Leadership As A Leader, A Person Who Guides Or Directs A Group

What is Leadership? According to the dictionary it means the position or function of a leader, a person who guides or directs a group. According to the United States Army it is defined as influencing people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation, while operating to accomplish the mission and improve the organization. While both of those are excellent ways to describe leadership it really is so much more than that. To accurately define leadership you need to either be in a leadership position or have been lucky enough to have a great leader. Lucky enough for me I’ve had great leaders and I’ve been in a position of leadership.

For as long as I can remember I have been a people person and I’ve always wanted to be in charge. Starting at a young age I asserted myself in group and lead the way, not because I thought I was better than everyone but because I honestly had the best of the group in mind. If we all work together then we all win. That’s my philosophy anyways. To do this I had to know what everyone else in the group wanted and how to express that I wanted to incorporate everyone’s ideas into whatever project we had. Now growing up we weren’t specifically taught how to be a leader or what defined leadership, this is just how we did things, someone was in charge and it was usually the person who spoke up first. Now that I’m older and I’ve had jobs and other situations that called for leadership I can accurately describe a good leader and how to be one.

My first job was at a movie theater where we had multiple managers who all showed very different leadership styles. Some were great and some were toxic. You would have the friendly manager who would let you do whatever you wanted as long as you got your work done. The...

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...lly care enough to show up and try. I respect that he follows the rules sent down by his leadership and has adapted to lead from that to prepare us for our future in ROTC.

All in all being a leader to me means going above and beyond to make sure your soldiers are taken care of and understand the mission. It’s putting the organization and the group above yourself to make sure everything is accomplished and done correctly. Not making it about yourself but striving to create better future leaders with your actions. Don’t just shout orders but lead by example, get down and help out your soldiers and show them that once everyone gets involved more can be accomplished and everyone does better. Being a leader is remembering that everyone started from the bottom but knowing that not everyone worked to make it to the top but also that they didn’t make it there by themselves.