Leadership: Self-Assessment Paper

                                                     Bingcan Cui

                                                                                                         12147124

 9,13,2015

                                                     Assignment 1

               Leadership Self-Assessment Paper

        When I was at primary school, my teacher always taught me and other students that you do not interrupt other people’s jobs; you only take care of your own jobs, and since that, we seldom had the opportunities to work as a team, we always studied and worked individually, the teacher always showed their affection who could work alone to get good grades, and from that on, most of us Chinese students, formed the idea that the best way to get good grades and win respects from other students is taking care of your own business, this habit still lasts when we were in high school and even in college, until recently, as a senior student who is going to graduate soon, I started to think about that, and realized that there is something called team spirit which is more important in our lives especially when I was applying for a part time job, the first thing that the employers would ask was “What was your Aha moment of team work”? I got confused at that time since I didn’t really have a deep impression about that. Fortunately, leadership provides me with overall sights of what is a team, what does each team member play a role in their team and why is it important to allocate the resources of a team to maximize the efficiency and accuracy of a team project. By analyzing each part of our leadership course, I reflected myself and concluded some strengths and weaknesses that I have when involving a team project. Through reflecting, I could have a better understanding of myself and have a clear vision of my future career that how can I become successful in this society.

        There are three strengths that I have in leadership process.

The strong desire to change

Good negotiating skills

Willing to sacrifice

The core idea of leadership, in my opinion, is making the change happen, which is, always think about how to make a team become better, this is exclusively important for becoming a good leader because a team won’t be a good team if they accept status quo. Therefore, the prescription of maintaining a good team is that every team member should have the desire to change so that we could meet the upcoming challenges with passion and spirits, instead of the regret of pain. When I was elected as the chairman of an English organization, I didn’t follow the path led by the former president, because I believe his vision is not clear, and that’s not my organization supposed to be, I believe that every client in my organization should improve a lot of their spoken English that everyone could speak fluent English eventually, following that direction, I established some new departments which are responsible for certain kinds of jobs to assure that my ambitions could be reached eventually. It took a couple of months to make that happen, and I felt really difficult to get through some bad times, but since I never surrender and always believe there is better sight in front of me, I conquered those difficulties and made it at last.

If you have ever seen a movie “ One to one” you probably could understand that good negotiating skills always help a lot when you make a deal with people, it sounds like some tricks to fool people around but actually it’s not, it’s basically finding a better way to solve a problem with considering the interests of both sides. As we all know, when a team project comes to us, we need to make a plan, assure our direction, and make some alternation during the process, however, all of these need to be agreed with by all team members, unlike a captain who makes an order, everyone participates in the decision making, therefore, if someone has a good negotiating skills, he will be more likely to get what he wants, and help a team figure out their paths that satisfying all team members. Besides, have a good negotiating skills could also gather the help outside a team, when we need to make a team project, especially involve some activities connecting with outside a team. Take my own experience for example, i had been running a 310 leadership project with my teammates called Story Book Walk project, which is simply guiding a group of kids to walk around a park, at the meantime, our teammates will read the stories to them during the walk. It looks like easy but without the help from so many other organizations, it will be so tough, and good negotiating skills start to work.

People who would like to sacrifice have a better understanding of people’s needs, it’s important to know that resources is scarce within a team, sometimes, not every teammate could get what he or she wants, when that happens, it always need someone who may sacrifice, however, most of us are tough and not many of us want to sacrifice. However, i never mind sacrificing myself since i understand that point and with considering the overall goods of a team. There is a typical example that there is only one leader in a team, but does that mean the other teammates all will need to sacrifice themselves? That is not always true but sometimes, i won’t just pursue to become a leader, if i find someone who potentially could extent the overall good of the whole team, i wouldn’t refuse to be a follower.

The three weaknesses that I have in leadership process.

More listening

Lack of self-discipline.

The perspective of a team

From my perspective, I do not possess the patience and willing to listen from others, also, I didn’t possess the capability of telling the most important thing to do within a short period of time, that weakness might come from my characteristic that I am too confident sometimes, I do not listen to other people like my family and friends even they always reason with me, as I still believe I am always right. This weakness could harm a team extremely sometimes especially when other people have different opinions with me, if I keep insisting my judgment, without considering the feeling of other teammates, everyone feels unhappy and has no motivation to do their jobs. It could be even worse when someone might have a better idea but I refuse to accept, as we all know, the power of a team far outweighs an individual, and this is also the reason we are learning leadership to maximize the efficiency of a team, but without listening to other teammates, the power of a team must be minimized, and therefore, a good leader cannot be a dictator.