Knowing Yourself & What Makes Up a Leader

Knowing Yourself

You can't be empowered if you don't know yourself; your values, goals, strengths, weaknesses, or vision, first that has to be established. Then, you can focus on being an empowered leader for others. It correlates to Luke 6:42, 'How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.' Focus on discerning yourself and working through any issues you may have, then you can be a better powerhouse to lead and inspire others. 

Confidence and faith in yourself is a must. For me its knowing that if something's working for others, I can tailor it to fit for myself as well. It's taking what we've been taught and applying it to the outside world. I worked at Little Debbie's for 9 years, and in March of 2015; the Walton Family Foundation employed me. During the week in-between ending one decade and starting another, I scripted for a company. I took all the material I'd learned in the program and applied it for website and company suggestions. Being confident in chasing after my modeling passion and wanting to be an inspiration for others. Walking out on a ledge and setting the goal of graduating DEBT FREE. Obtaining that goal purely on my faith in God and my support networks. Be like Nike, "just do it". 

What Makes Up a Leader? 

The age old question, is a leader born or made? They're born. However, you can train, polish, and perfect anyone into a leader. Would that produce an as great of a result if you would had started with an individual that already had those born qualities instilled? You can make a leader. However, if you give a born leader the tools and training; I believe they can surpass any made leader. Here are some qualities I believe are a good starting point in realizing a great leader.

I define 'best' as someone who really cares about you: your success, your personal life, and helping to build you up as a person. I also think it helps if they have a good set of Christian based values and beliefs. The 'worst' category would basically be someone that has no respect for you at all; talks down to you and thinks they are better than you. They wouldn't treat you as an equal, trust you, or be trustworthy themselves. As we've learned in previous classes, the best kind of leader is one that is willing to be a servant leader, Christ would be the ultimate example of that. For a good read, view Ken Blanchard & Phil Hodges, Lead Like Jesus. 

The Team Matters

Jesus couldn't have been a leader without the presence of his followers and disciples, his teammates. Just like a shepherd leads his flock. 

Acting confidentially also means one recognizes the need of a good team. No one can get anywhere by themselves, it takes many hands. Diversity and knowing your customers plays a huge role in this. Selecting teammates with different, complimenting strengths to yours is very important. It can mean the difference between a excellence experience and a painful one, sometimes even costly. Fortune 500 CEO's craft their teams around this concept. For example, one might be driven and action oriented, so a good, complimenting teammate would be a thinker, one with patience and looks at all angles. We practiced just this in, one of our classes, Diversity. 

We as students had to complete a final presentation on Diversity and Inclusion. We were chosen and split into two teams evenly, which involved five different categories. Together we had to agree on two specific topics to focus on, ours was Age and Work/Family. Each of us had unique talents that we brought to the table to make our presentation great. We also had a specific diverse make-up that lent to working together better. We really didn't have any conflict, but a situation did arise and the team handled it beautifully. Lastly, there were several key things taken away from this experience. The diversity we had on our team helped to shape it into a great presentation, it wouldn't have been the same without it.

Team Selection

We chose our teams in class the first night. We decided to split everyone evenly according to age, gender, political stance, occupation (we have several Wal*Mart employees), and ethnicity. We had enough for three different groups. It worked out quite nicely; we have three Hispanics, three men, and three 'Wal*Mart people', so that's really what initiated the start of the groups. We just filtered the rest through. I and another classmate were the only two under thirty, so we made sure we were on different teams. The last was political stance. We did have more Conservatives than Liberals, but we tried to distribute everyone as evenly as possible. The content our team produced was just as important as the process we went through in formulating and working together as a group. Our team consisted of Claudia, James, Marcia, Melanie, and myself. 

I took away quite a bit from this team presentation on Diversity and Inclusion. I got to know each of my classmates a little better as well. I came to understand a little more about diversity issues in our categories, Age and Work/Family. I also came to know that we all individually made up a pretty good team. Everyone communicated effectively and timely. Everyone did their part and was willing to help and volunteer. Individually, I found out that Claudia likes to communicate, which is a good thing, she was a natural leader and pushed the group at a healthy pace. I came to know that James and Marcia are very laid back and are thinkers. I also came to know Melanie's individual five strengths a little better. She had the most unique strengths of the group. I learned that we're all diverse and the more you have on your team, the better the outcome. 

Mistakes

Lastly, being an empowered leader for others means being humble and admitting making mistakes. Mistakes are inevitable, no one likes to make them, but we grow when we do. The important aspect is the takeaway.

Another group I was involved in during, Team Coalitions and Processes, highlighted this point perfectly. It was a disaster, from the beginning. Everyone picked their teams based on the topics, instead of focusing on complimenting strengths and weaknesses. Our group just rolled down hill from there. There were issues with communicating, honesty, staying on a timeline, and ultimately... trust. In the end, we all had a "come to God" meeting and finally aired all of our concerns. It turned out we got the best grade out of any of the groups.

So what was the key? Even though we didn't utilize our strengths in selecting teams? The honest flow of communication, building trust, voicing our opinions, and really collaborating was key. If we wouldn't have done that, who knows what would of happened. That was an experience I wouldn't like to repeat, but it was such a great experience to grow from nonetheless.

In life and in our work, we don't always get to pick our teams and sometimes we have to work through difficult challenges. The most important aspect is how you handle the situation and what you learned from the experience. I know all our group members could agree that we learned very valuable, life and work lessons that could be applied in the real world. To learn more about growing from your mistakes, check out Heather Parady on her blog post entitled, Yay! Failure!. Also, check out Team Building, from the Dyer's; it gives priceless techniques for building up your team and becoming the most efficient force you can be.