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
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