LeaderShape

For those who don't know, LeaderShape is an international institute that helps people with dreams step out of their comfort zone and begin to make active steps toward reaching a goal. It is a six day program that immerses you into a group of people who also have big dreams and passions. It teaches you to lead with integrity, learn more about yourself, and connects you with others. I was so blessed to be a part of this experience at the University of Tennessee session this May.

This is the 2012 University of Tennessee graduating class of the LeaderShape Institute. We are the second group to go through this program at UT. The best part about our group was the extreme diversity, yet the extreme ability to get along and become friends with every single person.

Within the whole group, we had 5 different family cluster facilitated by a UT faculty member. Mine, in the middle, was Shanna Pendergrast who works as an advisor in the College of Arts and Sciences. Not only did she serve as our facilitator but also as our friend and partner in striving to reach our goals. Each group had their own team name, ours clearly was The Adventurers. Within our group, we really dug into ourselves and encouraged and supported each other. Of course we also goofed off a lot!

One activity we did was to find out what our core values were, aka the driving motives behind all we do as individuals. Once we evaluated ourselves and found which ones we truly held close, we wrote them on these paper t-shirts so that we could wear them around and others could see our values. 

My core values are love, stability, community, knowledge, and trust/honesty.

LeaderShape vision: A just, caring, and thriving world where all lead with integrity and a healthy disregard for the impossible.