How Did the Various Self-Evaluations Throughout the Course Impact Your Self-Awareness?

                                                                                September 8, 2017

How did the various self-evaluations throughout the course impact your self-awareness?

Throughout my journey in this course, the self-evaluations were instrumental in allowing me to gain a sense of how others perceive me as a leader in contrast to how I perceive myself. I’ve recently been placed in my first management position and through many of the evaluations and concepts, I’ve learned much about myself. Early on, I discovered identifiable traits that spoke to my strengths and others that clearly demonstrated potential areas of weakness. I ranked highly in my abilities to be sensitive and empathetic to the needs and concerns of others. I’ve always worked diligently to lead in accordance with my core values and moral foundation. The evaluations were indicative of my efforts and identified me as friendly, trustworthy and conscientious. My shortfalls, which came as no surprise to me, were in the categories of self-confidence and self-assurance. Interestingly, self-confidence and assurance were lacking in my perception of self however, those who were on the outside looking in, gathered a different sense of my level of confidence and self-assurance. Surprisingly, friends, family and co-workers saw me as a self-secure and confident guy. My take away from the evaluation is that my greatest limiting factor was internal and was fueled by a less than favorable perception of self.  Once I completed the skill assessment evaluation, I was able to get a better understanding of how my leadership traits were reflective in the evaluation of my management skills. The Three-Skill Approach demonstrated that the bulk of my leadership skills were human in nature. My characteristic empathetic and friendly traits account for my high human skills. I’ve always thought it important that a leader should be relational with subordinates and approach them as members of the team rather than tools of the trade. My experience with this approach is that my subordinates often feel free to express themselves and demonstrate a willingness to accomplish more when additional tasks are placed upon them. All of which I think adds to a more pleasant working environment.

The Three-Skill Approach also shed light on my perceived shortcomings which were exposed in my trait evaluation. I scored very low in the conceptual skills aspect of the evaluation and this gave me clarity as to why I perceived my self-confidence and assurance as being low. I’ve always struggled with the creativity and conceptual skills required to build on ideas and concepts. I’ve reached the conclusion that if given a muse and a theme, my final product would likely be lackluster to say the least. I often use my human and technical skills to hide my inability to conceptualize the broad scope of things. Thankfully, I’m early in my management career and there’s room for growth.

To further solidify my perception of self, I discovered that my leadership style falls in line with my traits and skills as it pertains to leadership. I’ve always deemed myself as a “team player” and my style of management promotes the idea of subordinates working in conjunction with me to accomplish personal and organizational goals. The idea of Team Management is to get employees involved in the organization processes and goals, while also ensuring that their needs are met, moral is high and expectations are clear. I’ve learned that my behavioral approach is more relationship oriented versus task oriented with employees. While it is safe to say that this approach isn’t 100% effective with each of my subordinates, I think that it has allowed the vast majority of them to feel more accountable for getting tasks done which in turn, requires me to focus less on tasks. I also think it eliminates micromanagement, something I despise dearly.

Before the assessments, I’d have never thought to consider taking a different approach to each employee based on their individual personality/behavior characteristic. I naturally expected that employees would happily perform their jobs as long as I was supportive, relational and engaging. I’ve learned that I can’t continue to use a generalized approach to management. Inevitably, there will employees who fail to respond positively. I’ve adjusted my leadership style and incorporated assigning my tasks based on the performance and behavior of the employee. I’ve termed it as “meeting them where they are .” I’ve taken into account the skill level and various behavioral aspects of my subordinates and adapted my leadership style to fit each employee.

Which leadership concepts seemed to provide you with the most insight to your own leadership journey? Explain.

I think the concept of being a transformational leader encompasses a number of the concepts that we’ve covered over the past 8 weeks and is the concept that I’ve found to be the most insightful/inspiring in my journey. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve based my leadership approach and actions on my moral and ethical values. I think that as a leader, your values are reflected in a number of ways to include your choice or words, how you manage conflicts and how you conduct yourself on and off the job. To become a transformational leader, I acknowledge that it requires that I’m inspirational. In my acknowledgement, I reflect upon the leaders who gave me the gift of seeing myself in a position of greater influence and the importance that it has played in reaching my goals. As a transformational leader, it requires wanting more for others with a “selfless” approach. I’ve spent ten years in the U.S. Army and one of the things that I remember the most about my basic training graduation is how the concept of selfless service was expressed and the importance of its role in leadership. In hindsight, my characteristic leadership traits, approach,  and style seems to fit along the lines of a transformational leader. When a leader is able to demonstrate that subordinates are more than a tool, express an interest in their overall well-being and treat them as a valuable part of the team, it creates the medium to become transformational. Employees are influenced by the example a leader has set. A leader who maintains high ethical and moral conduct attains adoration and admiration which materializes as influence. When I interact with my subordinates, I make the conversation unique to them, individualizing and personalizing the interaction. When they send me requests, I make it a priority to resolve issues quickly. When there are issues that aren’t resolved quickly, I keep them in the loop. One of the challenges that I’ve found with my desire to be transformational is that it’s difficult working for a CEO who does not have the similar values as my own. It has made it difficult to support my staff and accommodate simple needs such as lunch breaks. Efforts to advocate for employees often results in push-back and the end result has been a high employee turnover rate. This has allowed me to realize that in order to have an impact on employees and promote a culture that advocates for the success, it will require that I start of business of my own.