Personal Statement : Leadership And Technical Leadership

I have always known I love change, but from this class, I learned change is the hallmark of a leader. As John C. Maxwell says in The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, “Growth = Change.”The leadership assessments allowed me to understand myself in a new way. Because I am a curious green thinker, I need explanations and answers to understand my world. I tend to see the big picture of a project and my mind motivates me toward something new or improved. I am curious about new opportunities because I easily become bored with routine. Learning I have these characteristics has increased my confidence to pursue future leadership roles in a small to a mid-sized position.

I am seeking admission to Concordia University-Chicago’s Educational Leadership Doctoral program. Currently I am an Instructional Leader with the Rockford Public School District. I would like to pursue a Doctorate degree in Educational Leadership to further my knowledge of the required leadership traits, essential skills and educational systems, practices and laws so that I may ultimately become a contributing member of a school district’s administrative cabinet.

I agree with you as a leader it is important to recognize where we are and where we want to go. The knowledge that I have acquired from this course has helped to guide me in the right direction. I feel confident leading others and hope to inspire them. However, I understand that I need to be able to reflect on my current leadership style and make the necessary changes. One change that I plan to implement as I stated on my journal is servant leadership which encourages “leaders be attentive to the concerns of their followers and nurture them” (Northouse, 2013, p. 219). Also, I plan to implement situational leadership. I understand that I should base my conduct on the demands of a particular situation. I learned that if I aspire

I am Staff Sergeant XXXX and this essay details my personal leadership philosophy current as of January 18, 2016. I find it necessary to include the date because my leadership philosophy is alive, it adapts and changes as new experiences enrich my life. This philosophy has been developed and shaped by a myriad of experiences, both personal and professional. Therefore, it’s my belief that every aspect of my life, whether it be positive or negative, has molded me into the person I am today. I believe that translates into the type of leader I am. My leadership philosophy can be broken down into three main components: what I expect from myself, what others can expect from me, and what I expect from others.

Being both a mentor and a leader has been an important part of my life for many years. Wether it has been a school project or helping kids I have worked hard at being a leader and mentor for others. From 2006-2011 I spent a few weeks out of my summer vacation being the leader of a group of incoming Kindergarteners at a program known as Safety Town. Safety Town is a program that had middle school/high school kids leading a group of 6 or 7 children and helping them learn about how to be safe, with each day focusing on a different topic (i.e. fire safety, stranger danger, transportation safety, ect.) I was actually attended Safety Town when I was an incoming Kindergartener and years later I learned that my 6th grade teacher ran the program in our area, which is how I eventually moved from a mentee to a mentor.

Over the course of this semester, I have become more self-aware of how leadership plays a crucial role in my life. I learned this through a variety of class activities, discussions, assignments, and our group project. Because of all of this, I have learned more about how I conceptualize leadership, and what employers might look for in new employees. Through this class I have grown intellectually and as a person. In the future, these skills I acquired will effortlessly transfer into the workplace after I graduate.

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).

At the beginning of this course, I was curious as to how it would develop. The following is a reflection on how the course has impacted me in both learning, expectations as a new leader, and my everyday working life. I found that when I took the three leadership evaluation tools, the results were not far off from what I expected. These results made me feel positive about myself and the direction that I have intended on driving my career towards. These tools further identify where my weaknesses are as well as where my strengths lie. Although I find that this journey is frightening it has proven rewarding , as well as a diverse and complex trek.

“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.

Adaptive leadership may be the most follower-centric theory of leadership covered in our study thus far. As a component of Complexity Leadership Theory, adaptive leadership premise is for leaders to encourage followers to overcome problems through empowerment (Norhouse, 2013). In this concept, leaders do not assert their legitimate authority to answer the tough questions. Rather, through mobilization, motivation, organization, orientation, and focus, leaders facilitate learning transactions to resolve uncertainly or novel events.

From a leadership standpoint in order for a vision to be successful it must be simple, understandable, and beneficial for my staff. A vision must originate from both the leader and its followers, and it is the leaders job to articulate the vision. As a newly appointed manager my focus is to help my staff shift demographics to help serve diverse patient populations but also fix the work dynamic to work better as a team. Therefore, in order to ensure a more positive environment in my department several changes will be implemented to provide the best quality of care to my patients.

As I look through my personal believes in order to explain my desire to be a future administrator, I became with the conclusion that I have a heart of serving. A good school administrator has to be more than an administrator, a leader or even more, a servant of a vision. A Leader, has to be the advocacy for many students and other colleges, and I want to be an advocate for them. As a fourth grade teacher who is directly involved in the academic development and growth of young children, I have become acutely aware of the ideal type of learning environment that should be provided to both students and teachers in the school setting. In adopting a broad perspective of the school situation, which takes into account

In adaptive leadership the leader challenges people to face tough problems and learn new ways of dealing with change (Heifetz (1994).

Before this class, I had a very primitive and vague definition of leadership. Not only did I define it as per my views and ideologies, but I also said that each individual has their own definition of leadership. My initial belief was that leadership does not have a clear cut definition, but there were well defined leadership traits which made an individual. I also initially believed that personal traits did not translate into leadership traits with no strong correlation. After going through the various modules this class offered, it is safe to say that I have significantly redefined leadership and underwent a strong personal assessment. This paper talks what I took back from each of the class activities, assignments and how my self-assessment compares to the perception of others.

Heading into this course, I wasn’t exactly sure what it was about. Aside from reading the description on the KU website, I had no idea what to expect. I thought it would be centered around what would make a good leader, and the things I should do to achieve this. After the first couple weeks, I finally grasped the purpose of this class, and slowly started to work what I was learning into my day to day life. Through this class I have been able to identify what adaptive leadership is and how to apply it to my day to day task as well as how to work within the disequilibrium. I was also given the opportunity to reflect on what I was learning, through journals and amongst my peers through discussion boards, and how I was using my knowledge to identify different challenges I was facing in my life.