My Leadership Vision

          As a peer leader in high school, we taught our freshmen the four general personality types: the lion, the otter, the golden retriever, and the beaver. The lion is the aggressive leader, the otter is the partier, the golden retriever is the caregiver, and the beaver is the organizer. Throughout high school, and even now, I would consider myself an otter. I am vocal, assertive, and love to persuade people. These are all generally beneficial leadership skills, but I need much more leadership practice in the future. I also want to develop the compassionate qualities of the golden retriever. I have succeeded in small teams in the classroom, the theater, and the athletic fields. But at this stage of my life, my leadership vision is of the kind of person I want to be twenty years from now, including the kind of employee I want to be; the kind of boss; the kind of husband; the kind of father. My leadership vision has three parts: as an organization officer at UT, as a manager in the workplace, and as a loving and supportive family man at home. In each of these sectors, I want to practice better compassion and transform myself from otter to golden retriever.

          My leadership experiences at The University of Texas will serve as stepping stones into my future work and home life by developing my communication and others skills. To sharpen my communication skills, I will practice leading small groups of people by holding several officer positions in a few, key organizations during my stay in Austin. I will run for officer positions within Phi Kappa Psi and learn to manage the organization’s finances, negotiate conflicts, and plan ahead for the fraternity. I will also demonstrate understanding, discipline, and patience in dealing with one hundred rowdy boys. A group of one hundred party boys will inevitably contain a large percentage of otters. Thus, college is the place I will begin my transformation from the otter toward the golden retriever. I will learn how to actively listen to others with open ears and an open heart. If I raise boys one day, disciplining them will be much easier after my experiences leading the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. To hone my work life skills, I am going to apply for more business committees through the Undergraduate Business Council. As a returning member next fall, I can lead existing committees or even create new ones to start up a new business school program. Managing a successful project will be good experience for my future workplace and dealing with teams will further sharpen my general communication skills.

          Through leading teams, working within groups, and achieving business goals, I will demonstrate leadership in the workplace. My goal is to work for a large, international company, holding an upper-level management position within twenty years. I have always enjoyed working with people, and a management position will allow me to interact with the various employees and projects below me. Having an upper-level position is not an easy task to accomplish by the time I’m forty years old. In most hierarchal companies, executives have endured forty years of service in their industry. But every company needs something new, I believe. So while it will certainly require significant work and effort on my part, my goal is certainly attainable. Graduating with degrees in management and the Business Honors Program is a good start. I will also seek out professional internships to build the work experience part of my resume. Practicing my communication skills will better prepare me for the interview process for my post-graduation career. Furthermore, I must work hard in all my classes, not just my honors business ones, to keep up my GPA while at The University of Texas. Often companies that provide their own training, such as investment banking firms, prefer students with liberal arts educations. While these new workers do not know anything about financial analysis, their brains can be molded. Liberal arts students are not buckled into a specific field or task like many business ones are. While I can specialize in management information systems or finance to obtain my business degree, through earning my Plan II degree I will learn how to see the big picture. For this reason, I place equal importance on my Plan II education as I do my Business Honors one. Because I have a plan and time frame laid out in front of me, I believe I can achieve my career goals by starting now. The duality of my college degrees, combining workplace specialization and leadership experience, make me an unrivaled job candidate for the future. My plans may seem extravagant, but they are well-founded.

          To really practice the compassionate qualities of the golden retriever, I am considering becoming a human resources manager, because they deal exclusively with people. They make sure employees are working in a safe environment, conflicts are settled, and employee benefits are understood and accepted. Human resource managers must also be extremely effective communicators. I am a good leader of small groups or teams. As a human resource manager, I can be a part of several teams representing a larger employee populace. I can initiate plans of action or conversation, yet still be open to other ideas from my colleagues. I will learn how to manage my peers in addition to people below me. What distinguishes excellent human resource managers, however, are their relationships with their employees. Even in settling workplace conflicts, I will need to practice compassion and better understand those around me. This habit with my employees will follow me home from work and act upon my family as well.

