My Leadership Philosophy

My dad has been probably the biggest single influence of leadership instruction and mentoring in my life. Since my childhood, my dad has taught, and continues to teach, me what leadership means to him. He taught that I should not follow the crowd, but instead I was to positively influence people to lead them in doing good and taking care of those who were not able to care for themselves. His lesson was simple: “we exist in life to smooth the path for others”. Another aspect of his leadership philosophy is that we should lead formally when called upon to do so, but we also need to lead informally in the different roles we find ourselves. One could say that being a formal leader is leading with a ‘big L’ and informally leading could be described
As a trooper in the field, I do not seem to have a problem with confrontations with people in the course and capacity of my job. It is when I am dealing with my coworkers that I do not do as well. I think that part of this stems from my discomfort and lack of confidence in dealing with all the rules and procedures associated with human resources and the collective bargaining units involved. When I feel comfortable with a situation and the rules and polices that govern that situation. I also believe I do not like to make people feel bad and want to avoid uncomfortable situations with them.
Another area I do not do well is communicating with people. This is especially true in my written communications. I tend to write to get my point across in a direct way and need to work on softening my written communications, so it is interpreted as I had hoped it would be received and not another way. Email and telephone communication is very important in my particular position currently because I do not have in-person contact with a majority of the people with which I work. Learning to more effectively communicate will continue to benefit me after this
I think is a result of getting too focused on a task or problem and appearing like I do not want to be interrupted, even though it is my job to be interrupted. Some people would not approach me even though I am willing to help them because of how I appear to them. I think part of this might be a result of not having what some would call a poker face. I tend to show my emotions on my sleeves. Most of my emotions, good and bad, are evident by just looking at me. I need to work on masking my displeasure or intense focus, so I can encourage people to feel like they can approach me to work on the problem they are having. To make this change, I will need to become more aware of how I come across to people and work to mitigate how I appear to others somehow. A positive outcome for this change is that people will continue to see me as an approachable leader that can help them. As I continue to work in the environment I do, people already come to me with a variety of concerns or problems. This helps me become aware of and knowledgeable in a host of issues that directly and indirectly affect me in my position. This will help both my agency me as I continue to progress and learn more about operations in all