Leadership Blog

This blog focuses on experiences that I've had as a leader and what I want to achieve in order to be an effective leader throughout my life.

[shayanlar99]

My High Performing Team Experience

I had the chance to be in a high performing team within my volunteer work at the Breakfast for Santa Foundation, where we had many opportunities to show our different skills to perform tasks and organize the event as well. Here’s what happened and how my experience was during my time with the high performing team.

I believe the team was high performing since we each had to perform different tasks that required different skills such as setting up Christmas decorations, had someone coordinate/manage the flow of materials such as food or additional decorations and we had to take part in serving guest food or any other needs they might want. We also had the opportunity to work with new people effectively and efficiently to benefit the workflow of the event. We were measured based on how well we perform our tasks and so we each were more motivated to organize the event effectively. during my team with performing with the team, I had the opportunity to contribute towards them by managing materials that would come into the banquet hall where the event had to be set up in, set up more complicated decorations that required more labour and communicated with the main coordinator of the event to update them on the progress so far with setting up the decorations as well. I also was required to serve families with different needs or wants similar to being a waiter within a restaurant and I had to sign in guests who are on the list for the event. Looking back to my participation within the team, I believe there needed to be more trust between each of the members since there were times where many tasks that were completed by different individuals were either interfered with and criticized by other members as well. I noticed this throughout my task of putting up bigger decorations, which required more labour and so I noticed many incidents where many people were not agreeing with the creative direction or just criticizing the set up of them. I also thought that there needed to be a slight improvement in communication between each member since there were some incidents where some tasks were done incorrectly due to the main coordinator messing up the instructions to perform them and so it slightly affected our goal of getting everything done on schedule. Based on my role within the group, I believe that I would’ve changed my role in the team by pushing myself to communicate more towards other team members since I didn’t dare to ask questions and get clarification on certain tasks. This prevented me from completing some tasks correctly and I still had unanswered questions towards the end of the event as well.

When it comes to solving the conflict in a team, I tend to focus on looking at everyone's side of the story by using my strength harmony, negotiate with the group regarding the overall problem and immediately come up with effective solutions to solve the issue. I believe this has worked well for me in terms of developing a team as well as myself since I’m able to effectively solve the issue by increasing the number of voices in the conversation to find areas where all parties can agree on and can work through tasks effectively. I’m also able to benefit myself by showing my leadership strength of being harmonic with the situation, continuously show improvements in my problem-solving skills and improve my reputation as a leader as well. If I had to choose another approach to solving problems within a team, I would focus more on solving the issue in a more accommodating style, where I meet the needs of others at the expense of the persons own needs and I’m able to focus more on the issue rather than just focusing on winning within the situation. This also would benefit me from creating peace among the issue rather than being one-sided and hypocritical about the conflict.

After my experience with working in a high performing team, one thing that I would do differently when working in future teams is to focus on commitment and here is why. When being committed among my team, I'm able to encourage lively debate as well as ensure that each individual's ideas are heard and considered. I also would be able to identify what each individual personally wants to get from the team project and integrate that need to the project. It also builds stronger relationships with each other and encourages better ways of dealing with delays and frustrations among a group.

Overall, this is what happened within my experience with working in a high performing team, what I might change from it, how I would respond as well as how I can better deal with conflict and one thing that I would do differently when working in future teams.

[shayanlar99]

Leadership Credo Strengths Experiences

I had the chance of writing out my personal leadership credo based on my summary of leadership strengths:

As a leader, I believe in honesty, build trust and inspire others around me and in my everyday life.

As a leader, I want to focus on being loyal by motivating and building strong relationships among my team.

As a leader, I will embrace positivity within tough situations and lighten the spirit among my team.

As a leader, I will focus on embracing courage by promoting trust and set a great example within my team to follow.

As a leader, I will want to continue persuading harmony by helping individuals and help others to see the practical side of things.

Here are some situations in which I’ve used each of my strengths from my leadership credo, what I’ve learned from each one and how I’m able to apply the new knowledge to other leadership opportunities.

