Personal Statement On The Function Of Leadership

As a teacher-leader, I have been assigned a number of wide-ranging and important informal roles in my career thus far that have enabled me to support and contribute towards the success of not only my students, but also my department and my school as a whole. By assuming these diverse leadership roles, I have been able to develop professionally, improve student attainment, positively influence the teaching and learning practice of my peers and contribute towards the culture and ethos of the schools I have worked in.

My personal leadership philosophy reflects a desire to develop subordinates and create an efficient, purpose driven environment. A leader must create a clear vision which followers can understand in order to meet all the requirements of their unit. A leader must lead with the end in sight creating goal driven activity. I believe the way to measure the success of a leader is through the success of their subordinate leaders. Therefore, a leader must constantly develop their subordinate leaders. Passion drives success making it essential for a leader to create buy-in to their plan at every level. It is inevitable that a leader will have to make correction and in order for this to have a positive influence on the organization the correction must be clear, quick, and recoverable. My personal leadership philosophy focuses on these three main points; care for Soldiers, clear vision, development of subordinates, and positive corrective practices.

The process of leadership requires self-identification of behaviors and reflection on one’s attitude (Bell, 2010). Among the thousands of leadership books in print today, this book is one that takes a different approach to examining leadership from a Christian perspective as well as relating to the process of leadership along with many

The text will cover a number of different aspects of leadership. We will consider my personal understanding of leadership and it relates to certain leadership theories. In my philosophy of leadership, I will address what role I believe a health care leader should play, what leadership theory they should follow, and why leaders should follow that theory. It will describe my current sphere of influence and how it has shaped my understanding of leadership. I will explain how I am a leader in my current position and how I apply my leadership philosophy within my position. Then I will provide how I see the use of informal, formal, positive and negative power as it applies to my personal philosophy of 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.

Leadership starts at the top, and the top is not the man, but the faith in God that flows out of him. There is, different types of leadership and many ways to display this quality. God is our ultimate leader, and He revealed ways on how to be an effective leader in the church, in the house and in life. Therefore, the focus of this paper will be the Pastor epistles and the type of leadership model that they share and put forth. Now, effective ways of leadership may manifest differently in each individual. God made us all unique and gave each of us a specific talent or gift. Therefore, this class has made me investigate and look at myself more in depth and see what type of leadership model I would follow, and feel is the best model.

Leadership is dynamic, charismatic and fragile all rolled up into one. There are many words that describe leadership and leadership is defined differently by all. As I sit and type this paper I realized the date, 28 Aug. On this date 10 years ago, I was thrust into a roll that would define my leadership style. Hurricane Katrina made land fall over the city of New Orleans (NOLA) on 28 Aug 2005, this storm created havoc and destruction never before seen in the United States. I was in charge of 12 Coast Guardsman and 3 Coast Guard Airboats in which we would crew. Upon arrival in NOLA we were joined up with the 82nd Airborne Division and assigned 12 Scouts from the 2/505 platoon. These men were on the heels of returning from battle overseas and had been home for less than 30 days. Again these soldiers were thrust into action, but now they had a completely different mission. Joining forces with the Coast Guard and conducting door to door urban search and rescue was now the priority. Over the next 27 days we all grew to trust and count on one another and from the deplorable conditions in which we all suffered it lead to my leadership philosophy.

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.

I learned early on that the bedrock of any organization, corporation, or military unit is the personnel who work or serve within. Understanding the skills, capabilities, and experience of the people within your group is vital to help them personally excel and the group to succeed. My first experience with the complexities of personnel management were as a teenager some thirty-five-years ago.

Leadership is defined as the action of leading a group of people or an organization. Whether, a political leader, an administrator family head or an individual pursuing a passionate, personal cause, a leader must also use management skills to guide other people to the right destination, in a smooth and efficient way. A good leadership style refers to a leader's characteristic behaviors when directing, motivating, guiding and managing groups of people. Great leaders can inspire political movements and social change. They can also motivate others to perform, create and innovate. The reason godly leaders should be diligent in their service is because we are working for the Lord and not for men. He is the one who will reward us, even if we are mistreated by our employers or others. This assignment explores the results attained from my personal assessment using the Leadership Assessment and Spiritual Leadership Gifts Test. My personal reflection and consideration of the test results and my individual critique of the validity of the exam will be expressed.

Character, service, and leadership have been a meaningful part of my life. Each of these factors have a specific meaning to me which shows through my everyday life. Every situation I am in adds to my definition to these terms. Through being positive, volunteering my time, and being a good example, I have experienced the importance of character, service, and leadership. One reason having good character is very important to me, is because I believe in trying to do the right thing as much as I can, even if the right thing is hard to do.

Leadership is all around us regardless of position. Everyone, in some manner, has the opportunity to lead and make an impact whether at home or at work, low on the rank structure or at the top of the proverbial food chain. A successful leader is someone who has a vision, strong core values, a servant and someone who can win the hearts of those to whom they are leading to accomplish a mission; leaders work themselves out of a job if successful. Influences within my career were Chiefs on my boat who were not afraid to get their hands dirty, first classes who worked late and made themselves available when we were all screwing up to ensure we would succeed without retribution on the following Monday and dozens more with attributes I wanted to follow and visions I thought were worth wild to achieve. Through these exposures, I have realized that a successful leader is a servant. My leadership philosophy is to provide a vision, be an example, and empower people to succeed, be a servant to those doing the work, reward success and get out of the way.

With little interface to the operations side in at my employer, and to what I was able to gather through a quick search on the company’s intranet, I would say my employer has been successful at operational innovation. At my company, Operations is an organization that falls under the Engineering, Technology, and Mission Assurance. It has its own vice president. Under this vice president, it has multiple departments, with each department responsible for a certain are of operation. For example, one department is responsible for System Integration, while another is responsible for Manufacturing.

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).