Alicia Gomes-Figueira Covey Appendix 3 quote

Covey Appendix 3 quote John W. Gardner (pg 361)
“Leaders and leader/managers distinguish themselves from the general runoff managers in at least six respects:
1. They think longer term.
2. In thinking about the unit they are heading they grasp its relationships to larger realities.
3. They reach and influence constituents beyond their jurisdictions, beyond boundaries.
4. They put heavy emphasis on the intangibles of vision, values, and motivation and understand intuitively the nonrational and unconscious elements in leader-constituent interaction.
5. They have the political skill to cope with the conflicting requirements of multiple constituencies.
6. They think in terms of renewal.
“The manager is more tightly linked to an organization than is the leader. Indeed, the leader may have no organization at all”.

In terms of my own vision, experience and being a student leader at UH-Hilo, I think that I have followed change and a better place for our students at UH-Hilo as well as my community. Thinking outside the box is what any leader should do to become a great leader and build relationships with their organization as well as with other people. In my experience of being a student leader for the past 9 years, I have learned new skills to help make my organization a success and build relationships with my organization as well as with other organizations on campus and faculty, staff and administration. I have also learned that we all have our own strengths, weakness and talents and we as leaders must help each other to take that talent and strength and build on it. Because everyone in an organization has different cultures, values, goals, and visions, we can all learn from one another about other cultures and so forth.

Alicia Gomes-Figueira Covey Appendix 2 assignment

The theory that I have chosen in the Covey Appendix 2 is the Spiritual Leadership and the leader I have chosen is Mother Teresa. In my own words I believe that the Spiritual Leadership Theory is all about connecting and influencing people on a spiritual level such as religious view on life. This involves taking care of others, having knowledge of different cultures, values, traditions, customs and beliefs. You must commit to the care of the whole person and spiritual care into their daily lives and what they practice. Mother Teresa had so much passion to live her life with vision and discipline that lead to change. Mother Teresa had great “spiritual intelligence”, which made her a great leader. I believe that the Spiritual Theory applies to all the accomplishments that Mother Teresa did throughout her life and that possessed all these qualities as a leader. Mother Teresa was an Albanian Catholic nun and founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1948 at Calcutta, India. She was a great humanitarian and she helped the sick and poor, not only in her own community or country but local, national, and international. Her vision for the organization, her actions to create change, and taking that action to make the change happen I believe is what made her a great leader. Also, her warmth, empathy, genuineness to the world made her a loving person and a great role model. She lived her life serving God and spreading the word of God to the world by her actions. This showed that she lived her life by “faith” and “hope” and that by her actions could change the world and make the world a better place.

COM 441 Project proposal

Alicia Gomes-Figueira
COM 441 Project Proposal Leadership and Communication
Spring 2010 Dr Becker

My project proposal will consist of the following:
What do you plan to do? I plan to research on women leaders who ran for office throughout history and look at who they ran against, how the media portrayed and advertised these women leaders.

Why (how does it connect to your mission?) It will connect to my mission and gaining leadership skills from women who have been in the leadership position and was successful and it will show that women can become leaders within their community, local, national and international just as well as men.

When? I will have my research paper ready to submit to Dr Becker and the COM 441 class in May 2010.

How? I will develop 10-15 page research paper which will include all the research I have found to make my project a success.

What will you need to succeed? I will need to do research and look back in history on women leaders who ran in politics and became leaders such as Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin.

How will you know if you have succeeded? I will know if I have succeeded by the research I gather and put into my paper and getting feedback from Dr Becker and other COM 441 classmates.

Ted Talks

After visiting the TED Talk site, the one speaker I chose to write about was First Lady Michelle Obama and her talk on a plea for Education at a London girls school. She makes a passionate, personal case for each student to take education seriously. It is this new, brilliant generation, she says, that will close the gap between the world as it is and the world as it should be. I wanted to show that even thou her husband is the president of the United States, Michelle Obama has become a leader to many people of young and old. As she was growing up, Michelle Obama family never had much money but her parent always told her that education was very important and she further her education at Princeton and she went on to Harvard Law School. Her and her older brother was raised with Love, morals and a good education. Her mother was her role model and showed her compassion, love, and faith. After that she went back to Chicago to open a law firm where she met her husband Barack Obama. I was so inspired by Michelle Obama and listening to her talk got me thinking of my own childhood and education and the future of my nieces and nephews. Michelle Obama balances work and personal life and she still finds time to help out around the world and all the things she is passionate about such as working mothers. She talks about that the girls are our future leaders and they are the ones that will make a difference in our world and will close the gap between the world as it is and the world as it should be.

