Philosophy of leadership
Before I get into my leadership philosophy, I want to discuss some of my strengths that I discovered that have helped me form this philosophy. These strengths make up who I am as a person, so naturally these strengths would be a big part of my leadership philosophy. I discovered five of these strengths by answering question as a part of a StrengthsFinder quiz. The first of these strengths, moving from fifth to first, is that I am an achiever. This means that I enjoy being productive, I have a solid work ethic, and I take satisfaction in completing a task. Being an achiever aids in my leadership philosophy because it gives me the focus to able to complete a task, allows me to work hard and complete a task to the best of my ability, and gives me satisfaction enough to recognize others I work with as well as myself and deliver praise for completing a task. The second of my five strengths is one as a developer. Being a developer means that I see the potential in others around me, and I work with them to ensure that they reach that potential. Similarly, I can see the good things people are doing and the improvements they are making and give them positive feedback based upon these improvements. Being a developer is important to my leadership philosophy because people need to feel like their hard work and improvements are being recognized. If you start by telling people the things they are doing well, and then recognizing their hard work and improvements, they will continue working hard to be the best they can be. I believe that by first solidifying a person’ strengths, then you can motivate that person to identify their weaknesses and begin to improve them, so that they become the best overall worker they can be. Being a developer of others shows them that you care about their success, as well as that of the company or group and your own. A third strength I discovered that builds my leadership philosophy is being a relator. Being a relator helps me in my leadership philosophy because a relator focuses on strengthening his relationship with others around him. Other people’s opinions matter to a relator, and he uses these opinions to come up with the best strategy to complete a task. Also, if and when conflict and adversity arises within a group, a relator can help get to the base of the problem and help those involved resolve the conflict. The more a relator knows about his fellow workers, or the stronger his relationship with them, the more effectively he can work alongside them. A fourth strength I discovered that helps build my leadership philosophy is empathy. Having empathy means understanding when people are going through difficult times, and knowing their thoughts and feelings. Workers around a person with empathy feel comfortable talking about what they are going through with an empathetic person, because that person shows great interest in others. This interest goes beyond others simply being co-workers, rather an empathetic person genuinely cares about others around him as people. An empathetic person is able to sharpen his own mind, because in dealing with others and a task at hand, he thinks with his head while using his heart to feel the situation. Empathy helps a person share his own struggles, creating a positive environment for relationship building amongst his peers, which increases the effectiveness of the group. Perhaps an empathetic person’s most important trait to leadership is reaffirming others that their work is appreciated, giving them confidence to help them work more effectively. Finally, the fifth strength I discovered that builds my leadership philosophy is that of belief. Belief means that a person has certain core values that define what a person does. That person uses this belief in their values to drive them and make an impact in the world. Often, a person uses these core values to sacrifice their own desires and selfish gains in order to help others around them reach a goal or complete a task. Using this strength of belief also helps a person believe in others around them, believe that they can accomplish a task or goal, and uses this belief to help others around him reach their full potential. The greatest mindset a person who is strong in his belief holds is that any goal is in reach with the right attitude, and the right work ethic. Four out of five of these strengths lie in the relationship domain, which is why my relationships and interacting with others is such a big part of my leadership philosophy. (StrengthsFinder website)
Now that I’ve laid out the backbone of my leadership philosophy in my strengths, I want to get more into my leadership philosophy and what leadership is. Leadership can be described as a relational and ethical process of people together attempting to establish positive change. The ethical piece of my philosophy involves connecting my values of hard work and helping others as ethical thoughts leading to ethical action in the way I go about leading a group towards finishing a task (Exploring Leadership, Komives, 52, 252.) There are three main points that help shape my leadership philosophy. The first is that a leader should not work like a dictator does, ordering and directing those that work under him to complete a task for the leader. Rather, a leader should work with others in order to elevate their potential, their
standard of work ethic, and their overall product and ability to complete a task. A leader who works to elevate the work of others around him will not only increase work efficiency and improve the final product, but he will also strengthen his relationship with others working around him. When workers see a leader who is working to elevate their own success and the success of the group, this builds their trust in that leader and creates rapport between the workers and the leader, strengthening their relationship. A common phrase used to describe this quality in a leader is that he leads by example. The second piece of my leadership philosophy is that a leader must be able to adapt to changing times. The world today, thanks in most part to the increasingly quick development of new technologies, continues to change at a more and more rapid pace. If a leader is so stuck in his ways that he cannot adapt to new and changing situations, he misses out on opportunities to increase efficiency, improve overall product of work, and thus boost workforce morale. Workers see a leader that is willing to adapt to change as truly caring about the product of work he is putting forth and the work and effort put forth by his fellow workers, rather than only caring about being in charge and doing things his way. Related to this, the third piece of leadership that helps form my leadership philosophy is that a leader must be open to continuous learning, and open to the ideas and opinions of others working around him. A leader open to learning and the ideas of his co-workers or followers facilitates critical thinking on how to go about completing a task, which will help produce the best possible process to finish a task resulting in the highest quality product. The best possible solution to completing a task might not be the leader’s own idea, so it is important for the leader to get the opinions of his co-workers. A leader who works to get the opinions and ideas of his workers will build relationships with his followers by showing that their opinions and ideas are valued. To me, building a solid, trusting, caring relationship between a leader and his followers, or co-workers, is the most important piece of my leadership philosophy.
