Tom’s “Leadership and Me” post really interested me because he hit some main points that are strikingly similar to my ideas. I cannot agree more that being successful means doing what one wants to do and what one is passionate about—what makes them happy. In fact, in Kaleidoscope 1, my PRINT assessment revealed I was a 7: “to enjoy life and be happy”. Even more so, Tom recognizes that he needs to work on his confidence to help improve his leadership style. This is something I work on everyday.
Reading more, I realized two of Tom’s “Traits I Admire” are the same as mine: confidence and passion. I love the point he makes about intelligence as well, “..the ability to do critical thinking, reason and have the right amount of skepticism.” I have always been the person that assumes people are all good natured and have each other’s best interests in mind, but I need to remember that’s not always the case. I never related intelligence to skepticism in the way he did and that new connection really sparked a lot of new thoughts for me.
Thus far, I am still not a fan of trait-based theory and all I can say about this is SITUATION. Although, he did make a point about confidence in the pros of the theory, which I think is great because of my focus on confidence in being a leader. I didn’t really think about it in those simpler terms, but then I can’t help to think about the discouragement someone who doesn’t have those traits would feel.
In his PMAI assessment, Tom mentions the confidence to reach for those archetypes that are available to you if needed. I scored in this range for most archetypes and I automatically thought, “Oh hey, if I want to see things like this or do things like that, I can”. I did not originally think about needed the confidence to stray from my current path(s) and reach for those certain behaviors and characteristics.
I really think that Tom and I have the same general ideas about leadership, but interpret and express them differently. I look forward to reading his blog throughout the semester.
In Gia’s introduction post she refers to leadership as a silent, guiding role. At first glance, I thought “Wow.. No way!” Then I thought about one of my favorite quotes: "A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves." -Lao Tzo. This is exactly what she is referring to, but I think I’ve always focused on the end result and achieving a common goal, not the process of reaching the goal. This post made me
One of the traits she admires is patience and this is really interesting to me. She says she does not have enough patience, but I am the complete opposite and sometimes allow too much time and lenience. Just the simple fact of being reminded that there are people on the complete other side of the spectrum when it comes to behaviors and traits reminds me that BALANCE is important.
Short and simple: I really like trait-based theory/athlete comparison Gia makes. As I’ve already revealed, I’m not a fan of the theory, but this is a wonderful way to describe it.
It’s unbelievable how many different ways there are to view and explain leadership.. At the beginning of the semester, I expected many theories, but I did not expect so many interpretations of the same theories… and we are only a class of twenty or so…
No comments:
Post a Comment