A change I would like to promote in my community is a change in the education system. I believe that everything goes back to the type of education we were given as a child, and right now our education system is extremely flawed. Instead of teachers being able to teach what they believe will be most important in life and helpful to the student they are instead required to focus their material to standardized tests. This eliminates all creativity in the classroom and provides an unsuccessful learning environment.
This is a second-order change.
What I can change about myself in order to be a more effective leader is to not be so bossy. I tend to take charge of things and sometimes that can come across in the wrong way. In the precontemplation stage of personal change I would be thinking that there is nothing wrong with my leadership style and that there is nothing to change right now. During the contemplation stage I start to realize that I am not a perfect leader and that I need to stop being so bossy to others.
In the preparation stage I could start making little changes, like asking for other peoples input form the group instead of taking charge all of the time. During the action stage I really need to start changing my leadership style in group work. Instead of taking over I could try to work together with the group as a whole and have each member actively participate, maybe even let someone else take charge of the “leader” role.
During the maintenance stage I will work on keeping my leadership style like this while working in groups.
The metaphor that I find myself drawn to is the metaphor of yeast. An example of this while working in groups is when instead of one person doing all of the work, each group member does an equal part of the project. We all end up working happily together and complete the project much faster working as a team. Resistance has definitely played more of a stagnation role of change in my experience. In my National in high school I was the president and often lacked motivation of my members. Most of the people were unfortunately in there because it looked good on college applications so it was hard to make change in my community when many of my group members didn’t participate.