Personal Growth
According to my personal observation, leadership is an innate ability, which you are either have or not. Leadership has always appealed to me as I am able to persuade other people that things that they think must be done in their way can be done in some other more effective way. Moreover, modern society requires leaders to become more flexible, which is why leadership plays a very important role in the success of organizations all over the world. The purpose of the following paper is to examine myself from personal and professional sides based on the knowledge gained in the class, where I had to identify myself as an individual. Now I can clearly state how I see a leadership path in my life.
First, I would like to tell about my background. I came from China and was raised in an ordinary family. Now my mother is 49 years old and my dad is four years older than she is. I am the only child in a family; that is why all my parents’ attention was devoted to me, nevertheless they brought me up as a polite and not selfish person. My parents have always had good relationships; of course, there were some quarrels, but they have always managed to reconcile and forgive each other. Despite the fact that I do not have any siblings, I am lucky to have a cousin, who is quite young and currently lives in China. Unfortunately, I have not been so lucky to get to know all my relatives, as most of them died until I grew up, but I have a grandaunt, whom I respect a lot. She also likes me and happy to see me every time we meet.
I am proud to be Chinese and I am fortunate to have a wonderful family. I think that a family is the most important thing in everybody’s life and nothing can diminish its value. In fact, this was what my parents taught me and I strongly believe in that. I also believe that even if I stayed in the USA, I would still have a strong bond with Chinese people, as this is my nationality and I see the world through the light of an Asian prism. It is important to mention that I am committed to support my parents when they get older and I have strong ties with Chinese community in the USA. Moreover, if I get married with a person of another nationality, this would be my responsibility to teach my child Chinese culture as it is an integral part of me. I love my country, but in order to have more possibilities in life, I had to break out from my comfort zone and study abroad. Since I knew English, I decided to study in the USA.
I definitely believe that there is a purpose in my life. First, I must state that I am a leader by nature, and this has played a critical role in my worlds’ perception. While other people thrive to be successful and believe that they can take any steps in order to reach their goals, I think that ‘remaining a human in any situation’ is the purpose of my life. I have understood that I enjoy helping other people. I think that the purpose of my life is to be able to sustain a harmony in my soul and to remain a ‘human’ despite all the attractions and unfair options that the surrounding environment offers.
However, I am a rather ambitious person and I have certain goals in my life. When I finish my education, I would like to try myself in an area of business management. I feel I can become a great leader. No matter whether someday I will become a head of a huge company or shall own a private firm with only a few subordinates, my goal is to be successful in that area. Thus, I believe that if a person works hard, everything is possible and it is important to help others to reach their goals as well. I want to lead as I want to help people and I am convinced I have good leadership abilities. When my friends face some challenges and cannot deal with, I take a full control over the situation and people follow me. This means that some people need guidance, and I want to lead them to a brighter future and help them to achieve their goals. The world is full of good people, but being a good person is not always enough. The society really needs leaders to thrive as leadership is all about helping, leading, motivating, guiding, and inspiring others. Moreover, a servant leadership, which is a special type of leadership, is even more valuable nowadays as ‘servants’ help to make each of us a better person. Thus, the major goal in my life is to be helpful to other people.
Based on the life goals and the general purpose of my life, I must state that the most common features of personality that I appreciate are honesty, loyalty, compassion, courage, and justice. Still, I think that every person should be treated not mostly with deep compassion but in a fair way. Unfortunately, I have observed many situations when people who were treated with compassion were easily taking advantage over others due to their foxy and dualistic nature of character. In my opinion, loyalty is also a very important trait. People must show it and not only expect others to be kind to them while doing nothing to help those in need. Moreover, I also appreciate such values as determination and commitment as I would like to be committed to my future company and people who would work there.
During the stage of my early adulthood, the most significant change in me was related to gaining the understanding of friendship and human relationships in general. Sometimes true friends are not the people who help you in need or the ones with whom you spend much time every day, but those who share your success and have a warm open relationship with you even if you have not seen each other for ages. Moreover, sometimes a new friend really can be more tolerant and grateful than old friends, who take you for granted because you have been friends for a while. This is the most significant truth I have learned about relationships. The peculiar experience about that was related to my friend who helped me to find the first job.
What is more, I came to understand that I have a high level of resilience and can work well under stress. One of my best skills is related to diplomatic abilities, and every time I face intolerance, I try not to walk away but to talk with a person and explain what is wrong about his/her behavior. Once I had a conflict with my peer, but I understood that my rage outburst made the situation even worse and calming myself down was a better option.
I want my life to be meaningful, as I believe that every individual has to have a purpose in life and have something to live for. As it was mentioned before, I want to apply my leadership skills to help others and this would mean that my life would not be empty and I would be able to do many good things. The world is not always an easy place to survive in, and a egocentric approach has been fashionable for many years, but there are still many people thanks to whom the world is still a good place. Such people create new jobs and care about others; they donate money and ask nothing for that; they simply treat people fairly as everybody deserves justice.
To my mind, leadership is an ability to ‘lead’ people not only because of certain power that an individual might have over others due to a senior position in the society. A leader must be able to motivate, persuade, and encourage, explaining the ideas and ‘serving’ for the benefit of others. I have met such people during my working experience in an international organization, where everyone was inspired by their leaders, which brought to the company not only growth but also a future stability. It is actually a process of social influence, which maximizes the potential and input of other individuals by empowering them to develop and challenge the difficulties.
Leadership cannot be measured only by the level of effectiveness since a real leader should be both effective and ethical and must have endurance to survive. This combination can really make a difference in the world. In other words, responsible leaders are the people with whom workers enjoy communicating and working. Moreover, I believe that leadership should always be ethical. Once I have experienced a situation that has changed me forever. It happened during the classes I have attended in China before going to the United States. There was an African American lady studying with us and every child was bulling her. I was afraid to take a stand to protect her, until one day I was reprimanded by the teacher who asked me to leave the class although I did not do anything wrong. Still, no one in class protected me apart the mentioned girl; she confronted the teacher, who eventually apologized and said that he was wrong. This has changed me completely as I understood why ethical behavior is very important and why people should take leadership positions and stand out. Since then, I protected the girl and we became close friends. This is the reason why I want to become that kind of person.
In conclusion, it is important to mention that I would like to continue my path by trying servant and transformational leadership styles. I don't like when people buy blog post, blogger or writer should post only own texts. It make blog more valuable. Being a leader is a lifetime journey; a path that cannot be changed. It might be challenging and sometimes tempting to give up, but there is nothing more rewarding than to see the success and progress of people whom you have led to achievement of certain goals.
