Personal Reflection on Leadership

What is leadership? When I use the Google search engine millions of hits come up with various definitions for leadership. Leadership is when a person(s) is able to lead their team to success by persuasion, education, and trust. Leadership deals with the power of persuasion, morals, honesty, ethical standards, motivation, etc. Several people will claim that they have effective leadership skills, but they do not have the necessary skills to be an effective leader.

It seems when people think of an effective leader they believe it is a person who runs a successful organization who has more money than they know what to do with. Others look at the President of the United States, religious leaders, etc. Yet others look at the people who died for their cause such as Martin Luther King, Jr. I agree with some of these opinions. I do not believe all the Presidents of the United States were effective leaders nor did they have the leadership skills needed to run a country and have their countrymen look up to them as a national hero. Nor do I believe that all heroes are leaders.

In several of my classes there was always that argument that if someone was born with leadership skills or if you are able to learn and develop leadership skills. I think that that everyone has the skills to become leaders; however, they need to take the initiative to develop those skills. Sometimes people do not believe they have the skills until they are put to the test. If you go with the belief that only certain people are born leaders then you must believe that everyone is either born to love or to hate. When you are born you are raised by an individual(s) who starts telling you from the start what are right and what is wrong. You grow up believing what you are told. Eventually you start thinking for yourself and you take the initiative to learn and become the person you want to be. I think that the individual's parents, teachers, mentors help the individual find the qualities of a leader within themselves and the individual then starts working on those skills or choose to ignore the skills.

When asked who was the most influential leader in my life without hesitation I answer my mom. My mom faced an abusive husband and had the courage in the late 1970s to leave him and to raise her two young children on her own. At that time divorce was not as popular as it is now. At that time enforcing child support was not a high priority. My mother went out and found a job and a sitter for her two children. She started working at the local hospital for minimum wage and found a way to pay for daycare costs of two young children. She was able to cloth us, put a house over our head, and food in our stomachs. When my father tried to gain custody of her children she found a way to pay for a lawyer and fight him. Spousal and child abuse again was not a well known epidemic in the lat 1970s as it is today. By the grace of God and her determination