My Personal Definition Of Leadership

"Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it." Dwight D. Eisenhower This quote from Eisenhower rings true on many levels. During my career in the military and the private sector, I have been subjected to many different styles of leadership, good or bad. In my leadership roles I have attained, I tried to model leadership abilities by taking bits and pieces of previous leader’s styles and forming them into my own model. This has proven to work well as dealing with people from all different walks of life there is no one size fits all approach. In writing this paper, I will detail my own leadership platform drawing from the course material and various other sources. The goal of this paper is to show a solid understanding of the course teachings and perhaps give the reader a new found perspective on leadership.

What is leadership? When examining this question it is important to understand what it means to be a leader within an organization. “Leadership is the influencing process of leaders and followers to achieve organizational objectives through change (Achua, 2010, p. 6). Leaders serves people best when they help them develop their own initiative and good judgment, enable them to grow, and help them become better contributors (Thomas S Bateman, 2010, p. 66). Unlike management leadership flows from the core of a personality and cannot be taught; although leadership can be learned and may be enhanced through coaching and mentoring. Leadership involves unique processes that are distinguishable from basic management processes (Thomas S Bateman,

Leadership is multidimensional. There is no straightforward way to describe what a leader is or explain who makes a great leader. The description will be shaped by the purpose of the work being done and the followers one achieves. Dye (2010) states that leadership is a “living phenomenon” (p. 14) and supports the need to provide personalization to the leadership style. There is much discussion on the development of a leader. Some believe that you are a natural born leader who fine-tunes those skills through “persistence and perseverance of failures and successes” (Blanken, 2013, para. 5). Others, like Blanken (2013), feel that exposures early in life begin the development of leadership traits, and “education, jobs, and life experiences then shape the leader’s philosophy and psychology” (para. 7). A dominant style might be apparent in a leader; however, the adaptability in leadership approaches allows the leader to be focused on

Leadership is a personal skill that has to be developed and improved upon daily, just like an athlete works on his craft. We all come from different walks of life and that is often a factor in the way our leadership styles are shaped. Our differences of race, gender, religion, home environment, and lifestyle all have an effect on the way we are led growing up. It is a skill that is mastered over time, while never being perfected. Like anything else in life, leadership skills are often developed from who we are, where we come from and the people in our life who have taught us their knowledge.

My Leadership philosophy is influenced by President Abraham Lincoln and his leadership style which resounds with me on how one should act and leader others. In fact, his willingness to get out of the office and circulate around the people is one of the foundations of his leadership style and is resonated by Master Chief Cantrell as he calls all chiefs to get out from behind our desks and get to know our people. This trait along with his character as it relates to honesty and integrity align directly with how I believe a leader should act. Leadership for me is not just telling people what needs to be done, but in order to be an effective leader we must get to know those we lead and above all we must be honest with everyone around us, both

There are many different leadership styles and different ways to learn about becoming a good and effective leader. Clark (2016) states in his article The Art of Science and Leadership “Becoming a good leader is not easy, but by learning the correct leadership skills and knowledge, putting them into practice through quality learning activities, and then adapting them to different situations, will put you well on your way to becoming a leader.” Ada Sue Hinshaw was one of the above said successful leaders of her industry.

"Where there is no community, trust, respect, ethical behavior, it is difficult for the young to learn and from the old to maintain" (Sendjaya and Sarros, 2002, p. 68). The founder of servant leadership, Robert K Greenleaf; believes that every person ought to own values that could support and guide others. Greenleaf 's theory "the servant leader is a servant first; it begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve" (Dierendonck & Patterson, 2010). In order to serve, people must comprehend values, which are a person 's ethics of behavior shaping his or her vision. In addition, values could be distinct from taking the survey created by Milton Rokeach; which consists of the most important morals and beliefs and how it influences people, organizations, and society (Johnston, 1995). Furthermore, servant leaders have personal models of leadership; which are the advancement of personal growth and values. My personal model of leadership reflects and creates a purpose on my values and belief, which are trust, responsibility, equality and loving; demonstrating how it impacts an individual, interpersonal, organizational and societal. In conclusion, once people comprehend their value and decide their personal model it will define them as a servant leader because it does not matter if it is today or tomorrow, the values will then have the same principles (Lee, Fabish & McGaw, 2005).