My leadership philosophy is formed not only by my own strengths and experiences, but also by readings covered in class. The first piece from class is the different leadership theories. The first leadership theory covered in the book is adaptive theory, which shapes leadership as an adaptive and changing process which leads to a finished product. Adaptive leadership means that all members of an organization must be willing to sacrifice their own talents sometimes to adapt to the changing needs of a project in order to efficiently create a good final product. This leads to the next theory important to my philosophy is shared leadership. Shared leadership places the responsibility of leadership not solely on an appointed leader, but with everyone involved on a project. This theory relies on the relationships between group members, and the interactions among all group members, including the appointed leader, to complete a task. The last theory from the book that helps shape both the ethical and relational piece of my leadership philosophy is the servant-leadership theory. A servant-leader puts the needs of his followers before his own in order to build up his relationship with these people before they work towards completing a task. Servant-leaders recognize the importance of relationships with his other workers to increase their morale to work together to provide the best product (Komives, 69-80.) Two other class readings that built my leadership philosophy came from two supplemental readings. The first reading covered leadership styles. The two leadership styles from this reading that are closest to my leadership philosophy are the affilliative theory and the visionary theory. The affiliative theory focuses on connecting people in a group together, building relationships and morale in order to complete a task together. After a team comes to a point where they are familiar enough with each other to work together, the visionary style can be effective. The visionary style of leadership uses common values and goals to motivate people to work towards a finished product. Once a group comes together and strengthens their relationships with one another and with a leader, it is easier for the group to be on the same page, share a common goal, and work more effectively towards accomplishing that goal (The Leadership repertoire, Goleman, 54-65.) The second supplemental reading that helped build my leadership philosophy discusses a higher standard of leadership, one set forth by Gandhi. Gandhi not only observed the plight of the people he was trying to lead to independence, but he immersed himself fully in their situation. Gandhi led by example, by setting the example of how to peacefully work for change while living the lifestyle of the poor people of India. My leadership philosophy does not call for the extreme that Gandhi took his leadership to, but can use the example of Gandhi’s power. Gandhi’s power came not from wealth, charisma, or an elected position, but rather from the willingness of the people that followed him. From the reading, “The greatest source of power is personal power: the character, courage, determination, knowledge and skill of the individual members of an organization.” (Higher Standard of Leadership, Nair, 90.) By following a higher standard of leadership, or being a servant-leader, a leader can work towards completing a task with his followers, making decisions along the way without infringing on individual’s personal power within the group.
After laying out my leadership philosophy, I wanted discuss another way to look at my philosophy. My favorite metaphor of leadership is that of an orchestra or symphony. In a symphony, the conductor leads his orchestra, essentially indicating which musicians to play when and how they should play. In this action, the conductor is not only leading his orchestra, but he is bringing out the best of his musicians at the appropriate times in order to make a beautiful piece of music. In the same way, my leadership philosophy doesn’t just call for a leader to instruct his followers on what to do for the sake of being the boss. Rather, a leader needs to work with his followers to bring out the best of each of them when the situation might call for it so that they can complete the task as efficiently as possible and put forth the best product possible. If a conductor only relied on one group of musicians to play the whole time, even if they were the “best” musicians, the piece wouldn’t sound very good with only one group of instruments playing. Similarly, if a leader were to rely on only a few of his followers, even if they were the best, in order to complete a whole task, he misses out on an opportunity to include everyone, increase efficiency, variety, and improve the overall product. (Komives, 53.)
