MM Leadership – Reflection Paper #2
Internal and External Factors That Shaped Me as A Leader
by Leader Anna Choco
Questions needed to be reflected on:
I. EXTERNAL: What are family, environment school and work experience that shaped you today?
II. INTERNAL: Your Values, Strength, Weakness and How Do They Affect On How You Decide or Act?
III. How Do They Prepare You For Your Future Challenges?
And Here we go….
EXTERNAL: What are family, environment school and work experience that shaped you today?
Family was defined as a basic social unit consisting of parents and their children, considered as a group whether dwelling together or not. As I've shared on my defining moments, as a family, we are not well-off but we were taught by our parents to live as simply as possible, to be God fearing and should abide the Ten Commandments, to go to church every Sunday and special occasions, to help each other in times of tribulation and in need. My father gave emphasis on "honor your father and your mother" reason why we have high respect for them. Growing up, we were trained to learn and follow the family's rules of right or wrong. I realized that my father's discipline to us helped me a lot as a person, as a follower and as a leader. I learned to be a good follower not by fear but by the good example that my father exhibited. We all know that being a good follower has a lot to do with being a good leader and leading by example is an effective way to lead. My mother taught us to be hardworking. I grew up seeing her helping my father to earn a living. She was a businesswoman who did retail and ran a junk yard. I remember those times where we were obliged to help in the junk yard doing all those dirty stuff like sorting of bottles, plastics, metals, carrying heavy sacks for stacking. During those times, I hate doing those stinky dirty jobs, knowing that we can afford to pay for a helper but why do we need to do it ourselves? Reflecting about it now, I realized that doing all those stuff was intentional to taught us to be humble and learned to mingle with a lot of people especially those unfortunate ones. It made me realized that hard work and humility was the learnings I got from that "hard and stinky" responsibility I did for my mom.
I grew up as a normal kid who played on the streets with a lot of playmates and never realized until now that I first learned to socialize at an early age on the streets! During childhood, playing with a lot of kids and dealing with different personality taught me to be who I am today. I learned to fought my way up just to get what I want as a kid. I learned to be competitive during those "piko, patintero, taguan, tumbang preso, chinese garter" and all other games I enjoyed doing.
We all learned and got our competence from school. This is where we spent most of the time when we were younger, even longer than the time we spent at home. This is where I learned to socialize in a bigger scale community, where I learned to communicate not just with my classmates but with my teachers and professors as well, learned to strategize on how to do my homework effectively, and this is where I started to visualized myself as a professional someday. The ups and down of being a student, the perseverance to review for exams, punctuality and attendance, these are just few of the learnings that I was able to develop during school days.
After gaining a lot from family, environment and school, work experiences further shaped me as a whole. I started as a draftsman doing plant layouts at Nikon Industrial Inc., after that, I moved to an architectural company still as a draftsman. After three years, I finally moved to DMCI Construction where I joined the project team who did the Rockwell condominium project as a CAD operator. I was also part of the team who did One Roxas Triangle in Makati until I was transferred to DMCI Homes as an Architect, a subsidiary then of DM Consunji Inc. I spent my eight years with DMCI Homes until I decided to work abroad and landed in Singapore to be with Banyan Tree Hotels and Resorts. As what I've shared in my defining moments, my planned path was derailed until I almost lose my job and learned my lesson the hard way. That was the time I realized that being complacent will bring you nowhere but rock bottom. I learned that "character builds competence to eventually meet your purpose in life." I was seconded to our office in Shanghai to lead the architectural team to implement office standardization. Living beyond my comfort zone was challenging but it gave me a great life journey to remember. Living in Shanghai taught me a lot of things as a person and as a leader. I learned not just to work with different people but to live in a community where culture was so traditional and rich at the same time. I learned to be adaptive of any given situation, I learned to dance whatever the music was, so they say. When I was appointed as Project Manager in our Bangkok office, dealing with individuals with different personalities became much easier. I remember I once read from HBR that "Adaptability is the new competitive Advantage."
INTERNAL: Your Values, Strength, Weakness and How Do They Affect On How You Decide/Act?
