Self-awareness, internalized moral perspective, and relational transparency. Confidence, hope, optimism and resilience. If that’s all it takes to be an authentic leader, I’m almost there. Balanced processing and self-discipline could use a little tweaking (Northouse, 2013).
At my age (56), most of these traits are to be expected. I have been married for 33 years, and I have raised six children. I live successfully with bipolar disease (blessing/curse). I worked as a supervisor in a nonprofit human service agency for more than 30 years. I returned to school in 2013, and will start my final semester in less than four weeks. I am an Organizational Leadership major, with minors in Human Development and Family Studies, Labor Studies and Employment Relations, and Sociology. Something is terribly wrong if I haven’t learned a few things in the process of gaining all of that “life experience.”
Many of the courses I have taken have had an element of developing self-awareness. Most leadership theories mention self-awareness as a necessary leadership trait. If you don’t know yourself, you can’t lead others. I have always had a strong sense of self, but studying leadership has taught me that developing self-awareness is a life-long process and that I don’t know as much as I think I do. I have had quite a few “aha” moments in the last year.
My strengths include empathy, optimism, confidence, connectedness, a strong belief system, creativity, sense of humor, and communication skills. My weaknesses are procrastination, dreadful time management, deficient mathematical and analytical skills, inconsistency, talking too much, and over-dependence on others (especially my patient and long-suffering husband, who some refer to “Saint Steve” – I can be exhausting). I would like to think that I am an ethical person, but I discovered in an ethics course that it’s often easier said than done. I consider competitiveness, perfectionism, stubborn determination, organization, and a trusting nature to be both a blessing and a curse. Selfishness and generosity are the “devil and angel on my shoulders.”
That brings us to transparency. I am an open book. I tend to have no filter; as a result, maintaining professionalism has sometimes been an issue. I lack the ability to resist a punch line when the opportunity presents. My husband says that he could travel across the country on a bus and never know the name of the person beside him, while I can’t make it through the checkout line at Walmart without making a new friend. Blessing/Curse.
Hope, optimism and resilience are innate traits. I’m stuck with them. Most of the time I am confident, but we all have moments when we doubt ourselves or feel uncomfortable in a given situation. I rely heavily upon instinct in decision making. I have been conditioned to hold my nose and jump; afterward I have no choice but to make it work. This is how I came to adopt two children with Down syndrome, and it frightens me to think that I might not have if I had given some thought to the possible ramifications of that decision. I wound up back at PSU on impulse. After six months of being unemployed, I got bored (I sure didn’t see that one coming). I woke up one morning and decided to become a student. Two days later I had secured student loans, scheduled courses, and ordered books. The four dogs? Maybe it was not such a good idea to act on impulse in that scenario. Moderation is definitely not one of my virtues (blessing/curse).
Bill George (Northouse, 2013) suggests that a genuine desire to serve others, passion, and heart are authentic leadership traits. I can check those off the list. Somewhere in my studies I read, “If you lose the role with which you have become identified, you will confront the loss of your center.” That was one of those “aha” moments. I strongly identified with my former job and am at somewhat of a loss about future career goals. But, that is where faith comes in. God made me exactly who I am, and I believe that he takes responsibility for that questionable decision. He has more common sense than I do. Somehow I always end up exactly where I am supposed to be, and I have learned not to worry or question. When I fall off the path, God kicks me right back on (sometimes it hurts). And, I am grateful for it.
Did I mention that I talk too much?
Reference
Northouse, P.G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.