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Self-Awareness

The idea behind self-awareness is being aware of one’s owns emotions. Generally speaking any job that entails working with others, either it be coworkers or customers, it involves realizing the potential impact it can have on performance and relationships. This applies to me because I’m consistently working with the same group of people to fix aircraft and it’s important to have a good working relationship with those that I work with.

The major strength that I have in this area is the fact that I do recognize my emotions when interacting with others and the potential impact it has on my relationship with them. The area where I need to develop the most is building and continuing resonance within these relationships. For me it’s very taxing to become emotionally and personally involved with others and as a result I become rather passive when it comes to casual conversation. Ideally I believe I should be more active and invest my time in the development of everyone, including subordinates, peers, and even supervisors.

Self-Management

Self-control is big in self-management. Self-control in my opinion is defined as being rationally able to do a risk-benefit assessment on everything that we do (or not do), before we do it (or not do it). There are a lot of things that I would like to do, but I don’t do it because the potential rewards don’t outweigh the risks.

They say that if you don’t have anything nice to say to not say it at all. Out of the supervisors that hand out orders or tell me what to do, I have the least respect for those that I don’t believe would be willing to do the work themselves or try to put forth an equal amount of effort towards accomplishing the mission. In these cases I refrain from publicly lashing them and instead just do what I’ve got to do. I also don’t hold back on my “please” and “thank you” or common courtesies such as holding a door open or defending them when they’re wrongfully accused, which I will admit is rather difficult to do but I manage. In the long run, I believe that rather having a spiraling negative relationship with someone it is better to show that initial initiative towards trying to build that positive working relationship. In a world of givers, matchers, and takers, sometimes you have to show that initial initiative before they’re willing to match it.

Social Awareness

Empathy is big in any sort of relationship with anyone. I use to work at a volunteer organization called Samaritans where I would speak with people with feelings of distress, despair, or suicidal thoughts. The number one thing that they taught during our training was that “empathy is everything, sympathy is nothing.” This isn’t entirely true, but the idea was that people want to be understood more so than pitied upon. My biggest strength is that I believe I am highly empathetic, but my biggest weakness is showing it or conveying my attempt to understand. Instead I react rather emotionless, or worse, smile or chuckle under what I believe to be stressful situations (under stress that’s how I react, which can be interpreted as if I laugh at their misfortune).

Social Skills

Developing others is an important social skill for any good leader. The leadership style that I hope to adhere to one day is that of a servant leader. I want to develop those under me to becoming the best that they can be, if not better than they can be.

My biggest strength is that I believe that if an individual is already self motivated, that through my feedback and guidance they develop in a way that guides them towards their long-term goals. My weakness however, is finding a way to motivate someone who has to long term plans or goals in life and doesn’t know what they want to be “when they grow up.”

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After beginning a particular exercise, I started noticing some areas where I think I do well but at the same time I could use some improvements. Some of these include being inspirational, sharing positivity, and being in tune with others. Let me explain:

The idea behind being inspirational is what Yukl would call “[communicating] an appealing vision, and using symbols to focus subordinate efforts.” (Yukl, 2013) In other words, realize a goal that might just be outside their comfort zone but something that only requires just that bit of extra effort to get. During my deployment I was discussing with a fellow (but younger/newer) Airman on how easy it is to achieve and get an Associates Degree through the Community College of the Air Force (otherwise known as a CCAF degree). All he needed to do was CLEP on average one CLEP a week and he could get his degree before deployments end. After realizing how theoretically easy it was to achieve, he started bragging that if he did one CLEP a week he could get his CCAF. He said this repeatedly for several weeks as if he were so inspired by our discussion and had intentions of getting it done. But by the end of the deployment, he has yet to take one CLEP. While I would like to think I was inspirational in this case, is it really inspiration if no action is taken?

At home station (where I live when I’m not deployed) it is often called the “Factory of Sadness,” where people’s hopes and dreams are crushed. While the immediate leadership is good, it’s the flying schedule dictated by the gods that takes the toll on us (more flying means more broke jets, more broke jets means more work). While I’m generally a quiet and aloof person, I am a rather optimistic one. I hear comments on how I’m rather positive about everything. They say that if you want someone to smile you should smile too; emotions spread and are contagious. I’m not someone who will generally spread happiness, however I am someone who spreads positivity, optimism, and motivation when I start talking.

