Leadership Growth Journey

Personal Growth

For a long time, I have heard the debate about whether a leader is born or made. While reflecting on my development, especially in the field of strategic leadership, I would side with the folk who strongly believe that leaders are made - not born. This is not because the thought that leaders are born appears to be false, neither do I believe that it is false. It is because my life experiences and growth into a responsible adult has led me to have this perspective concerning leadership in general. Of course, there are people who are lucky enough to have charismatic personalities that would cause a group of people to believe that leaders are born, but I do not relate to that world of logic when it comes to strategic leadership.

Throughout the years that I have lived and grown, I have learned that people are the product of their environment. I believe that my environment has shaped my leadership skills. The people I have interacted with and the life lessons that I have acquired, especially from making poor choices in the start and the need to be responsible have affected my cognitive development, since childhood into adulthood,. My personal drive to become more intelligent, be more responsible and become a leader to myself has inspired my growth in this direction.

The greatest challenge one can have in life is being a master of themselves. This is one of my strongest beliefs, which has allowed me to acquire knowledge and learn from specific experiences from which I have consistently reminded myself of appropriate leadership. At the moment, the leadership skills I am conscious as my strengths are teamwork, sociability and emotional intelligence. In the following paragraphs, I shall present a detailed breakdown on these skills.

My teamwork capabilities mainly grew out of my enrollment to this program. It is proverbially correct when it is said that two heads are better than one. Kurt Lewin’s field theory introduces the concept of life spaces through which get to converse together while learning from a common experience at that moment (Axelrad, 2015). Therefore, while I was enrolled to the doctorate program of Management and Leadership, I have interacted with various scholars and professionals in a team and from them, I have gain numerous invaluable ideas and friendships – some which I would pride in categorizing them as long lasting. These gains have taught me the essence of teamwork through collective effort in form of small tasks assigned to people, according to their knowledge, skills, and expertise, to achieve a common goal.

One of the colleagues whom I have grown closer to over time while in this program is Valerie Andrews. I have worked with Andrews in several group projects - our favorite project being the definition of the future of population health at Jefferson. We had a great time working on this specific project because, in some remarkable manner, our schools of thought were able to merge. This pioneered our proposal and support of the idea of combining Design into Healthcare. To add, our idea sparked my interest to pursue the field of healthcare – one which I foresaw a lot of personal growth and transformation.

My sociability has allowed me to build a network at the community in Philadelphia. This community helped me discern more clearly my personal needs. A combination of sociability and my will to learn consistently has allowed me to learn a few significant things that could be priceless in the outlook of life. One of the significant things I have learned, particularly from mentors and well-experienced professionals, is problem solving. It is undoubted that life is not a walk down the road. Life is more like a walk through an unpredictable terrain trying to reach to a certain destination. In order to beat the challenges that I have encountered at certain points in life, I have always relied on knowledge and wisdom acquired from mentors and professionals. This is simply because I can copy some of their tactics and ideas in finding solutions to my problems. I can attest that my sociability has helped me work on assignments which I had little confidence of being able to understand and handle perfectly. I have learned how to tackle things from the eyes of people with more experience than I have.

One of my mentors and friends whom I have been fortunate to interact with is my professor, Dr. Les Sztandera. He gave me the opportunity to present my paper at the 2018 Data Analytics Conference. “Leveraging Statistical Methods for an Analysis of Demographic Factors of Opioid Overdose Deaths.” I had an awe-inspiring experience of working on a paper that would eventually be published and my attendance and presentation at the conference was highly invaluable to me.

Another quality, which takes up a large portion in my growth as a leader is emotional intelligence. As a woman, especially, I have learned of the significance of being conscious of my emotions by knowing which stimuli trigger a particular set of emotions and being able to control them. I believe the emotions cloud the rational thinking process. However, in certain occasions, my emotions become overwhelming to the extent I may feel helpless. One of such occasions is the passing away of my only child due to a rare illness called Wilson’s disease. His illness and demise brought on tons of worry and concern from my entire family. The tipping point was the fact that he was diagnosed with the illness while away abroad in the United Kingdom for a holiday.

As a mother, my son’s life made me weaken emotionally. I had to see doctors twice a day for seven days a week and for each day, I had to make decisions concerning my son’s health. These decisions pertained the way in which my child would acquire treatment following information being given to me by doctors concerning their thoughts on the most efficient way they could sustain my child’s well-being. Thinking about this episode in my life reminds me that I need to be strong, despite the losses I have encountered. I also learned the essence of being alive and showing empathy towards others.

I have challenged myself into being emotionally intelligent, especially because I need to achieve my academic goals, move on with the invaluable rewards from the degree, and experience that I would acquire afterwards as a leader. Apart from my past experience, the concept of emotional intelligence grew in me throughout the coursework. I took interest in reading about it and I found it quite challenging to implement, but I am confident that with time, I will be near perfect. Emotional intelligence is highly critical in strategic leadership as well.

I believe my entire journey both personally and professionally have paved the way for me to begin my proving to myself that I am capable of continuing the journey and earning my doctorate degree. I have more reasons and more passion to earn the degree and to utilize in the field of Strategic Leadership.

References

Axelrad, S., 2015. Field Theory in Social Science: Selected Theoretical Papers by Kurt Lewin. International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 1(4), pp. 388-389.