Through life I had the opportunity to play leadership roles and follow the leadership of others. I tried to learn from my leaders things that I thought were most effective in allowing me to reach my potential. Some inspired me and allowed me to successfully complete my tasks while others allowed me to go beyond what I believed my limitations were. Great leaders are those who can push you to achieve things you did not know that you were capable of. Leadership is a two way partnership in which the parties empower each other; the leader empowers the follower by guidance and information while the follower empowers the leader by delivering on their tasks.

The best leaders that I had the opportunity to work with are those who led by example, were confident and were not threatened by my ambition, had clear communication style, and offered me freedom that allowed me to explore new ways of doing things. On the other hand bad leaders were those who held by the rules and lacked flexibility; even in instances where the rules did not serve the mission, they held by them. Other bad character for leaders is lack of interest in the subject which kills the interest of the whole team. Leaders must be able to motivate the team and in order to do so they must be genuine in their passion for the mission and goals. If the leader is insecure, that makes it extremely difficult for the subordinates to achieve goals or propose new ideas since it would all appear as a threat to the leader.

As a leader, I believe I may face certain challenges around humility. I am quiet honest and I believe that I work hard. I am proud of what I achieve and I try to present it in the most positive way which could in some circumstances appear as lack of modesty. I do believe that achievement entitles individuals to things that others would not be entitled too but that applies to everyone on the team which makes it fair and acceptable. I believe that “bragging rights” are a very strong motivator and that in many instances people would do things because they want to be recognized for them not only financially but socially as well. I therefore believe that this approach would motivate individuals who are willing to take initiative and go above and beyond; these are the individuals I would like to have on my team. I believe as a leader I would enjoy taking calculated risk. I have small fear of harm and would be bored without risk. Although I would not have fear of risk I would have anxiety which would incentivize my hard work and my high expectation from my team to live up to the challenge and capture the reward. On the other hand I do not believe that I would have the ability to provide emotional support to my team. Since I find solitude to be my best cure for times of stress and do not like to be dependent, I have a hard time accommodating individuals who are not similar to myself. This is one thing I can improve or rely on members in the team to provide the emotional support to each other. I believe this has improved since I joined the MBA program and worked in numerous groups with different level of expertise. One example which resonated with me is the group I worked in during the Haskayen Business Case competition. We placed 3ed amongst 16 international business teams. We received the case and were supposed to present within 24 hours. I took initiative to put the PowerPoint together. This to an extent allowed me to discuss points before including them in the presentation. It was important to me to only include ideas that can be defended through data. If a team member presented a concept that was not substantiated, I did not include it. As the day progressed one team member felt that his ideas were not being included. The challenge was to convince him to find the support data. He decided to stop working. It was a stressful situation as we needed him and his contribution. I was not able to speak with him and convince him to work but my team mate was