Crafting Student Leaders – Part 4 of 5: Conscientious Leadership

Cara Barker
This week, in the Morning Assembly—the daily meeting where Clairbourn students, staff, and parents gather to hear an inspiring message—the topic was the school’s new mission statement “Creating Scholars and Leaders with Heart.” The student presenters delivered the following message about the importance of student leadership prepared by foreign language and drama teacher Cara Barker. The Insights below are based on the work of DiSC and the work of psychologists David Merrill and Roger Reid, who in their book Personal Styles & Effective Performance identified four social styles: Analyticals, Drivers, Expressives and Amiables. 

Today we look at how the Conscientious leader behaves. Conscientious leaders diligently plan ahead and check their work each step of the way, guarding against errors that could lead to problems.

Conscientious leaders communicate information on a need-to-know basis, and such information is generally task-centered. Conscientious leaders are especially important to groups entrusted with tasks that are complicated or require attention to detail, where people’s safety or their property—including their money—could be put at risk.

Conscientious leaders can be trusted with details and complex tasks.

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Valuing consistency, the Conscientious leader might esteem these words in the Bible, “Let all things be done decently and in order.”

Conscientious leaders can be found as bank managers or as researchers in laboratories. They must take care not to lose sight of the “big picture” nor their project deadlines. Since Conscientious leaders value thoroughness, it is especially important for them to balance their attention to detail with a motivation to see a project through to completion.

If you find yourself identifying as a Conscientious leader, then you can practice giving encouragement to spur others forward. If you do so, then you will be exercising the type of leadership embodied in the Enthusiast, which we will explore further tomorrow.

In closing, consider the following, a summation of Aristotle’s words by scholar Will Durant, “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

Part 1: Leadership Styles | Part 2: Driver Leadership | Part 3: Social Leadership | Part 4: Conscientious Leadership | Part 5: Enthusiast Leadership
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