Breakdown of the Montgomery Leadership Program + my personality type profile

MLP

    This three semester program is designed to push student to grow and become leaders. The first semester is focused on community volunteering, teamwork/ team building and self reflection. Each group in this program was assigned to a community partner for the spring semester. My group was paired with the Noxubee Wildlife Refuge – our goal was to volunteer at this massive wildlife refuge while also understanding what the facility needed. We hosted a canoe day and helped the refuge gain publicity for the event, we provided snacks for the event then we ran the event. Loading people into canoes after fitting them for life jackets, showing them basic paddle movements then pushing them out into the wild life centers lake was our task. 

The second semester entailed teaching groups of DayOne Leadership students (freshman students looking to learn leadership). We were then assigned to lead this group through a new community partner (mine was a childhood development center) where we challenged the students to use the leadership skills we taught them to be helpful in the community. We built a chalkboard and a storage area for the tricycles so they could avoid the rusting outside in the rain. 

The third semester of this program has been my favorite. After learning, then teaching what we had learned, in the third semester we were on our own. We picked a cause important to us and our task was to provide service in our communities. We were expected to budget, plan, and coordinate with others to help us achieve our vision: mine was a youth literacy promotion project in Mississippi. I partnered with the public library and realized they had weekly story time events on Mondays and Wednesdays at 10am. I instantly realized that this must exclude kids who have working parents from attending these story times. The target group of kids in which I was trying to reach were the kids who may not have the same access to books as others in this community – kids with working parents. So, three Saturdays in March I planned for a story time. 

    Key Points

Focused learning on leadership skills and developing servant leadership abilities. Leadership over freshman leadership class

My Personality Profile

Uncovering my personality type and how others similar / different to me work has been extraordinarily influential to my leadership journey. This has given me opportunities to grow and it has also helped me come to terms with short comings that I struggle with as well as owning in on my strengths.

A break down of my personality type – 16 Personalities does a great job at explaining each section and each different variation of personality types. This is always the letter combination that I’ve gotten from various tests (free and not free) similar to this one.

Understanding a personality type can help leaders understand others. I find this especially true because unlike some of the other personality types – mine is true to me and my dislike for being micromanaged. I have seen other successful leaders who flourish in structured environments with deadlines laid out and project instructions and expectations clearly defined.

I don’t work as well under those kind of restrictions. I would much rather see a larger goal or desired outcome and then I will reach it.

Maybe in an unconventional, or new way – but still it will be completed with the independence to be innovative and creative. Project check points can also be difficult for me seeing as I do not set personal timelines for myself – rather, I hold personal responsibility and pressure on myself to complete what needs to be done early on.

Other personality types and more information can be found at 16 Personalities