Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Reflections on Changing Jobs

Eleven Lessons in Leadership

I'm changing jobs this week.  Tomorrow is my last day at my current job and next week I take on a new challenge.  As part of my MBA with UQ Business School I've learnt to appreciate the opportunity to be a "reflective practitioner", taking the time to learn from one experience before embarking on another.  My current workplace strives to provide an environment where our team can be high performing.  We have had help in achieving this goal from TMS Consulting,  and it would be fair to say that no personal stone has been left unturned in the pursuit of high performance.  I've learned a lot from this experience, especially from my work colleagues.  When one of my MBA tasks was to describe an example of leadership that I have personally witnessed I found I had plenty of material to work with from observing my colleagues.

I have been at my current work for eleven months and found, coincidentally, that I have identified eleven lessons in leadership, as displayed by my work colleagues.  These lessons are probably no different than any list of leadership lessons you could find on the blogosphere but they are the ones that resonate with me. I thank my colleagues for exhibiting them. Here they are:
  1. Never shy away from making hard decisions, or having difficult (but necessary) conversations with people.
  2. Be an active listener, able to draw out people's opinions and make everyone feel included
  3. Be a consensus builder, able to persuade people to support a common goal and to own group decisions.
  4. Be trustworthy. Don't let people down. Be someone that other people rely on.
  5. Be respectful, even when others are disrespectful. Earn the respect of others.
  6. Be energetic and driven. Your positive energy will be contagious.
  7. Be insightful, about yourself and others, a reflective practitioner who reviews the effectiveness of past decisions and learns from mistakes.
  8. Be tactical, a strategist who thinks long term but is also pragmatic and can identify and implement the short term steps needed to achieve long range plans
  9. Be motivational, find ways to rally troops behind a cause
  10. Be a visionary, able to paint a picture of the future that people can share and work towards achieving
  11. Lead by example and never expect more from other people than you are prepared to give yourself

Leaping into the moment - Dustin Eli Brunson Photography



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