Leadership & Team Building

How do you interact with others? What is your leadership style? How does that affect the team around you?

These are very interesting questions for me to answer, because up until recently, I’ve never really thought of myself as a leader.  I always had a very specific image in my head of what a leader should act like and my personality has never really fit that image.  I’ve recently been discovering, however, that being a leader can be a much broader term than I had originally pictured.  Let’s start with why I never thought of myself as a leader.  First off, I’m not an outspoken person.  When I’m in a group setting, I’m the guy that sits back and listens, and may make a few comments to the person sitting beside me.  I rarely contribute too much to the group conversation without carefully considering exactly what I have to say.  Another example, when I was captain of the WPI swim team, I wasn’t what you typically think of in a sports team captain.  I didn’t give inspirational speeches or “rally the troops” to victory.  I “led by example” by working as hard as I could in every practice and every competition.  At the time, I never really gave this style of leadership as much credit as it should have deserved.

Now let’s talk about the skills I do have that I’m starting to realize actually do make me more of a leader than I originally thought.  First off, I am the most organized person I know.  This is what allows me to be involved in so many things at once, and not become too overwhelmed.  More importantly, this really allows me to focus on accomplishing critical tasks, rather than trivial things like where I left my notebook.  Secondly, I have a natural ability to spot true talent in an individual.  This is especially important because it helps me to form very strong teams.  I recently heard the phrase “the most effective leader is the one who surrounds himself with the right people.”  I had never thought of this before, but it makes sense, because I have accomplished many things just from enlisting the right help.  Finally, I understand how to take calculated risks.  Many people who know me would describe me as a risk taker.  What they often don’t know is the depth of analysis and calculation that I’ve put into the risks that they see me taking.  I actually consider myself to be very risk averse, because I rarely take any risks without having a full analysis to support that the risk has a high likelihood of paying off.

The reason I’ve talked so much about these three qualities, is that I think combining them actually can make me into an effective leader, even if it’s not in the typical stereotype that I would place on a leader.  These qualities allowed me to be an effective swim team captain without ever getting in front of the team and giving the speech.  I recognized talent and organized the swimmers into effective teams that had the potential to accomplish big things.  I also know where and when to take my teams into potentially “risky” situations.  It wasn’t until recently that I recognized that these qualities could also qualify as “leadership” qualities.