When does Leadership Start to Grow?

As the end of this training is coming, I think making a summary of what I’ve learned and achieved can not only helps my instructor know how I’ve done with this course, but also helps myself recall what I’ve learned so as to strengthen my application of the Carnegie principles in the future.

Self-confidence—I’m a man with natural confidence based on my personality and experience—under normal circumstance. As I said in the last session, I didn’t expect I would need to do so much talking in this training, just like many other classes I’ve taken in my life. So in the first few sessions, I felt embarrassing to open my mouth because I’m having orthodontic braces, especially when I did one-on-one talking with another classmate. But it seems people cared little about or just ignored my mouth, so no one ever asked about it. Thanks to that, gradually I worried less and less about the metal strings inside my mouth and never hesitated to speak. With such greater confidence, I can really stand up and make my point to others even with difficulty or embarrassment.

People skills—My Enthusiasm Commitment is to smile and greet colleagues I meet in the office, especially those I do NOT know. There’re around 450 people in our company, there must be someone I don’t know, but still I think we should treat them as equal, we should also smile and say hi to them when we meet. And that’s what I did. E.g. there’s a newly established team in our company. Every time I pass by the corner of their desks, I smile at anyone who has eye contact with me. And I even made friend with a guy called X. We had lunch together, he told me what their team does and I shared with him what my team does and my 3-year experience in this company. It’s really helpful to know more about people around you and expand your people connection.

Communication skill—Applying some of the Carnegie principles really help me in some communication cases, especially for working with my US counterpart. He does his job, no less, but no more. In our job the work is mostly initiated by our partner in the retail side, so if my counterpart is not that proactive, our job might not be done well or efficiently. There was a case I really needed my partner to send me an important list of information, but what I received is an out-of-office notice because he’s got flu. After he returned to office, I didn’t just send him an email; I made a phone call to him. In the phone call, I didn’t go straight to business, I started with appreciation that he carried on his work even with the flu, and asked how he was feeling, had he got any recovery. Words tell meaning, but not so much emotion. What I heard in the phone from my partner was his happy tone after I expressed my appreciation and caring to him. Then when we talked about business, the conversation went very smooth.

Leadership—Being voted to be the team leader/president is the biggest achievement I got in this training, not that much because of the honor, but the opportunity for me to practice leadership, something I don’t really have back in my dept. For every team contest, I always provided a guideline to my team members, encouraged each one to make their point and assign different people to follow up accordingly. And I’ll always remember the quotation I read in the training handbook—Successful leadership is not by authority, but influence. My experience in this training proved that I have good potential in leadership and I’ll keep working on it whenever I find other opportunity in the future.

Besides what I’ve learned, I think more important for the future is to carry on what I’ve been practicing based on the Carnegie principles. This training is really a life-time benefit. And I think by influencing others, I can also help others improve themselves as well which would make this training more fruitful.

GOAWAYCOMEBACK COMMENTS:

Leadership awakens and starts to grow

When we forget to impress others

When we reach out to strangers

When we care about people before business

When we serve instead of order

When we give instead of take

When we listen instead of boast

When we ask instead of preach

A great leader is not born to be

But grow to be

卡内基训练简介：https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8QOnBFFWDU0