leadership reflection paper

A leader is someone who engages people to face challenges, adjust their values, change perspectives and develop new habits of behavior. I would say that I was not born to be a leader. I have always been quiet and someone who likes to keep to himself. I would rather sit back and do what I am told rather than telling others what they should be doing. I never felt like that I had the characteristics of a great leader. I never felt that I had the character for it, mainly because I never speak up and frequently interact with others. I would rather allow others to speak for me and only when I was directly spoken to would I speak up. I always wanted that I could stand up and take charge, but being an introvert that I am, feared that I would not be acknowledged.

This has somewhat changed when I stepped it up and became a leader. As a leader, I could say that I’m good at understanding problems and breaking it down to details to allow for effective solutions to be developed. An understanding of others informs my decisions and I work to be fair and realistic in all of my interactions. I keep an optimistic view and ensure that my feet are always firmly on the ground. Concurrently, I sometimes get frustrated when I find how others’ working methods to be unreasonable or when compromise is not seen as an option. I can establish good working relationships with others, however, I do not immediately trust others and rarely let my emotions show. Most of the time I seek structure more often than I should and rely too heavily on protocol. Confidence in some of my ideas is sometimes lacking, even when I know that I should be sharing them.

I consider my senior year in nursing when I became the team leader for my related learning experience or RLE gr...

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...me in return. I do not want to be a dictator. I do not need to be the all-powerful leader just to make sure that the job gets done. I just need to be the respected. Demonstrating mutual respect is very important to me because I believe in it. Whether I am in a leadership position or not, I will not allow my values and beliefs to be compromised for my selfish gain or from the pressure of others. As Heifetz said in Leadership without Easy Answers, to lead and yet sustain the personal stresses that come with leading requires inner discipline.

Even if I am no longer in a position to lead, I will continuously strive to learn and observe so that I can become a good leader who supports others and myself in everything that I do. My leadership will relentlessly be developing and show who I am and how I am; especially now that I am learning it formally here in the C4C course.