Leadership

Leadership is the most valuable trait anyone can strive to obtain. In my opinion, there are three main aspects to making a proficient and competent leader. If a leader portrays interests in his/her subordinates life and career, shows decisiveness in both normal and abnormal situations, and has a wealth of technical knowledge, I believe the mission would get accomplished at its greatest potential; both efficiently and effectively.

First, I believe it is important being a leader to understand your subordinate. It sounds vague, however if you understand your subordinates career and life goals, as well as their personal interests, communication with him/her will become much more effective. Also understanding what they retained from tech school and basic military training is important to understand how they will perform on duty. In my personal experiences, I have dealt with individuals who did not care about work as well as did not retain any information they learned in tech school. Learning the best approach to communicate with an individual with this attitude and mentality is completely different from an individual who understands the importance of their job since tech school and want to be all they can be, so to say. So although understanding your subordinate may seem vague, it is vital to achieving the most effective form of communication with him/her.

The next trait of leadership I believe to be very important is being decisive in all situations, normal and abnormal. I bring up both situations because on a daily basis this is dealt with in my workcenter. In a normal situation and prior to getting tools to start the nights work, we usually are told where to go and what to do by our expeditor. When our expeditor is absent, we are not told where to go and what to do so, and nobody steps in to assign tasks. Having a leader step up and making simple decisions like that is just as important as abnormal situations. For example, I was tasked to take two brand new...