Blog #4: Moral Muteness

In about 10th grade came my largest moral indecision. My close friend was thinking about buying and testing out an illegal substance, in school. I knew that this was going to happen, but I didn't hold him back and made no effort to tell any superiors to stop this 'deal'. Of course, they did get caught, and my friend got suspended from school for two weeks. Although he would have been mad at me at the time, there is no doubt in my mind that by telling someone what was happening it would've kept his record clean. I regret it ever since because it was a major stumbling block for him when he was applying to colleges. I've even talked to him about this since and even he has admitted that it would've been far better to be in trouble with his parents than the law.

Blog #3: Implicit Bias

The first quiz I took was the Presidents IAT. It said that I have a moderate preference for JFK over Obama, it wasn't totally shocking but I admittedly don't have a preference for many presidents over another. I believe this result may have came about because I don't really have a love for Obama, so I think it was more of a dislike for Obama than it was a love for JFK. I don't exactly know how this will shape or really matter in my life working with others. I have a view on presidents that they don't necessarily change much in society as a whole so this may not have been the best quiz to take when taking into account who I am and what I care about.

The next IAT I took was the association of weapons with white and black Americans. I was generally surprised by the result of me having a strong association of black Americans with weapons, it is unfortunate but it makes sense. I believe the results are this way because of the portrayal news channels create by pushing stories involving incidents with black americans and especially lately with things like Trayvon Martin and the events in Ferguson, Missouri. In a philosophy class I took last semester when I was at a different school in Upstate New York we covered implicit bias. The professor used a slide show to show the implicit biases people in society hold. There would be similar pictures of white people holding non-lethal objects then showed black people holding the same objects and the class was must quicker assuming that the black person was holding a weapon versus a non-lethal object as they actually were. It is sad and unfortunate that society happens to be like this but I believe eventually we will be able to rid of implicit bias involving race. I am again unsure how to fix this or work on this but I just need to become better with biases to a point where I no longer hold them. I will never become a good leader until that rings true.

Lastly, I took the IAT on old versus young people. The results of this that I moderately favor young  people compared to old people. I am not surprised at all by this because young people are my peers and I tend to like my peers. I do not think it is any different than an older person would do assuming that they'd favor old people, since they are their peers. This will assist by showing that I need to show more compassion with older people even if I may favor younger people. I am positive that if I worked with older people more often this bias would change and go more in the middle of favoring old and young people. With more experience and time leading a more diverse age population, I believe I can get better.

Blog #2 - How *not* to lead?

Michael Scott is a perfect example of how not to lead a group of people. Although I know this blog post was supposed to show a clip and how they show the leadership qualities from the Relational Leadership Model but I thought I'd spin it to how exactly a person should not lead. 

Starting with inclusive, Michael shows it countless times in this one clip of him yelling at Toby and saying how much he hates him which is the exact opposite of how one should handle a situation. Toby even is scared to talk because he knows what Michaels reaction will be.

Now with empowering, he tries to empower the office to lose more weight by wearing a fat suit and in turn making fun of people of higher weight. Another perfect example as to how not to empower a group of people.

Next comes ethical, he constantly gets into everybody's face and tries to have fun when in an office you should probably be more business-like and focus on the company's goals. He is very good at having very poor ethics by either being mean or just never focusing.

Lastly we have purpose, his purpose is great for TV but not really in a practical sense. His purpose is to constantly distract his workers from their goals and to remove their focus from what they should be doing, work.