favorite quotes"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader." - John Quincy Adams
"The best leaders get comfortable with being uncomfortable." - Angie Grissom "The best leaders are the best learners. You have to believe that you (and others) can learn to lead, and that you can become a better leader tomorrow than you are today. Leaders are constant improvement fanatics, and learning is the master skill of leadership." - Jim Kouzes "Lead from the back, and let others believe that they are in front." - Nelson Mandela "True leaders don't create followers... they create more leaders!" - J. Sakiya Sandifer |
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My beliefs
Very simply, the fundamental motivation for leadership should be a desire to serve others (Russell, 2001). Regardless of your motivations to serve, putting others at the forefront of your leadership efforts should be of utmost priority. According to Emory and Henry College’s Robert Russell, it is not the lot of the leader to be served but rather his/her privilege to serve. Servant leaders value human equality and seek to enhance the personal development and professional contributions of all organizational members. They give up personal rights to find greatness in service to others (Russell, 2001). This teaching resonates with me completely—I fully believe in its premise and hope to lead in a way that incorporates all of the values of servant leadership. With this in mind, I believe that setting a leadership precedent from the beginning of an organization’s life is crucial. From day one, a leader should break down barriers between every follower in order to enhance the workplace environment. Based on respect and trust, the relationship between a leader and a follower should be full of empowerment, vision, feedback, and appreciation for all who are involved. By using a certain charisma to enhance the energy and commitment to the organization from the followers, I think that leaders need to have a certain “spark” that ignites the potential in all of their followers and creates an environment that is conducive to growth, maturity, creativity, and performance. By preaching the purpose of the group, a leader must solidify that all followers and constituents gain an appreciation for the work that is done by the group. Finally, a leader has to be able to inspire others to push themselves to reach their full potentials. As a leader, I will make it my duty to honor these values and uphold my personal beliefs that make up my overall leadership philosophy.
Servant leadership
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Research shows that empowerment is consistently tied to important organizational outcomes. Today’s empowered work environments result in the opportunity for and necessity of self-leadership (Carson, 2005). I am a huge believer in empowerment, as it focuses on delegation and on passing power from higher organizational levels to lower ones. Giving independence to employees makes them better at making decisions and staying committed to the vision of the organization. Giving employees the ability to exercise power can help them grow into better professionals while enhancing the ability to increase their own self-leadership. This involves an examination of what is required for task completion as well as why and how a given task should be completed (Carson, 2005). I think that this can be made more salient when the follower at stake is in an empowered work environment. With empowerment and self-leadership, you can find avenues to influence and improve direction and motivation within organizations by placing greater emphasis on employee mindset and skill development for each individual in the workplace. A key piece of the empowerment puzzle is finding a way to break the ice with all of your employees/followers. Ice breakers can be an effective way of starting a training session or team-building event. As interactive and often fun sessions run before the main proceedings, they help people get to know each other and buy into the purpose of the event and/or organization. This usually involves some form of personal reflection and the sharing of previous tales. By diving into personal story-telling, a leader can gain a unique look inside the mind of the follower, and vice versa. I do not think that we can fully learn who we are until we begin to “story” ourselves. As a leader, I will make it a priority to create an environment that spurs storytelling and promotes the sharing of personal beliefs, values, and experiences.
