Running head: Leadership Story 1

Ryan Hathaway’s Leadership Story

Ryan A. Hathaway

UW Stout & UW La Crosse Affiliation

Leadership Story 2

Introduction

Within the Student Affairs practice, most practitioners are leaders. Each position requires

some leadership skills as most practitioners work within teams or supervise teams. Most

practitioners will also find themselves working as leaders to assist students throughout their

academic years within their institution. With the idea that everyone is a leader, everyone has a

beginning, current state, and future goal as for their state of leadership. These three states are the

practitioner’s leadership story. With this context, this paper will address my leadership story, and

my current UW-Stout Wigen & Red Cedar Hall Coordinator position.

The Beginning

I started my leadership career in 2012 at Menomonee Falls High school as the

Technology clubs event designer. The Event Designer was a leadership position; however,

minimal amounts of work were needed to complete the position well. My next leadership

position was within the University of Wisconsin Green Bay’s Residence Hall Committee as a

general member through my first year on campus. During this time, I met Jeff Willems the Area

Coordinator who was the professional staff member of the Donald Long hall in which I was a

resident. Willems would continue to influence both my career and leadership style throughout

the oncoming years. This position within the committee gave me a starting point in developing

my work with teams. As I ended my year in the Leadership committee, I became a Resident

Advisor for Donald Long hall. This led to Willems becoming my supervisor in which Willems

then taught me about Student Affairs. This also pushed significant improvement with teamwork

and leading teams in conducting programs. During my second year as a RA, my student staff

supervisor was released from the position and this led to me taking on the position of

Community Advisor. After a month had passed, I had then became the Community advisor,
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which supervised then six RAs. This position helped me grow significantly within leadership

since it was my first supervisory position. I held this position, as well as other positions off

campus, until I graduated with my bachelor’s in human biology with an emphasis of health

sciences, chemistry, and computer science.

One of the ways Willems influenced my career was the switch from Pre-med to Student

Affairs. During a volleyball match another student had compared me to Willems which was the

got me to start thinking about the student affairs field. This event was so impactful because I had

looked up to Willems significantly and still do since he was such a strong presence during my

academic years. Willems was also the one to start educating me on multiple leadership theories

that were attached to my work. The main theories that Willems pushed was: Challenge and

Support, Transformational leadership, and laissez faire with more of a focus on autonomy and

being a resource to students. Willems had discussions with me on multiple occasions that were

centered on the theories he was attempting to teach me. He also was a big person on actions

teach better than words and showed most of these by example. During most of our 1:1’s he

would discuss were I was in the developmental stage and would then discuss how he would be

giving direction from then on. With challenge and support he would openly discuss how he was

planning on challenging me and always ended the conversation with “now how can I support you

through this process”. Finally, with his students on the higher developmental level he would take

the approach of challenging them at the same time of letting them do what they believed to be

the best.

Within the position I currently am in, Sarah Snyder has influenced me the most. Sarah

Snyder was my first supervisor at UW-Stout which was the first professional position I have had.

With Snyder, she pushed a significant me to be autonomous and confident within my position
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but at the same time pushed that it was important to ask questions. Sarah did this mainly by

simply giving me almost full control of my building other than a few aspects in which my

position did not cover. Snyder was also always willing to help me grow within this position and

as a leader. When I first started, I had mentioned that I wanted to work on my conduct more and

in having this brief conversation, it led to Snyder coaching me through conduct and giving me

additional conduct work. Snyder also had discussions weekly about leadership style and how

she thought would be the best way to serve students while still ending it with a discussion on

how I perceived things and wanted to continue forward. Snyder also showed, the pros and cons

to many different styles of leadership to help push me towards finding my own style.

Who I am now?

In my current role within Housing, I supervise and lead a team of four resident assistants,

eight desk assistants, a hall leadership committee, and an academic resource coordinator. For

each group of student staff and positions, I have attempted to utilize multiple methods of

leadership to provide the best direction and support. With that, I mainly utilized the Hersey and

Blanchard’s situational leadership theory, path goal theory, and transformational leadership style,

a modified laissez faire leadership style. Throughout the year I had used multiple theories at

different times and through different situations to best suite the students. During staff meetings, I

took more of a focus on path goal theory and a coaching style as I believed that created the best

results during that scenario. With Path-goal theory there would mainly be discussions on the

what possible obstacles may be coming up and how to work around them. With Housing

initiatives, I thought it was best to describe the process using path goal theory in which the staff

would know why we are conducting ourselves in the way we were, how to do so, and what

possible obstacles may come out. I also took on the coaching style due to the differences of
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developmental levels within the group I was supervising. When I was out of group meetings, I

attempted to utilize both situational and transformational theories to best suite my students

especially when dealing with direction. This was shown most during 1:1 interactions and

meetings when it was important to meet the individual needs throughout this meeting.

With that, I also utilized a modified laissez faire focus on those who are higher on the

developmental level and those who are in the directing behaviors similar to Willems. With these

students, I focused mainly on discussion of resources available to them but pushed them to

continue their work with a focus on autonomy. Northouse (2019) states laissez-faire is

“the factor represents the absence of leadership. As the French phrase implies, the

laissez-faire leader takes a ‘hands-off, let-things-ride’ (non-transactional) approach. This

leader abdicates responsibility, delays decisions, gives no feedback, and gives little effort

to help followers satisfy their need” (p. 168).