          The third component of my leadership vision is my role as family man, a role in which I will support my family, lovingly attend to my wife and children, and negotiate internal conflicts. I believe this is the most important focus of my future life. How do I want to be viewed as a husband? How do I want to be viewed as a father? Part of my goal is to be as good as a father to my children as my father was to me. The other half of this goal is to be a loving, understanding, and coachable husband. My goal here is to have compassion and empathy when communicating with my wife and children. “The ability to sense how others feel and to understand their perspectives means that a leader can articulate a truly inspirational vision.”⁶ My ideal home life involves having one son and one daughter so that I get a taste of both worlds. I wouldn’t be averse to having all boys or all girls, but I think understanding both will make me a better father. As a father, I want to always be there for my children. I want to be at every football game or ballet recital. I plan on helping them with their homework until they become smarter than me. I am going to teach them to play tennis and baseball and create in them a love for the outdoors. My family and I will go camping and make frequent trips to our ranch in Bandera, Texas. Additionally, I want to be a parent that my children will never be ashamed of. The unique connection between my parents and me is that we are friends. My house was always the place to hang out because my parents enjoyed the company of my friends. I want to have the same atmosphere in my own home one day, where I can build friendships with not only my children but their peers as well.

          The most important person in my family will be my wife, because she will be an integral part of running our household and communicating with the members of the family. She is also the one person who my leadership capabilities will affect the most. Long after I retire and my children graduate college to raise families of their own, my wife and I will still be one. Therefore my relationship with her must be the strongest. Everything my leadership opportunities have taught me my whole life will be applied to her: patience, understanding, compassion. Skills like active listening that I learned in the workplace will also apply. Over the last three or four years, I have seen my family torn because of breakdowns in communication. Frequently, the issue is a mere misunderstanding. But the repercussions these incidents have had on me are much larger than my parents might imagine. I will try to never do this to my children; the burden is too much. I will be a loving and respectful husband to the end of my days. I will be the kind of husband who does the cooking and gives my wife backrubs every night.

My family is going to be the most important thing in my life twenty years from now. By this time, I want my personality type to have changed from otter to golden retriever. However, an otter’s personality can never completely go away; someone like me will always strive to have fun. I will implement my otter personality into my family unit simply by having fun with my wife and kids. But by the time I am married, I want to be selfless enough to devote my attention to my family, rather than myself. My personality will always contain traces of the otter. But my behavior, shaped by a combination of compassion and understanding of my fellow humans, will adapt to the various stages of my life.

          I will go through college, a career, and starting a family, learning more about communicating with others each step along the way. My leadership vision began during high school, when I first started accepting officer positions and leadership roles. My vision ends in a rocking chair on the front porch of my house next to my wife. But my path is not set in stone; I will simply follow what makes me and my family the happiest. Joseph Campbell advised, “follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be."⁹

Word Count
Original Word Count: 1380
New Word Count: 1756
Quote Word Count: 42
Total Word Count: 1714
Endnotes
1. "Short-Clawed Otter," http://www.sch.im/wlp/large%20images/short%20clawed%20otter.jpg.
2. "Fraternity Rings," Dexter Jewelry, http://www.familysealrings.com/Fraternity_Seal_Rings.html.
3. Winston, Eman. Personal picture.
4. Nash, Terry. "Cactus Wings Photography," http://k41.pbase.com/u40/cactuswings/large/26014406.04020503x.jpg.
5. "United States Army Recruiting Command's Human Resources Division," http://www.usarec.army.mil/hq/HRD/Human_Resources_Logo.gif.
6. Daniel Goleman, "Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence," in Composition and Reading in World Literature, ed. Jerome Bump (Austin, Texas: Jenn's Copy and Binding, 2007), 65.
7. "Football Dad," www.ludtlaw.com/HomePage.shtml.
8. "The Inn at Westwynd Farm," www.westwyndfarminn.com/wraparound.htm.
9. Joseph Campbell, in Composition and Reading in World Literature, ed. Jerome Bump (Austin, Texas: Jenn's Copy and Binding, 2007), 71.