The best leadership experience I have that employs my leadership philosophy stems back to my senior year of high school. That year, I was one of the senior leaders of our spirit committee. Prior to this year, attendance at sporting events varied greatly depending on the quality of our opponent, and the quality of our pep rallies and skits had declined since our freshman year. This was partly because the only people the committee was getting input from was the athletes, jocks, and other popular kids, many of whom couldn’t come to very many of the planning and rehearsal meetings, or had their own agenda of what they wanted to be included in the skits that wasn’t always appropriate for a Catholic school. In order to try to fix these problems, we really encouraged, pushed coming to the meetings so as to bring in a wider range of personalities. We tried our best to take input from everybody that spoke up at our meetings, and include the best of everyone’s ideas to come up with the best pep rallies, and fun gameday activities to increase attendance at games where our opponent wasn’t always the same quality as our league games. Our plans seemed to work, and it was really rewarding to see the crowds and hear the noise our students brought to every game. We even had a group of students come up with a cheer from a motto on our football team’s tee shirts that is one of the more popular cheers still used today. It was really encouraging to see the ideas that our group was able to come up with once we expanded our input, and even more so to see the finalized product of what happened when a group of high school kids with a wide variety of personalities came together with a common goal in mind, to promote school spirit.
Works Cited
Gallup’s StrengthsFinder site. Strengths.gallup.com/private/sf2/reports
Goleman. The Leadership Repertoire. From supplemental reading from class
Komives, Susan, Lucas, Nance, and McMahon, Timothy. Exploring Leadership: For College Students Who want to make a difference. 2013. San Fransico, CA. Josey-Bass
Nair, Keshavan. A Higher Standard of Leadership. Lessons from the life of Gandhi. From supplemental readings in class
Now that I’ve laid out the backbone of my leadership philosophy in my strengths, I want to get more into my leadership philosophy and what leadership is. Leadership can be described as a relational and ethical process of people together attempting to establish positive change. The ethical piece of my philosophy involves connecting my values of hard work and helping others as ethical thoughts leading to ethical action in the way I go about leading a group towards finishing a task (Exploring Leadership, Komives, 52, 252.) There are three main points that help shape my leadership philosophy. The first is that a leader should not work like a dictator does, ordering and directing those that work under him to complete a task for the leader. Rather, a leader should work with others in order to elevate their potential, their
standard of work ethic, and their overall product and ability to complete a task. A leader who works to elevate the work of others around him will not only increase work efficiency and improve the final product, but he will also strengthen his relationship with others working around him. When workers see a leader who is working to elevate their own success and the success of the group, this builds their trust in that leader and creates rapport between the workers and the leader, strengthening their relationship. A common phrase used to describe this quality in a leader is that he leads by example. The second piece of my leadership philosophy is that a leader must be able to adapt to changing times. The world today, thanks in most part to the increasingly quick development of new technologies, continues to change at a more and more rapid pace. If a leader is so stuck in his ways that he cannot adapt to new and changing situations, he misses out on opportunities to increase efficiency, improve overall product of work, and thus boost workforce morale. Workers see a leader that is willing to adapt to change as truly caring about the product of work he is putting forth and the work and effort put forth by his fellow workers, rather than only caring about being in charge and doing things his way. Related to this, the third piece of leadership that helps form my leadership philosophy is that a leader must be open to continuous learning, and open to the ideas and opinions of others working around him. A leader open to learning and the ideas of his co-workers or followers facilitates critical thinking on how to go about completing a task, which will help produce the best possible process to finish a task resulting in the highest quality product. The best possible solution to completing a task might not be the leader’s own idea, so it is important for the leader to get the opinions of his co-workers. A leader who works to get the opinions and ideas of his workers will build relationships with his followers by showing that their opinions and ideas are valued. To me, building a solid, trusting, caring relationship between a leader and his followers, or co-workers, is the most important piece of my leadership philosophy.
