Leadership Step By Step – Exercise #1: Personal Essay
Recently, I’ve been spending a lot of time learning about connecting with my own emotions, being more assertive, and how to be a better leader, particularly when it comes to sustainability and with my family and friends. Assertiveness and and emotional connection feel like something I could teach myself, but I find leadership to be a more elusive skill to develop. I need help. So I joined Josh Spodek’s leadership workshop, where we are doing the exercises from his book, Leadership Step By Step.
Initially I wasn’t going to post my essays and reflections here, but I decided that some of these exercises can be pretty revealing of who I am, where so many of my ideas come from, and posting them can be a valuable exercise in vulnerability. Hence, posting them and allowing others to read them may be beneficial to me and to others.
So here we go! My personal essays and reflections from the exercises in Leadership Step By Step!
Note: If you’ve been following my blog for a long time, you may remember I started to do these exercises before, but I think I only got to exercise #3 out of 20. This time, we’re getting to the end!
Exercise #1: Personal Essay
The term “leadership” means different things to different people. To some, it’s merely a position at work, granted by some higher authority. To others, it’s the first step to changing the world.
Most (if not all) of the major changes that have come to modern society happened at least partially due to having leaders who were able to rally people to a cause and effect change. Leadership done poorly looks like coercion, compulsion, oppression, intimidation, or harassment (I actually don’t think of this as leadership at all really, but to some, that is what it can mean). Leadership done well leads to progress, people feeling supported and empowered, and true growth and change. Some of the greatest leaders gave us basic human rights, equality, freedom, and much more. To me, leadership is the first step to changing your world for the better.
As a young boy, to say I was shy would be a grand understatement. I couldn’t talk to anyone I didn’t already know well and feel comfortable with. I certainly couldn’t talk to girls, and as a burgeoning teenager, that just wouldn’t do. In my mid-teens, I spent years learning how to be “well liked.” I read books on body language, having conversations, relating to others so they feel like you’re listening, and how to make them feel understood. I studied stand-up comedians tirelessly, figuring they are a group of people who have to go up on stage, seem down-to-earth, and make everyone in the crowd feel comfortable enough to laugh at jokes within seconds. After years of practice, I achieved my goal. By 18, I could be the life of the party. I could be surrounded by 10 people listening to me ad lib on whatever I felt like talking about, with everyone laughing. I can still recall the voices of friends telling everyone else “Eugene is SO funny!!!” I loved the attention and being in the spotlight.
At some point, the excitement of knowing how to steal the spotlight died – I no longer felt any need to be so attention-seeking and I had gained a lot of confidence from that experience. But 20 years later, I realize that recently I don’t want to just be likable. Being likable and having lots of friends is fine, but having lots of friends doesn’t change the world. I want people’s lives to be better for having had me in it. I want to have more of an impact on those around me than just being a nice person to talk to. It’s time to focus instead on leadership.
I’m now reading Joshua Spodek’s Leadership Step By Step with a new goal in mind: to gain the skills in leading others – to learn how to help people search within themselves and motivate them to want to change for the better. To help them realize their vision and help guide them and show them the path to achieve. To help them make their world better.
In my current life, I have several semi-leadership roles in my life. I work as a project manager for water utility projects – I need to be able to lead field crews, engineers working for me, administrative assistants, all with a goal to complete a project. At home, I am a husband and a father – I need to be able to offer direction, stability, guidance, and partnership to my wife and children. I am a podcast host and advocate for sustainable living – I need to be able to help others find their reasons to live healthier and happier lives through sustainability. There is no area of my life where improved leadership skills wouldn’t help.
My current leadership skills are not strong – there are certainly some parallels between leading and connecting with others and being likable, but my leadership skills are certainly not what I want them to be. I find that in leading others, empathy, assertiveness, and strong listening skills are key, and I try to remember that at all times. On the contrary, telling others my own opinions, telling others what they “should” do, and trying to “prove” I’m right are all prime examples of things I’ve learned not to do when trying to lead, though admittedly, I find myself doing them all-too-often anyway and thinking to myself that it’s time for change.
So this has brought me here. The value I hope to gain from these exercises is a new abundance of tools to help me communicate better, guide others, and become a person others want to follow.
