I think that one of the  biggest lessons that I’ve learned while being in competitive sports during my high school years was how to manage different people as a captain of the team. There were many moments where I could have probably taken different aspects of the things that I’ve learned in this course and applied it to my role as a captain if I had taken this course earlier. One of the many things that opened my eyes was the idea of transformational leadership that takes into consideration the well-being of their followers opposed to taking the leadership position just for specific tasks that are set out.

Through and through, I think that one of the many aspects of a leadership role that I’ve failed to realize was that you are probably more ept to get your followers to follow in your direction if you are able to sympathize with how they are feeling. One of the greatest mistakes that I seemed to make was that I took each problem separately and allowed my personal emotions to get in the way of how I dealt with different problems. Looking at the decisions that I made through my years of playing captain with different teams, I’ve realized that if I was able to apply the idea of Powell’s 13 rules, I think that I would’ve probably would have a much easier time dealing with different problems that had come my way. As this grew into my college years, I think a problem that I’ve had with a lot of different people when interactions occur was that I didn’t really look into changing the attitude and emotion of those that I was interacting with but rather dialed in on how I could possibly make everyone’s life easier.

My biggest flaw to this was that I wasn’t really applying the idea of transformational leadership to the different interactions that I’ve had with people but rather made an approach that focused on the skills approach. It wasn’t until the entrance of my military career that I really learned about what transformational leadership really stood for. As I entered Basic Combat Training, the drill instructors that were in charge of my group showed leadership in a way where I grew to respect because I knew they were there to make us into better human beings. Following in their footsteps after graduating, I’ve grown myself into a position where I’ve been able to have a vision of what I wanted to accomplish within my own team and being stern in certain ways of how we were going to do things without being rude to others. Through this, I think I’ve grown from being a transactional leader to one that has become more focused on being more transformational because I’m always seeking ways to create a bond within the team members that I am always with.

Team leadership is a necessary skill needed if someone wants to have a successful role in their workplace or if they lead others by example. I think that one of the most important factors in determining an individuals leadership skill can be shown through how well someone leads multiple through different tasks. One of the examples that I have that explain the idea of team leadership is my role as a non-commissioned officer as I go through different leadership tactics so that I could have the cooperation of those that I am leading.

The fundamentals of every team are that they need three components: clear and engaging direction, enabling performance situation, and adequate material resources. With the three different components that take part, I think that I’ve found myself finding a reliance on the last two components since I’ve been having trouble with connecting by finding a direction in what I wanted to lead the people, While a lot of the past leaders that have taught me seemed to have a clear sense of how they want to lead, I think that I’ve been hesitant on the overall direction that I wanted to take.

Through my time as a leader, I think that some of the things that I’ve learned is that it’s always important to take in the opinions of others so that you could take in all the possible scenarios before making a decision. In consideration, I think that the important factor that it brings in is that I think it brings the overall team closer together while developing a sense of trust in the leader because it’s simply not just “my way or the highway”.  In conjunction of this idea, I think that shared leadership by multiple leaders in a team makes the idea even better because responsibilities are shared and you could lean each other for support when it is needed as a leader.

Nowadays when people think about the structure of the military, they usually talk about the overall discipline and rigidity of the culture of the overall spectrum of the military. I’ve noticed that as the ranks proceeded to go higher, different individuals began to grasp a certain level of influence within their circles as they go higher within the ranks. What I’ve realized from my personal experience is that a lot of individuals try and help the upcoming leaders and lead them in the direction that gives a positive influence for all the future leaders that would be created as more individuals climbed through the ranks.

One of the most important aspects that I’ve learned in the military was that the abuse of power was not a common sight as I expected because of how much rank seemed to matter within the military. People tried to take care of others without abusing their power and really tried to get the upcoming NCOs (Non-commissioned officers) to understand that it was more important to be able influence someone’s life in a positive opposed to a negative aspect. I think that’s something that a lot of individuals tend to overlook that a lot of leadership want to see the overall force improve in the leadership aspect of the military. Many of the leaders that I’ve encountered throughout my service have been the ones that sincerely care about the development of your career opposed to going after their own success. I think the biggest difference I’ve found between my civilian work places and the military was that the power invested in the different individuals is given with the assumption that they’ll take care of those below them.

The experience that I’d like to talk about regarding power and influence is my personal take on how my taste of power has given me the opportunity to make a positive impact and influence the soldiers because I was given the position were I was able to make a change with the best of my ability. I think the biggest part of having power is that a lot of people don’t really know how to handle “power” when they are given the opportunity and more often than not, they abuse the power because its something brand new and something they never had the opportunity to control. When I was given the opportunity to wield power to be able to influence different individuals, I had prior experience from being a manager at a retail store. I think that with my prior experience of being able to influence different people, it came with the benefit that I didn’t really abuse the leadership position as much as my other peers were.

In retrospect, I think that there have been many cases where power has probably been abused in the military but during my stay, I haven’t been able to see any defining moments where I could see clearly that it was abused. While my experiences have been relatively positive, I do not think that it’ll always be that way in the same experience that everyone else will have in the military. In conclusion, I think that there’s always need to be a balance between power and influence for the best benefit.

For the five years, I’ve enjoyed my fair share of learning new things from my superior to teaching different how-to’s down to my juniors that were just getting into the military and had no idea what to do. As I look back to the beginning of my career in the military, I’ve realized that many of the things that I learned to become proficient at my job was through the guidance of my superiors that’d been in the job longer than I had been. I think that their expertise was what gained my interest in the field since they seemed to know everything they were doing and exactly how to do it so that everything was done professionally. While I’ve made numerous amount of mistakes throughout my career, I think that the way that my leadership handled it was professional in a way that they always tried to guide me down the right away opposed to the wrong. The three skill approach seemed to be evident in the way my leaders handled different situations because their technical was way beyond my average capacity and they were the subject matter experts in the field. On top of that, the overall human skills that they employed to direct their soldiers to accomplish the mission was astounding.

As I’ve gone up the ranks with the different lessons that I’ve learned from my superiors, I’d like to say that I take in the same three skill approach to help those that are within my reach. While to those that are just joining the military, I may seem that I’m the subject matter expert since I’ve been in longer than them. I always try to teach them the methods that my superiors have taught me and try to lead them in the same manner that I had been taught. I believe that I still lack in the conceptual department since I think that I haven’t been exposed to as many different situations as I’d like. At the same time, every time an idea or a problem arises, I think that I continue to work them to the best of my ability so that people know that I do try my best to resolve the issues as they come out. Finally the human skill approach is something I assume that I’ve learned to be quite adequate since every day I’m always faced with decisions of how I’d resolve issues between friends and co-workers when they need assistance. Many of the times, I think that I’ve become an individual that others could look at and understand that I’d be the one that’ll assist if they ever need help in something.

References:

Northouse, P.G. (2019).  Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.