Inner Work for Authentic Leadership
In his YouTube video title Inner work for Authentic Leadership, Bill George discusses the
inner work that is necessary in order for leaders to gain self-awareness. It is important for a leader to practice their
preferred method in order to reflect on the real world experiences they
encounter and also seek honest feedback from those they trust (Goleman, 2012). As for me, I find that the real-world
experiences which most individual would normally perceive as negative, unfortunate
situations were the most instructional for me and resulted in my professional
and personal growth and maturity.
While trying to find my balance between working to gain lucrative
income to support my son and meeting a longing desire to make a difference in
my community my path to stability was a long and arduous to say the least. I chose to follow a lifelong dream to become
an educator after working in the insurance industry for ten years with a
Fortune 500 company. The company prided
themselves as the number one insurer in the country and one of the largest
worldwide.
My position with this company was monotonous and stressful
and I had lost satisfaction in what I was doing to earn a living day in and day
out. I knew I had to make a change. The catalyst to me working towards my dream
to becoming an educator was an office move (which increase my drive time by fifteen minutes in traffic) and a difficult team manager who
believed in micro-managing and public disciplining her team members. The extended drive in traffic and the team manager's management style made it
difficult for me to enjoy my job. No sooner than my next performance review where I received a number of unexpected satisfactory
ratings I knew a change would come soon since had been preparing myself for my career change.
It was one week later when I accepted
my first teaching assignment which was a temporary assignment in the middle of
the school year. Most of my associates,
friends and family thought that I was crazy for making this change and leaving
my “good job” with the insurance company however, I knew that the time had come
for change and my faith will be rewarded in the long run. I knew this because I take the time to reflect,
pray and mediate on the things that concern me and the desires of my heart.
I have a morning and evening routine whereby I recall the major
issues and successes of the current moments in all aspects of my life however, I
often reflect on certain situations throughout the day as they arise. I ask myself how did my actions contribute to
the situation and how else could I have responded to the situation. I pray and mediate to seek guidance and peace
in any situation of discord involving myself, my coworkers, family and
friends. I take these moments seriously
and do not limit myself to any boundaries or locations. For example, when I am having
a rough morning I often visit a park and have lunch by the ocean and clear my mind
and enjoy my surroundings. When
situations arise where I feel I need the opinion of another and honest feedback
tend to go to my best friend since she knows me best and has no problem letting
me know when I have contributed to the problem or reacted to the situation rather
than responding the issue at hand.
I feel that I have
grown to be a fair, non-judgmental, authentic and effective leader because I reflect,
pray and mediate on the events in my private and professional life which enable me to stay humble and genuine in my approach with my team. I believe that every situation which I encounter was meant to happen and the end result should be recoded as a lesson learned rather good, bad or indifferent. This way when (not if) I encounter the same
situation in the future I then have a reference of how to (or how not to) respond
to the situation. In order to be a leader one must be able to influence others to trust you enough to lead them to complete a common goal (Northouse, 2016). How can a leader expect to successfully lead others, and gain their trust and respect along the way; if the same leader is not able to rationalize their own thoughts and feelings regarding the events surrounding his or her self?
References
Northouse, P. (2016) Leadership theory and practice (7th
ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Goleman, D. (2012, November). Harvard's Bill George: Inner work for authentic
leadership. Retrieved May 7, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmPu2LQ84ts.
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