When I think back to my childhood
the memories are not always happy ones.
I grew up always trying to overcome the power that is my mother. All I knew from a young age was a sense of walking
on eggshells, never knowing what would set her off on any given day. As I was an only child the only focus in the
house was me and that gave me very little privacy or ability to work out
problems on my own. As my mother
continued to intertwine her way into my life I withdrew and was eventually
lost. My personality has always been a
strong one, which often lead to conflict between my mother and I. I was not allowed to have my own opinion and
I was expected to do what made my mother happy at all times. As I grew older and became an adult I
separated from my mother and discovered I had this voice inside me for the
first time in my life. I had feelings
and ideas that were all my own. This was
an amazing discovery for me. From there
I realized I had a talent for leading people and this is where I was determined
to make a difference. I had lived under
a leader, my mother, who had taught me to never question decisions and from
this I realized that the leader is not always correct. That is not to say that the leader is not to
be respected but that sometimes they do not always have the best answer.
As a leader I decided to always
take in suggestions and feedback from my followers. This doesn’t mean I always changed my mind
about a decision, but I made it a point to listen to other people’s suggestions
and then make my final choice. Yukl
(2013) defines this type of leadership as Consultation. Employees can feel empowered when there are
listened to; it creates ownership over their situation. Empowerment is something I never had as a
child, as a result it is something I want to pass down to my employees.
In my early adult life I decided to
confront and conquer the feelings I had as a result of my mother and my
childhood. This was not an easy task as
it involved untangling many layers of deception and manipulation. When I first sat down with someone to start
my process we made a plan, the plan set forth the steps I was going to take to
uncover myself from the pain and frustration I was under. It seemed like a good plan, the problem is
things did not always go the way we wanted them to. This meant that we were constantly reviewing
and editing the plan, especially because I could only control my part of the
plan. I could not control how others
would react to it. The plan was always a
work in progress.
Whetten and Cameron’s (2011)
description of problem solving involves four steps: define the problem,
generate alternative solutions, evaluate and select an alternative then
implement and follow up on the solution.
This immediately made me think about that plan with my mother. I was constantly problem solving around her
responses to my plan. Over the ten years
I have been working with the plan, and yes I still use the plan, I have learned
some great problem solving skills. The
top one being that people will not always react or follow through the way you
want them to. This is a huge obstacle in
business. We create strategies in hopes
that others will respond in certain ways and when they don’t we find ourselves
not knowing how to react. My experience
with my mother has given me the ability to look ahead and create alternatives
when things do not go as expected.
Whetten, D. A., & Cameron, K. S.
(2011). Developing Management Skills (E. Svendsen
Ed. 8th ed.). Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Yukl, G. (2013). Leadership in organizations (8th
ed.). Boston: Pearson.
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