A Leader’s Legacy Response 1

In the first section of A Leaser’s Legacy the topic of our Significance and leadership was brought up. Like most stories in the book I too agree that there is someone that I look to for advice and use as a standard to judge myself as a leader. I have had many leaders who have been very influential on me some in good ways and some in bad ways.

The first leader that really showed me how to work hard and give my all was my mother. I was working with her one Christmas. It was retail… So you know that long hours and many angry customers were in store. The story that will forever stick out in my mind was the day that we got to work at 7am and didn’t leave until 4am. I don’t remember what day it was but it was close to Christmas and orders for engraving was backed up. We got to work early to try and make a dent in the orders… We did however the person who was going to come in and help at night didn’t come. It was at that point that my mother was going to drive an hour home to drop me off then drive an hour back and work through the night.. I was not going to let that happen. I thought that if she could do this then I sure as heck could. She didn’t get extra thanks for it she was the store manager so she actually made less money working the long hours (downfall of being on a salary). But one thing that she did do was instill a work ethic in me that to this say is alive. I don’t leave until the job is done.

I’m a firm believer that you don’t only learn from being patted on the back but you learn from getting kicked in the butt. I once worked for a man who never had anything nice to say. It was a small business so it was hard to hide when you saw him coming. I got it worse because not only was I the “new guy” but I was the youngest and the only one working as an data storage engineer that didn’t have a degree in computer engineering. The one day that he ended up being nice to me and gave me encouragement was the day that he had to lay me off. The company hit some bad times and last in first out were the rules. It was sitting in his office that I finally saw his true colors. He wasn’t mean to me because he didn’t like me and didn’t want me in the office. Or because he thought that I was not able to do the same job as someone else employed there. But he was hard on me because he know that I had a lot to offer the company and while talking to me that morning I could see that it pained him to have to lay me off. While some people may think that he was a little too rough and too mean I think it was just what I needed at that point. It is because I went into that job extremely arrogant and leaving the doors that day I knew that I grew as a person because not only did I have thicker skin but I knew more about my weakness and how to handle tough situations.

While they both have different styles of leadership and different management styles I feel that they both are good leaders. It is because they both got the most potential out of me while I worked for them.