Leadership Development Plan

I have been playing tennis since I was 5 years old and even though tennis is an individual sport I had to help other people achieve their goals many times in my life. It is important in my sport because you practice with many other people and if they get better and achieve their goals that is going to help me achieve mine.
Model The Way:
Last year I experienced that our team captain does not do a good job as he was acting like he is better than others; therefore nobody accepted his advice. I thought that it is not what a good leader does so I tried to step up and take over this kind of leadership, which I think I managed to do because I treated everyone with respect and they listened to me. The one thing I could have done better is setting a good example, not just talk about it. I am not credible if I tell other people to work harder when I sometimes have bad days and I don’t even do it. This is something I could have done better. People will follow me if I show them how to do it the best way I can on a regular basis.
Inspire a shared vision:
I think this part might be one of the most important parts of leadership. If I can’t get people excited about doing something they will probably not do a great job. Last year I had a group project where I was on a team with three people who did not care a lot about grades, which obviously affected my grade. It was not a very important class, so I tried to come up with an idea how I can make them care about this project. I tried to explain them that later in their lives they will probably have to work on projects, which would help them to make a lot of money. This idea made them a little excited about the project because they thought it might influence their future. We still only got a B for the project. I could have found a better “higher” purpose so I definitely have to be more creative and come up with a vision that everybody shares.
Challenge The Process:
This is probably the weakest part of my leadership ability. Even though I always look for developing in every part of my life I have a hard time make other people develop. A leader has to be unselfish and has to care a lot about people around them. On the tennis court I always look for new ideas how I can improve, but I barely suggest others how to do things, which has to change in my opinion. As of now I care too much about myself and my goals. Last year we lost to Utah, which was a bad loss for us and I only cared about how I played and did and I was unable to ask the question that appears on the self rating sheet: what can learn from it? I need to do a better job with challenging other people. This way I can become a better leader.
Enable Others to act:
Respect and dignity is very important for me. One thing I learned from my parents that I always have to be respectful even though I have a higher position, or I am a better tennis player etc. Other people’s opinion and views are very important for me as well. I trained with a 14 year old kid this Summer who had some great ideas how to make practice more efficient. I changed the way we practiced as he suggested and I felt like he was right; that is where I learned that I have to listen to others and provide them with freedom. Although, I have to make sure that sometimes as a leader I have to say no to people, so that they see me as a strong leader. I am sometimes too nice and do not want be in conflict with other people, so I just take their advice. I have to improve that so that I can be a stronger leader.
Encourage The Heart:
Encouraging other people is such an important feature of a good leader. Last year we had a lot of memorable matches with the tennis team, one of them was beating Stanford. One our guys was struggling throughout the whole year, but he managed to pull out a tough three hours long match against Stanford, which I thought was awesome. I talked to him after the match for 15 minutes just thanking him how great he did and how much I appreciate his attitude to the match. I know it meant a lot for him because after that match he started to play better and won more matches than before. After the season he came up to me and thanked me for the nice words and said it helped them a lot. However, I need to do a better job with encouraging my teammates when they practice. Again, I focus too much on myself when I am doing an activity. My coaches always tell me to encourage others during practice too, not only matches because that will make everyone better. I think I finally understand how much it means for other people, but I still need to improve that skill.
Emotional Intelligence:
Everybody has feelings, emotions that can highly affect our performance. Someone who wants to be a good leader has to have emotional intelligence so that he can use emotions to force other people do better, or understand these emotions other people may have. In a workplace it is so important that everybody feels good and a good leader can change they way how other people feel even when they are having a bad day. After last season the tennis team went through a really hard time. One of our teammates and friends died after a terrible accident. Everybody was shocked and could not practice at all, or even when we did we did really bad. I tried to change their feelings a little bit by saying that he would want us to get back and work harder than ever and we kind of all agreed on that and tried to get back on the tennis court as soon as we could. It was not the same though as it was before. It is obviously a very extreme story, but I learned that if I can calm someone down, or use some methods to change their moods I can be a much more successful leader. I think I am doing a pretty god job with helping my family, friends or teammates when day are having a bad day and cheer them up. Something I have to learn though is to control my own emotions, so that I can be a great example to others. Hereby they would accept me as a leader because they see a strong, emotionally steady person.
Action Plans:
One thing I learned throughout my life is that I always have to try to get better at every single aspect of my life. I always look for the opportunity where I can improve, so that I can become a better person. From a leadership perspective I have to learn a lot because I have never really been a leader for a long time, so I am pretty inexperienced. One thing I really would like to improve in is the “inspire the vision part”.
1. I have never been a leader of my teams in school projects before. I never helped setting a team goal; I always did what my teammates told me to do even when I thought that it is not necessarily the right path. In this team project I would like to play a huge role in setting the team goals up because that is not only my interest, but also my teammates’. The way I would like to achieve this improvement is that from the first meeting I would like to be the one who talks the most and look for a goal that everybody agrees on. I will know after the first group meeting if I achieved my goal, or not. If I can help set up a goal that everybody likes I will be very happy, if not I will try to look for ways to come up with a better goal. I would probably talk to some of my friends who already graduated and ask their help because they already went through these steps. Hereby I can rethink the way I would like to achieve my ultimate goal.
2. I have a huge goal I want to achieve in regards of emotional intelligence. I sometimes tend to be rude with other people when I have a bad day. On these days I do not really care about other people I only think about myself and the problem I may have. By the end of my term I would like to be able to control my emotions and my mood, so that I can be a useful part of my team. The way I want to get here is to always remind myself that this whole project is not just about me. I cannot be selfish and just care about myself when I have 4 other people around me who would like to do a great project and get a good grade. I will try to measure my process by asking my teammates about me and the way they see me.
Hopefully this class will help me improve my leadership abilities, and I can achieve my action plans by the end of this term.
Self Rating