Leadership and interpersonal leadership have meant many things to plenty of people. Understanding how each of us develops as a leader progresses by determining our leadership philosophy, mission, vision, values, and goals that we strive to work towards as we move forward in our leadership journeys. These journeys are best defined by Mother Teresa’s quote, “ Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.” Each of us lives through Mother Teresa’s statement setting small S.M.A.R.T. goals to reach a more massive effect during my last semester of grad school. Over the following several paragraphs, let me give you a glimpse into my process, my vision, and my reflection that shaped my approach to setting and achieving my goals and the impact it had.
Process
During my graduate school journey, I took an interpersonal leadership skills course that set the tone for perceiving and constructing my leadership goal. After taking the initial leadership assessment and having a group discussion on what we wanted to accomplish, I became very aware that this was the first time I had vocalized and defined my intention. In the first conversation, I was vocal in expressing that I wanted to be a driving force for organizational change in an organization, explicitly contributing to the organizational development, strategy, and structure. The professional goal that I set shaped how I viewed the leadership assessment results and defined my overarching goal. The leadership assessment results advised that I had ample room for improvement in being more attentive and concise when engaging in communication. With this in mind, I determined that my overarching goals are as follows, “I have two critical areas of growth; the inspiration and vision categories provide for the most development. The primary focus of these areas is to improve my overall communication. Specifically, targeting being more concise, improving overall engagement and audience attention. Define clarity, articulation, and audience engagement would help better inform and navigate situations where I need to influence and inspire individuals toward a specific outcome or motivate a particular group.” The first step in approaching this goal was defining a process, so I felt the need to add a detailed structure to maintain focus between the larger purpose and smaller milestone goals created throughout the course. My leadership goals can be found in the APPENDIX.
Vision
Understanding my approach to developing and implementing my milestone SMART goals was a journey that I wanted to achieve by 2020. Even in the presence of a pandemic and multiple constraints, making it challenging to execute many of the interpersonal communications that I wanted to engage in, I still pursued making the most of improving my overall communication. I set a milestone goal for Persuasion that became my driving vision for further developing my communication. In defining the purpose for Persuasion, “By November 30th, 2020, pitch the workflow analysis during a scheduled quarterly meeting to achieve 100% buy-in (a go or no go response) from the Educational Operations director.” I understood that no matter which milestone SMART goal I was working on, these milestones could all be accomplished through the methodical approach of defining success and working toward them. I found that I did not face any difficulties in examining the smart goals as milestones to build upon. Each plan was a way to slow progress, develop a skill, and practice the skill to move forward incrementally toward better communication.
Reflection
As I have explained, the process and vision for defining my leadership goal of improving overall communication were shaped by my realization of my core professional goal, leadership assessment data, and the creation of my Persuasion SMART goal. Thinking of the core questions asked, I am reminded of a quote by Mark Twain, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” The journey in defining and working through the leadership goal and SMART milestone goals was just like the lightning bug. When first starting, the thought process was focused on creating a plan without an end in sight. The establishing of the persuasion goal was the catalyst for defining what success would look like if I improved my communication. This singular goal set the tone for evaluating how I would internalize the concepts from reading interpersonal skills. My journey this semester has been based on working toward choosing the right word and finding my lightning. I have not faced any real difficulties but have stayed steadfast toward my goals, understanding that I can achieve the success I am looking for through the minor incremental improvements I can achieve.
The end of the semester marked the end of this chapter for me. At the beginning of 2020, before COVID, I set the intention to graduate by the end of the year. Achieving the requirements has been a powerful motivator for internalizing the concepts from this semester on SMART goals and engaging with peers to understand others better. I will take the interactions and perspectives from class discussions to better motivate, coach, and mentor others to achieve their goals. The exchanges with several of my classmates have challenged me to change how I think about coaching and mentoring individuals to create SMART goals. In process improvement, SMART goals and metrics are fundamental concepts that I coach others towards. I have gained invaluable experience in understanding how better to help others work to achieve their goals. Over the next few months, I will continue to work on the goals that I set in this course and start to define new ones that will help shape my next direction and chapter for myself. The O.L.S. experience and interactions have left an indelible mark on finding more creative ways to engage and cultivate relationships.
