My new home!

Aloha!

Today was a big day for developing my future leadership potential. I was offered my first management job for post-college today. I will be starting in June as a Rooms Division Corporate Management Trainee at the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort & Spa. I am nervous, but most of all excited! The reasons I am nervous are abundant:

• Maui is a union hotel and I have never worked, let alone managed, at a union property. Rumors that I have heard say that it is much more difficult and that many employees are unmotivated because they are tenured.
• Maui is far! What will I bring? Should I ship my car? Questions are racing through my mind.
• I may never make it back to the mainland. The company is investing a lot of money in me to send me to Maui. It will be at least a year before they will even think about sending me back.
• Will the locals just think of me as another mainlander?

This is the biggest move I have ever made and I am really looking forward to it!

My PMAI Results

After reviewing my results from the PMAI test I better understand where I currently stand as a leader.

My top scores from the test are:

• Jester
• I am happy, playful, and full of energy. When it comes to problem solving I think outside the box. I have a trickier side and find fun in every situation. I need to be careful to not be irresponsible and to make sure that my trickery does not get out of hand.
• Ruler
• I step up to the plate to be a leader when possible. To solve problems I try to put in place policies. I like to intensify my power. I need to be on guard to ensure that I do not become a dictator as a leader.
• Creator
• I am highly imaginative. When problems arise I try to develop a clear path to resolution. I always think of new inventions, and I need to guard against reducing everything to its most simple form.

I am most definitely a combination of the three, leaning most towards Jester, which is exactly what the results stated. In addition to my most prevalent archetypes, the PMAI also gave my least prevalent archetype, orphan. I need to incorporate some of the orphan characteristics to round out my leadership style. The most important area of focus that I found is realism. Orphan leaders are realistic, and my strong archetypes are not.

These survey results seem to be very accurate for how I see myself as a leader. With focus on the weaknesses of the archetypes that are prevalent in my style I can improve myself as a leader.

Archetypes and Leaders

As I further develop my leadership style I am starting to observe the importance of searching for the "hidden" traits that make up my character. The PMAI (Pearson-Marr Archetype Indicator) test takes symbols, images and themes that are gathered through a series of questions and establishes the top archetypes. These archetypes are named based off of the common characteristics and desires that go along with them.

The archetypes PMAI uses are:

 Each of these archetypes describes the most important desires and goals of the individual who is evaluated and the potential for parts of that person's leadership style. These archetypes come from values that are created throughout one's life. After completing the evaluation, my results proved to be very informative. The next post will touch more on that. After this test I trust much more in the archetype based leadership theory rather than the traits based leadership theory.

Judging by your traits...

Trait based leadership theory was developed to pinpoint leaders in a group based on the traits that one portrays. To actually determine one's ability to lead much more research must be done.

By using only traits, an observer can only pinpoint a member of a team with potential to leadership based on six key traits explained in "Leadership: Do Traits Matter?" These traits are drive, leadership motivation, honesty and integrity, self confidence, cognitive ability, and knowledge of the business. 

The major con of this approach is that this only shows potential for leadership. Without further investigation an observer cannot determine whether or not the individual can apply those traits in the required situations.

For purposes of preliminary analysis trait based leadership theory can work well, but for decision making, there is further investigation required.

My Top 5

In order to be a great leader one must have a great base of traits to build from. Here are my top 5 (in no particular order):

1. Honest-your team must trust you and if you are not honest, that trust will never be gained.
2. Competent-if my leader is not competent and able to perform, or at least understand, the tasks that I do it takes a lot longer to gain my respect.
3. Risk-taking-this is more important to me if you are an employee of mine. With big risk comes big reward and I would want my supervisors to take INTELLIGENT risk.
4. Innovative-new ideas keep a team consistently growing and developing. If the leader is innovative he will inspire his team to be.
5. Rational-when a leader sets impossible deadlines he is setting his team up for failure. As a leader I want to always set my team up for success, and therefore must be rational when developing rules and regulations.

Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

~Abraham Lincoln 

About Me

"Adam is all about building from the ground up and achieving trust of his team through buy in. He looks for inspiration and risk taking in a leader as seen in the move Miracle as well as in leaders such as Richard Branson, who built his empire from the ground up. Adam sees innovation as a key to leadership evident in his leader choice Steve Jobs who is the "scout" of the group. Overall, Adam looks to be a team builder, who is a genuine leader, and inspires his team to be better than they are." ~ Galit Tashman

As evident in this story of my leadership style from a fellow classmate, describing another person's leadership is much easier than formulating an explanation of your own. I agree with Galit and emphasize the fact that my main focus is the buy in. Once you have your team on board, anything is possible. I also believe that a great leader is only as good as their team and that a great team is only as good as their leader. That means that you must build the great team before you get the buy in.

Through the course of this class and the use of this blog, I hope to develop myself as a leader. This can be done by observing good and bad leadership situations. To formulate the information above I completed the exercise below:


Leadership Exploration Exercise:

• Images

·      Movie Examples

o   Miracle

o   Braveheart

o   Office Space (bad examples)

·      Famous Leaders

o   Richard Branson

o   Abraham Lincoln

o   Steve Jobs

·      Values

o   Genuine

o   Risk-taker

o   Inspiring

·      Quotes

o   People are more easily led than driven.
~David Harold Fink

o   The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.
~Eric Hoffer

o   To be able to lead others, a man must be willing to go forward alone.
~Harry Truman

Context

·      The carpenter

o   An example of “the carpenter” would be Richard Branson. He is a big risk taker and two weeks ago when I heard his keynote speech he inspired me. He has built Virgin from the ground up, with each new division a culmination of his ideas. As a leader he proves that anything is possible and is currently building Virgin Hotels from the ground up.

·      The communicator

o   Most people think of Martin Luther King Jr. as an icon for inspiring masses. He was able to communicate with all types of people to pass along his ideals and eventually create an equal environment for all.

·      The scout

o   Steve Jobs is “the scout.” He has taken Apple to new heights and is constantly innovating technology. Apple has become the leaders and all others follow to that territory.