True North

While writing my personal development plan, I realized that I am currently in the process of finding my own true north. I still feel lost but with some of the guidance in this book, I am beginning to understand where my own compass lies. It was also nice to read that there is no one style of leadership that is correct and that there are no universal traits or characteristics to effective leadership. This insight provided by TN really gave me a positive outlook as I had always thought to myself, I should act more like a good leader, or I should acquire traits of a good leader. TN really showed me that true leadership comes from within and is exemplified by empowering those around you.

To begin the personal development plan, I started with a five-year outlook of what seemed to be the most obvious part, my personal life. This actually was one of the hardest parts of this paper. I found it difficult to really define what the word “personal” encompassed. For me, that word included my family life, and in some ways also contained aspects of my career life. As TN stated towards the end of the book, there really is no delineation of personal and professional life. One always manages to have an effect on the other, which made it difficult for me to distinguish, but I will attempt to provide a plan for what I define as my personal life.

The five year outlook for my personal life centers around one main word, and that word is independence. This is somewhat contradictory to what is preached in TN regarding effective leadership and goal attainment. TN states that in order for leaders to be effective, they must build a team of support. Therefore, on the surface, my overall goal of being independent in the next five years seems to counter what is taught by TN. I would then need to explain my definition of independence and try to mesh it with what TN teaches and how it can be fostered.

For me, the epitome of independence is having a home of my own (that I own). In order