Personal Experience on Influence of a Leader

I was once engaged in a voluntary project in our local community. The project manager in charge of all the activities and operations of the project was a very outgoing leader. I can say that I truly envied his leadership style and this had a positive influence on the leadership style I so much believe in. The project manager was a great communicator and relayed the message about the vision of the project in a concise and clear manner. He always said that “You cannot just be on board the ship, you need to understand our destination for you to appreciate the voyage.” While at first, I took these words as a usual prep talk, I later got an opportunity for a one-on-one interactive session with the project manager where I asked him to expound on what he meant by those words. I can now understand that this man was a visionary leader who applied transformative leadership. After 3 months into the project, I made a quick assessment of the way things were run and realized how seamless things were being done, with the perfection of an orchestra. It then dawned on me that the success of the orchestra is not solely on what each individual artist can do, but how well the conductor harnesses the synergy of the whole group. The milestones of the project were being achieved before the set deadlines and the team had a great chemistry. 

Looking back at the period when I was engaged as a volunteer for 6 months, I appreciated how much I learned about being a great leader. An important lesson I learned was every team member needs to understand the vision of the organization. This proved to be essential in reducing the internal conflicts and attaining the goals of an organization. I would describe the contribution of the project manager by stating that, “Transformation leadership works.”