Personal Project

Introduction

My current position affords me two types of leadership positions. While I do not manage people directly I manage both a project and a job function. I am responsible for working alongside IT professionals to automate a good chunk of my job function that is now done manually. The IT professional meets with me to find out my needs and wants. He then takes this information and writes the appropriate code to make the system work the way that I need it too. I am responsible to make sure he understands the importance of why we need what I am asking for and then I review what he has done prior to any implementation. I am qualified to manage this project even though I do not have an IT background. Past experience in working on automated systems in prior companies has taught me what is possible to achieve. In addition, having been in my line of work for more than 15 years has given me the knowledge of what we need this system to do in order to make our customers happy and properly maintain our records.

On another note I also manage my job function. In most large companies the role that I fill is performed by various teams of people. The company I work for is on the smaller side so the volume of work is significantly less than that of a larger company. I am the only person who performs my function. If I am ill or on vacation my job does not get done by anyone else. I see every trade through from beginning to end. If I am not here the customer simply has to wait until I get back. I get calls regularly from customers looking for contact information within my company. When the customer finds out that the contact is myself for all functions they are looking for they are usually quite surprised. My extensive experience allows me to fill to multi-tasking role without any problem. On the occasion that we have visitors in the office, my manager will always introduce me as Kathy McFadden, Documentation Manager.

In the past I have held various managerial positions that did actually involve managing staff. I have had teams as small as 2 and as large as 8. I found that this can be quite fulfilling but only if you work for the right managers in the right company. When I was a Manager, I never felt like I had any control. I was told what goals my team needed to meet and how they were to meet them. I was merely a babysitter, making sure everyone behaved and kept their nose to the grindstone. While I was happy to have been promoted to manager, I did not have the freedom to run my group as I saw fit. I was merely allowed to follow a script provided to me by senior managers.

In my personal life I also perform a leadership role. I am a divorced parent of one 3 year old child and it is my responsibility, to not only run my household but to manage my son's life. I manage what he wears, where he goes to school and what he eats. I am responsible to make sure they bills are paid and that we have a roof over our heads and food on the table. My son is dependent on me. So in a way, I am his manager as well.

Skills, Attributes & Beliefs

Although the positions I have held have had differences, they mostly require the same skills. One of the skills that I posses that help me to perform my job function is organization. In order to do what I do, one must be organized. You are regularly buried in a sea of paper and you need to know what the story is behind each document. In order to keep track of things in such a manual paper-intensive environment you have to know what is going on around you and where things are. I find this skill to be even more important than the skill of knowing the actual job function. Organization even applies to the job of managing a household and children as you need to keep track of when things are due, and the normal stuff that goes along with raising children, such as doctor visits, immunizations, school functions etc. Another example of a skill that goes across all of my leadership examples is the ability to multi-task. Weather at home or in the workplace, you need to be able to do more than one thing at a time. If it is at home, I get myself ready for work and my son ready for school at the same time. I prepare his dinner in the evening, while checking my messages and my e-mails. If I am at work, I often find myself reading work emails and talking on the phone to a customer at the same time. I am often on the phone and putting together an excel spreadsheet while talking to the person requesting it. Having the skill or multi-tasking allows me to get more done in a shorter amount of time, making everyone happier all around.

Attributes I can relate to are getting along well with others and work in a team. Being able to get along well with my co workers and customers is imperative to my job. Although my position is directly related to those in my group it is indirectly related. I often have to interact with my coworkers and am constantly interacting with outside customers. I pride myself on knowing how to behave and what to say to convince people to assist me when I need their help. I have excellent connections with my clients and am often called upon to call my contacts to get matters resolved. Because I maintain an excellent friendly yet professional relationship with my clients, they are always happy to help me. Internally, my team works great together and everybody is quite happy to help each other out when needed. Even at home, my son and I are a team. I always remind him of this and he loves that I delegate responsibilities to him while watching over him. (Like putting on his own shoes) He knows he can do it himself, but likes that I make sure he is doing it right. We get along great and work as a team.

One of my strongest beliefs is that everything happens for a reason. Even though I may not have been happy with the way things worked out at some jobs I have had in the past. Every position I have held has been a learning experience. I love to learn new things and one way of doing that is to move around within a company or of course take courses. Even having bad managers and bad managerial experiences happened for a reason. I learned what type of manager I do not want to be. The manager I have now is teaching me what type of manager I do want to be. Another belief I have is that I feel you should always do your best. Somewhere deep down I feel someone will recognize your talents if you always do your best. Even in the event of failure, at the very least you can say that you tried and gave it your all and of course learn from your mistakes.

Thinking Habits

Over the course of my career I have employed several of the thinking habits. Continuous