My leadership philosophy is formed not only by my own strengths and experiences, but also by readings covered in class. The first piece from class is the different leadership theories. The first leadership theory covered in the book is adaptive theory, which shapes leadership as an adaptive and changing process which leads to a finished product. Adaptive leadership means that all members of an organization must be willing to sacrifice their own talents sometimes to adapt to the changing needs of a project in order to efficiently create a good final product. This leads to the next theory important to my philosophy is shared leadership. Shared leadership places the responsibility of leadership not solely on an appointed leader, but with everyone involved on a project. This theory relies on the relationships between group members, and the interactions among all group members, including the appointed leader, to complete a task. The last theory from the book that helps shape both the ethical and relational piece of my leadership philosophy is the servant-leadership theory. A servant-leader puts the needs of his followers before his own in order to build up his relationship with these people before they work towards completing a task. Servant-leaders recognize the importance of relationships with his other workers to increase their morale to work together to provide the best product (Komives, 69-80.) Two other class readings that built my leadership philosophy came from two supplemental readings. The first reading covered leadership styles. The two leadership styles from this reading that are closest to my leadership philosophy are the affilliative theory and the visionary theory. The affiliative theory focuses on connecting people in a group together, building relationships and morale in order to complete a task together. After a team comes to a point where they are familiar enough with each other to work together, the visionary style can be effective. The visionary style of leadership uses common values and goals to motivate people to work towards a finished product. Once a group comes together and strengthens their relationships with one another and with a leader, it is easier for the group to be on the same page, share a common goal, and work more effectively towards accomplishing that goal (The Leadership repertoire, Goleman, 54-65.) The second supplemental reading that helped build my leadership philosophy discusses a higher standard of leadership, one set forth by Gandhi. Gandhi not only observed the plight of the people he was trying to lead to independence, but he immersed himself fully in their situation. Gandhi led by example, by setting the example of how to peacefully work for change while living the lifestyle of the poor people of India. My leadership philosophy does not call for the extreme that Gandhi took his leadership to, but can use the example of Gandhi’s power. Gandhi’s power came not from wealth, charisma, or an elected position, but rather from the willingness of the people that followed him. From the reading, “The greatest source of power is personal power: the character, courage, determination, knowledge and skill of the individual members of an organization.” (Higher Standard of Leadership, Nair, 90.) By following a higher standard of leadership, or being a servant-leader, a leader can work towards completing a task with his followers, making decisions along the way without infringing on individual’s personal power within the group.
After laying out my leadership philosophy, I wanted discuss another way to look at my philosophy. My favorite metaphor of leadership is that of an orchestra or symphony. In a symphony, the conductor leads his orchestra, essentially indicating which musicians to play when and how they should play. In this action, the conductor is not only leading his orchestra, but he is bringing out the best of his musicians at the appropriate times in order to make a beautiful piece of music. In the same way, my leadership philosophy doesn’t just call for a leader to instruct his followers on what to do for the sake of being the boss. Rather, a leader needs to work with his followers to bring out the best of each of them when the situation might call for it so that they can complete the task as efficiently as possible and put forth the best product possible. If a conductor only relied on one group of musicians to play the whole time, even if they were the “best” musicians, the piece wouldn’t sound very good with only one group of instruments playing. Similarly, if a leader were to rely on only a few of his followers, even if they were the best, in order to complete a whole task, he misses out on an opportunity to include everyone, increase efficiency, variety, and improve the overall product. (Komives, 53.)
The best leadership experience I have that employs my leadership philosophy stems back to my senior year of high school. That year, I was one of the senior leaders of our spirit committee. Prior to this year, attendance at sporting events varied greatly depending on the quality of our opponent, and the quality of our pep rallies and skits had declined since our freshman year. This was partly because the only people the committee was getting input from was the athletes, jocks, and other popular kids, many of whom couldn’t come to very many of the planning and rehearsal meetings, or had their own agenda of what they wanted to be included in the skits that wasn’t always appropriate for a Catholic school. In order to try to fix these problems, we really encouraged, pushed coming to the meetings so as to bring in a wider range of personalities. We tried our best to take input from everybody that spoke up at our meetings, and include the best of everyone’s ideas to come up with the best pep rallies, and fun gameday activities to increase attendance at games where our opponent wasn’t always the same quality as our league games. Our plans seemed to work, and it was really rewarding to see the crowds and hear the noise our students brought to every game. We even had a group of students come up with a cheer from a motto on our football team’s tee shirts that is one of the more popular cheers still used today. It was really encouraging to see the ideas that our group was able to come up with once we expanded our input, and even more so to see the finalized product of what happened when a group of high school kids with a wide variety of personalities came together with a common goal in mind, to promote school spirit.
Works Cited
Gallup’s StrengthsFinder site. Strengths.gallup.com/private/sf2/reports
Goleman. The Leadership Repertoire. From supplemental reading from class
Komives, Susan, Lucas, Nance, and McMahon, Timothy. Exploring Leadership: For College Students Who want to make a difference. 2013. San Fransico, CA. Josey-Bass
Nair, Keshavan. A Higher Standard of Leadership. Lessons from the life of Gandhi. From supplemental readings in class