Reflecting on Leadership

CP

December 11, 2017

By Kacie Escobar, MBA, APR

I learned a lot about myself during a recent session of LeadershipFPRA, “Leading and Managing.”   Far from your typical presentation of leadership definitions and management styles, what transpired was an inspiring weekend of self-reflection among like-minded colleagues with shared goals.

One of the most empowering takeaways was realizing that leadership stems from social influence – not authority or power.  Anyone can be a leader in any department at any level of an organization.  This is true at Curley & Pynn, where we each encounter opportunities to be a leader every day.  The key is knowing yourself and how to leverage your strengths to motivate and influence others to achieve common goals.

To help the LeadershipFPRA class better understand ourselves, leadership coaches from The Maue Center kicked off the session with an exploration of our individual strengths and how they can be leveraged to mold us all into great leaders.  Each class member completed a “Strengths Profile” and shared the results in intimate conversations about how these behaviors have shaped our lives and our careers.

As my top strength, growth drives me to constantly seek new opportunities, learn new skills and invite feedback on my performance in the pursuit of personal and professional development.  I feel most energized when I’m performing these activities, which certainly explains a lot … like my desire to be in FPRA and an ambition I’ve experienced since childhood that caused me to take school and extracurricular activities so seriously.  Thanks to our leadership coaches, I now understand how to better employ growth and other strengths to be a more effective leader for my team and our clients.

Learning about strengths and how to see them in other people was invaluable – and just the beginning of a session that plunged even further into emotional intelligence, accountability, time management, managing up and so much more.  The agenda also included time to brainstorm solutions to the barriers holding us back from leadership success, as well as the opportunity to develop individualized leadership development plans.

I’ve never been to group therapy, but I’m sure members of the LeadershipFPRA class would agree that this session sure felt like it.  I drove home with an entirely new perspective, feeling invigorated and truly privileged to have begun this journey with such an outstanding group of colleagues from around the state.  I can’t wait to see what the next session has in store.

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