Firstly, I had the chance of using honesty within a group project, where I had to be honest about my friend's part of the work and how it needed to be improved. As a friend, I told him face-to-face on what works and how he could improve his part to benefit the grading of the project. I thought about it and I originally was going to re-edit his work myself without telling him but instead, I was honest and told him face-to-face instead. I believe it was important to personally talk to him instead of re-editing his part myself since it not only affects his learning ability, it also doesn’t benefit him from constantly improving since he won’t see the effects his work has on a project and it won’t benefit his work quality in the future as well. I also found it interesting that he was very acceptable with the criticism which made me happy since it showed that anyone can be honest about anyone's work quality without having to jeopardize a friendship and unmotivating someone to work harder as well. Based on this experience, I’ve learned that being honest not only motivates others to work harder, it also helps to build stronger relationships, build trust and inspire others to do the same. I’ve also learned that if I wasn’t honest with him about his part of the work, it would’ve jeopardized our relationship and it would have affected the trust that we have with each other as well. Based on this situation, I would apply it to another leadership opportunity that I might have by focusing on building a network of people with different perspectives whom I can rely on when I need expertise, help other see the practical side of things, and manage future arguments by asking everyone to share their thoughts on the situation and come up with solutions that everyone can agree on. Secondly, I had the opportunity of using loyalty in a group project, where none of my group members were putting the effort into a group project. lacked communication and didn’t put much effort into it as well. Through this, as a leader, I continued to stay loyal to the project by finishing as much as I can, leave slightly less work for my other group members to do and continue with communicating with them. I think the most important thing that I’ve learned from this situation is how important it is to be loyal towards school projects, at the same time putting as much effort as possible since it’ll show within the marks you get and you learn not to fully rely on other people to contribute to the work. I also found it interesting that many people tend to not rely on loyalty when it comes to group projects since they either don’t like contributing equally to the work, don’t ask for help and avoid making strong long-term relationships with people as well. Overall, I’ve learned that loyalty allows us to take risks of predicting the actions and behaviour of people we trust. This benefits us from carefully putting trust to certain people, identifying someone who may not commit to a relationship, similar to how none of my group members wanted to contribute to the project and the ability to analyze the behaviour of someone to indicate whether or not they’ll be loyal within a relationship. This can be applied to another leadership opportunity, where I would have to focus on encouraging people around me to do their best work and perform to the highest standards to work productively as well as efficiently. Thirdly, I had another situation where I used positivity, which involved my dad’s presto card auto-load feature being cancelled due to unknown reasons, so as a leader, I remained positive and identified solutions immediately to solve the issue. To solve this issue, I researched possible reasons why this happened, went with my dad to the presto customer service desk to ask questions regarding it and continued to encouraged him to remain positive about the situation as well. I believe the most important thing I got from this situation is how much of these small issues trigger us to act upon it negatively rather than seeing the positive side of it and so I found it better to look at it positively to increase our motivation on acting on the issue as well as avoid being discouraged among the situation as well. One thing that I found interesting from this situation is how it ended up being a minor issue rather than a big one and so it was very beneficial to just remain positive instead of being negative about the situation. Based on the situation, I’ve learned that it’s important to look out for the upside of any situation, find solutions immediately that would benefit the situation and focus on being engaging as possible within the situation as well. I’ve also learned that with remaining positive about the situation, my dad felt more motivated to solve the issue, remained more positive throughout it and we were able to solve the issue effectively without having any other conflicts come up. I find that I can apply positivity to another leadership opportunity by helping people rise above their daily frustrations with good stories or even jokes, generously praise the people that I work with and avoid negative people that could bring me down. I can also help others see what is going well for them to encourage them to keep their eyes on the positive and avoiding the negative as well. Fourthly, I had the chance to use my strength courage in a situation that involved me and my group members presenting our current progress within our project to receive feedback that should be implemented before the final project is due. Unfortunately, one of our group members wasn’t able to make it to present our progress so far and so I decided to take the courage and present what she was going to say during the presentation. Overall, it worked out and we were able to get great feedback to implement into the final project. I believe the most important thing that I got from this is pushing yourself to take risks instead of holding back which is what I did and I was able to benefit my group as well as myself. I also found it interesting that I was able to present her part last minute since I usually don’t do good or react well with last-minute changes and so I was thankful that the presentation turned out well even though she ended up not showing up. It showed that I was able to react fast on the last-minute change without any hesitation and I was able to push myself to do so as well. Based on this situation, I’ve learned that it’s important to try new things without worrying about the consequences from it, climb over obstacles to act on something that might be difficult, accept feedback from others to improve on yourself and act fast on issues that I would possibly come across. I’m also able to use courage in other leadership opportunities by taking action as soon as possible when performance issues arise, hold myself accountable as well as be a role model for people around to emulate, avoid the fear of making errors and admit to my mistakes instead of hiding them. I also want to focus on standing behind people that I love even though they make a mistake, continue to communicate openly and honestly with the people around me and show courage when dealing with conflict that I come across even though it can affect my reputation as a person. Lastly, I had the chance of persuading harmony, where I came across an issue within my friend's group for one of her classes, that involved the other group members within the group from corporating with completing the assignments within the class and so I decided to confront everyone in the group to solve the issue. After confronting everyone, I was able to solve the issue by coming up with an effective solution that everyone could agree on and my friend was able to continue working with them with completing the assignments. The most important thing that I got from this situation is how effective it was to talk to everyone in the group rather than just see my friends side of the conflict since it not only effects the groups atmosphere, it also goes against being harmonic about the situation, which focuses on finding areas and solutions where all parties can agree on. Based on the situation, I found that most interesting thing I got from it was the fact that everyone within the group agreed with the solutions that I came up with, instead of fighting against it, which made me feel better about taking action to conflicts that I come across harmonically and it improved the groups atmosphere as well. Overall, I learned that it’s important to be harmonic to build a network of people with different perspectives to whom I can rely on when I need expertise, increasing the number of voices in a conversation to find areas where all parties can agree on and help others see the practical side of things to build an agreement among a group of people. To apply harmony to another leadership opportunity, I would focus on applying strategic thinking in conflicting situations, when others argue, focus on talking about practical, down-to-earth matters that everyone can agree on and focus on being open to other's viewpoints within a conflicting situation as well. Overall, these are some situations in which I applied my leadership strengths from my leadership credo, what I learned and how I might apply each one in other leadership opportunities.