With this definition, I had focused on pushing the students more to be self-sufficient while still

reporting to me and then supporting those needs that were reported. This was focused more on

the student becoming self-sufficient while at the same time I was providing what was needed. I

believe that students high on the developmental levels have strong self-efficacy thus it is

important to give them the freedom to be self-efficient. As for students who are lower on the

developmental levels, I continued with a coaching style providing high direction and high

support for those students.

Where do I want to go?

As previously mentioned, I currently utilize multiple methods to best push students

towards achieving their goals. One of the directions I want to move away from is the modified

laissez faire leadership style. I do believe I can give students autonomy; however, I personally
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have been under the belief recently that the usage of this theory and the idea of autonomy as

more of a buzz word and creates an underachieving staff without direction. Although it has

previously worked with other supervisors, I believe it is not the style meant for me. I personally

believe that I started using this method due to my lack of knowledge and only pushed this belief

that it was a strong method because of my lack of experience. I now believe that this led to my

students not being held accountable and lead to a weak leadership. I believe that during the first

semester I was given too low of a direction from my supervisor and since I had low technical

knowledge of this position, I transitioned from a skills-based leadership to a positional leadership

which also brought down my strengths. I want to focus on ensuring that I am being directive

enough with his students during this upcoming year and move away from the positional

leadership. I also want to head into a direction in which I focus more on my followers needs and

motivations instead of a focus on autonomy.

With this, I want to focus on transformational leadership, situational leadership, and

Adaptive leadership. All three of these leadership styles focuses mainly on the ability to work

with change, unexpected events, and with the changing needs of my followers. Although I have

used most of these methods previously, a focus on fine tuning and developing more tools and

products that push these methods will be my focus. I also want to bring in adaptive leadership

theory since it does work well with the previously mentioned theories. As Northouse (2019)

mentions, I do want to motivate, organize and focus the follower’s attention on the goal ahead

which is all described as items that come from adaptive leadership. I also want to work more on

the usage of path goal theory with a focus on the discussion of the end goal. Previously, I mainly

discussed the path and briefly mentioned the goal, however, my work now is focusing on the

discussion of the goals and how to best achieve them. With this, my goals for the upcoming
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years is to strengthen my approaches previously used, further himself from laissez faire

leadership style, and to bring in adaptive leadership into his work.

How will I accomplish this?

To achieve my goals, there is a significant amount of work to conduct. My main role over

the 2019 summer has been developing multiple tools to provide students stronger direction and

accountability. Although this is a higher directive response, it allows me to then later assess the

needs of the students and to develop them accordingly. One of these tools is the usage of

Sociograms. A sociogram is a simple floor plan in which a student staff member will write or

draw information about their students. Sociograms are a tool in which personal interactions with

residents can be assessed and used to determine community base items within residence halls. I

intend to utilize this as an accountability measure, since it is easy to ensure RAs have knowledge

on their residents, but also to use the information provide as directable content. With the usage of

the sociograms and other tools, this will lead me to a more directive leadership, and a more

accountable leadership in which their path is clearer. I believe with the usage of the sociogram I

can provide a strong focus on accountability within the building while focusing on altering my

direction to those on the higher developmental scale. Each RA will be required similar items for

the sociograms, however, it will be dependent on the level they are at, to see how much we

unpack and create direction from that information. After implementing these tools, we should see

an increase in satisfaction from the residents which will help us evaluate this goal.

Another tool that will be utilized in the upcoming year is an intake discussion for the staff

members and an evaluation conducted by me. The intake survey allows me to ask questions

about the student’s leadership style, what are their motivations for this position, and what they

want out of me as a supervisor. With this tool, I will be able to focus on the individual
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consideration, and their motivation. I will also be focusing on staff development work this year

pushing students to be stimulated intellectually. This will be conducted by once a month staff

development and once a month all staff meetings. These all should strengthen my

transformational leadership since all are parts of the transformational approach. For adding

adaptive leadership styles into my techniques, the usage of the six behaviors mentioned within

Northouse (2019) will be important. Specifically, I focus on preemptively identifying adaptive

challenges which will also be used within path-goal theory as well. This will be done by a strong

focus on challenges and issues during one on one meetings with staff and Hathaway’s

supervisor. I will also focus on maintaining disciplined attention and giving the work back to the

students. I am implementing multiple recognition tools that will assist with the giving the work

back to the students and the strong focus of accountability will also assist with maintaining the

disciplined attention. I will also be focusing on the discussion of leadership with my supervisor

to further work on adapting and adopting different techniques throughout the year. I also believe

that with the experience I have gotten this past year, I will shift back towards a skills-based

leadership style.

Conclusion.

As with every Student Affairs professional, leadership is a key part of their career. Each

professional has a story and a path. Hathaway started within his High school career and

continues to attempt improvements on his leadership style. Although previously Hathaway did

utilize a modified laissez faire leadership style, Hathaway will push and grow out of this method.

Hathaway will also strengthen his transformational and situational leadership style. With an

adoption of the adaptation model as well, an increase in satisfaction for students and student staff

is also expected.
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References

Northouse, P. (2019). Leadership: Theory and practice. (8th ed.) Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage

Publishers.