Midterm and class reflection

When analyzing the characters in Where the Wild Things Are and looking for specific leadership theories within them I feel I learned a lot. I learned how to identify leadership qualities from observing somebody. Prior to watching the movie, I had a good overview of the theories, and could think of some past managers that used such theories. But now I feel I would be able to pinpoint someone’s natural leadership strategies and tendencies and then also help them improve it. There were times during the movie where I would identify a character utilizing a theory, but I also caught myself noticing how they were not using it correctly or how they could have improved and used a different technique.

         I learned that leadership can be found everywhere, and when looking for the leader in the group, that I should not just look for one person. As I noticed in the movie, and as I am beginning to realize in most situations in life: there are many leaders within a group of people, and those various leaders will lead in times where they feel they are useful. While max (main leader) seemed to lead when the group moral was down, KW (another important leader) seemed to lead the groups overall opinion on various matters.

         I feel as though I learned a lot about leadership during this first section of this class. All of the theories discussed in class, were new to me. While I already had a broad view of leadership and learned various theories from management courses and previous HTM classes, I learned the more about the behaviors of leaders. Another important that that I have learned in part to this course, is that there are many different types of successful leadership. Prior to this semester, I had a more black and white view of leadership, that there is bad leadership and good. But now I am realizing more that bad leadership is often incorrectly matching leadership style to the situation. And that someone who is a good leader at one job, may not be at another. It’s more about adaptability than having a set technique of how to lead everyone. But overall I la great deal of information during this first section that has helped my learn about myself as a leader.