Leadership

This is a paper that i wrote long ago for my Annapolis stuff. I think that people might enjoy it.

Leadership

What is a leader? A leader is someone who people look to in an emergency. A leader is not always the most popular or the most well liked. Leaders are not always the cut from the same mold, the one thing that leaders always have in common is the trait that causes leadership. Some of the common traits in a leader are patience, open-mindedness, integrity and social intelligence. In my life I have encounter all of these in my personal life.

One of the biggest that is of valuable experience to a leader is patience. With my experience as a leader sometimes I must teach things more then once. If you can be patient with someone that is struggling with an issue, then the rest of group will recognize that and respect you more. One of the big examples of patience in my life is when I commanded the unarmed drill for my local NJROTC unit. While I was commanding I would have to come early and stay late with some of the cadets as they struggled with advanced commands, but my work paid off and I got to watch the cadets grow and master moves that seemed impossible.

Open-mindedness is a trait that many people want other people to have but not themselves. A leader must have the trait of open-mindedness because people will respect someone who will listen to their ideas and actually think about them. One example is in NJROTC I redesigned our command structure to take advantages of our unit, when I presented it to my Naval Science Instructor, he noticed a flaw in my design that I had not noticed, and helped me fix to make my design better. If I have not been open-minded then I would have taken the advice of my NSI and would have allowed a flaw to hurt my unit because of closed-mindedness.

Integrity. Words that come to mind are honestly, trustworthy, authenticity, and genuine. Integrity is one of a leader’s biggest traits. Integrity allows people to trust you. If you do not have integrity with yourself then how can you have it with others? When people see that you have integrity they know that you are honest, trustworthy and genuine.

Social intelligence is a term that I hear being tossed around a lot but I believe that no really associate with leadership. Social intelligence is being aware of the motives and feelings of other people and knowing what to do to fit into different social situations and knowing what makes people tick and knowing why they do what they do. This is a two part trait, one half of it is something that you are born with and the second half is what you gain form personal experience. A leader must be able to play a crowd or be able to know why people do things and have a plan for dealing with circumstance. One example is that teachers will usually not start teaching their curriculum until they are able to read the class and recognize how the class needs to be taught to allow the students a greater chance of success.