[shayanlar99]

Followership Commitment

Based on my understanding of followership, personal value’s and my personal talents/strengths, here’s what I’ll focus on in order to commit to being an effective follower in the future. Firstly, I want to focus on becoming a more effective follower by putting myself at risk to serve the best of interest of my leader and the organization. Secondly, I also want to focus on self-management, where I work well without the need for close supervision from my leader and I’m able to think for oneself. This gives me the ability to continue improving on my existing strength of being a good learner by having a great desire to learn and focus on continuously improving my actions/skills. Thirdly, I want to focus on being proactive by taking action during critical times, anticipate needs and possible outcomes that my leader might come across. Fourthly, as a follower, I want to focus on helping the leader to be a good leader by asking for advice on certain things/challenges that might come up, tell the leader what I need as well as when I need it and giving continuous feedback on what is/is not working within our relationship. This will help emphasize my skill of being consistent by helping provide disadvantaged people with the platform they need to show their true potential and make clear rules that apply equally to everyone. Lastly, I want to focus on improving my personal follower power of persuasion by focusing on anticipating change and acting upon problems that might occur. By doing this, I’ll be able to persuade my leader on acting upon issues that occur using research and critical thinking in order to do so. Overall, these are ways I want to focus on being a committed and effective follower within the future.

[shayanlar99]

Reflecting on my top 5 leadership skills

I’ve recently conducted a survey to uncover my top 5 leaderships strengths and here were my top 5 based on it:

1. Consistency - I am keenly aware of the need to treat people the same and I crave stable routines and clear rules and procedures that everyone can follow.

2. Harmony - I mainly look for consensus, where I don’t enjoy conflict; rather, I seek areas of agreement.

3. Positivity - I have contagious enthusiasm, where I’m upbeat and can get others excited about what they are going to do.

4. Empathy - I sense other people’s feelings by imagining myself in others’ lives or situations.

5. Learner - I have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve and I also enjoy the process of learning, rather than the outcome that would excite me.

Using the leadership strengths, I’ve identified, I’m able to visualize situations where I can incorporate them effectively and I’m able to continue using them in my everyday life.

