During the zombie apocalypse simulation, the most difficult decision for me to make was the last event. This event talked about a city in the country that was being used to hold the infected patients who were being quarantined. For the disease that was infecting these patients, there was no known cure and the spread of the disease was continuing to infect the population. The decision to be made was whether to bomb and kill the infected patients and the 300 volunteers who were working as a medical team to care for these patients or to instead let them continue to quarantine in the area. As a team, we decided to bomb the city in order to eliminate the disease and prevent the infected from spreading the disease further. This decision was very difficult to make because we had to consider that we would not only be taking the lives of the innocent who were infected, but the lives of the innocent who chose to volunteer to help the infected. In the end, we had to make the decision that would best prevent the spread of the disease in a timely manner and would improve the health of the rest of the uninfected population living in the country. 

During the course of the simulation, I think there were differing personalities in the team and I think we could have improved overall on making sure that every participant was able to voice their opinions. There were some team members who did not have as much opportunity to speak and as a team we could have opened the floor for more conversation from the team members who may have had opposing views or different outlooks on the situations. Conflicts were resolved by holding a vote and deciding on the majority choice. This was done because of time restraints and the fact that we did not have as much time to fully consider and argue both sides. I think that the majority voting worked well because we were able to make decisions in the time that we had. I think it also worked well to have a few members share any strong opinions right off the bat and discuss from there. I think we could have improved on getting opinions from the entire team rather than mostly just a few voices. We could have considered other ideas and made more risks that some of us may have not fully agreed on. Although I believe some risks could have been taken, in the life or death scenario where decisions on the population’s health had to be prioritized over anything else, I believe the team was quite successful and clever to make the “safe” and less risky choices. 

Adaptive leadership is when there is a group of leaders who address and handle challenges in the form of adaptive problems that have no determined way of being solved. Adaptive leadership is when an environment is created for leaders to express their differing opinions and discuss what the best solution could be. With adaptive leadership, it is important to have emotional intelligence, good values and morale, curiosity of new techniques and strategies, and transparency. I personally really resonate with the adaptive leadership style. I think adaptive leadership is a very effective way of coming up with the best solution to challenges that most people can agree on. I think it is important to always discuss options with other team members and to make sure that every base is covered when making a decision that can affect a company in any way. I also like the idea of being able to step back and foster an environment where all members of a team feel involved and respected. 

I think one of the leadership principles that I learned from the simulation that resonated with me the most was the idea of stepping back and fully addressing the opinions of every member in the group. This resonated with me because I realized that when I was sharing my opinions on a decision, I was aware that there were some disagreements within the team, but I did not acknowledge or inquire further about these disagreements. From our debrief, I realized how important it is to get a full analysis of all sides of a decision and to allow every member to feel they have fully expressed their ideas and opinions.