My dear colleague yet again came to my rescue. He gave me an interesting article to read. It wa
s all about a manager and a leader and the differences between the two and the characteristics of each one. He handed it to me and told me to read it and then we would discuss it and that he would like to hear my feedback. I didn’t understand why he wanted me to do that but I went ahead and read it while I was doing my physiotherapy session.
I began reading the management part and thought to myself, my goodness this isn’t me. I can’t do any of these and I don’t believe anyone should. I felt uncomfortable while reading it and skimmed down to the part about leadership. As I was reading I felt this was more me as some of the characteristics were screaming at me. A few examples such as gives, shapes, heart, proactive, passion, excitement for work and the list goes on. I am people focused, I do take risks and if something is my fault I admit to it and apologize. An example of this is the other day I sent out an email confusing my staff to something we are following at our school. I totally missed the previous email we got saying we are following the new steps. I automatically apologized and said that it was my fault and I had missed that email we received. I got messages, emails and staff coming by my office for clarification. For the ones that came to me in person I apologized and said what I said and I could tell that they weren’t expecting that as an answer. They automatically replied saying, “don’t worry about it, we were just double checking.” At the end of the day we are humans and we are all allowed to make mistakes.
The very next day I went to him and told him that I read it. He smiled and looked at me and said, “thoughts?” I replied back by saying, “I am definitely a leader and not a manager.” He smiled back and said, “mission accomplished. You definitely are and that is why you feel those feelings at times.” We continued discussing the article for a few minutes and he gave me examples to how I reacted to certain things and how I solved problems in the past. It proved to me more and more that I am a leader and can never be a manager!
What do you consider yourself? How do you describe yourself?
