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Leadership Reflection

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Submitted By arcvillones
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This paper reflects on the following questions:
What do you think is your passion? Why do you say this is your passion, as it may be manifested in your personality, personal history and lineage?
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As I was reflecting on this intently, I came across this online article from Harvard Business Review where Peter Drucker, one of the most influential people in the area of modern management, talked about the topic on managing oneself. And an excerpt from this article below quite interests me the most.

“Most people think they know what they are good at. They are usually wrong. More often, people know what they are not good at—and even then more people are wrong than right. And yet, a person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weaknesses, let alone on something one cannot do at all.”

- by Peter F. Drucker, Harvard Business Review: “Managing Oneself”; http://hbr.org/2005/01/managing-oneself/ar/1

This struck me quite a bit as I found this a bit ironic, because this somehow describes how things are unravelling, particularly on the state of my profession right now, and the state of things, in general.

Well, I am not quite sure what I’m really good at. It’s not like I’m inept. It’s just that I am not sure if I’m really good at something. I’ve always engaged myself with so many things back then as my personal history reveals, as “jack of all trades, master of none” identity. For example, I have passion for creating music – composing lyrics and arranging the melody. I played rhythm/lead guitar in a local “rock” band way back my entire college days. I would say I was an average guitar player and although I sing, I am not a virtuoso. But I have friends who made a career out of it, even until now. But I never imagined myself choosing a career as a musician.

In retrospect, I never had a technical job that I fully committed myself into and poured my heart out where I truly looked forward to going every day. A lot of instances where there were days when I didn’t feel like working. Although I do look forward to excelling and making progression throughout my career, I’ve always been looking for a job where my purpose was about getting well compensated to provide for the family.

But there is only one occupation that I felt comfortable with – teaching, a profession which my mother had been her entire life. On my end, 5 years in the academe from 1997 to 2002 somehow made me feel that I was contributing to society. And I believe I am good at it. I still do teach and facilitate trainings now on the subject of project management, and I still find it a fulfilling endeavour. Indeed, teaching is a noble profession, such that when circumstances dictated that bringing up a family is a priority in 2002, I allowed myself to explore the possibility of corporate employment.

To me, it seemed that everything that I have a passion for – creating music or teaching , is either financially unstable or unattainable, and I “settled” on a career choice rather than choosing one.

However, I believe that a person’s passion shifts over time and is neither destined, nor fixed. I know I will have to shift with it in order to achieve my personal fulfilment and success. I have seen this shift, and from the pattern of events that are transpiring – working from manufacturing to information technology, then to banking – my inclination is to achieve a profession where the nature of the role will be to help people, and overall contribute to society. I will have to “manage myself where I can make the greatest contribution”, as Peter Drucker suggests. I know I will be good at whatever I end up doing, but I no longer want to do something that will not have an impact to society, even how small my contribution is.

Right now, I am passionate about pursuing careers in consulting in business and personal finance; at the same time continue on my project management training as a public trainer. I know I am good at interpersonal relationship and mentoring, where I am able to articulate ideas into simpler, understandable terms; and I am going back to what I seemed to love doing – my passion for teaching. Although it wouldn’t have much of an impact on bigger communities and society as a whole, I would like to at least be able to make a difference in the lives of individuals.

I am in the turning point of my life right now transcending from what I was to what I ought to become, using both my strengths and my passion.

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