Matt S. Leadership Philosophy

A person's leadership philosophy is what defines how well they run a group of people. After taking a semester class in Leadership and Management, I have learned several new ideas that have changed the shape of my leadership philosophy. By combining these all together, my thoughts on leading can be broken down into these steps, ranked by importance.

1. Recognize who you are leading. Before you begin to lead, I think that understanding who you are trying to lead is of utmost importance. Understanding this concept helps me understand what type of leadership style to incorporate. During my semester with Management and Leadership, I learned that there are many styles which one can choose from. For example, you could use autocratic techniques, or more democratic techniques. Using either one should be based upon what is best for who you are leading, not who you are as a person. Perhaps in leading a group of younger children I would use a more autocratic approach, whereas with older, more mature people, I would use a more democratic approach. Therefore, I believe recognizing and understanding what type of people you are going to lead is the first essential step I take when leading.
2. Part of the curriculum in this class was reading The 7 Habits for Highly Effective Teens. Many of the topics mentioned in the book impacted my philosophy, but one which really stood out to me was “begin with the end in mind”. What this means to me in terms of leading is that when you begin leading a group of people, you must make clear what the end goal is. Getting everyone on the same page in terms of what there is to accomplish is in my opinion the next most important thing to do as a leader. My favorite quote about leadership from Antoine de Saint-Exupery channels this idea by saying, “If you want to be a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long of the endless immensity of the sea”. This channels the thought of beginning with the end in mind and also touches upon the thought that when leading, it is important to be a leader, rather than a boss. A boss would assign people to collect wood for the ship, and create the sails, but a leader inspires them. A leader motivates them for the end goal. Once the followers become focused on the end reward, they won’t need someone to assign them tasks. They will do them willingly. I believe a good leader always has the end product in mind, and is always doing their best to inspire and motivate others to achieve it. 
3. The next most important part of leading for me is the planning process. Once I figure out who I am leading and what the end goal is, the planning is crucial to the execution of the goal. During our unit on management functions, we went over how the planning process works. From this I have taken away that it is important to start the plan as broad and general, and then narrow specific tasks down further in the planning process with dates and specific details. I also learned that it is good for plans to be compatible and flexible, because odds are that things don’t always go exactly according to plan.
4. The next most important part of my leadership philosophy is the behavior used during the day to day process of leading. Simply put, how your followers perceive you and how you behave around them is essential. My key idea here is to be who you want your followers to be. I always want to look positive and motivated around those I’m leading so that they will sense my motivation to accomplish our goal. I believe that if I behave like this, the group I lead will place their trust in me, which is good. It is also good to show faith and perseverance in the goal, especially when you hit roadblocks. If your group sees that you’re not giving up, then they won’t either.
5. In our management functions unit we also touched upon the idea of the organizational environment. In order for the task at hand to be accomplished efficiently, there must be some sort of structure to the working environment. Setting up a chain of command and having each person execute their responsibilities is key when mapping out the organizational structure. As a leader this is key to keep in mind when delegating different members of a group to tasks. It’s always good if a leader can take up a manager role and set up different groups or subgroups to independently work together.
6. Later in the semester we had another unit on communication. I believe every great leader is also a great communicator. Making sure that you can get important messages out on time, to everyone so that each person is on the same page is essential. If the idea of communication is forgotten then a leader may never even see their goal accomplished.
7. Reviewing how well the execution of your plan went is an important part when leading that is often forgotten. This is important to me because by looking back on how things went and how they could have been better will help you improve your leadership abilities for the future.

Conclusion: The world has leaders everywhere you go, but there are many fine details that separate a leader who is great from a leader who is not so great. I believe that by focusing on the key ideas mentioned above, anyone can work to become an excellent leader.