Accordingly to the
foundation for critical thinking, Intellectual Perseverance is defined as
“being conscious to use intellectual insights and truth, in spite of difficult,
obstacles, and frustrations”. Understanding
Intellectual Perseverance will assist in keeping my conscious of learning about
leadership focused and not clouded with outside influences such as “irrational
opposition from of others”, which will allow me to keep focused on the end
result. This concept is also can be explained in my abilities as a leader in
the workplace, and a student studying leadership within this program. (Foundation
for Critical Thinking, 2014)
The most critical area to
used Intellectual Perseverance is in the workplace as a leader, whether its my
informal or formal role. As an informal leader, I am not responsible for
individual performance progression or feedback, approvals of leave, or any type
of discipline type of activities. As a formal leader in work scope alignment
and ensuring working is completed, and the team is delivering results. In this
role, when I give instructions as a leader you need buy-in to new ideas, or new
ways of performing a task. There are some employees that always have that
natural resistance to change, where they come up with their ideas or opinions
on how to do something. Although their way of doing something is not delivering
results, they will provide any kind of excuse to not change what they have
always been doing. As a leader, it is very difficult to not cloud my opinion or
direction based others on the team that can steer you in a whole new direction.
Examples of staying focused is bringing the team together to understand roles,
goals, and objectives in understanding the required results, ensuring everyone
understands the changes are a benefit verses a deterrent or distraction.
Being a student in the
leadership program, Intellectual Perseverance will be the most complicated,
unlike a leader in the workplace I am very confident in my job, and learning
will be faced with adversity in opinions, thoughts, and concepts. Leadership is
a concept that has been a study that has been around for a very long time, and
varies in principles and theories. Additional to all the information on
leadership, all the leadership classes will drive additional information and
force students to look at their current beliefs and values in comparison to
other student’s experiences and views. Intellectual perception will help me as
a student to remain focus on a concept, use others experiences or example to
counter that concept, but in the end its my study of leadership. An example to
overcome this is our course study requires students to communicate in
discussion boards and sharing our experiences on a particular leadership
concept, which brings variety and creative, with a different insight.
In conclusion, although
Intellectual perception will be difficult in my studies due to the possible
obstacles, challenges or adversity that could allow me to get frustrated and
stay focused. I will have to work extra
hard to remain attentive to the learning plans, and not “struggle with
confusion” when I don’t understand a concept or an opinion from others in the
same study program. However, I do plan to use all the experiences from the
students to help me learn, listen, and gain a better oversight on the different
leadership experiences of students as leaders.
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