Leadership and Influence essay
It is true that there are moments in life that has to do with facing many situations where some decisions must be taken. However, it was from these difficult situations where I have taken advantage from as a leader. Beyond the use of appropiate rhetoric, my way of communicating with other people has always been through persuasion. As a result of my persuasion, I usually influence people.
One of these situations that I can outline was the way I tried to convince a group of people to accomplish a mission with a social objective. My experience was when I was working on a volunteer group from an institution of the Catholic Church named Opus Dei. We had to go to peripheral neighborhoods with high rates of violence, illegal drug traffic, delinquency and highly dangerous zones.
Our mission consisted in visiting house by house, speak to the families and ask them if they needed help with scholar lesson for their children. Once we were settled in the place, my group reacted in an unexpected way. Fear has taken control of them when they saw the way people lived in their familiar dwellings. Most of my colleagues wanted to abort our mission and decided to go back, because they felt threatened by the neighbors from these families.
In this case, I used a persuasion technique: I told my group to observe the children and listen to their petitions, they wanted us to stay and I reminded them that we were there to help them so they could grow up with a better future and that we, as a part of a community had a responsibility which was carrying out this moral commitment for the children. As soon as I spoke out my thoughts, my colleagues finally took the quick resolution to split up in small groups of two and started to teach the children classifying them by grade, and the enthusiasm came back. The children were very diligent. Once we completed our mission, my colleagues recognized that if I wouldn't encouraged them, our commitment was not going to succeed.
My persuasion technique has influenced on my colleagues in a way that allowed us to finish our mission, and of course thanks to the collective-social conscience developed in each of them.
Since I had this experience, my interest for urban planning has started. With my Master on Construction Law I aspire to consolidate my knowledge and as a Chevenning scholarship holder, my wish would be implementing this new branch of Law in my country for a better quality of familiar dwellings.