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A way to enhance breaking the ice is by approaching the process with a welcoming spirit. My entire life has been filled with meeting new people and welcoming them into my life. Because of the enthusiastic and energetic nature of my spirit, people automatically feel comfortable being around me. Because of that comfortability, we can conquer road blocks easily, increase our team chemistry, and build on our friendship in very unique ways. So, a goal of mine is to approach leadership with the same spirit that I have always lived with. By making my followers feel “at home,” I will be helping them stay productive, remain relaxed, and reach their full potentials. Another crucial step in building an empowered, efficient team is by giving them enough guidance during the entirety of their followership. By using that welcoming spirit, make sure that you tell your followers that you are there for them to help coach them and lead them to success. Make sure they know that they are welcome to ask questions and seek assistance whenever they need. Make sure that the environment is comfortable enough for them so that they are not afraid to admit that they need help. I have no problem with taking time out of my busy day to help others. This is a huge component of servant leadership. Finally, as a leader, you must humble yourself by hiring and/or recruiting followers that are better than you. Understanding that this is a tough task, you cannot be afraid to relinquish some power to your employees. I have seen how the hunger for power can be the ultimate demise of some leaders and organizations, so I will make sure to put my ego aside and be comfortable with my followers developing quickly. Hiring others who are better than you will prevent you from becoming complacent with your role, something that is vital for continued growth as a leader. Having a lot of talent underneath you will push you to become better at what you do, further enhancing your job and leadership skills. As a leader, I think it is your job to train your subordinates to become bigger and better leaders than you currently are. If you cannot find a way to do this, you are doing yourself and your followers a disservice. By building the leaders of tomorrow, you can prolong the legacy that you are wishing to leave while increasing the overall talent, intellect, and professionalism of the future.
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values-based leadership
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I believe leadership should be fulfilled through a core set of values. Since values are prescriptive, they play an important role in determining the choices that we make. Values are the enduring standards that collectively form the value systems of our lives (Russell, 2000). They can develop our moral reasoning skills by helping us decipher between what is right and wrong. They can aid our abilities to perceive situations, generate solutions, enhance relationships, and increase performance. For these reasons, I believe that values-based leadership is at the foundation of my leadership goals. In order for this part of my philosophy to be effective, I will need to clarify and understand my own belief systems so that I can transmit good organizational values to others. Some of these essential personal leadership values include: service to others, humility, integrity, honesty, and hard work. Furthermore, justice, personal restraint, concern for the common good, and courage may also be critical leadership values (Russell, 2000). My hope is to model the way for my followers and lead by example. By doing this, I can invoke a vision of the future and lead change in that direction (Scott, 2014). Being a fan of “getting down in the dirt” with my followers, I want to show them that I am “all in” to the success of our organization. By doing every kind of task that is necessary in the process of producing a unique product, I like to show my followers that I am not afraid to do the jobs that are unappealing, tiring, and cumbersome. Through this philosophy, I will pave the way for our organization to think in a humble way, with the mentality that nobody is “too good” for any job that needs to be done.
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I also believe that charisma should be the glue that keeps organizational relationships together. Charisma is a fire that ignites followers’ energy and commitment, producing results above and beyond the call of duty. It is the product of: 1) a spark—a leader who has charismatic qualities, 2) flammable material—followers who are susceptible to charisma, and 3) oxygen—an environment conducive to charisma (Klein 1995). Charisma is the product of the union of these three components, residing in the relationship between a leader and a group of followers. Hoping to be a leader who can easily “ignite the fire” of an organization, I need to focus on building my ability to have assertiveness, self-confidence, social influence, and moral conviction. Through the use of charisma, I believe that leaders can help build chemistry in and out of the office. Being a team, it is vital to operate as a unified unit. Having fun together can contribute to workplace satisfaction, individual productivity, and feeling of overall accomplishment. Sometimes it is hard for a workplace team to enjoy each other’s company due to the stresses and demands of the various jobs at the office. It is up to the leader to take the initiative to set up group bonding experiences and employee appreciation workshops in order to fully enlighten the ability potential of the group. With higher group satisfaction, turnover will be decreased and employee commitment, respect, and trust will be increased. Finally, I think leaders have to be able to challenge subordinates and the organizational process. By encouraging followers to think outside of the box, you are helping to venture into the world of the unknown. Even though it could be a gamble, it is a risk that can be rewarded in a multitude of ways. If you can get your followers to “break the rules” (legally) of traditional thinking and brainstorming, there is no telling of the positives that can be generated. By challenging followers to test themselves and each other, you are continuing to build the success of the future.
