1. Leadership
Introduction: Leadership is the ability to guide others effectively in the pursuance of a common goal. An effective leader is capable of understanding the past, visualizing the future, and taking action in the present to develop or grow an employee, group of employees, division, or organization to greater success. Objective: Personally, my objective as a leader is to meet the individual needs of each of my valued colleagues and employees’ from a management perspective and develop them into developing the whole.

2. Leadership Situational Leadership1
In my research I identified a framework which meets my objective called “Situational Leadership” by P. Hersey and K. Blanchard. In this model they explain four types of leadership which are customized to the individual employees based on their development stage and the relationship maturity. I have reworked this into the following picture to detail how I intend to use situational leadership:
1Hersey, P. and Blanchard, K. H. (1969). Life cycle theory of leadership. Training and Development Journal, 23 (5), 26–34.

3. Leadership Emotional Intelligence1
In order to better understand the population which I serve I am seeking a high level of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is being able to perceive emotions, facilitate thought, understand emotions, and manage emotions. Below is a brief description of each part of emotional intelligence:
Perceiving Emotions: The capability of identifying emotions in others
Facilitating Thought: Leading people through a thought process & recognizing their thoughts & feelings
Understanding Emotions: Knowing how thoughts and emotions come together in order to get people to change what they are thinking
Managing Emotions: Someone who is capable of reserving their emotions when stress situations arise and is able to convey that reservation to others to keep the situation calm
While I strive to have a high emotional intelligence for myself I will also try to pass this goal onto my colleagues and employees. Having a higher emotional intelligence helps drive understanding through effective emotional management, which the workplace will stand to benefit from.
1Frank H. Walter, Michael S. Cole, & Ronald H. Humphrey (2011). Article: Emotional Intelligence: Sine Qua Non of Leadership or Folderol? Academy of Management Perspectives, 25 (1),

4. Note to Markham: This slide is written from an administrator’s perspective as I will use it with my employees immediately.
Leadership
Exercise
Consider your current role and complete the following table. For each question, please score 1 through 5 where 1 is the least satisfied and 5 is the most satisfied. Then write what an ideal or aspirational scenario would look like relating to the question.
Use an additional piece of paper if necessary.
Questions
Score (1-5)
What would be ideal?
The feeling of worthwhile accomplishment you get from doing your job
The amount of challenge in your job
Your involvement in decisions that affect your work
My job requires me to use a number of complex or high-level skills
My job gives me a chance to use my personal initiative or judgment in carrying out the work
My job is arranged so that I have the chance to do an entire piece of work from beginning to end
My job is one where a lot of other people can be affected by how well the work gets done
Just doing the work required by my job provides many chances for me to figure out how well I am doing
My job gives me considerable opportunity for independence and freedom in how I do the work
Supervisors often let me know how well they think I am performing my job
I have the skills I need to excel in my job