Michelle Obama's plea for education http://www.ted.com/talks/michelle_obama.html April 2009
First Lady Michelle Obama, a lawyer and administrator, is an advocate for working parents, military families and national service. Why you should listen to her: http://www.ted.com/speakers/michelle_obama.html
Michelle Obama's life as First Lady of the United States is informed by her early life, growing up as the daughter of a pump operator for the Chicago water department. Though money was tight, her parents emphasized education and possibility for their two brilliant children. Both kids went to Princeton (her older brother, Craig Robinson, was a bond trader, then become a much-respected basketball coach at Brown and now Oregon State University); Michelle went on to Harvard Law School, and returned to Chicago to do corporate law at the firm where she met her future husband, Barack Obama. She left corporate law to become a civil servant, working in planning, social outreach and administration with the city of Chicago, AmeriCorps and the University of Chicago Medical Center. Today, Michelle Obama's personal focus is on raising her own two children, Malia and Sasha, in the glare of White House life. Her more outward focus, as First Lady, also revolves around issues of work-life balance; she's a passionate supporter of military families and of working mothers. She's helping to lead the drive for national service, encouraging Americans to volunteer in their own communities. (And of course, she's become an international fashion icon too.)
To learn more about Michelle Obama here are a few links about her:
http://www.barackobama.com/about/michelle_obama/#michelle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Obama

"What I have learned from my classmate about a leader."

After reading my classmates 600 word of a leader I have learned that there are so many other great leaders out there and that have passed on. The one leader that stuck out for me was Mother Teresa. What I learned about Mother Teresa is that her leadership legacy of creating action and a spiritually life by dedicating her life to helping the poor, ill, less fortunate, and striving for peace. Mother Teresa had the ability to analyze what was needed and where it was needed most and visualized peace and well-being, her self-awareness, empathy, social sensitivity, and her ability to communicate with others that enhanced balance, judgment, and wisdom. All of these things and the way she led her life by creating action and a spiritual connection to people and the environment has made her the great leader she was and she will continue to inspire us all to follow in her footsteps and live our life as she did.

Martin Luther King Jr, a leader

The leader I picked for my 600 Word biography of a leader with the connection to Covey 4 and 5 was Martin Luther King Jr who was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. Just a little history about who Martin Luther King Jr was as a person and a leader. He was the son of the Reverend Martin Luther King Sr. and Alberta Williams King. He had an older sister, Willie Christine King, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel Williams King. He sang with his church choir at the 1939 Atlanta for the premiere of the movie Gone with the Wind. He was of African-American heritage, an American activist and a prominent leader, and was a leader in the African-American civil rights movement. On June 18, 1953 he married Coretta Scott on the lawn of her parents' house in her hometown of Heiberger, Alabama. They had four children; Yolanda King, Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott King, and Bernice King. He became the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama when he was twenty-five years old in 1954. He became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civial disobedience and other non-violent means in 1964 and Martin Luther King, Jr day was established as a U.S. national holiday in 1986.

His leadership legacy was on the civil rights in the U.S and becoming a human rights icon with his public speech of “I had a dream”in March 1963 in Washington where he raised public consciousness of the civil rights movement that has established him as one of the greatest leaders in U.S. history. I believe Martin Luther King Jr was an example of a true leader and one that discovered his voice and expressed it as chapter 4 and 5 talked about. His mental intelligence IQ to analyze, reason, use language and comprehend life issues made him an outstanding leader. Another thing that I think made him a great leader is his emotional intelligence IQ of his self-knowledge, self-awareness, social, empathy and his ability to communicate to others such as in his “I had a dream speech”. His Spiritual intelligence IQ of guiding, motivating, and connecting with people as well as his vision, discipline, passion, and conscience was another way he exemplified his leadership legacy and skills. His vision to see the good in people and projects and having the discipline to make his vision, goals and values a success which brought his passion and desire for a common purpose to help his community and the world is what made him the leader he was and his legacy still continues on today.

In closing, Although the 8 habit talks about several leaders in chapter five such as George Washington, Mother Teresa, Florence Nightingale, Margaret Thatcher, Nelson Mandela, and Mohandas K. Ganhi, I believe all of these qualities is what makes Martin Luther King Jr a true leader and one that I look up to and wish to follow in my life as a student leader as well as at home and in my community and for this, I have chosen Martin Luther King Jr as the leader I wanted to discuss in my 600 word biography. With all his accomplishments in his life and how he became such an outstanding leader in our community, the U.S. and the world I feel has made him an outstanding leader and one that we all can look to for guidance long after his death.