MY PERSONAL LEADERSHIP PHILOSOPHY
“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”
- John C. Maxwell
“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”
- John C. Maxwell
I love the above quote, because it truly explains what it means to be a leader. Whether standing alone or supported by many people, a leader knows how to work toward a common goal, has the motivation to reach the goal, while showing and inspiring others to work toward the goal as well.
True leaders have a passion to reach a common goal and will work tirelessly while influencing others along the way, whether they realize it or not. Leaders do not take on a complete task on their own, but they inspire and impact others to help reach the common goal. Just as Jim Collins explains in his book, Good to Great, pursuing a vision while having passionate people help you will greatly influence and improve the leadership process. A task cannot be completed and an organization cannot be bettered by one person working alone; however, it takes a group of people. Sometimes it just takes one individual to light the spark to ignite a leadership fire.
I do not think a true leader ever stops leading; however, being a leader becomes a lifestyle. Throughout my life, I hope to be a leader who includes and inspires others along the way. I hope to always follow through with what I say I will do in order to have a positive end result, whether it is bettering an organization, completing a task, or simply living a life of a dedicated leader.
Collins, J. C. (2001). Good to great: why some companies make the leap--and others don't. New York, NY: HarperBusiness.
True leaders have a passion to reach a common goal and will work tirelessly while influencing others along the way, whether they realize it or not. Leaders do not take on a complete task on their own, but they inspire and impact others to help reach the common goal. Just as Jim Collins explains in his book, Good to Great, pursuing a vision while having passionate people help you will greatly influence and improve the leadership process. A task cannot be completed and an organization cannot be bettered by one person working alone; however, it takes a group of people. Sometimes it just takes one individual to light the spark to ignite a leadership fire.
I do not think a true leader ever stops leading; however, being a leader becomes a lifestyle. Throughout my life, I hope to be a leader who includes and inspires others along the way. I hope to always follow through with what I say I will do in order to have a positive end result, whether it is bettering an organization, completing a task, or simply living a life of a dedicated leader.
Collins, J. C. (2001). Good to great: why some companies make the leap--and others don't. New York, NY: HarperBusiness.
CLIFTON STRENGTHS FINDER
When I joined the Residential Leadership Community my freshman year at Virginia Tech, each student was required to use the Clifton StrengthsFinder© tool to identify our strengths in an effort to learn how we work with others. This has been beneficial to me throughout my college career, as I have used it in training for Orientation Leader, training for Kappa Delta council, as well as on resumes. According to the test results, my top five strengths are: Positivity, Woo, Discipline, Developer and Responsibility.
CLICK HERE TO SEE A FULL DESCRIPTION OF ALL 34 STRENGTHS
When I joined the Residential Leadership Community my freshman year at Virginia Tech, each student was required to use the Clifton StrengthsFinder© tool to identify our strengths in an effort to learn how we work with others. This has been beneficial to me throughout my college career, as I have used it in training for Orientation Leader, training for Kappa Delta council, as well as on resumes. According to the test results, my top five strengths are: Positivity, Woo, Discipline, Developer and Responsibility.
CLICK HERE TO SEE A FULL DESCRIPTION OF ALL 34 STRENGTHS
POSITIVITY:
You are generous with praise, quick to smile, and always on the lookout for the positive in the situation. Some call you lighthearted. Others just wish that their glass were as full as yours seems to be. But either way, people want to be around you. Their world looks better around you because your enthusiasm is contagious. Lacking your energy and optimism, some find their world drab with repetition or, worse, heavy with pressure. You seem to find a way to lighten their spirit. You inject drama into every project. You celebrate every achievement. You find ways to make everything more exciting and more vital. Some cynics may reject your energy, but you are rarely dragged down. Your Positivity won’t allow it. Somehow you can’t quite escape your conviction that it is good to be alive, that work can be fun, and that no matter what the setbacks, one must never lose one’s sense of humor.
WOO:
Woo stands for winning others over. You enjoy the challenge of meeting new people and getting them to like you. Strangers are rarely intimidating to you. On the contrary, strangers can be energizing. You are drawn to them. You want to learn their names, ask them questions, and find some area of common interest so that you can strike up a conversation and build rapport. Some people shy away from starting up conversations because they worry about running out of things to say. You don’t. Not only are you rarely at a loss for words; you actually enjoy initiating with strangers because you derive satisfaction from breaking the ice and making a connection. Once that connection is made, you are quite happy to wrap it up and move on. There are new people to meet, new rooms to work, new crowds to mingle in. In your world there are no strangers, only friends you haven’t met yet — lots of them.
DISCIPLINE:
Your world needs to be predictable. It needs to be ordered and planned. So you instinctively impose structure on your world. You set up routines. You focus on timelines and deadlines. You break long-term projects into a series of specific short-term plans, and you work through each plan diligently. You are not necessarily neat and clean, but you do need precision. Faced with the inherent messiness of life, you want to feel in control. The routines, the timelines, the structure, all of these help create this feeling of control. Lacking this theme of Discipline, others may sometimes resent your need for order, but there need not be conflict. You must under- stand that not everyone feels your urge for predictability; they have other ways of getting things done. Like- wise, you can help them understand and even appreciate your need for structure. Your dislike of surprises, your impatience with errors, your routines, and your detail orientation don’t need to be misinterpreted as con- trolling behaviors that box people in. Rather, these behaviors can be understood as your instinctive method for maintaining your progress and your productivity in the face of life’s many distractions.
DEVELOPER:
You see the potential in others. Very often, in fact, potential is all you see. In your view no individual is fully formed. On the contrary, each individual is a work in progress, alive with possibilities. And you are drawn to- ward people for this very reason. When you interact with others, your goal is to help them experience success. You look for ways to challenge them. You devise interesting experiences that can stretch them and help them grow. And all the while you are on the lookout for the signs of growth — a new behavior learned or modified, a slight improvement in a skill, a glimpse of excellence or of “flow” where previously there were only halting steps. For you these small increments — invisible to some — are clear signs of potential being realized. These signs of growth in others are your fuel. They bring you strength and satisfaction. Over time many will seek you out for help and encouragement because on some level they know that your helpfulness is both genuine and fulfilling to you.
RESPONSIBILITY:
Your Responsibility theme forces you to take psychological ownership for anything you commit to, and whether large or small, you feel emotionally bound to follow it through to completion. Your good name depends on it. If for some reason you cannot deliver, you automatically start to look for ways to make it up to the other person. Apologies are not enough. Excuses and rationalizations are totally unacceptable. You will not quite be able to live with yourself until you have made restitution. This conscientiousness, this near obsession for doing things right, and your impeccable ethics, combine to create your reputation: utterly dependable. When assigning new responsibilities, people will look to you first because they know it will get done. When people come to you for help — and they soon will — you must be selective. Your willingness to volunteer may some- times lead you to take on more than you should.
StrengthsFinder 2.0 – Tom Rath, Gallup Press ©2012
Photos courtesy of Suzanna Watkins