The following personal learning goal video is a testament to what I have learned about myself and how I envision my future growth as a leader. First and foremost, I learned that my skills in building rapport and cultivating trust are highly valuable as George Manning and Simon Sinek emphasized caring about people is crucial to be a quality leader.

My results from EBS University’s social style assessment revealed that I do not have a dominant social style. However, I see being able to utilize facets across multiple styles as better than having a singular style in that it empowers me to have two traits from different styles working in tandem and enables me to resonate with a wide range of individuals. However, without a dominant style, considering that there is also potential to clash with a wide range of individuals, it is essential that I mirror the traits of a person I am working with as opposed to implementing the ones that are opposite from them.

I also learned about my strengths in weaknesses in communication style. For instance, I learned from Alex Lyon’s TedTalk that I have a strength in demonstrating genuine interest by nodding and verbally reciting a speaker’s content. According to Forward Focus, it’s also a strength that I give positive feedback that is specific to a person’s behaviors. Before the course, I did not know that these were strengths. Now that I know these are attributes, I will implement them more. As soon as I learned from Lyon that placing my finger tips together indicates a sign of confidence, I started implementing the tactic and it helped me generate more confidence during conversations when I initially went into the conversations nervous. From there, I developed immense admiration of Kathryn from Patrick Lencioni’s book as she embodied many instances of handling difficult emotions well and successfully distinguished tension from conflict. Additionally, through the difficult conversations role play, witnessed my tendency to, due to my lack of ability to be detail oriented, decide what others are saying as soon as I gather the main idea. I also interrupt people and finish their sentences for them. Now that I am aware of this habit, I can practice getting better at it.

Through the course, I was able to clarify the leadership characteristics I strongly embody and others that I need to improve upon. I rated myself as highly proficient in concern for others and vision, partly proficient in ability and resilience and not proficient in stability and self-confidence.

I created a SMART goal focused on achieving milestones that will improve my proficiency in the four leadership characteristics as a prerequisite for successfully leading a team. My SMART goal is to achieve milestones in the next 12 months that will improve my ability, resilience, stability and self-confidence so that I can effectively lead a team to create a quality, functional website of my writing portfolio.

The most memorable tool from the course that is going to help me achieve my goal is the advice from Simon Sinek (2016) to simply focus on staying in the game. I have already experienced this as part of my training to complete the half marathon. I found that, insofar as I focus on my breath keeping me alive in the training sessions, I can keep playing the game to achieve my milestone. According to Sinek (2016), it’s the leaders that organize their resources and decision making around the infinite contest that frustrate and outlast their competition. Another key lesson I learned came from Solomeh Diaz as she gave the advice to detect when I am becoming aggressive and to take a pause. It led me to making one of my milestones to create a thorough cueing system in order to notice nonverbal signs of my own emotional escalations during conversations. As I gain experience as a leader, I will view failure as the opportunity to begin again, only more educated (Manning 2014). At that point, I feel limitless in my potential for growth. While I did not yet meet my personal learning goal, I see myself achieving it. I look forward to applying all types of lessons to grow along the way.