A641.8.3.RB – Personal Balance Sheet

A resonant leader is someone who conditions, selects and influences a follower or followers with different abilities and skills and who aligns the follower or followers’ mission and goals to the organization's goals and mission.  As a resonant leader, I have the need to validate my commitments to the values of a) showing humility; b) displaying mercy and belief to the actions of his/her follower(s), and c) controlled discipline.  To be a great leader, I need to be courageous and possesses integrity, humility, honesty and with clear vision who believes in teamwork and is a strategic planner.

According to Boyatzis & McKee (2005), a resonant leader encourages the people around him/her by creating an environment that is supportive of innovation, creativity, and change.  They develop the ability of self-honesty while holding other accountable and uphold standards of excellence.  Resonant leaders work with their followers in finding individual strengths that benefit both the organization and the workforce.  They inspire trust and builds loyalty that ultimately results in a better business.

Strengths and Enduring Positive Dispositions

I have always been an excellent coach, friend, employee and a leader.  It has always been my dream to be an excellent positive influencer to anyone that I encounter.  I want to be a significant contributor in shaping our workforce, community, organization and the globe as a whole a better future by having the ability to understand how the future tends to emerge, and most especially by being open to new possibilities and new opportunities.  I believe that it has been my calling to positively lead a group of individuals creating a better world making every citizen of the globe feel valued.

It is of importance to me that every member of my group works and communicates with transparency trusting in each other's strengths and supportive and willing to develop each other’s weaknesses.  Trusting each other gives us the ability to be a better listener, more patient, and more grateful for new experiences and newly formed relationships.  In addition to, members of the workforce that I will be leaving behind have the desire to continuously develop their skills in reframing the challenges that they face daily, increasing their creativity and innovative thinking, unlocking an array of determinations.

Fredrickson & Losada’s (2005) claim that emotions that are positive have a unique connection with flourishing health, most specifically with our mental and physical condition makes sense to me.  Caprara et al. (2012) reaffirmed that the majority focus of psychological researchers is the identification or recognition of the different behaviors, traits, cognitions, and emotions that are positive may conceivably cultivate and elevate human flourishing and well-being.  As a leader, I need to have a definite and positive commitment to the growth of the people that I work with and focus on helping them to become better individuals – personally and professionally with an understanding of the field, the discipline, and the leadership role together through open communication and transparency.

As a leader, it is of utmost importance that I practice the art of mindfulness to ensure that my focus, collective, and emotional intelligence is increased and that I develop a higher emphasis on support, and my personal and social awareness is heightened.  Self-Leadership is where my resonant leadership begins.  When I practice a moment to moment awareness, combined with planning and focus development ability, a mindful culture will nourish my innovative skills, self-awareness, problem-solving, and stress reduction skills.  Mindfulness not only promotes awareness and consciousness, but it also fosters compassion.  Compassion is an essential component to cultivating productive and innovative work environments (Comaford, 2016).

Weaknesses and Enduring Negative Dispositions

As a leader, there are times that I tend to be more focused on getting the facts when trying to resolve conflicts between our staff.  Unfortunately, at times our fact-finding purpose is misinterpreted as seeking to control the situation rather than finding a resolution to the current issue.  To be an effective resolutionary, Levine (2009) stated we would have our vision of the outcome, but we have to be more intentional about putting the other parties’ vision first.  Levine (2009) further stated that we need to follow our instincts.  In following our intuition and emotion, it is important to trust our deepest instinct by listening to everyone’s stories first.  Then, we need to keep on following to our intuitive voice and have faith to keep on developing that intuition (Levine, 2009, p. 135). 

My behavior of avoiding additional tasks while in the midst of resolving a more critical issue or being too focused with accomplishing a project do not only affect my relationship with the people at work but most importantly, it affects my relationship with my husband.  I have come to learn that it is of utmost importance that I continuously strive to practice self-awareness to the success of my relationship, i.e., with my husband, in-laws, family, friends, and my co-workers and colleagues.  There was a work week that was a little bit out of the ordinary as I consider it. Our company went live with a physician practice acquisition that I was leading, and on the same day, my husband underwent surgery. Due to my professional responsibilities, I was only able to give my husband my full attention on the day of the surgery. I was so blinded by my work responsibilities that I was out of my element to be a caring and supportive wife.

Lastly, during challenging times, I tend to bottle up and try to handle demanding undertaking by myself.  At times, I even find myself angry without knowing what is causing the anger which I find very unhealthy to my relations with the people that I work with and my husband.  Self-regulation is of importance so that I can be aware of my emotions, regulating my feelings and maintain flexibility and direct negative behaviors toward positivity.  As a leader, I must be able to ensure that the people I work with and the people around me, to be honest.  I must also accept the reality that their honesty will not always be to my liking.  Living stress-free means finding a balance between work and life meaning having the ability to be organized and having the capacity to prioritize.  It is only to my benefits in having the capableness to practice the art of recharge and renewal.

Conclusion

In my life, my husband is my best confidant.  Whenever I have a terrible day at work, he always knew if something is bothering me, especially now that I am a full-time student.  We made a pact that with our busy schedule, especially mine, Sunday is our day to reflect how things were over the week.  Although I have my bi-weekly open discussion with my Regional VP of HR and a monthly meeting with my Chief Executive Officer, there are still things that I am not comfortable discussing with them, not that they do not have my trust.  Sometimes, there were some sensitive work matters that I felt I needed to talk with my husband first before executing appropriate actions to resolve employment issues.  He never failed to give me his honest opinion.  My husband’s honesty is very refreshing.  He opens my mind to different possibilities.

            I have always believed that I will not be as successful as I am today without developing and strengthening my spiritual intelligence.  Vaughn (2002) noted that spiritual intelligence does not only regard mental ability rather, it is also a correlation of personal to transpersonal as well as the self to spirit.  I always start my day with meditation and with a daily devotional reading the Bible.  Strengthening my spiritual intelligence is consequential to the development of my leadership skills and abilities as well as my strengthening my personal character and traits.

References

Boyatzis, R. E., & Akrivou, K. (2006). The ideal self as the driver of intentional change. The

Journal of Management Development, 25(7), 624-642. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/10.1108/02621710610678454

Boyatzis, R. & McKee, A. (2005). Resonant leadership. Boston, MS: Harvard Business School

            Publishing.

Caprara, G. V., Alessandri, G., Eisenberg, N., Kupfer, A., Steca, P., Caprara, M.G., &…Abela, J.

(2012). The Positivity Scale. Psychological Assessment, 24(3), 701-712. doi: 10.1037/a0026681.

Fredrickson, B.L. and Losada, M.F. (2005). Positive Affect and the Complex Dynamics of

Human Flourishing. American Psychologist. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.60.7.678.          

Levine, S. (2009). Getting to resolution: Turning conflict into resolutions. (2^nd edition).

Williston, VT: Berrett-Koehler Publisher.                                                             

Vaughn, Frances (2002). What is Spiritual Intelligence? Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol

42. No. 2, 16-33. Sage Publication.