15 Chapter 15

Ellen Tolleson

Advice to students enrolling in Change Leadership

Be open.  This is the best piece of advice I can offer to incoming students in Change Leadership.  If you can get to a place where you are open then you will learn and experience more than expected. Over the course of the class, Dr. Holmes focus is to take you as an individual student from where you are when you first walk through the door on Day 1 through a process of growth and learning by the last day.  Each of you will grow and learn at a different pace and level but all will learn.

Be open to this journey, learning will come in many forms.  Peer to Peer and Professor to Student.  Through reading and lectures. Through feedback, lots and lots of feedback.  Know that feedback is all learning and if you are open to accepting the feedback you will grow.  Being open is listening to the feedback and not responding, just saying thank you and then sitting with the feedback.  Take the feedback you receive and sort through it, think on it and then use it to make you are better student, writer and leader.  You won’t always like it, remember be open.

What you will learn in Change Leadership are skills that transfer with you, it is not tied to one position that you may hold but continues with you in all areas of your life, from career and volunteer roles to family roles, whatever path you are on.

Be open and you will be successful.