Based on my first leadership strength consistency, we mainly focus on treating people the same no matter what situation we're in and we look for what’s right and fair. With that being said, a situation that I would find myself using this leadership skill is within an office setting where I would be in charge of managing a project and I would be in charge of dividing the work as well as making sure everything gets done before the set deadline. Using Consistency, I would make sure to set specific rules for tasks and making sure tasks are divided equally among my team. I would also make sure to solve conflicts by looking for solutions that would benefit everyone equally and are fair. I believe this leadership strength is similar to middle-of-the-road leadership since they often focus on balancing between keeping moral and getting work done. Secondly, my next strength is harmony, where we mainly focus on seeking individuals, families and organizations working together as well as bring peace to conflict or frictions. With mentioning that, a situation where I would find myself using this is being an HR manager within a work environment dealing with employee conflict among the workforce and looking for solutions to solve much of these issues that arise. Using harmony, I would focus on solving the conflict by asking others within the work environment to share their thoughts on the issue in order to increase the number of voices in the conversation in order to find more areas where all parties can agree and I’m able to solve the issue. Harmony is very similar to country club leadership behaviour where they primarily focus on the workforce environment and creating a friendly organization. Thirdly, with my third strength positivity, I mainly focus on the upside of the situation and I find ways to make everything more exciting and dynamic. With mentioning this, a situation where I would use this skill is if I was working at a clothing retail store and I was the head of the customer service department where I would have to deal with a number of issues that customers have. If there was a situation where one of my employees within the customer service department was having an issue with a customer, I would focus on being positive with the situation by helping my employee by helping him or her rise above the frustration with handling the customer and trying my best to lighten the mood by immediately coming up with a solution to brighten up the situation. Positivity can relate to employee-centred leadership behaviour since it focuses on the human needs of subordinates such as dealing with issues and promoting positivity among your employees. Fourthly, with my fourth strength empathy, I mainly focus on helping people express their feelings towards themselves as well as to others and help people give a voice to their emotional lives. With this being said, a situation where I would use this leadership skill is in an office setting where I am a manager among a workforce and I have the responsibility to resolve issues within my company. using empathy, if one of my employee is having issues at home, and is having a hard time coping with everyday tasks within the company, I would personally contact the employee and have him or her explain the situation that they’re in and try to understand what they’re going through as well as attempting to give advice on that matter. I would also focus on building trust among my employees in order for them to get a sense of feeling that I understand what they’re going through and build a healthier environment when solving these issues. I feel empathy can relate to country club management since they primarily focus on their employees and building a friendlier organization. Lastly, with my fifth strength learner, I enjoy the process of learning by learning new facts, beginning a new subject and mastering an important skill excites me during my everyday tasks. With that being said, a situation where I would use this strength is at the begging of a new job that requires managing others and requires updating my knowledge such as a marketing firm. The marketing industry is always evolving and changing, so it’s critical that as a marketing manager that I’m well up to date on technology changes as well as consumer behaviour. Becoming a marketing manager, I have to ensure that I’m always updating myself with new information coming in within the company and applying within my daily tasks. This would also help to ensure that I’m able to pass on new information I gather towards my employees in order to benefit productivity within the company and overall workflow as well. Overall, based on my top 5 leadership skills, these are situations I would imagine myself to be in when using each one and hope to continue using them in my everyday life situations as well.

Last weekend, I had the chance to use one of my top leadership skills positivity based on what I’ve learned about the skill and how to effectively use it. Me and my dad as well as my sister bought a new condo 1 year ago and has been in development ever since. Due to the cold Canadian winter’s, the condo has been delayed for almost two years and was supposed to be ready this February but it has since been moved to a finalized date of this upcoming July. Due to this sad news, my dad was upset the most due to this since it’s supposed to be a new beginning for us as a family and we have been anticipating moving into the condo for quite some time. Because of this, I had to be the leader among my family within this situation and promote positivity in order to cope with the upsetting news. I did this by promoting positivity about the situation by highlighting the benefits of moving into the condo, brought the idea of going furniture shopping to list some of our favourite furniture pieces for the new place, listing our first priorities as well as what were first going to do in the new place and taking the time to sit down and imagine ourselves in the new place as well. By doing this, my dad as well as my sister became more positive about the situation and gained a better feeling on the moving date in July. Based on this situation, I learned that having a positive attitude as a leader is very beneficial since it not only gets others excited around you, it also gives the people around you motivation to keep going and it helps them rise above their daily frustrations.

[shayanlar99]

My Leadership Situation

There was a time where I had to take the leadership role throughout a project that I’ve done in the past and let me say it was an “interesting experience” here’s why. My marketing report writing course required us to get into a group of 4 and we would choose a current trend within an industry to work with as well as implement features to match with the trend into an existing company. Our chosen trend was social shopping and our chosen company to implement features to fit the trend was Fashion Nova. Here’s how it all went down.