For the Final Project I am going to write a traditional scholarly essay that examines how stories relate to creative leadership within many diverse fields, the way stories can be used when dealing with challenging leadership situations, how the creation of stories are a big part of a leaders mission to guide others, the importance of leadership, and the ways that leadership incorporates stories to open up new opportunities. According to Ladan Nikravan, he states that “If we do not employ creativity as a core cultural imperative in business, we will be stuck in yesterday’s success and actively resist change.” This will be the underlying concept of this essay that will help to prove why leadership needs to be approached carefully in order to be open to new ideas and have a more creative mindset. I can go about developing this information into an essay by using examples and many different concepts from the stories within each

Beginning in boot camp and continuing throughout my career, I’ve seen the Coast Guard promote the leadership model to be: “You” influencing “Others” to achieve a “Goal”. With all the different ways leadership can be defined, this simplistic model which has been permanently engrained in my thinking definition still rings true for me. As such, when defining my own personal definition of leadership, I align it to this same model. More specifically, while I support the fact that leadership involves influencing others to achieve a common end I propose that is not the whole story. Leaders must not be stagnant in their vision and must lend themselves to the possibility they may have to adjust their leadership styles depending on the goal. The best leaders are the ones that understand their own personality traits as well as those traits of the people they are trying to lead.

Management in my mind and as the book reinforces the definition to be, to plan, to organize, to staff for the process, and to control the process to the end. These are consider the primary functions of the management role (p.8).

Since Kindergarten, I have been blessed with other influential programs and people in my life that have encouraged me to be a leader. The foundations of my leadership skills and beliefs have been built mainly through my experiences in joining different athletic teams and clubs throughout middle school and high school. I was able to follow under some of the best and worst coaching and team leaders that have shaped what I think a great leader is today. I have been lead under leaders that I resent and leaders that I admire. My leadership characteristics mostly come from these examples in my life. I saw what situations I felt uncomfortable in and how my fellow teammates reacted. I would often think about how the situation could have been better if the leader had approached it a different way. I tend to mimic those leaders that have truly influenced and motivated me because I want to make others feel the same way that leader made me feel. The biggest difference I saw in the varying leadership styles was the way in which the leader communicated to the rest of the team, the collaboration efforts, and the way in which they adjusted to changing circumstances. My views on leadership did

As a graduate student approaching her final semester in school, thoughts regarding my leadership abilities in the soon-to-be “real world” have occupied my mind lately. To further explore and develop my ideas about leadership, I decided to develop my personal leadership theory. So, I asked myself the following questions: What makes a successful leader? How do you recognize a leader when you meet one?, and lastly, what is my theory of leadership? With this last question I thought about what leadership meant to me personally and how I personified it in a role of authority. While I had given thought to how I led, I had rarely taken the time to fully understand what my personal leadership theory entailed. Throughout the length of this paper I will analyze how my leadership skills, traits, values and elements from both Authentic Transformational theories help me to shape my leadership philosophy. In doing so I hope to define the leadership values that influence the way I view and practice leadership.

It is known that individuals have different types of leadership styles. Some individuals are more successful when it comes to following others and some individuals are better at leading others. Being a successful individual is not only judged by the actions of completing a task but the ability to lead others.

Leadership is a difficult word to define and according to the Miriam-Webster Dictionary leadership is the “office or position of a leader” (Miriam-Webster, 2010). This definition is definitely not one that I would ascribe to when discussing leadership. My definition of leadership is “the ability someone has to motivate and empower others to achieve a goal.” Some may add to this definition, others may discard it altogether and have a completely different definition. In the end, leadership takes on many different forms depending on who is doing the defining and we end up asking ourselves, what is leadership and why do we care?

Due to my passive nature, I’ve always avoided leadership roles. With that being said I still aspire to be someone who can be looked to as a leader. In order to reach that goal I observe and try to mimic the actions of people that inspire me. There have been many people I’ve taken orders from, but I have “followed” few. Those are the ones I consider to be true leaders, and have tried to be like myself.