There’s one topic I enjoy discussing…Leadership. This is a never-ending topic of discussion in which I have had some long debates that typically does not end in a solution but rather a mutual respect and some great tools of leadership styles shared amongst adults. Thirty years in the Marine Corps has catapulted by experience with leadership into a realm I had no idea I would enter.
I didn’t even call myself a leader until the Marine Corps told me I was. We learned and memorized Leadership Traits and Leadership Principles in bootcamp. These traits and principles are known to be the tenants that guide military leaders throughout their career. I’m not going to name them all during this blog but know, they will forever be engrained in my memory through repetitive chants. They are the basis of my foundational leadership…So I thought.
As I truly began to understand leadership and how to apply the traits and principles, I realized that I was a leader before the Marine Corps, I just never affirmed it. Born and raised in New York City, leadership was not a word that I used often and definitely not a word I used to describe myself. I remember, just wanting to survive. You simply did what you had to do. As I reflect back on my youth, I now know a lot of my foundational leadership came from my mother. She led by example, and like all children, I watched, I learned and I mimicked.
My mother was not an entrepreneur but she was the CEO of our household. She led through firmness, fairness and compassion. Every leadership trait and principle I would later learn, my mother already possessed. Nobody ever taught her how to be a leader, she simply put people first (her children, and her family). She was a natural leader, genuinely invested in the growth of her household and worked tirelessly to ensure its success. By the time of her untimely death, my natural leadership instincts kicked in. The Marine Corps had not prepared me for some of the hardest moments of my life, my mother did.
If you have not looked at yourself as a leader…CLAIM IT!!! Too often we don’t remind ourselves that we are all leaders. However, life experiences and knowledge will evolve the natural leaders in all of us and determine the strength of your leadership.
