Post #5

It was very interesting to see the differences between how I perceive myself and my leadership reputation and how others do. The three people I chose were two of my close friends and my older sister, all of whom know me rather well. However, their responses were significantly different than both how I perceived myself and how I thought others perceived me. Many of the flaws and things that I could work on that I thought were apparent to everyone were not perceived by my friends and sister. I believe that one of the reasons for this is that one of my strengths is being deliberative. Since I tend to be careful with both my words and actions, I usually do not show chinks in my leadership armor, so to speak. Another potential reason is that we tend to be harsher critics of ourselves than of others. While it is probably true that I am occasionally egotistical or pessimistic, the people close to me realize that those characteristics are not emblematic of my leadership style. Alternately, I had never really thought of myself as something like “committed to a common vision” until one of my friends brought up several instances in which I fit exactly that description. This exercise made me realize that my idea of how others perceive me is not necessarily how others actually perceive me. Of course some of the traits lined up, such as intelligent, well informed, or sarcastic, but many of my ideas on how others perceived me came from how I perceive myself. This lets me know that I should strive to get more feedback in both a professional and personal environment, so that I can both better myself as a leader and have a better idea as to how others perceive me as a leader and as a friend.