Becoming a Resonant Leader

March 8, 2017

This blog is supposed to state a personal vision for myself, list at least three learning goals and milestones for each action, and key people who will help me achieve these goals.  Full disclosure to the professor.  You will not be enlightened by any of my writings here.  Between being goal oriented, with a secondary tendency towards direction oriented, I have achieved nearly all my objectives to gain retirement.  What will retirement bring me?  It will bring me time and financial freedom.  I am so close to that goal, that I don’t need to do extensive introspective exercises that are more useful for a person in their late twenties or early thirties.  That is not me.  Therefore, I will state that I did the exercises at the end of chapter 6, “Becoming a Resonant Leader”, but the output will probably disappoint.  It is not disappointing to me because I have fought hard to reach my goals.  I will briefly describe my struggle here, but to the point, my goals are nearly all achieved.

I have been destroyed financially in total three different times in my life.  I have persevered.  My assets are probably just over a million $.  That is not a lot of money, but compared to where I was at just 16 years ago, it is.  I have almost no debt.  The main exception is a house that I just recently purchased in Corpus Christi, TX.  I plan on paying that house off in total in about 5 years.  I have money in the bank, money invested, and multiple income properties.  I am ready for a worry-free financial retirement.

I have worked hard at my military and civilian education.  With my graduate degree, I will have attained the level of education that I aspire to.  I do not feel the need or want to continue.  I have completed 33 military schools and/or training courses.  So, that puts to bed any aspirations of higher learning beyond this degree.

What about a career?  As stated, after nearly 34 years in the military (which includes 5 years and 5 separate combat deployments), I am ready for retirement.  I am interested in getting a civilian position (federal civil service) at the Corpus Christi Army Depot (CCAD).  Why?  Because I can then buy my active duty years in the Army, combine them with my years as a U.S. Customs Inspector, and be vested in a position with 28 years’ seniority.  It will not take away from my reserve retirement and will give me the option of only working for two years before I could retire with a 30-year retirement from the federal civil service.

So, it appears that I have it all worked out.  Right?  Well, another reason I am in a hurry for retirement, is that the genetics in my family don’t work out so well.  The men tend to die at or before 60 years of age.  I will be 58 this summer and do not wish to work until the day I die and never get to enjoy retirement.  That happened to my dad.  I don’t want it to happen to me.  So, what is left?

With my degree finished this Fall, I will have completed all my military and civilian educational goals.  I will have locked in my military retirement.  The only two “goals” left are gaining civilian employment at CCAD, and whether that employment consists of a supervisory position. I understand that there may be some challenges to adjusting to retirement, but I think that I have thought about them deeply enough to where it won’t affect me.  I plan on living financially free, accomplishing my bucket list, and living in love and contentment.  That is the plan.  It is a simple plan.  It is a plan that can all be accomplished in the next three years.  I simply do not wish to set goals beyond this.  My ultimate goal is retirement.  Once I have retired, then I could reflect upon a personal ICT plan if necessary.  Right now, I don’t see it.

In the immediate future, I plan on spending 6 months out of the year in my home in Michigan, and then 6 months at my home in Texas.  Both homes are on the water.  I have boats that are in both places.  I want to enjoy the things that I have worked for, travel, and work on hobbies that I want to get better at. These hobbies include playing the guitar, fishing, hunting, and real estate investing.  I have plenty of things that will consume my time, energy, and cognitive talents.

Respectfully,

John D. Hescott

Reference:

Boyatzis, Richard., McKee, Annie., & Johnston, Frances. (2008) “Becoming a Resonant

            Leader”. Boston: Harvard Business School Press

Personal Balance Sheet

March 2, 2017

This reflection blog will be an introspective and honest evaluation of my personal strengths and weaknesses.  After completing the exercises compiled by Boyatzis, McKee, and Johnston, I wrote down the results for the purposes of putting it into this blog.

Strengths.

What are my strengths as a person and as a leader?  I have several traits that are very good for leadership.  They are: communication, process improvement, and emotional intelligence (EI).  Written and oral communication are essential for success as a leader.  Combined with a blend of EI, this allows a leader to communicate up, down, or laterally throughout an organization.  Written reports can be useful, but they lack the ability to connect with people, such as one can during face to face meetings.  Written communication can also have emotional content added by the reader that is not useful in the transmission of ideas or concepts.

Finally, my strength at process improvement has been a life-long development of tactical and strategic thinking.  I do not relish delving into statistical variations, scientific management, or math based quality control.  However, I can do those things and am very aware of the logic and math behind the concepts.  Therefore, it frees me up to put my process improvement suggestions into plain and simple English.  I try to use the KISS principle (keep it simple stupid!) in all my writings.  I try not to over-write for the purposes of making myself sound educated.  Instead, I am more interested in taking complex ideas or concepts and simplifying them into words where more people will understand them.

