As I mentioned in my Leadership development plan, for 20 years of my life, I had very few leadership experiences and the concept that I thought before as a leader was completely wrong. I thought the leadership was nothing more than just a mandatory policy that force people to follow what they said without few explanations or no explanations at all for the purpose of doing it. So to be honest, I hated the leader when I was young and I never wanted to be a one because I know it was a wrong thing to do.
As I was taking BA-352 this term, the concept of leadership have gradually become more important and positive and impact on me want to become a one because I realized it is such a crucial skills and set of behaviors that every businessman needs to have in order to better communicate to others and getting people complete the job as efficient as they can by following a good leader.
Referencing my Leadership Development Plan, an important part of my leadership philosophy is actually doing what I say, that is, “Model the way.” If I don’t model what I expected out of others, it will create a negative environment where people will be discouraged to do their tasks. As I discussed in my plan, I am very organized when it comes to my school work, a little bit of a “neat freak” and this clearly translated to my team members after our mid-term peer evaluation
Artifact: According to my mid-term peer evaluation, I have a good organization skills and they were able to trust me and delegate tasks on me without worrying that I won’t get it done well, and they also appreciated that I took the initiatives for the team to have a good start. I emphasized the importance of organization with my group members not because I didn’t think they weren’t organized, but it is something that can get put the side.
Another aspect of my leadership philosophy is knowing when to step up and when to step back. As a team, we established that there wouldn’t be a team leader and each of us would equally contribute and head different parts of the project. This worked extremely well in our team because we didn’t have one dominant personality. This method fit right in with my way of leading and was highlighted in our final peer evaluation.
Artifact: According to my final peer evaluation, I was able to take the time and effort to the PPT slides to ensure that our team presentation is on the right direction. In my team, my Microsoft PPT manipulation is a little bit more sufficient than other teams. I had a extremely busy schedule as the term was getting towards to the end. But I realized that if I don’t step up and do the PPT slides, our team presentation won’t be as productive and convincing as if I did the slides. So I took the courage and accepted the task and I used my organization skills to manage all my other school work. At the end, I was able to complete the PPT slides as every body expected in the team.
One area I do need work on in my leadership skills is delegating. In my Leadership Development Plan, I stated that this was a quality I needed to work on and I believe I have improved it, but still need to practice. In our Mid-term peer evaluation, I have found my teammates saying that I was worried too much about every single detail and the team felt not so productive within a limited resource they had. I can see why they felt that way and what mistakes that I had. If I delegating everybody’s task well, or I should say, if I had a good organization and a good structure of what my plan was, and talk the team what they should do, they would not end up frustrated and the team would have been more productive and efficient. For the mid-term peer evaluation, I definitely agree with my team members about their concerns. At the end of the project, I was stressed because of the approaching deadline and took a lot on because I felt that was how I could manage my stress. I know the importance of delegating tasks but I just need a good way to do it. This is the area that I need to focus the most in the future.
Over all, I was able to gain the trust and reliance of my team through my continual hard work, always being prepared and thoroughly knowing all my information. My teammates stated that while I may not have talked as much as a leader, what I had to say was worthwhile and needed to be heard. This helped build my credibility, and allowed an easier transition to helping build this team from distant individuals to a collaborative team of students. I did not want to see us falling apart and creating a hateful environment on one individual who had extreme cases of unfortunate circumstances. I feel by bridging this gap between teammates as the weeks went on, we all became closer and were more interested in getting to know each other in a deeper relationship, not just the professional student coming to the meetings.
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