When I perform an honest evaluation of myself as a leader, certain qualities emerge as my strengths and others emerge as areas of opportunity. I am not bothered by the fact that there are still areas where I can grow and improve. Who among us doesn’t want to be perfect, of course. Reality is that nobody is perfect though, so the next best things to be are humble, honest, and always open to learning. I attribute getting to where I am so far in my career to being hungry for learning new things and cultivating great professional relationships and mentorships along the way. I intend to continue on in the same way to see where it takes me.
My strength as a leader, who I really am at the core of my leadership, is a leader for people. Before I am a leader for the company, or the finance department, I am a leader who is here to support my team. I am a servant leader. I build relationships with my team members based on trust. I always behave in a predictable and consistent manner with them. They know what the expectations our for our team and that they have the freedom to suggest ways to meet those goals. I encourage dialogue, creative solutions, career development, work-life balance, and hard work. I advocate for them to be treated fairly by everyone else in the company and I encourage them to step up and go the extra mile for another team when the opportunity arises. I believe my purpose is not to shine or stand out in the company, but to have an entire team of shining stars standing out for the company to take notice of.
Part of being a good leader is being an authentic leader. Team members reporting to you can smell insincerity a mile away. In my early leadership days, I received feedback from one direct report that I tried to oversell successes and minimize failures during staff meetings. I was trying to not come across as a teacher scolding the class when giving bad news but I wasn’t being authentic and the team could see right through me. The worst part about that is that by being inauthentic, I was also showing the staff that they could not trust me. I hadn’t yet learned about building foundations of trust but I still knew that this was potentially very damaging to our team. Authentic leadership has a direct connection to employee behavior, commitment to the organization, and team performance (Kiersch, 2015). I recognized that early feedback for the gift it was and have carried it with me ever since.
In Alyson Paige’s article, “Top Qualities of a Leader”, she discusses vision, character, communication, and team assessment. One of the qualities I will always continue to work on is vision. Paige states that vision requires a leader to, “…tell a compelling story not yet lived”. I know what our overall team goals are. I can set specific metrics to meet in order to measure progress and attain those goals. Where I feel I fall short is in coming up with inspiring, creative solutions to reach those hard-to-get goals. My boss recently came to me to ask my thoughts about using artificial intelligence to automate some of our more outdated, manual systems. The idea was so innovative and impressive. I will keep working on ways to hone my ability to think outside the box. Perhaps this is an area in which I am destined to fail forward for a while. In other words, put forth decent but half-baked ideas until either something sticks or at the very least the process of having interesting ideas takes hold in my brain. Failure is uncomfortable for me and something I need to work on internally if failing forward is to work (Burruss, 2018).
That honest evaluation of myself as a leader reveals that I am great at leading people and need to work on creative solutions to difficult problems. I try to stay humble, honest, and always open to learning. I hate to fail but need to find comfort in failing forward. I love being a leader and at this point in my career my favorite parts by far are helping others develop their path to leadership, and continuing to force myself out of my comfort zone and learn new things.
Resources
Burruss, L. (2018, April 1). LEARN FROM FAILURE: Fail forward so that you take lessons
from unsuccessful pursuits. TD Magazine, 72(4), 44.
Kiersch, Christa E.; Byrne, Zinta S.. In: Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies.
2015, Vol. 22, Issue 3, pages. 12; Sage Publications, Inc., 2015. Language: English. (AN: edsbig.A425327725)Business Insights Global
Paigie, Alyson. Chron. 2015.
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/examples-managerial-skills-26168.html
My strength as a leader, who I really am at the core of my leadership, is a leader for people. Before I am a leader for the company, or the finance department, I am a leader who is here to support my team. I am a servant leader. I build relationships with my team members based on trust. I always behave in a predictable and consistent manner with them. They know what the expectations our for our team and that they have the freedom to suggest ways to meet those goals. I encourage dialogue, creative solutions, career development, work-life balance, and hard work. I advocate for them to be treated fairly by everyone else in the company and I encourage them to step up and go the extra mile for another team when the opportunity arises. I believe my purpose is not to shine or stand out in the company, but to have an entire team of shining stars standing out for the company to take notice of.
Part of being a good leader is being an authentic leader. Team members reporting to you can smell insincerity a mile away. In my early leadership days, I received feedback from one direct report that I tried to oversell successes and minimize failures during staff meetings. I was trying to not come across as a teacher scolding the class when giving bad news but I wasn’t being authentic and the team could see right through me. The worst part about that is that by being inauthentic, I was also showing the staff that they could not trust me. I hadn’t yet learned about building foundations of trust but I still knew that this was potentially very damaging to our team. Authentic leadership has a direct connection to employee behavior, commitment to the organization, and team performance (Kiersch, 2015). I recognized that early feedback for the gift it was and have carried it with me ever since.
In Alyson Paige’s article, “Top Qualities of a Leader”, she discusses vision, character, communication, and team assessment. One of the qualities I will always continue to work on is vision. Paige states that vision requires a leader to, “…tell a compelling story not yet lived”. I know what our overall team goals are. I can set specific metrics to meet in order to measure progress and attain those goals. Where I feel I fall short is in coming up with inspiring, creative solutions to reach those hard-to-get goals. My boss recently came to me to ask my thoughts about using artificial intelligence to automate some of our more outdated, manual systems. The idea was so innovative and impressive. I will keep working on ways to hone my ability to think outside the box. Perhaps this is an area in which I am destined to fail forward for a while. In other words, put forth decent but half-baked ideas until either something sticks or at the very least the process of having interesting ideas takes hold in my brain. Failure is uncomfortable for me and something I need to work on internally if failing forward is to work (Burruss, 2018).
That honest evaluation of myself as a leader reveals that I am great at leading people and need to work on creative solutions to difficult problems. I try to stay humble, honest, and always open to learning. I hate to fail but need to find comfort in failing forward. I love being a leader and at this point in my career my favorite parts by far are helping others develop their path to leadership, and continuing to force myself out of my comfort zone and learn new things.
Resources
Burruss, L. (2018, April 1). LEARN FROM FAILURE: Fail forward so that you take lessons
from unsuccessful pursuits. TD Magazine, 72(4), 44.
Kiersch, Christa E.; Byrne, Zinta S.. In: Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies.
2015, Vol. 22, Issue 3, pages. 12; Sage Publications, Inc., 2015. Language: English. (AN: edsbig.A425327725)Business Insights Global
Paigie, Alyson. Chron. 2015.
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/examples-managerial-skills-26168.html