It’s really hard for me to read people and immediately be in tune, but I do listen to what they’re saying and try my best to be in sync. I use to volunteer for a group called Samaritans in the UK where I spoke with people over the phone who had feelings of distress, despair, or suicidal thoughts.  What we learned was that we should never assume how people are feeling because there can be a disconnect between what they say and how they feel. For example if a woman calls and says that her husband had recently passed away, many would assume she would be feeling sad, distressed, or even suicidal. However there have been cases where the widow was feeling ecstatic, happy, or even overall joy because the husband could have been abusive, in a coma or critical care for many years which would have taken its toll on the family, or even the fact that the widow may have never loved the husband and is now free to find that cute young boy she’s been fancying. The point is that one can never assume how another reacts or feels for any particular situation and the only way to get that information is to ask.

References

Yukl, G. (2013). Leadership in Organizations. New Jersey: Pearson.

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            The goal for this week’s blog was to think back and figure out what or who helped lay the foundation for my personal and professional development. I will admit it was rather difficult coming up with specific examples because I always thought of myself as mostly self-motivated. That said, perhaps certain events in my life helped shape me into the person that I am now. Two of these events include receiving praise/punishment based on my grades and the development of my competitive nature based on video games. I will then follow up with what I believe my supervisors are failing to do in my feedback session and what I can do to help develop those that I lead.

            Going as far back as I can remember, I would always either receive praise for my good grades or I would receive punishments for my bad. For example anytime I received good grades on my assignments I would receive some sort of acknowledgment from the teachers and peers, but most importantly I would be recognized and congratulated by my parents. This obviously brought up good feelings within me and it was something I sought after as a kid. However in the event that I didn’t do so well and received bad grades, my dad would shut off my Internet, which kept me secluded and cut off from the outside world (I was a shy kid and stayed mostly indoors). This lack of Internet kept me away from my video games, which in turn lead to increased stressed levels as I was no longer keeping up with my video game peers in a competitive nature. Perhaps this combination of praise and punishment was what helped shaped my slight fears of failure and my hunger for success.

            Video games, surprisingly, also helped shape me into the competitive person that I am. Ever since the beginning of video games everyone is constantly trying to beat the scores of someone else. This led me to thinking that the only point to play is to win. Before joining the military I was heavily into World of Warcraft where I would spend countless hours trying to obtain the best sword, or the best armor, so that I could have that competitive advantage when it came to the Arena. This translates into my thinking that if I spend the time to get that degree or volunteer my time out in the community that I will hold an advantage over my peers when it comes to promotions. So far this holds true, as I am currently the highest-ranking person out of everyone that I went through Basic Military Training with.

            The second question in the exercise “Who Helped Me?” says to “think of the people who conducted performance reviews with you or gave you feedback on how you were conducting your life or functioning at work.” (McKee, Boyatzis, & Johnston, 2008) During my feedback sessions at work I’ve always been told that I was already competing ahead of my peers, to not change what I was doing, and to keep up the good work. For years this has been going on and the problem I have with this is that it tells me nothing with how I can further develop my self to my full potential. It’s constructive criticism and feedback that I seek and I’m not getting any of it. In the coming months I’m going to be promoted, so I fully expect to be conducting my own feedback sessions with my own troops.

            There are two things that I will take from this and bring to the development of my own troops. The first is that I will reward success and actively punish failure. I believe in order for this to work I need to discuss ahead of time what rewards are worth seeking and the types of punishments that they think would be fair based on what it is they have done. The idea of tough, but fair, would be important in this domain. The second thing that I would bring to the development of my own troops is that I will always work with them to set new goals on how to further develop them as a person, even if they’re already the best. Just because they’re doing better than everyone else doesn’t mean they can’t be better themselves.

            So by now I’ve reflected on how certain life events have shaped me into the person that I am today and how I believe I can take what I’ve realized my supervisors have lacked in my own personal development and to turn it around to further develop my own troops. Granted, I won’t know if this method will be successful or not until I try it, but I will most certainly try. At the end of the day my only wish is to maximize the effect of personal development for my troops and to help them reach their full potential. I want to be there for them when they need it the most and I want to be there for them to help them succeed.

References

McKee, A., Boyatzis, R., & Johnston, F. (2008). Becoming a Resonant Leader. Boston: Harvard Business School.