When the leadership reputation assignment was first introduced, I was intrigued. As someone who can tend to be skeptical about what people think of me behind my back, I was interested to see what others said about me under (hopefully) complete honesty. The three people I asked to complete this evaluation included my mom, and two of my friends, one male and one female I was a little surprised, and pleased, to see that most of the positive qualities, along with some of the negative qualities that I thought of myself were agreed upon with the other people I asked to evaluate me. In return for their honesty, I had to be willing to see their point of view and understand why they selected the qualities that they did. At first when I came across a quality that, whether I thought I had or didn’t have, that another person thought differently, I wanted to present an argument for my opinion. However, once I thought about it and was honest with myself, most of those cases ended in me thinking, “Yeah, you’re probably right.” Generally, the qualities listed that had to do with being hardworking and caring were agreed upon for me by all four people completing this assessment, including myself. It was interesting to see the differences in qualities people selected about me, and how they might’ve have been influenced by my relationships with the different people evaluating me. For example, my male friend agreed that I was happy, approachable, charismatic, typical qualities for two guy friends who were former athletes. Qualities that were not selected by him, though, were qualities more directed in the sensitive and caring realm, probably because we don’t go to each other to talk about our feelings, as most guys wouldn’t. Those kind of qualities were among the bulk of those selected by my female friend, who comes to me whenever she is upset or is dealing with a problem in her life, and with whom I can share when I am upset or struggling. I was interested to see that the person with whom I matched almost all of the qualities selected was my mom, which shows me that she really does know me best, even though sometimes I want to think she doesn’t. Even though there were some differences in my qualities among the three people I asked to evaluate me, they were pretty similar across the board, which I’d like to attribute to the fact that I do my best to be like an open book, in that I don’t pretend to be something I’m not just because of the people I might be around, so I was glad to see for the most part that others were able to agree on a lot of qualities they thought I possessed and that I also thought I possessed.
2 Comments
Erin
3/8/2015 03:18:57 am
Thank you for your honest reflection on this activity. It sounds like it was affirming in a lot of ways. I appreciated your point about the nature of your relationships influencing the ways in which people perceived you. That is a great point to consider because how we act in certain "arenas" of life varies to a certain degree. I imagine your mom would be happy to hear that you think she knows you well :) You should share that with her if you haven't already because I imagine it would make her day!
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Sam
3/8/2015 04:44:58 am
Thanks for sharing, Adam. It's great that you were able to receive feedback from different point of view. That was a smart decision to try and get one guy-friend and one girl-friend to review your leadership traits. It's interesting how one's identity can affect how they perceive you. Similarly, shared experiences differ from person to person. As we continue to discuss leadership in the class, I encourage you to look at yourself from different angles. Leadership is personal, and therefore is analyzed differently from different people. This will be a great addition to your philosophy of leadership paper.
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