Before listening to Justin Jones-Fosu speak on diversity I, like most people, thought diversity only consisted of different ethnicities, religions, cultures, and gender. After listening to him speak, my view on diversity completely changed. During his presentation, he was full of energy and had the crowd laughing and interested. His enthusiasm, plus his message, were what I really liked about his presentation.
Justin Jones-Fosu talking about hugging elephants and kissing giraffes!
Diversity is all around us, especially here at Texas A&M University – Commerce, where we are preparing for QEP week. When we think of diversity, we need to think about what it really means. Yes, we have different ethnicities, religions, and genders but it goes far beyond that. Diversity just means different. Justin Jones-Fosu really hit on this one aspect – different. When dealing with leadership, diversity is all around us. We deal on a daily basis with people who think differently from us, who lead differently, and who are just different in many aspects than us. This is what makes leadership so amazing because we receive unique ideas, plans, and so forth from members. As we are preparing for QEP week, we are talking about diversity in many aspects of our lives here on campus. We expand diversity to the cultures on campus, the way people think, organizations and their purposes here. So the one thing that we can do when approaching diversity according to Justin Jones-Fosu is to respect others’ ideas, their opinions, and be open to new ideas, challenges, cultures, everything.
Shelbea (closest to camera) enjoying the presentation!
While listening to Justin speak, it reminded me of the John Maxwell’s book, The Five Levels of Leadership. Justin Jones-Fosu briefly talked about different types of leaders and in The Five Levels of Leadership John Maxwell talks about working your way up the five levels to be a better leader. Maxwell describes how each level builds on the other and the type of leader one has to be to accomplish the different levels. Jones-Fosu described this in his presentation and related so closely to Maxwell’s book. I thought this was interesting because I was able to see how leadership, diversity, and people’s leadership styles are all interconnected together.
Shelbea Saunders – Fraternity & Sorority Life Intern (shelbea.kd@gmail.com)
Leadership Engagement & Development (L.E.A.D.) 