Reflection

I aspire to become a better leader by understanding and creatively employing what motivates and inspires others so as to create self-sufficient teams that are able to translate their strong sense of community into systematic success.

I would like to be seen as a person who empowers others, genuinely values their contributions and aspirations, and is personally committed to seeing them succeed. I would like to be seen as the person who inspires and supports them in their quest towards realizing their own personal goals and objectives. At the same time, I would like to be seen as someone who promotes freedom and critical thinking, and who has confidence in people’s leadership skills and sense of personal responsibility. I would like to break the stereotype of a leader having to be the enforcer of rules, and I think that the only way to do that is to help my people reimagine themselves as leaders, to celebrate their successes as their own personal victories, and to create genuine accountability by utilizing the aspirations they have set for themselves as a benchmark of success.

I wish to build self-motivated, independent thinking, and functional teams that challenge their own pre-constructed mental models and biases and find creative ways to exceed an individual's knowledge and expertise. I wish to assist others in visualizing the bigger picture as well as their present and future place in it. I hope to make every individual understand their value and importance of their role in the organization.

I will know that I have succeeded if the teams that I am coaching are productive, results-driven, and self-motivated. My job will be done when the organization operates under a defined system of shared values and credits its people for the immense success that they have created.

I am an action-driven individual who rushes up the mountain without always ensuring that others are able to follow his pace. At times, my passion to excel is misunderstood as a sign of personal ambition. I can also be viewed as dismissive, vague and elitist, and these characteristics have become serious obstacles in the past as I was trying to build teams and motivate people. In the past, I have found myself standing at the summit alone and questioning whether the end result justified the means of getting there. I dread the very existence of all these attributes and hope to transform into a humble leader who clearly communicates his thoughts, connects with the team on a personal level, and finds the patience to consider all opinions prior to arriving at a decision. I understand that such transformation will not happen effortlessly, and I am fully willing to invest in this process, to learn more, and to examine my own personal biases and limitations for the purpose of slowing down and helping others actualize their potential and reaching their goals. I hope that by learning to be humble and to listen more, I will be able to build a team environment and culture of success that will outlast any individual achievement.

Another area of development that I could benefit from is planning. I need to spend more time thinking and planning rather than hastening into the next circumstance and acting without a strategy. I believe that as an organization grows, planning becomes the most essential element to growth. In fact, I believe the difference between small and large organizations to be the degree of planning that is required for those organizations to properly function and ultimately survive. I am currently managing a medium-size firm that