Ethan Woyansky

Professor Scott Harris

UNIV 392

29 June 2017

Throughout my time as an Orientation Leader, Ive had the privilege of meeting some

wonderful students, people whose company and understanding I dearly appreciated. These

students served as the backbone of my leadership; I bounced my ideas and jokes off of them, and

they reciprocated back to me in an equal manner, often bringing the rest of the group into the

conversation with them. As wonderful as these students are, they are often quite rare, and those

on the other end of the spectrum lead to me becoming incredibly flustered and disgruntled - those

students who destabilize my leadership structure often lead to me becoming disassociated with

the leader I want to be. During my last freshman orientation, this exact scenario came about -

students who were mean, disrespectful and ornery were abound in my group, and my resolve was

tested throughout the course of our twenty four hours spent together.

I tend to believe that my leadership is far more situational than structured - I try my

hardest to read my groups and act accordingly to my students feelings and interactions. In my

last Orientation group I had three students in particular who were atrocious in regards to

respecting me and the program. They laughed and talked during every presentation, disrespected

me by giving me a nickname based on sensitive information I shared with them, and joked

during the sexual consent section of the Student Promise presentation. Though I normally feel

emotionally connected to my students by the end of the first night, I couldnt enjoy myself and

have fun with any of them due to these three people. It was almost as though their actions were

causing me to rescind my emotional investment in my work, and pushed me to lead a more

directive-oriented leadership role than a support oriented one (Northouse, pp. 90-91). I didnt

feel happy, excited or connected to these students - I wanted them out of my path and out of the

school that I hold close to my heart.

After the Student Promise presentation where they laughed during a sensitive topic, I

pulled the entire group to the side and raised my voice at everyone, mainly singling out the three

students who had disrupted my leadership the entire day. I shifted immediately from a referent

style of power to an authoritative - there was no more I could do to try and bond with my

students. No longer would I attempt to support them after how awful they had been - I simply

wanted to get them to their presentations and be done with them.

In hindsight, perhaps there were alternative options to how I had dealt with the situation,

but it seemed to get the point across that I was incredibly infuriated and unable to lead without

their full cooperation. No matter which path I had chosen, it definitely became clear to me that it

was impossible to always rely on one specific style of leadership - being someone who relied on

only my skills, traits or bases of power would be too rudimentary and simple for the complex

groups of people I would be around. Rather than focus on the basics, I decided to implement all

of these ideas into my situational basis of leadership - be welcoming, warm and kind, but

assertiveness is needed at times throughout the day.