My Leadership Experience

My first impression of what qualities leadership entails was belief in oneself, initiative to action, outspokenness, moral rights, the ability to lead by example, and humility. Also, a leader has to have total confidence, but over the past few months. I discovered a lot more than all those qualities and that it takes a lot more to become a good leader. I learned a lot about myself that I never knew before and I am more assured in my abilities to lead. This class has taught me a lot about leadership, and also now that I think about it, my dad is a real leader and he has taught me a lot about life. Throughout the paper I will relate a lot of my leadership experience back to him and also the readings and activities in class. Now I am aware of the concept of leadership in all aspects of what I do in life, I never thought that the simple things I do like being organized or helping others can be considered as leadership traits. I think knowing about my leadership style, teamwork, goal setting, ethics, diversity, conflict, and organization will help me become a better leader. I believe I am a better person and leader than before when I didn’t really put a lot of emphasis on becoming a leader. This class has helped me realize the potentials I have to become a future leader. I am a big believer in that being a leader can help make a difference in the community and at work and hopefully someday in the whole world.

The readings and discussion in class helped me to understand what leadership is about. The first concept of leadership to me was to understand my leadership style. Before this class, I never thought about my leadership style or even knew that there were different types of leadership. I think my leadership style is best described by the combined style of pacesetting and coaching, because I was exposed to the pacesetting style a lot by my dad who was very professional and expected good things from people. He would demand the most from everyone and he expected them to do it the way he does and if they can’t then they are gone. The pacesetting style is not the best way to be a leader, because some people are not capable of exceeding in everything they do and you have to accept that they are not as good and hope that they can improve in the future. My dad is a great person and everything, but the pacesetting style of my dad has made him an unpopular manager around the employees. I took account that I will not be like him and have everyone dislike me all the time. So I decided to lead with the pacesetting style, but also with the coaching style. I would take the best parts from both styles and model my leadership after it. When I lead or do something, I would always do my best and expect other people to do the same as me and give it their all every time. If they cannot do what I want than its fine because I will not just get rid of people for not being up to my standards right away. I think it is mean thing to just fire them rather than giving them time to get better and eventually do what I ask. I will try my best to help in any way possible and I want them to know that I care about them and that we are friends also not just leaders and followers. Now that I know about these leadership styles, I will try my best to apply them in my work and personal life more to help me to become a better person and a better leader also.

Before this class, my favorite way of dealing with conflict is to avoid it as much as possible and hope that it would just go away in the future. The reason for this is that I did not want to put all the effort into fixing the conflict and I was not really comfortable with confronting people about what is wrong, because my dad is really good at confronting people on what the problem is. He is not afraid to do and he will anything to make things right through any means necessary. My dad would confront me all the time on whatever was wrong and that has made me resent him a little bit, because he would...

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