Why I Joined The Coast Guard

1. Leadership influences can be seen throughout the entire Coast Guard. Some are good, some bad, and some exceptional. I think it is important to refer back to where we come from. My influences have come from many walks of life, and in all colors and genders. Some I have never met, but heard of in Coast Guard history. It remains that my father is a personal inspiration, along with one particular Chief in my career. Both of these individuals continue to make an impact on me in a positive way. We all may have joined the Coast Guard for different reasons, and from different places, but reached a point where we began living and breathing the hard working values which define us as an organization. When I find myself in a tough leadership
Regarding leadership behaviors, I have some room for improvement. I was surprised to learn that while I was viewed in a positive way, people felt that my “bigheartedness” placed too much work on myself, and that I should not try to do everything myself. This is surely a point that I must improve on. I cannot expect other people to be able to expand if I continue to soak up what could be growth opportunities for other people. I can see where I developed this issue, as I worked with many poor examples of leaders while I was coming up in the Coast Guard, and in every instance they did not help their people, and had an absentee problem. I possibly learned just as much of what I would not like to become as a leader from these individuals, and as I result I seem to over compensate by trying to bite off too much of the workload at times. I can improve on this by stepping back a bit, and allowing other people to do some of the things I currently extend myself in performing in addition to my duties (i.e. collateral
Some other areas for my own improvement from the LPI are experimenting and taking risks, searching outside of formal boundaries for innovative ways to improve the organization, and finding ways to celebrate the accomplishments of others. I have never been much of an “outside of the box” thinker, and I should strive to solicit more of that from the people who I have on my staff that are naturally like that. While I can be a very linear thinker, I can always tap into what other people offer in order to improve work processes. Additionally, I feel that recognition of hard work in others in highly important. It was shocking to see that I scored an infrequent occurrence of this on my Leadership Practices Inventory considering I typically go out of my way to do this. I will continue to make thoughtful SOQ recommendations (along with the CPO’s at my unit), look for other opportunities to recognize hard work, and to make sure that the people who deserve recognition for efforts are