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inspirational leadership
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A leader who does not inspire is like a river without water. The dictionary defines inspiration as “breathing in to infuse with an encouraging or exalting influence; to animate; stimulation by a divinity; a genius, an idea or a passion; a divine influence upon human beings (Secretan, pg.1). The ultimate role of a leader is to inspire others to achieve great things. I think the best leaders must also feel extremely inspired in order to inspire and dedicate themselves to their jobs and followers with such passion and vision. I believe that inspirational leaders can define and champion a specific cause that can end up drawing people to it from afar. By reaffirming their commitment to their own calling and then coaching others to find out and master theirs, inspirational leaders can bring humility and excitement back into the building of future leaders. Through courage, authenticity, love, and grace, my hope is to become responsible for the developing and nurturing of the ethical leaders of tomorrow. I have always been a big believer in showing appreciation to those who have contributed in any way, shape, or form to my development and overall success. By giving thanks, you are acknowledging someone else’s efforts to shape you into who you are today. Without them, you may not be the same person, have the same values, and live by the same moral code as you do currently. For this, much gratitude needs to be given. Appreciation encourages the heart and enables others to reflect on how they have benefited your life. This feeling of accomplishment will further aid in that person’s development and open up the opportunity for them to benefit someone else. With this domino effect in mind, you are single-handedly paying leadership development forward just by giving thanks. By showing appreciation, any professional relationship can be enlightened to the fullest.
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I am also a major advocate of having a positive, strong group culture. A leader can create this by having a team-oriented approach to everything he/she does. This cultural dimension can be spurred through all of the actions that a leader decides to take. By encouraging and rewarding group members, leaders can emphasize performance, improvement, and excellence amongst followers. With the right formula of assertiveness, future orientation, humane orientation, institutional collectivism, gender egalitarianism, and in-group collectivism, leaders can find the right recipe for successful leadership (Javidan, 2006). A humane focus on impacting others can pay off in massive dividends. Through selfless action and a positive mindset, you can leave a lasting legacy. By enabling others, you are setting them up for success. If the individual followers can succeed within your organization, then the organization can build off of that success and improve collectively. Finally, I believe that one of the biggest determinants of effective leadership is the ability to give and receive feedback. Personally, I thrive on feedback, regardless if it is positive or negative. With feedback, I can realize how I am doing in many facets of my job; my workplace relationships, work ethic, attitude, and tangible job elements. Being able to receive feedback is vital to staying humble. Through modesty, you can gain an even bigger amount of respect from your followers while staying grounded from your ego. Being able to give constructive feedback may be even more important for leadership; you have to be able to help followers gauge what they need to improve on. Through feedback, you can help followers minimize their weaknesses, harness their strengths, and contribute to their overall impact on the organization. If you are not keeping followers up to date on their positive and negative work-related skills, they will think they are doing enough to satisfy the job description. With this mentality, they are almost certain to become complacent, which will decrease motivation, productivity, creativity, and passion for the task at hand. Making feedback a top priority, I hope to pave the way for my followers to have bright futures by shedding light on the beneficial and detrimental nuances of their workplace behaviors.
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final thoughts
One of my favorite quotes is, "you will always get what you have always gotten if you always do what you have always done." It perfectly sums up how I am planning on progressing as a leader and as a person. Looking back on my life, I have been so fortunate to have done the things that I have gotten to do. Many people would dream about having some of my accomplishments, experiences, and memories. If I had the opportunity to do it all again, I would do it all the same. In terms of leadership, my hope is to continue to develop and never stop improving through education. I hope to "practice what I preach" and become the most influential leader that my followers will ever see. Sticking to my ethical morals and values, my hope is to positively impact whatever industry I am a part of while leaving a lasting impact on the next generation. I am planning on giving back to both of my alma maters in various ways while becoming a role model for the leaders of tomorrow. By seeking results, relationships, and responsibility, I want to gain national trust and respect. By having a professional manner and a servant leader lifestyle, I will pay close attention to followers' needs. Through empowerment and inspiration, I will enable others to act by encouraging their hearts. By utilizing the values that have been instilled in me throughout my upbringing, I know that I will continue to treat others how they like to be treated. Finally, by honing in on my personal strengths and weaknesses, I will gain the emotional intelligence to move people to become better individuals. Because of this, I will hopefully set the stage for how leadership should be implemented for many years to come.
Possible future positions
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"triple f"(the foundation of my life)
• FAITH • FAMILY • FRIENDSHIP |
biggest mentors
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tips for success
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