My Leadership Life

My Leadership Life

My leadership philosophies are based off of learning to lead from some great people. Whether it was my grandpa who taught me that if you want something, you have to work to get it, or watching my uncle making himself a business and building it to the sky, I have been shaped by some amazing leaders. The people you surround yourself with does truly play into what sort of person or leader you become. I, for example, take bits of leadership from the style of Steve Jobs. I look at something I believe in and in order to get other people to help, I attempt to convince and prove that if they don’t help, they are the ones missing out. 

My leadership philosophy comes down to the idea that if you want others to follow, you have to demonstrate and give good reason to believe in what you are doing. If I want others to listen,  speak loudly and confidently and with clear thoughts and intentions. If I want others to do something, be the first one demonstrating what to do, how to do it and why. 

What I have taken from Management & Leadership

Throughout the semester, I’ve learned that there is no one best way to do leadership. This has ultimately lead me to be a better leader as I have learned to incorporate many strategies into my style. I use positive motivation while still being forceful when necessary. My goal is to attempt to inspire and encourage enough so that being forceful is unnecessary and people will follow solely based off of knowing that they are doing something worthwhile. 

Going back to 7 habits, one of the most important habits to me was to be proactive. In the past, my laid back demeanor and lack of self confidence lead me to not want any leadership roles or be the least bit proactive about taking a leadership role when it was really necessary. I now take my every opportunity to be proactive and make change happen. If I see something that I believe needs to change, I will say something, step up and try to make that change happen. There really is something to “Be the change you want in the world”. By doing this I know that no matter what, I have tried to make my impact and it will work sometimes, and other times not. I have realized that although when leading a group of people, democracies tend to be the preferred type of decision making style, Autocracies are ok as well. While doing our leadership impact project, I recognized many times where instead of just all attempting to agree on what to do, we needed someone to stand up an just tell us what was going to happen. In retrospect, I could have been that person at times, but I feel that having it turn out the way it did served a better purpose in teaching us about the success and failures of leadership, instead of everything going according to plan. 

This one semester class really changed me. It shaped me into a competent, well rounded and thoughtful leader. I now truly feel like if the situation arises, I know how to keep everything under control. I have learned to take things slow, I have learned to control others while keeping everyones best interest in mind, I have also learned when to realize that things aren't working. Its all a part of building up to be a great leader. This class truly is one of the few classes in high school I believe will help shape me my entire life. Its an amazing thing to have been able to gain all this experience. I plan on implementing many things from this class into my leadership life.