My Philosophy

Leadership is building relationships to be able to construct a better product, society, and future. Leadership is a joint relationship between two or more parties where the leader should use many different styles. The best leaders build others confidence and raise others to improve themselves, however others can break their confidence by abusing their power that the followers entrusted in them, by using them for their own benefit.

My philosophy on leadership has evolved over the semester after a lot of introspection. Before this class I knew about certain types of leadership, but I’ve learned about styles like front-line leadership or transformational leadership. Through reading Maxwell’s ‘The Leadership Handbook: 26 Critical Lessons Every Leader Needs’, there are a lot of great lessons. I think through this text and the sources from this class, I’ve realized that I had to reinvestigate myself, take a breath before reacting to improve my reactions, and also taught what not to do…

A good leader in an organization, listens to others, leads by example, and reflects on their failures and successes in order to improve their next decision. A good leader connects, motivates, and improves those around them so they can be better employees and individuals. A good leader is decisive, makes themselves approachable, and manages both themselves and the relationships with those around them.

My Beliefs and Values

I believe and value people. I think that investing in people is the way to help others and in so doing, you will always benefit, although sometimes those benefits may take awhile to come back to you. I believe in equality and that love is love. I also believe in love, in sleep, and in nutrition. I believe you have to feed your mind, body, and soul in order to become a better leader. These are simple things, but challenging to live by.

My values include being compassionate, being self aware and having a strong sense of self and relationship management. My values also extend to adaptability, connectivity, and proactivity. I think that I am also a creative individual that can connect with people and together we can solve problems. I believe my leadership values have improved over the semester, but are ever evolving. In reflecting on my values, I realized that I have to constantly reflect on how my daily rhythms are working with or against my values.

I think my rhythms somewhat line up with my values, however I believe a lot of my workplace rhythms focus on the minutia, and don’t really help my big picture values. For instance, after analyzing my daily rhythms, I care about timeliness and responding to emails (even the unimportant ones), whereas I should focus on some of my other rhythms like my communication skills and my kind, empathetic behavior towards others. I also realized that by looking at my rhythms, they don’t truly match up with my longer term goals. So, I will work on making sure my daily actions and inactions (times when I am not productive) can better align with my values. I believe having a vision board and a reminder of the big picture will aide those moments when I am bored or tired or just focusing on the wrong details. I think I also have to keep asking the 5 Why’s or figuring out the why, instead of the how or the what to help make sure my daily work matches up with my beliefs.

I think that analyzing your rhythms and putting them next to your values was a fantastic activity, that really allows you to connect the dots of how your day to day actions match up with your true values or if there are some disconnects. I certainly found that there were some daily dots that needed to be corrected. It is a great visual exercise to see how the day to day can effect the bigger picture. Ultimately if your rhythms match up with your values, and your values match up with your beliefs, than you are much more likely to be able to become a great leader and have your life sentence come to fruition.

My Diversity Statement

I am a white, cisgendered male and have been and am very privileged.  The diversity that I lacked from within my family unit, my parents, tried to expose me to and expand my horizons by moving around every 3-5 years.  I was born in Kenya, and lived in Spain, Turkey, Argentina, and the US (once again, we were very privileged to be able to travel and experience the world). This childhood exposed me to many cultures and distinct ways of thinking, understanding, and doing.

In growing up, experiencing the world, at times as the minority, and others in the clear majority, I was able to expand my understanding of diversity.  Seeing the poverty, racial, gender, and sexuality gap in different countries opened my eyes and my need to confront these realities at an early age.  Throughout my life I have been an active member of Habitat for Humanity and I’ve tutored many ESL students and helped others learn to read through programs like the HEAL program.  I’ve realized the importance of being different – the creativity, points of view, and solutions that others offer that I alone, just don’t have. 

I lived in Argentina at a time where they lacked racial diversity, there was a huge poverty, gender, and sexuality gap.  Our international school (our ivory tower) was right next to a villa (the slums). In high school we would go to the villa and help tutor the parents, help with meals, and play with the kids.  On the flip side, Argentina became one of the leading countries tackling the sexuality gap and was the first Latin American country to legalize same sex marriage.  This fight for equality, which a friend took me to march for, in the streets of Buenos Aires, exposed me to the fact that love is love (PERIOD).

My international upbringing has made me face the inequalities we have in this world and once I saw them up front, I could not go back to my ivory tower and put my blinders back on.  Once you’ve had a village offer you food, knowing they wouldn’t eat that day; marched for rights that you have and others don’t; taken feminist classes as the minority, you see the importance of diversity and acknowledge the need to confront these truths.  That said, I must acknowledge that I have a lot to learn and I still must speak up and participate more to help narrow these gaps. I hope to expand upon this and fight for awareness and inclusion as a teacher.

My Vision Board

In addition to the activities of this class, recently I also made a vision board, which I believe has shed light on my the type of person and leader that I want to be. Below is my vision board. In it there is a mixture of pictures from my past and visions into the future. The vision board runs the gamut from fitness goals, like running another marathon, to enjoyment of life – especially my family, to traveling the world (like the AMOR picture of me and a great friend in Madrid), to being more mindful and meditating, like I have on that dock whenever I can. My future vision involves me training, but hopefully also getting a job like a Foreign Service officer (like my mentor) to be able to travel the world and once again experience other cultures and make many more amazing connections with fantastic people from all over the world.

Life Sentence

My current life sentence:  Teach people to better communicate and make people realize that they are more similar than different.  This life sentence combines my responsibilities of caring for family, neighbors, and staff.  My abilities to teach others, communicate in different languages, see the world with an international lens. Finally, my opportunities, of continuing to train people at an executive, school, or on a diplomatic level to help unite others by helping people communicate together instead of talking past each other.  

My final project, which will be a website, that will help reflect my desires and hopefully I can share my leadership plan. This will include my leadership philosophy, beliefs, values, and other insight that will shed light on my life sentence.  I’ll also get into a my leadership framework, that will hopefully frame not only my leadership path, but also convey how my leadership will help others communicate better and bring colleagues and others closer and to see past their differences.  Lastly, I hope that my website will create a plan that will help me stay on the path to improve my leadership abilities and help me make my life sentence a reality.  I hope that both the website and the sentence go hand in hand in setting the foundation to a clearer future and a path that, although it will undoubtedly change and split at times, it will be a foundation that I can come back to and update to create a legacy I’ll be proud of.