The major thing that I have learned through building my own authentic leadership is that I am a leader who likes to be rewarded for my hard work. This allows me to fully identify my leadership development plan as I develop into a leader who can accept failure. I learned that being rewarded for my hard work may not always happen and I need to be able to accept that. I have also learned that being rewarded should not be my ultimate goal when performing tasks. The best reward I can get is the experience and new knowledge I learned while doing a certain job that will help me succeed in future endeavors. My vision states that I am a leader who facilitates, and one who hopes to integrate others into the team. I learned that in order to help the entire team succeed; I must focus less on how I am to be rewarded for my hard work, and more on how the entire team/organization can benefit from our combined contribution.
As a leader, my two greatest strengths are the facts that I am very conscientious, which allows me to make reliable decisions under high stress situations; and that I am team focused, by allowing all members to confidently express their ideas or concerns in order to establish the best plan moving forward.
After completing the team project, I have identified some areas that could use some improvement within my team to make it perform even better than it already has. Our team was very good at planning (creating ideas, delegating tasks, setting up meetings etc…). However, it seemed we were hesitant to get started with our duties. I believe this was a result of our team consisting of two yellow (Collaborative) , and two red (Controlling) quadrant members. Both of these quadrants are internally oriented which made it easy for us to plan our course of action easily but made it hard for us to initially start our actions like contacting the charity as well as booking the ice rink. This is also reflected when submitting our first written report; it was very last minute when everyone put their parts together which left little time for editing and team reflection. I recommend maintaining a balance between planning and actual project completion. This will help develop our time management skills, and result in team performance moving from good to great.
