Are You a Leader?

I attended a career workshop on campus where someone was invited to talk about leadership and management in the working world. It has been some time since I have read through my notes but every statement he made during that workshop made absolute sense. Below is a listing of what he called "Signs of Management":

Interest in Building an Organization

This sounds like I'm talking about building a business but this statement applies to any aspect of your career. This can refer to you building a club on campus and staking out a leadership role to be able to make an impact. For me, in the working world, this means to building a specialized group of team members that are geared towards solving unique project problems. Any good manager should show interest in building either a team, organization, or practice into something more and feel a sense of accomplishment.

Organization

Any good manager needs to know how to organize and I for one can attest to that. When you're managing multiple project, a million things can go on at once and you need to be very organized to be able to stay on top of everything. Currently, I am continuously updating time lines and budgets to ensure that my projects are meeting their targets. These skills came from being in a demanding curriculum while in college. Multiple homework assignments, midterms, and extracurricular requirements forced me to be organized and obtain good time management skills.

Strategic Thinker

In the end, its all about the big picture. A good manager can step back away from the details and look at the whole to ensure that what they're building is meeting existing goals. This is a skill that is hard to obtain while still in college but everyone can always step back and look at the big picture. Maybe you're working on a class project with other students and have been working out the details for a long time. Take a step back and evaluate how the project as a whole is performing. You may be working on one part of the project and your classmate is working on another but when you come together to write the final report and you finally realize that nothing agrees and you've wasted time and effort. You don't want to be in a situation where the details look great but the pieces don't come together.

Like to See Each Others Succeed

This was something that was not obvious to me when I was in college but experience has shown me that if the people you manage succeed you'll succeed. How does this apply in college? If you're running a club on campus and have spent the time and effort to build it, you'll need someone else to run the show when you've graduated. This passage of knowledge and mentorship is an important part of maintaining the life of any organization or business. I always make sure that I teach what I know to my team members so that they can learn to take on projects of their own. This allows me continued advancement as there are others trained to replace me.

Leadership is an important skill to develop because let's face it, the only way to advance your career is to be in a management position.