Leadership Theory Reflection
During the first semester of my junior year at University of Cincinnati, I had a great opportunity
to work for the Learning Assistance Center as a Peer Tutor. It was a truly amazing experience for me
since I got the chance to meet new people and learn new skills. Working at the Learning Assistance
Center is a pre-approved experience. I was really lucky since I joined the LAC right at the time University
Honor Program made working as a Peer Tutor an honor experience. During the time I was working at the
LAC, I had participated in many different workshops that were being held by our amazing staffs and
supervisors. Thanks to these trainings, I have learnt a lot of knowledge in variety of areas. I got a chance
to discuss with my colleagues about how to communicate with the student, how to make a resume and
curriculum vitae and many other great topics. At the end of the semester, I participated in a discussion
about different types of Leadership which was really interesting to me. In the workshop, we talked
about different concepts which were related to the topic of leadership and how it appeared in our work
at the LAC. In this essay, I will discuss about the Lewin’s Styles of Leadership.
The Lewin’s Style of Leadership was developed by Kurt Lewin, a psychologist in the 1930s. Lewin
Leadership Framework includes three main styles which are autocratic leaders, democratic leader and
laissez faire. Talking about autocratic leaders, this is the type of leader that makes most decision by
themselves without discussing the topic with their employees. When I first heard about this style, I
thought it was a negative way to lead people. However, there are situations where this type of
leadership is useful. For example, I had a situation when a student came to my appointment a day
before exam trying to learn all five chapters in Microeconomics. The student tried to convince me to
teach him everything even though he only scheduled a half hour appointment. In this situation, I made
a decision to not teach him the material but to help him figured out his best learning style. After figuring
out his best way to learn, I showed him several ways for him to learn and practice for the exam. This
example definitely illustrates the autocratic leadership style. Instead of doing what the student wanted,
we went another way of which I think would benefit the student more since the student knew exactly
what to do after the appointment. Instead of solving that current problem of learning everything, we
figured out a way to solve his long term goal which was to find out his most effective learning style.
From an article named The effects of Kurt Lewin's three major leadership styles on followers: A follower's
perspective by Martha R. McQueen from University of La Verne, it said :” Autocratic leaders believe that
if left alone, people are not capable of completing tasks”. Personally, I think this statement is true. In the
above situation, the student came to me so that we could figure out together his best way to study for
his exam. If the student hadn’t come to the appointment, he might wouldn’t be able to figure out his
best learning strategy.
The second style Lewin framework is democratic. In this style, leaders listen to their employee’s
ideas and inputs to make the decision. An example for democratic within the Learning Assistance Center
is that my supervisor usually asked me for inputs to improve the Group Tutoring program. Group
Tutoring in Langsam Library is a new initiative that Peer Tutoring department came up this school year. I
am fortunate enough to be one of the few tutors to participate in this program. Instead of tutoring oneon-one, I could tutor up to four students at the same time. Because this is a new program, my supervisor
usually asked for my thoughts about the Group Tutor. I got the chance to discuss with her about ways to
make this program more well-known and more effective. I can see that in this situation, my supervisor
used democratic leadership to influence me. In addition, I also participated in the GROWL discussion.
This was basically a conversation between our supervisor and the tutor. It was a very open discussion in
which we shared our ideas about the Peer Tutoring program and how it affects not only other students
but also us. It was a great time for everyone since we got the chance to get to know each other and our
supervisor. This activity was also another example of how democratic leadership takes place in the
Learning Assistance Center. According to the article Democratic Leadership: The Lessons of Exemplary
Models for Democratic Governance by Sanghan Choi from Florida Atlantic University, it is said that
democratic leaders helps boost their follower’s involvement and commitment. At the LAC, our
wonderful managers and supervisors have created such an amazing environment. It made me felt really
welcomed and empowered when working as a Peer Tutor.
The last style of leadership that is included in Lewin Leadership Framework is laissez faire. In this
type, leaders give their employees the autonomy to make decision by themselves. I can relate this
leadership style back to the Peer Tutoring program. I was taking full eighteen credit hours while I was a
tutor last semester. Therefore, I was tutoring people in between my classes. Since peer tutor is a flexible
schedule job, I had a chance to figure out the best time frame that worked for me. There wasn’t any
fixed time that I needed to tutor as long as I scheduled at least seven hours. This freedom of choosing
times to tutor really helped me in term of balancing between working and studying. Not only be able to
choose the time that worked best for me, I could also choose my own tutoring method based on some
core guidelines provided by the LAC. At the beginning of the semester, we did go over some steps of
what we should focus on during the tutoring session. However, it really depended on me to navigate
through a tutoring session. This sense of freedom really gave me a lot more chances to adapt with
different learning styles from our tutees. As I read through an article called Leadership and Job
Satisfaction - A Review by Dimitrios Belias and Athanasios Koustelios from University of Thessaly from
Greece, they said that the laissez faire style can only work if the group of employee are highly qualified
in an area expertise. In my opinion, the employees not only need to know about their areas but they
also need to have passion in the job. I was a tutor in Microeconomics and Macroeconomics. Since I am
majoring in Business Economics, these two subjects are the two main foundation courses for me.
Therefore, I really enjoy tutoring other students these classes. Tutoring economics really helped me
understand my major better.
In conclusion, I can see all three leadership styles takes place within the LAC environment. Each
style has its own strength and also weakness. As a Peer Tutor, I have been able to realize and utilize
those strengths within my work. My goal when I first worked as a peer tutor was to improve my
communication skill. After the first semester of working, I can see myself improving gradually toward
my goal. As a result, working as a tutor had truly been an amazing experience for me and I can’t wait to
be back at the LAC next fall semester.