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Adam Barnett Rebecca Agosta English 1102 January 23, 2014 Leadership Identity An aspect that could be used

to identify me is my leadership skill. From the outside, you may not be able to look at me and immediately recognize a leader, and even when you get to know me, you still may not notice it. When it comes to group projects and making group decisions, though, I always like to take charge and establish individuals roles and procedures. I hope to take advantage of these skills one day by perusing a job in management. I am not a hard core, intimidating type of leader as I tend to be more democratic in my ways. I ask for everybodys opinion before I make most decisions to gauge popularity. I believe that if a majority of your followers agree with your decisions, you will maintain control much longer and people will be more likely to accept you as their leader. Total dictatorship is not a goal of mine, I like to feel at one within the group I am leading. Being a part of the group makes leading a group feel more fair to me and Im sure to everybody in my group also. One place where I like taking a leadership role is at work. I worked at Papa Johns for about two years, and was offered management positions several times. I ended up turning down theses offers because of uncertainties whether I would be leaving work there in the near future. But even so, I did everything a manager was required to do in their shift. This involved opening the store, setting tasks for co workers and goals to follow, providing motivation to work hard
Comment [t1]: Ive noticed this within your group work. You dont seem the kind to dominate or force people to working in specific ways, but you are observant and lead/support when needed.

when we got busy, and dealing with customer complaints. On more than a few occasions I trained new employees on proper procedures also. I followed the rules by the book but was always flexible, giving people options if there was a big task to tackle. Cleaning up the store at the end of a shift, I would offer people multiple clean up duties so they could decide which they preferred to do. People always do a much better job at what theyre assigned if its something they prefer doing. I knew this to be true from observing myself. I was much more eager to clean things I enjoyed doing, such as the windows or the front counters, than cleaning things like the oven. If it was a job that I didnt favor doing, I would often skip parts so I could be done sooner, and that really isnt acceptable behavior and can also be dangerous to the health of many people since it was in a kitchen which handles large quantities of food. Looking back, I wish I had taken the management position officially to use on my rsum, but I know the experience of doing it for so long will help me down the road regardless. Taking leadership roles has also come in handy for me when it comes to school work. I took a lab last semester in college and the class was divided into three groups that worked together to complete experiments and the work sheets that went along with them. We never specifically set a leader and, in fact, groups were never officially assigned, we were only told that they made the work easier because tasks could be divided among group members. For the most part when you have a group working toward a common goal, a leader will be selected whether explicitly or not. I wasnt necessarily trying to be a leader. At the time, I didnt even realize my contributions were mainly that of leadership, its only when I look back that I realize that they were. I would tell group members which parts of an experiment they should work on, keep everybody focused, and lighten the mood with the occasional motivational jibe. This was a consistent thing during our lab every week except for one time. The lab class times are 2 hours
Comment [t2]: Allowing choices rather than always having the right way to do something.

and 45 minutes, but students are able to leave once they are finished. Rarely would anybody end up staying much longer than an hour and a half. One day for our lab class, I was exhausted by the time of our 5 oclock class, and I decided to sit back and let my group do the work. We worked through the whole experiment without assigning roles and communicating properly only to find that the whole thing had been done incorrectly from the beginning. We had to do it all over again! The class ended up lasting three and a half hours! After seeing failure on the first attempt, I had the motivation to step back up and figure out where we went wrong and make adequate corrections for the second attempt at the experiment. This was the day that it became clear to me that me taking charge had some sort of effect on the function of our group in that class, as well as in any kind of group outside of that classroom also. Im not sure that others even recognize me as a leader, not sure if it appears to be part of my identity. I, myself feel that this is a decently large part of who I am. I appreciate efficiency when working towards a goal, so I follow the clich If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. I will be the one to step up to guide a group efficiently in accomplishing its goals. I believe that being a more democratic leader who gives people options of what they wish to do will make people accept me more as a leader. Also, it prevents anyone from claiming I am too bossy and they disagree with my decisions. Acceptance as a leader is what I am looking for, and with that I feel that I can motivate a group to achieve anything.
Comment [t5]: From a teachers perspective, you do come off as a leader. Maybe not a loud one (which is fine), but more so a silent confidence that you know how to divvy things up and get the work done. I enjoyed learning more about how you see yourself. Comment [t4]: Good short anecdote to help me see how this comes out in your everyday life. Comment [t3]: No one else went into the leadership position? Does it ever tire you or do you just enjoy it?

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