My PRgative

In True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership, author Bill George says that when you follow your internal compass, your leadership will be authentic, and people will naturally want to associate with you. Although others may guide or influence you, George writes that your truth is derived from your life story and only you can determine what it should be.

After reading Chapter 1, it was important to examine my life story and leadership opportunities to this point, with an emphasis on the influences of my early years and instances of my leadership.

Discovering My Leadership in My Life Story

During my early years, the people who had the greatest impact on me included:

• Parents

• Aunts, uncles, cousins

• 6th grade teacher Mrs. Mildred “Curt” Miller

• 7th grade English teacher Mrs. Connie Wilkins

• WNBC-TV (New York) “Live at 5” co-anchor Sue Simmons

From my earliest memories, the experiences that marked key turning points in my life include…

• Confirmation/first Holy Communion

• Graduating high school in my junior year/skipping senior year

• Entering college

• My first internship in broadcast journalism

• My first job in broadcast journalism

• Transitioning from broadcast journalism to public relations

• Deciding to earn a MBA degree

•Achieving professional accreditation in public relations

Looking at patterns from my early life story, the people, events and experiences that have had the greatest impact on me and my life have largely related to my education and my professional careers in communications (broadcast journalism/public relations). I do not recall any instances in which I have been dissatisfied with my leadership or received constructive feedback from others about it. I also have not experienced an instance in which I felt like a victim.

These are some failures/disappointments in my life that I have reframed as learning experiences:

• Being a runner-up instead of winner of scholarship beauty/talent pageants

• An on-air production error that led to my firing from my college campus TV station

The Journey to Authentic Leadership

Initially in my life, I believe I viewed leadership as a destination to a certain point – for example, earning a certain professional position or status. Now, I view my life and leadership as a journey in which I seek to maximize my learning and experiences because of my rejection of complacency, stagnation and mediocrity.

My most significant leadership experiences have been focused on self-leadership – developing my own (or accepting from others) challenging assignments or projects that have allowed me to showcase my independent performance capabilities in an exemplary manner to ultimately gain recognition or job advancement.

From these experiences, I have learned to:

• Make thorough plans.

• Work to complete plans incrementally over time without procrastination.

• Adjust plans as circumstances change.

• Ask for help without feeling that it shows weakness.

The experience that I need to develop my leadership to take it to the next level is appointment to be a team leader, such as chair of a committee in an organization. This experience would challenge and enable me to learn through practice skills such as mediation, negotiation and delegation.

Through Leadership Houston, I am seeking ways I can take my previous experiences and apply them more optimally to my leadership.