Personal Note On Leadership And Leadership

Leadership is not nature but nurture. It is not inherited but obtained through self-discipline and hard work. I got to learn it in a hard way through great, but challenging experiences.

Is a leader as defined in the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, merely one who leads - synonymous with a boss? Or something more? I believe that a leader is much more than that and can be defined in any number of ways. In attempting to define a leader personally, I will use both myself and others as examples.

Field Manual (FM) 6-22 defines leadership as “the process of influencing people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation while operating to accomplish the mission and improve the organization”. The objective of this paper is to communicate my leadership philosophy of how I hope to lead the Soldiers within this organization. To fully understand my leadership, I will provide you some background on who I am and how my leadership styles have developed:

Through identification and ongoing assessment of her leadership style and ability this leader is able to develop and understand her own strengths and limitations in order to grow and develop into a more effective leader. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of servant leadership, contingency, path-goal styles leadership to gain an understanding of current leadership models, identify this author’s style of leadership and explore why leadership is important to organizations, society and this author.

My definition of leadership is being someone who represents a group of people, or team. This person takes charge of situations where a person is needed to represent the group or team. This person also sets goals, a common vision, and represents the team in both good and bad situations. The person is not afraid to own up to mistakes that the team has made, even if the leader may not have personally made the mistake. Furthermore, the leader sets the example for the team to follow. Additionally, this person shares their knowledge and experience and sets the example for others to follow. The final point and one that I think ultimately creates a good working climate, is that the person genuinely cares for the team and always has the best interest both personally and professionally.

Leadership values that I think were key to our basketball season was responsibility, teamwork, and flexibility. The coaches were responsible for drilling that into the athlete’s minds as well. It is very hard to play lightening if there is no teamwork present. The athletes were also accountable for dedication. I noted earlier that dedication was a problem in previous years, but this year athletes held themselves accountable for making it to each practice. Other values I presented were having a sense of purpose and setting goals. Not only goals for the team, but generating goals for myself. A goal I had was to pursue self-improvement in my leadership. I haven’t had very many leadership experiences so this was my time to learn and reflect upon this experience. One thing I learned was to have a listening ear. Once I took the time to stop and listen, I became more approachable and felt mindful to other’s feelings.

The path to a personal leadership philosophy is made up of three parts. Each individual aspect is a facet of a complete whole. Much like a timeline that includes a past present and future, my personal philosophy consists of a foundation, action, and growth. If you do not understand where your foundation of leadership came from you will have problems acting in a leadership capacity. Also if don’t pay attention to how you are acting as a leader you cannot know in what ways you need to grow. Why should I spend the time and effort in developing myself as a leader? The Gunner’s Mate rating has a strength of just over 600 members. Maritime Force Protection Unit Kings Bay has 31 Gunner’s Mates assigned to it. I have a full five percent of the Gunner’s Mates in the Coast Guard that I lead. During my four year assignment at MFPU Kings Bay approximately 55 Gunner’s mates (9.2 percent) will have been under my leadership. I see that as an enormous responsibility. As a young Gunner’s Mate I saw my senior leadership as people capable of effecting great change on the rating. Now today I am in the position to have that same impact.

This is what I believe about leadership: it’s overrated. What I mean by this is that after 20 years of life, I have become numb to society’s leadership propaganda. As I stated in my original leadership philosophy two years ago, society has taught us to associate leadership with power and affluence, to picture a man in a suit so crisp his cuffs could paper cut your soul and a vivacious, yet somehow sternly reserved demeanor. Rarely, if ever, have a witnessed a “mediocre” student be called a leader; it is always the best, the brightest, and the most personable that are graced with the glorious label of leaders. They are held on a pedestal as if their characteristics are superior to those of others, revered to the point that they some otherworldly and their characteristics seem unachievable by the average Joe. I am not attempting to say that highly publicized leaders or presidents or CEOs are not leaders, I am saying that they are not any different than you or I. It is in my nature to counter the belief, to dub null and void the almighty concept of leadership as a reward or achievement and instead replace it with the idea that leadership is an innate trait. It’s not about being a leader; it’s about building on the qualities that make a leader. While reflecting on my beliefs and writing this paper, I noticed that Microsoft Word’s suggested synonyms for leadership include management, control, headship, and governance. This is a perfect example of

As a future leader, I strive to inspire those around me with. Not only will I constantly seek to challenge myself and develop as a leader, I will support and drive others to do the same. I aim to lead because achieving dreams with the help of other people requires leadership skills in order to get them behind you. I will build and define a mission for my team while clearly and concisely communicating objectives required to succeed. I strive to help my followers find the best in themselves because I believe all good leaders should always build up their team with strength and encouragement. There may be obstacles along the way, but as a leader I will find ways to move forward with our projects when these problems occur, while always taking responsibly for team downfalls. As a successful leader, my internal strength will shine through with the support of my followers. In order to maintain the trust of my followers, I will always be a model of the behaviors I wish to see in my followers. “Leaders do what they require of others.” (Johns & Moser, 1989, p. 120).

“She knew you would make the right decisions,” is what my sister said to me as the room of onlookers glared awaiting my response. Amidst the grief of the moment, I struggled to grasp ahold of my abilities, and thoughts, resisting the urge to scream at the universe and engage my right to squander in my grief. In reality, I was the youngest sibling, holding the accountability of being an active leader. This was not your everyday decision making process, it was the planning of burial arrangements after the loss of our mother. Rapidly, decoding through the streams of my emotions, I collected my strength and continued with the process. In the end, I survived by drawing upon my emotional intelligence, intuition, and practical skills.

In today’s world, many people talk about leadership and what distinctive qualities define a leader. I thought back to what events molded me into a leader the most and how it has prepared me for my future at Christopher Newport University and the years ahead.

I consider myself part of many teams one of them being my freshman mentor group. Our group was chosen by us putting people we would like to work with on a card. Then Mrs. Hawkins put us in the group we are now. All of us mentors knew each other but we had never worked as a team together in our certain group. Our job is to mentor the freshmen, tutor them, and just help them with anything they might need. In order to get this objective done effectively, we must each take our on part seriously.

Leadership has had some changes since 1980. The Truth About Leadership by James Kouzes and Barry Posner describes some of the changes workers and leaders have faced over time. Generational changes, increased marketplace and diversity. Leaders can be anyone that has had an impact on our lives that we look up to and want to model ourselves after. The leader I choose was President Ronald Reagan. Reagan penned his memoirs in 1990.

Before discussing and describing my personal leadership style and synthesize the course material of different leadership theory, I want to talk about the development of my personal leadership style. In order to develop my personal leadership, what I did for the first five week of class was journal and observe my weak area of leadership and then comparing it with theories, given approaches and situations to find ways to improve and develop my weakness. I always have had a problem breaking down issues into manageable pieces, I tend to focus on the whole issue rather than breaking down the issue into manageable pieces and sometime I get overwhelm with the problem. Analyze: I think this is because I am always in

Throughout my life I have been on my own leadership journey. I had not realized it at first but every part of life has a lesson to learn. With the beginning leadership classes and the start of the Leadership Studies Minor, I have become more aware of what true leadership is about. As it was drilled in our heads throughout the course, “leadership is a process”. Learning this concept cleared the air of all the occasions in life that were adaptive but never had a term to describe them. I know now that the term is “Adaptive Leadership”. I like the quote; “Standing in the garage no more makes you a car than standing in an office makes you a leader.” A leader has qualities not positions or titles. A great leader to me is someone who is hard working, visionary, a good active listener, honest, honorable, and someone who is not afraid to ask questions.