Working at the LEAD Office and attending Mason has helped me to continue my efforts in civic learning and community engagement. The values of learning while giving back to the community were instilled in me through my involvement with the Boy Scouts of America. By leading various service projects, I learned valuable leadership skills while making an impact on my community. In helping to create leadership development courses, I learned how to create a community environment in which individuals can have the psychological safety needed for transformational learning. These are two lessons that I used with the LEAD Office.
In my work with LEAD, I was engaged in several service projects and community partnerships. Most of the projects I led focused on the little things that people can do to have an impact in the lives of others. Many of our projects started out by having participants think back to people who had a significant impact in their lives. Using Drew Dudley’s “Lollipop Leadership” TED Talk or a similar approach, I would show how small things can be meaningful. At one of the L-TEAM meetings I led, we focused on the project planning process. In this meeting, I used lessons from my classes and past service project experiences to inspire L-TEAM members to think about the impact they want to make in the world while equipping them with the tools and skills necessary to make it happen. It was these skills that the L-TEAM leaned on when developing the spring semester service project. Service, and leadership, is not defined by the size of the impact, but rather by the meaning the impact has on others.