Attitude

What does attitude mean to you? Briefly define attitude in your own words.

To me, attitude is the way that you respond to a situation presented to you. It is a representation of how you feel about something, and this can be a very positive reaction or a very negative one. Attitude is the one thing that can either keep you pushing through tough times or falling faster and faster into failure.

How does attitude affect your leadership?

Attitude affects your leadership in many ways. One of the most important ways it impacts your leadership is because it is contagious and rubs off on the people that you are around. It can motivate them or bring them down, and this impacts leadership in a huge way because it determines the will that your followers will have.

We talked about the following points about attitude. Explain each one as it pertains to your own leadership...
-Your attitude is a choice
-Your attitude determines your actions
-Your people are a mirror of your attitude

The first point, your attitude is a choice, pertains to my leadership because I have the power to choose how I want to react to something. There are days when I feel like I want to improve and show everyone what I can do, but there are also days when I just want to be done with everything. I have the choice to either keep a positive attitude and make others around me better, or I can slouch around and go with the flow of things. Attitude is a choice, and hopefully I and other people will learn that the positive attitude is the best one to have because it is what keeps you motivated and keeps you pushing to your potential.
Your attitude definitely determines your actions. In my own leadership experiences, I know that if I have a positive attitude and an attitude that leads me to play at the top of my game, that will take me to where I want to be, which is giving it my all 100% of the time. An attitude can either motivate you to be the best player, or it can make you lazy, feel frustrated with yourself, etc. until it is too much to bear and you feel like you want to give up.
Also, your people are a mirror of your attitude. As a leader, I have come to learn that your teammates do what you do, even if you might not think so. For example, this past volleyball season for club, we sometimes had energy issues when we were playing. We would seem dead on the court, not having any fun, not talking to each other, not moving around. I was to the point of frustration beyond control, and I learned that to be a leader you must lead by example and that your followers do what you do, for the most part. I tested it out at the next practice, having high energy all the time and keeping a positive attitude. It was a great practice and everyone said they had a great time. I learned that if you as a leader can keep a good attitude, it will bring everyone else's attitudes up with it. This is essential for leadership.

Respond to the following quote by Victor Frankl, author of Man's Search for Meaning...

"The last of our human freedoms is to choose our attitude in any given circumstances."

This book is about a man that lived during the Holocaust in the concentration camps and fought hard to survive. The book focuses mainly on how he believes his attitude was what got him through those tough times. To me, this quote means that no matter what situation you are in, whether you are having a great time or being tortured in a concentration camp, you have the power to control your attitude and make the situation better or worse. Your outlook on a situation can change your reactions and therefore either get you through those difficulties or ruin your chances.

Mr. Bollinger...

1. Learn as much as you can
2. Support the leader, you can't undermine them
3. Head coach has to trust you by what you do
4. Put people in a position of leadership, empower them
5. Know your place in the hierarchy, you may have it upside down
6. Serve others
7. Stay focused on the "important" as much as the "urgent"
8. You are the glue between the leader and the followers

Choose a point that you think is the most important and why.

The point to me that is most important about leading from the middle is that you have to be the glue between the leader and the followers. I think this is the most important because of personal experience. I have been in both the following and leadership position and I understand how hard it is for the two to connect sometimes. When you are a follower, you sometimes feel like you can't approach the leader because "they might not accept my ideas" or "they won't even take my thoughts into consideration". This is not always the case, but it does happen this way. There is something missing. When you are the leader, sometimes you are afraid that you will say something to your followers that could change their mind about their trust in you, or you don't want to make them feel like they are obliged to do exactly what you want. Again, something is missing. You need a person who can be the go-between, someone that will be there to be the relay between the followers and the leader. The leaders need someone to bounce ideas off of, and the followers need that person that they can talk to, relate to, and give their real opinion to.

Pick a point that you are best at and give an example explaining why.

The point that I believe I am best at is supporting the leader and not undermining them. One example that proves this is that during one of my volleyball seasons a few years ago, I had a coach who was frustrating a lot of the players and none of us really seemed to want to follow the coach. When the girls would come complain to me, I tried to focus on the positives when I was talking about the coach with them, and I eventually proved to them that our coach was taking the right actions that we needed in order to succeed. They didn't always agree with what our coach taught, but they finally realized that that person was doing their job to the best of their abilities, and that they were succeeding in teaching us what we needed to know. All because we took the action of focusing on the positive things, many perspectives changed and we were able to support our coach instead of put them down.

Pick your weakest and pick 3 concrete ways you can improve at it.

I would have to say that my weakest is staying focused on the "important" as much as the "urgent". I am not always the one who can solve long term problems before the short term problems, and I think that can be a negative trait to have. The long term issues also tend to be more important and could have a larger affect. 3 concrete ways that I can work at improving this include: 1. Making a list of short term goals that I can accomplish that I have to do fairly quickly. 2. Take any long term goals that I have and turn them into short term goals, for example; Going to college is a long term goal of mine. I can turn this into short term goals by deciding what colleges I would like to go to, scheduling college tours, start getting applications together, etc. 3. Lastly, I can make a list of all the things I am trying to accomplish in my life right now and I can, rank them by importance, not necessarily long-term or short-term, and try to accomplish them from there.

