Analysis Of My Leadership Skills And Potential
As a leader, I haven’t had many experiences in my life, only a year ago I occupied, for the first time, a leadership position, where I can say I had a team depending on my guidance, motivation and backup at all times. I am now President of a club at Nova, Nova Skills Association, as of July, but I have been Vice-president and Operations team leader since July 2017. So, I can say I have been developing my leadership skills for more than a year and I see a big improvement. Leadership is, for sure, a soft skill that always scared me, because of the responsibility and pressure you must go through when in a leadership position. However, now that I am someone’s leader, I see that I have many characteristics that define a good leader. I had some setbacks, but that actually made me more aware of my capabilities to help a team, my team, and those setbacks never made me less motivated to achieve our goals.
As a leader, I think my strongest feature is my sensitivity, associated with emotional intelligence, in the sense that I can easily understand when my teammates are less motivated or when they aren’t in their normal mood. I always try to intervene as soon as I notice those behavior changes, so that I can understand what the person feels and help them be more comfortable and motivated with their work. For example, in the beginning of this year, as I was starting my term as President, I felt many members were somewhat demotivated. The problem was members were feeling like their job was too repetitive and was beginning to be a routine, instead of something different that allowed them to be creative and innovative. So, for this academic year we decided to divide the team in projects, that could be a big event or some specific problems the club is facing like how to invert members demotivation or how to attract participants to our events. By dividing members between those projects, we will allow everyone to have impact and some decision power, independently of their position in the club, and also allow them to have creative and innovative ideas to solve these problems, instead of just always doing the same tasks.
On the contrary, I think my biggest weakness as a leader is also being sensitive, because my sensitivity makes me a very emotional person, that really feels bad with myself when a member leaves the team or when something goes less perfect than usual. This year is also an example. In the beginning of the year, associated with demotivation, two members of the club decided to leave and, at the same time, one event was canceled because the speaker had a personal setback. Emotionally this was a very difficult time for me, because I have a very strong connection with the club and everyone involved with it. I think I dealt with the situation in a good manner, by changing the structure of the club’s work for members and by rescheduling the event for the week after, nevertheless I was very sad with the situation and, if I wasn’t as sensitive as I am, I think I wouldn’t have felt so bad with the situation and would’ve been better at least to myself.
My emotional intelligence is definitely stronger when it comes to others’ feelings, but weaker when it comes to my own. I have a strong social awareness, but I need to focus on the development of my self-management, so that I can manage my emotions in healthy ways and adapt to changes and less positive circumstances. A skill of mine is my capability to solve problems when I don’t expect them, that I have developed, especially, with my journey at Nova Skills. I was for two years in the Operations Team of Nova Skills Association and, as Operations Team Leader, I had to deal with many unexpected events, small things as not having a room for a Training Session in the day of the event, to more complicated things such as not having a speaker for an event that will take place in two weeks. I believe I dealt with all of those events in the best manner possible. I always tried to keep calm and not convey any type of stress to my team, but at the same time be flexible and logical to think how can I solve this problem in the most efficient and effective way possible. It is curious that, even though I am sometimes an anxious person, in moments pressure I don’t stress anyone around me nor myself, because I know that, if I do, more difficult will be to solve the problem.
Nonetheless, besides having to develop my self-management, associated with emotional intelligence, I also have to focus on the development of my critical thinking. It was something I started to notice more with university, because we have many individual and group works on very different topics, some of them I don’t really have a lot of knowledge about. I know that to be a good leader, I need to have a critical mind, I need to know when to criticize and, also, when not to. I believe I do have a good critical thinking when it comes to Nova Skills, because I have a lot of knowledge on its matter. However, I do lack critical thinking when I’m not comfortable with the subject. I tend to just don’t give my opinion, with fear I may look “dumb”. That is for sure something that bothers me, and I want to change, but I know it will probably take some time. I see an improvement, if I look back two years, as I was beginning my bachelor’s degree, but I know I still have a lot of room for improvement.
To conclude, I think I will be a good leader in the future. I am having an experience as a leader, maybe not a perfect one yet, but I know I already have a lot of the characteristics that define a good leader, such as sensitivity, flexibility and communication, and I will improve the ones that don’t, such as self-management and critical thinking, in order to be the best leader that I can, in the future.
