Iowa State Leadership Experience

                The ISLE conference was unlike most leadership conferences that I have attended in the past. It was much more interactive and upbeat. I thought this was a great approach to leadership as these are two characteristics that we need to have when we are leading our mentees.
              The first session that I attended was the keynote speaker, Delatorro McNeal II, and he was awesome! I could tell that he was happy to be there and wanted us to have fun too. He used popular movies, like Pitch Perfect and Gridiron Gang, to relate back to how to be successful leaders and college students. He had so much useful information to tell us that I'm sure he could have gone on for hours. My favorite things that he said include, "mentors love you too much to leave you the way that you are" and "you need diversity to have harmony because if two people are the same, one is unnecessary". I love the first one because it inspired me to loudly push people instead of quietly leading by example. This is going to be crucial with the freshmen Hixson next fall; I'm going to have to tell them and push them to keep doing better whether it be with academics or their personal life. Delatorro also mentioned how creating challenges was a way to be leader and I can see myself using that as a way to help freshmen solve problems. For example, if they are having a tough time with homesickness, I could challenge them to attending one club meeting that week of their choice and try to get them more involved and meet new people. Secondly, I liked the other quote because although all of our students will come from the same Iowa background, they will all be unique and it is critical that we embrace that.
              The second session that I attended was called "U ZOO". It was lead by an Iowa State senior which I enjoyed because she is more of a peer to me. As we walked in, we were given a worksheet to complete similar to the MTBI online assessment where we had to rank how certain characteristics described us. This resulted in seeing what "animal" we were. I was a strong koala. From there, we were asked to create an event with our fellow strong animals. The task was very vague so really we could take it in any direction we wanted. Meanwhile, she went back to the audience and told them exactly what we would do based on our animals and prepped them to ask us questions about our event; we didn't know she was doing this! In the end, according to the audience, she was spot on with each one. For the koalas, she said we would be very kind and want to include everyone while keeping them comfortable. We had many plan B's! It was a very interactive session and flew by. As we left, we were given a follow-up packet to read that described how each animal most often behaved, what we are motivated by, and how we could improve on our leadership skills. I can see this a fun activity to use in our lesson plans as a way to supplement MBTI in the fall!
            Overall, I had a fun time at ISLE. It was a great way to hang out with some of the other Hixson peer mentors and get to know them more over the lunch break.