Mr. Cain...

What did he mean when he said, "You have the choice to entertain your thoughts?" Give an example of this in your own life as it pertains to leadership?

Mr. Cain meant that you can control the way that your mind thinks. You have the power to make something seem better or worse than it really is. This quote means that you can make every situation seem positive, even when it may not seem so. We have the power to react to situations differently, and can act in any way because of that. One example of this in my life would be that sometimes after a volleyball practice, I may feel as if I did not play very well. Usually, I come from these practices feeling depressed and frustrated with not only myself but my team as well. Once I realize that I am making the situation worse, I try to look back on the night and remember the little things that I did positive. For example, I will remember some really nice serves that I had, a kill that went through the floor, or an interaction between the coach or a teammate and I.

He read a passage about handling adversity right before he left. Explain which one you are, the egg (get hardened on the inside), the carrot (get soft), or the coffee bean (change the situation) and why? If you are the egg or carrot talk about what you can do to become the coffee bean when adversity hits and if you are the bean talk about what types of things you do during adversity to make the situation better.

I would say that I try to be the bean and at most points I think I am successful, but actually at times I become the egg. The "egg" is the one that, when faced with adversity, becomes hard on the inside. I feel like when I am presented with a challenge, sometimes I "harden up," shut down, and become frustrated. When this happens, the only place to go is downhill and I keep rolling faster and faster until I just have to quit. This is definitely not a good characteristic to have, in my eyes. When adversity hits, I need to focus on the positive things and not worry so much about what I am doing, but more of what I can do to help the team out, whether that means stepping up my game or staying out of the way. I need to think about the team and our success as a whole, and not just focus on myself.

Initiative and Perseverance...

We all struggle starting things even when we know they will benefit us in the end. We all would much rather enjoy the instant gratification that is here and now. In what ways can you show better initiation in your own life and leadership capabilities? Give at least one concrete example of something you are showing a lack of initiation with and at least 3 concrete steps you are going to take in order to do that.

The steps that I am going to take in order to show better initiation in my own life and leadership capabilities that I am going to not be afraid to take as many risks and I am going to learn to understand that these risks will most likely benefit me in the end, even if I don't "feel" like doing them now. A concrete example of something I am showing a lack of initiation in now is that I am not necessarily taking all the steps needed to improve in my volleyball skills, mostly with conditioning. The 3 concrete steps that I can take in order to do that is run a mile every day, do 15-30 minutes of jump rope a few times a week, and eat healthy foods and drink a lot of water.

Respond to the following scenario as it pertains to leadership and initiative...

You are a leader on a team and one of your best players, that the team relies on heavily, is struggling with completing the season for unknown reasons. They are not performing to their best capabilities, and they seem withdrawn at practice, not lifting weights very hard, but they still are competing hard during games and finding excitement in games. Using your new knowledge of perseverance, what types of questions could you ask them to find out more and what types of advice could you give them to get them through this time and persevere?

This is a tough one: Some questions that I would ask this person would include:

Is there anything that I can do to help you live up to your potential all the time?
How can we motivate you to work a little harder in practice?
What do we need to do in order to put your excitement in games towards practice as well?

I would say as my advice: We need to work hard in practice, too. If we only play hard in games, then that will be the only real chance that we have to fix things, and that is what practice is for. If we start playing hard in practice, then we will play even harder during the game.

Mr. Diers...

What does the following quote mean to you?

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the Strongman stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man whom is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again... who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at least knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, if he fails, while doing greatly, so that his places shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory or defeat.

To me, this quote means that it doesn't matter what anyone says or thinks, all that matters is the person who gave everything to get to their goal and they never gave up. They are the type of person that doesn't really care if they succeed or fail, but they trust that their passion and toughness will always set them above everyone else. This person knows that in the end they will always be placed above all those who know only victory and only defeat.

How can you relate Mr. Diers' comment "integrity is something you display all the time" to your own leadership process? Be specific in what that looks like?

This comment relates to my own leadership process because it is something that I value highly and that I believe is one of the most important parts of leadership. I try to behave the same way everywhere I go, with respect, honesty, and kindness. Its important to display integrity all the time or else people will not always think of you the same way. Reputations can get around, and if you have a bad one you can only end up hurting yourself, and possibly others. So it is important to have a set of values that you live by. You cannot only say you have values, you must live your life by them. Some ways that I strive to display integrity is through school, volleyball, with family and also when I am doing things with friends.

In what ways is sacrifice "something you have to accept" and can you sacrifice the wrong things? Explain.

Sacrifice is a necessary part of leadership, and therefore needs to be accepted if you want to lead anyone. You must be willing to give things up if you want to make changes or take your team to the next level. If you aren't willing to take chances, how can you expect anyone else to? It is just something that comes with leadership. You can definitely sacrifice the wrong things. Family-for example. Never do anything that will have a negative impact on your family. These are people that love you and will always be with you and if you hurt them in any way, it will ruin lots of things. I believe that family is the biggest one. Time, for example, would be a good thing to sacrifice, but never your family.