Enneagram help understand fears and desires, strengths and weaknesses, defenses and anxieties, how we react to frustration and disappointment.
My Enneagram - Type 9: "Peacemaker" (The GUT; Instinctive Center)
a) My Values and Strength:
Emphatic, available, steady, reliable, too accomodating, harmonizing calm, simple, accepting, ignoring reality. These are some of the strength attributed to number nines.
Reliable; might be one of the reason why I was able to pull off. It's good to know that some people recognizes your effort and perseverance, which sometimes I tend to assume that people are too.
Available & too accomodating; Always making myself available for people or friends needing my help and attention. This sometimes mean trouble since its hard for me to say "no." Being a leader, I need to be available and accomodate my colleagues when they need help and it feels good when you were able to share your self to them.
Harmonizing calm, simple and accepting; I grew up in a simple family and simple needs. Being calm helps me a lot when dealing with unforeseen events especially at home. I would like to believe that I got this strength from my father who was a cool dad. When at work, a task so tall to achieve became achievable when I remain calm and accepting whatever challenges I encountered.
b) My Weaknesses
Apathetic; being emotionless..this I would like to think that I am not but most of the times I am. This sometimes help in decision making; facts over feelings. I would try to change this trait and be mindful of other's feelings..a trait great leaders should possess.
Forgetful; I tend to forget people's details but I can remember names and birthdays. It would be better if I would be able to remember more details for a better version of myself and better relationship with others.
Stubborn; I am sometimes.
Unassertive; this is something I don't like and would like to develop further. A Peace Maker. Most of the time, I tend not to speak my mind just to avoid conflict which is not good. Great leaders are assertive and I would like to be one. This is a work in progress now which I would like to happen soon.
Public Speaking; my biggest weakness. I really look up to people who can expound a single word into a lenghty explanation. I am not an eloquent speaker and this is what I need to develop. It's hard for me to find words or maybe I'm not confident to speak in english. As Prof Jorge is always saying, a leader should be able to deliver a good speech and this gives me a fright. Most often than not, everytime I was called to do public speaking, I always feel nervous and stuttter. I would like to make this my goal: to be confident and calm and be able to deliver a good speech in front of an audience.
How Do They Prepare You For Your Future Challenges?
My Learnings:
For each type, there are levels of development. We should be able to discover the Authentic Leadership within us thru self assessment and knowing the your strength and weaknesses. I learned that no one can be authentic by trying to imitate someone else. Be unique. People will trust us if we are authentic and not just imitating others. Discovering the authentic leadership within us requires a commitment to develop ourselves. We need to take responsibility for our own development.
When I was almost lose my job, I know it was a wake up call for me since I have been too complacent. I would never forget that incident in my life as it was instrumental of who and where I am now. If not for that circumstance, maybe I haven't started to save and secure my own sanctuary in my dream vicinity when I was a kid. I still remember that time when my father would always bring us to their company party in Meralco head office in Ortigas. I told myself that when I grew up, I want to find work around Ortigas area due to my perception that it was a very nice place and it was very accessible to my hometown that time, Cainta Rizal.
Learn from our life story. Know your genogram, your family tree, your roots. Our journey to leadership begins with the story of our lives. Our life story provides the context for our experiences and through that, we can find the inspiration to make our impact in humanity. Like Steve Jobs, he connected the dots backwards for him to be able to understand his life story.
The question is not whether we can avoid stress but how we can control it to maintain our own sense of equilibrium. Don't let any negativity affect our decision making, but learn to control our emotions when something untoward incidents happen.
And of course, don't hold on to our own capabilities alone but learn to look up to Him and ask for guidance in everything we do. Now that I lost both my parents and living my life alone, God will always be there to guide me especially when I feel that everything is beyond my control.
Once again, I would like to thank this Leadership class and Prof Jorge for requiring us to reflect on our life's journey. This helps me revalidate myself if I am still on the right path and in-line with my life goals, which is to live a simple and fulfilling life J
This is my reflection paper; "Internal and External Factors That Shaped Me as A Leader". Thank you for taking time to read.
Sincerely yours,
Leader Anna Choco
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