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My Personal Leadership Experience

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My Personal Leadership Experience
Megan Schlafer
Transformational Leadership/LS335
November 6, 2012
Dr. Mary Weber

My Personal Leadership Experience The following paper will include a brief explanation of my occupational background, as well as a discussion of the circumstances, experiences, and people who I believe have helped my leadership ability. It will go on to explore my own experience and abilities in leadership roles, described by my viewpoints, and future ambitions related to leadership. Further detail will be examined of my leadership philosophies, style, and where I have put them into action. Lastly, I will conclude the extent to which I feel my leadership abilities are consistent with transformative leadership principles, as well as how these abilities will help me in the future. I will also discuss how I might strengthen said abilities in the present. Occupational Background I entered the workplace by the age of fourteen. I managed to get a job bussing tables at a supper club on the lake. I continued working in restaurants until the age of nineteen, moving up the ladder from busser, to hostess, and eventually settling on bartending. I liked restaurant work, for the most part. Truth be told, it was the money that kept me in the field. My experience was so narrow, that I had a hard time getting out of it. Management at this point in my life was never something that interested me; I was content just doing my job. I was immature, and did not have enough responsibility. I had a lot of terrible managers in this line of work, and I attribute that to the many reasons I wanted to get out of the hospitality industry.
My ambivalence towards careers changed when I eventually enrolled in the local community college, University of Wisconsin Washington County. By this time I was twenty-one years old, with the hopes of pursuing a

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