Throughout my life, I have always been involved in one leadership position, if not a few. Being a leader is not something that is necessarily new to me, I know what the position looks like, I know what is expected from a leader, and I know what it feels like to have the responsibilities of a leader. None of this means that I have actually been a leader, though.
Looking back on everything I have done, I can see the positions I've held and the things I have written on my resume, however, I don't see the accomplishments I have made. I feel like too many times in my life I have put myself or been put in a leadership position and failed to make anything happen.
A few nights ago, I witnessed why this could possibly be true. I went downstairs to ask someone to turn off some loud music, because I had a midterm the following morning, and I had lost my temper before I even left my room. You can imagine how effective I was once I got downstairs.
This isn't the first time I've lost my temper in a situation in need of a calm and collected response, either. My band director and leader role model in high school, Alan Feirer, had a conversation with me about my temper in the past as well. As I go through my life and do different things, I have not been as fortunate as I was back in high school to have someone who was concerned with my leading skills as much as Alan to let me know what I was doing wrong. In the real world, that is oftentimes left to yourself to discover.
Looking back, my temper has played a role in many of the failures I have had as a friend, family member, person, student, and leader. It's actually kind of scary for me too look back and realize all of those situations and how their turnout related to my temper and anger.
Because of all these situations, successes, and failures I have observed and how closely related they are to the amount of anger or the level of use of my temper, I have decided to let this be my first project of the Titan Leadership Program. I am going to work on more than just controlling my temper. I am going to work on recognizing when my temper or a response based in anger will only damage the situation. I want to be able to rationally recognize the mood I have to bring to the table when dealing with a situation. Only after that, can I be an effective leader.
Jordan,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your post. Often times it hard to look at ourselves critically and see the improvement we can make on our character. My suggestion to you when you recognize your temper taking over, stop yourself and take a moment to let it pass and work through the next step properly. It sounds like you just need a moment to release those feelings of anger. I look forward to hearing more about what you observe.