Dear prof. Jorge,
Resending po my Reflection 1.
Thank you.
Reflection paper 1
" My first Journey to Leadership".
"God created man in His own image and likeness" and with that in mind, I believe that we are all born leaders.
According to Chris Lowney, Self-Awareness is a foundation of leadership. No one becomes a great leader by accident. It is part of a developmental process that is influence by significant personal experiences, call of situation, family history, culture, and environmental factors.
As for my transformation, as a leader, I went through a painful eye opening process. My defining moments introduced me to understand my own weaknesses and instead of pitying around I learn to "adapt" on it.
I remember hearing the story of a man who had 360 degrees turn around. This man loves to go to casinos, spend more money in bars, a bad drinker, in a nut shell, he is a typical happy go lucky person. And after hearing the story a question came cross my mind, how can a person change his perspective in a snap? How can I experience that kind of transformation?
My Journey can be a little different. At present I am an advocate of education. But as for my chosen career I am into medical related field. And my journey to leadership started when I chose to love and believe that God place me where I am now.
My ultimate goal is to become a Medical Doctor. My action plan is to take Medical technology as pre-med course and pursue to Med proper.
As Pre-Med course, Medical Technology introduces me to different part of diagnostics. After passing the board exam I was blessed to be funded by my parents and help me open a small scale diagnostic laboratory. It was an experience where I was expose to bigger responsibility. I had the responsibility to establish the business, do the marketing, operations and a little on finance. Then. After a year I continued to med-school. On my second year as medical student, I felt out of track. I woke up in the morning realizing that I am not happy on what I am doing. That I wanted to venture on the other side of the boat. I want to breathe and stand out. So, I quit and left med school. I know that I cannot fight a battle without plan. With my little knowledge on business I decided to take my MBA in AGSB. Taking MBA class did not just gave me foundation on business itself but open the door for network. I met a doctor who had franchise a business that gave me light bulb and wanted to also offer it to our place. The program requires a manager that is competent and ready to take full charge of the program. I was very much lucky to be selected since I was only 22 when I applied to franchise their business. And my journey as educator started.
This is my first challenging call for leadership. The privilege to lead the young ones and be part of their foundation. As the program is new in the market I had a little difficulties with its management. The first year is the toughest year for a start-up business. (1) I had problems with most of my employees, and (2) Financial downturn and some inconsistency with the operations. Although it is my second business I thought of letting go of the business and just give up. I relied so much on the technical part. I felt so incompetent and lost my confidence. The exact term "Nakakawalang gana", best way to describe that feeling. But then, I learned that it is not all about the technical part for a business to progress, it also requires ingenuity and passion of the person leading. Being conscious of what I am going through, I know that I can only get through this if I will ask for His guidance. I remember reading different quotes from book Daily bread, an inspirational book, on person's weaknesses; How to empower, where to get motivation and increase faith with him. Realizing the mistakes I went through, I bound know how to turn this experience into life's lesson. I am happy that I figured out the missing puzzle. The missing puzzle is to set a goal, since crossing to new path one must renew and establish new vision/goal. One of the most important thing is to know where you are going and I failed to do that. Together with my employees, we revisited our plan, consulted management books and learn new techniques in management. I got an expert consultant on finance. I restructured my old ways of handling people and treated my employees as part of the family. I looked at my business in a bird's eye view and scrutinized each department. Unaware of these changes people started to recognized my work. Little by little I get some referrals from my clients. Feedbacks are also noted to be mostly positive.
And after a year of restructuring the whole business I was blessed to be awarded as the first "Top Performing Center", among 36 branches, in the Philippines. It is very inspiring for me to continuously improve the service and program. It was a life changing experience for me.
As I relate my experience as a leader I can say that one should be (1) self-aware with your own weaknesses; (2) be genuine, so people would not just see you physically from the outside but will feel your genuine intention inside;(3) know your purpose in whatever you are into, it is important to know where you are going and prepare for it; (4) A good leader is also a good follower, as a leader one should be the first to follow the implemented restructured rules and set by example. Many can be drawn from my experience .I am still on the completion of my journey. I hope I could be the leader that can be man for others. I am willing to learn from my experiences and of others too. And to share with you, I feel great to listen from the experiences of my classmates in our leadership class. That is one of the reasons why attending grad school is an opportunity that I am very grateful of.
Janell Ann Pineda-Bansil
Student number: H110064
No comments:
Post a Comment