Potential Strengths.

My potential strengths are: facilitation, public speaking, and leadership.  I have had some training in public speaking.  With an ability to connect with the audience with a resonating message, public speaking could be a big strength for me to develop.  Coaching and facilitation are potential skills that need further development.  They are potential strengths for me.  I found my coaching session with an employee from the Corpus Christi Army Depot (CCAD) to be very useful.  It highlighted the potential good that could happen if I were to concentrate on developing this skill, and can utilize the skill frequently.  Finally, I believe that my leadership abilities should be listed as a potential strength due to the nature of the assignments that I have had over the past 15-20 years.  I believe the potential to be a good leader is there.  I have the education, professional background and most of the skills necessary to excel as a leader.  However, the Army does not put the overwhelming majority of their Warrant Officers in leadership positions.  Therefore, Warrant Officers are not only neglected in their leadership development within the system, but are also automatically written off by both senior non-commissioned officers (NCOs) and senior commissioned officers.  It is a catch-22 that quite often turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy due to the neglect of leadership skill sets.  I have been aware of that neglect during my career and have taken steps to break the typical mold that Warrant Officers are assigned.

Enduring Dispositions I do not want to change.

My personality trait that I do not want to change is my ability to survive and thrive.  I have a competitive nature and even when things go against me, I keep working until I have gained an advantage.  I have turned many situations around during my life and will continue to do so.  It is in my nature.  If I would have had a good, coach or mentor in my younger years, I do believe that I would have benefited and been a lot better off, a lot sooner, in many aspects of my personal and professional career.

Weaknesses.

Everyone has weaknesses.  Can one admit to weakness and still be a good leader on the score-sheet?  Of course.  How many times have we heard that recognizing a problem is the first step towards resolving it?  My weaknesses as I see them are: controlling my emotions/body language, digging through detailed reports greater than 10-15 pages, researching source material, women, and selling anything.

           

I wear my emotions for all to see.  When I am happy, others know it.  When I am angry or frustrated, others know that too.  In a business setting, I need to learn to dial my outward exhibiting of emotions down.  I need to be able to have more of a neutral approach, especially when things are not going well.  Many times, I find myself shunning reading long reports, or searching for source material in Army regulations.  It could be as simple of a cure to know the shortcut to finding source/reference material, or reading a shorter summary of the material contained in a long report.

I have a weakness for women.  Female direct reports could be a problem for me.  This would be not because there is a danger of me acting inappropriately by statements, or dating them, but by me going easier on them than I would a male in the same position.  One example that comes to mind is this.  I received a bad report on mismanagement of an airfield in Afghanistan.  I flew to the base ready to give the operations officer and crew a good tongue-lashing and retraining.  I was met at the airfield by a good-looking female officer.  She was stunningly good looking, very personable, and…..the operations officer.  Nice.  Needless to say, her charm worked on me and she convinced me that the pilot report was inaccurate.  I flew back to my base and reported to my supervisor that it was all “fixed”.  Things did appear to get better and there were no more bad reports, but I did feel as if I had had the wool pulled over my eyes.  That is the best example of my weakness.

Finally, I have a weakness for selling anything.  It is hard for me to even sell my own property.  I always want them to be in “perfect” shape so that the buyers will be happy with it.  This quest for perfection leads to inadequate selling of goods.  I am a savvy buyer, but I need to be able to sell in my real estate ventures.

My enduring dispositions that could be a hindrance but will not change.

As stated in the above paragraphs, my enduring disposition is a weakness for women.  That is not an entirely bad thing because I have been able to connect with women that are in positions of power and have accomplished a lot.  I can communicate with them effectively.  I must carefully monitor the situation when I am put in charge of them.  That will be my biggest test.

My over-competitiveness and my wearing of emotions on my sleeve are weaknesses that are ingrained within me.  I will probably never be a good poker player because a good poker player would be able to “read” me like a book.  My emotions will not serve me well if they cannot be controlled in appropriate settings.  That part of my weakness I do believe can be corralled and channeled better, but the competitive spirit and all the accompanying positive and negative emotions that go with it are probably here to stay.

Conclusion.

This has been a good exercise in summarizing what I believe are the good and bad traits that I have as a human being.  I don’t believe that my weaknesses are “show-stoppers”, nor do I kid myself that many others possess the strengths that I listed here.  As our training has stated, the key to intentional change is to know where one would like to be in life.  Visualizing our ideal self is important.  For me, I now have the road-map to guide me to my ideal self.

Respectfully,

John H2O

References:

Boyatzis, Richard., McKee, Annie. (2005). “Resonant Leadership’, Boston: Harvard Business

            School Press

McKee, Annie., Boyatzis, Richard., Johnston, Frances. (2008) Becoming a Resonant Leader.

            Boston: Harvard Business Press