Sunday, January 23, 2011

Leadership Reflections

As an assignment for my conservation leadership course I must reflect on two personal leadership strengths and two challenges. 

Strength #1-I am driven.  I don't completely understand the forces that compel me to be this way, but I am task oriented and to be frank, I get shit done.  My follow through is outstanding and I'm proud of it. 

Challenge #1-I like to be in control.  As a leader, this brings about big dillemas.  It means I have an undeniable urge to always be in the drivers seat, literally in a car and figuratively in leaderhip situations. This can drive a co-leader crazy. I've spent quite a bit of time in the last few years working on this and I'm getting better, but I still have a long way to go.  In time, I know I'll be much more comfortable as a back seat leader.

And then there's this thing called passion, my greatest strength and also my biggest challenge. 

Passion carries me through every single day. When I wake up in the morning I think, 'what can I do to make myself better today' and 'what can I do to make the world better today'.  It's part of what drives me and part of what drives me crazy.  It's difficult to explain exactly what I mean, but my best shot is a bit of a metaphor.  Passion is like the fire in my soul that makes me operate.  I feed it every day with substantial stuff and at the end of the day I usually feel warm and fuzzy.  But once in a while, my fire gets extinguised by a matter of circumstances and I'm left with terrible burns.  Passion can be great, but it can also hurt. 

"I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers"-Ralph Nader

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