Our group consisted of 4 students including myself and one of my group members is a very well-known friend who also had to deal with the struggles that I went through as a leader. The other two group members were both full-time workers with one being a full-time mom and both needed a lot of guidance for there parts chosen for the project in order to succeed. Throughout the project, I had a tough time communicating with the other two members since both would barely show up to class each week and would not respond to questions frequently asked within the WhatsApp group chat. As a leader, I had to be positive within the situation and so I had a chat with both on their responsibilities within the project and when they should be done each part before the due date. There was an incident where the project due date was coming up, both me and my friend finished our parts a week in advance in order to worry less about getting each part done on time and the two members within the group left there parts the day before the due date which was stressful and unacceptable. I had to focus on communicating with both members on finishing their parts and clarifying why we planned on finishing each of our parts at least a week in advance before the due date. In order to succeed with the presentation, I focused on giving feedback on their parts, when they should implement each of their parts within the presentation and clarifying a date for rehearsing the presentation. Of course, we weren’t able to rehearse due to their busy schedule’s and so I took the responsibility and organized the presentation with there information added in order to make it easier for them. I made sure to proofread the material and asked each of the other group members to read their parts just to make sure everything was correct. On the day of the presentation, due to the lack of understanding of “communication”, one of the group member’s material was wrong within the PowerPoint and she just noticed it during the time we were presenting. This jeopardized the presentation and the reasoning for this was because she did not proofread her part as I mentioned everyone to do before the presentation date and we had to skip her part during the presentation because of it. Overall, based on this situation, I learned that as a leader, I should’ve focused on improving my communication skills, providing feedback on each part, clarifying when the material should be done and having a positive attitude within the situations. I also learned that for any group project, every member within the group should be responsible for there part of the work, get the work done on time and clarify any issues that might come within the project.

My current leadership strengths and skills include responsibility, communication, team building and honesty. In my opinion, possessing responsibility is great and useful wherever the situation you’re in. I find myself being responsible whenever it be a group project at school or even within a work environment, and I make sure to focus on being responsible for completing tasks, completing my part of the work and for my actions. An example would be when I use to work at McDonald’s, I was responsible for managing the first window of the drive-through and I had to make sure food orders were correct and I had to deal with payments from customers as well. This task required satisfaction from both the drive-through second window and my manager in order to avoid affecting the process of food orders. Secondly, I also focus on possessing communication skills as a leader since I feel it’s important to communicate among your team/employers with tasks or deadlines and to improve workflow. I’ve focused on possessing communication skills among group work such as the negative situation that I’ve mentioned where both would not respond, and I had to resort to finding ways to make it easier to communicate tasks that had to be done and upcoming deadlines. Thirdly, I focus on having team-building skills since it leads to better workflow, improves decision making and improves communication among team members. I find it’s a very useful skills to have within school since I had issues with partnering up with new people or even asking to join a group and so I focused on improving on this, which showed within my project management class since I was able to gather a group of people that are working towards the same goal and I was able to get a great outcome out of the project. Lastly, I believe having honesty is a great strength to have as a leader since it leads to improving the relationship among your employers/team members, develop trust and the ability to help others. I’ve focused on possessing honesty within projects such as one that I’ve had within marketing analysis and planning class, where I focused on being honest towards my group member’s work, communicated what changes should be made to deliver greater results and was able to build trust among them to benefit the presentation part of the project as well. Overall, these are my current leadership strengths/skills that I currently have and ones that I feel I’m good at when it comes to leadership situations.

Some leadership strengths/skills I would like to develop include positivity, people management, strategic thinking, transparency and problem-solving. I would like to focus on developing positivity since the main focus of having this strength is increasing engagement among team members, and helping team members maximize the advantages of their strengths, which I feel is important especially when it comes to completing complicated tasks as well as tackling deadlines. I also want to improve on people management skills since it’s critical to have in situations where you need to gather a group of people working towards the same goal and focus on motivating each other in completing tasks as well as helping each other out. I also aspire to use this skill to my advantage when it comes to group work since I can benefit from managing a group by dividing group work responsibly, motivating everyone to complete tasks and helping people to the best of my ability. Thirdly, I would like to develop strategic thinking skills since it focuses on having a vision of what you want to do and working to achieve that. I believe possessing this skill is important since it gives me the ability to look over side issues that might come up within a task and being able to gather information/evidence to support completing a task successfully. With this skill, I’m able to create a vision while also communicating it with my team and working towards it. Fourthly, I want to focus on having transparency as a leader, where I focus on openly sharing information among my team members instead of hiding it. I feel it’s a great strength to have since I’m able to build trust, gain support and increase engagement among my team members. Lastly, I would like to develop problem-solving skills, where I’m able to anticipate a problem when it comes up, gain acceptance of the truth among my team members and I’m able to see the big picture of the issue. I feel possessing this skill will help when a problem arises within a task/situation, allow myself to come up with effective solutions immediately and implement them in order to have a better outcome when the issue is solved. Overall, these are some leadership strengths and skills I would like to achieve within the present/ future that would benefit me as a leader.