Authentic Self Delving deep within one's own mind provides opportunity for personal growth and this intention may be useful in attaining potential. Accumulating certain valuable personal skills throughout a lifetime has given me an opportunity to reflect on these experiences and summarize them in an educational manner, useful for gaining understanding into these practices. Leadership seems at times a very interesting phenomenon that has varying consequences and originations. My own personal leadership skills, I believe, are a clear and true reflection of my authentic self and provide a useful and cathartic method of displaying this authentic self towards others. The purpose of this essay is to explore my authentic self and describe how my authentic leadership skills are derived from this source. I will explore my strengths and weaknesses and examine how they relate to my value system and other learned behaviors. I will also discuss how I have improved on my behaviors through the use of different techniques and methods in order to understand higher levels of leadership understanding.

Strong leadership personalities have many things in common. The ability to create a vision and inspire others to follow this vision is perhaps the strongest and most valuable leadership trait available. Throughout my experiences, I believe I've developed an ability to create a vision to inspire others. This, I feel, is a personal strength of my leadership self and has proven to be beneficial in all aspects of my life. My family life requires me to set the standards for all types of behavior including financial, moral and ethical amongst others. Leading one's family is the first step in becoming a total leader and achieving the potential of your authentic self. This ability to set standards and create a level of expectations has translated well for me into my professional life as well.

Another leadership strength I believe I possess deals with the ability to gain new competencies in various circumstances. Competence is a leadership trait that has served me well throughout my careers. Having an open mind and welcoming new ideas into certain situations brings about new learning opportunities contributing to any single persons confidence levels for what is required of them. Having the ability and confidence to learn new ideas and having a discipline system to learn new ideas creates an environment where challenges are more welcome and confidence surges. Understanding myself and how my own mind works has allowed me to soar on to new heights of learning because I had the courage to welcome a new idea that I had previously may have held some bias towards. Staying naive also helps develop new levels of competence and does not let your personal ego get in the way of attaining pure and undistorted understanding.

Discipline is an overriding fact that will help maintain and guide oneself into the right action. Discipline is often associated with painful and unwanted activities, but I believe discipline should be welcomed more within everyone's personal life. Staying disciplined in any particular activity mostly provides great results. I've seen this in my golf game, in my ability to read and understand new ideas as discussed before, and improving my desire to attain the most within my professional career as well. Leaders need to be disciplined in order to have others follow them and an undisciplined chief will always be exposed. By practicing discipline in all aspects of my I life, I have found other' as to be more responsive to my opinions and behaviors due to the hard work and determination I exhibit.

A leadership weakness of mine deals with my tendency to dwell on the past too much. I feel it is useful to forgive but not to forget. This is however more difficult to practice than it is to proclaim. Regret tends to produce a result where I second guess my best decisions. Also, adding stress and discomfort to my present situation...

Keeping in mind that I am often too hard on myself is helpful in approaching my weakness in this area. It's important that I remember that I am human and I will make mistakes but I should not consider my errors to be too much to overcome. Remembering the important lessons from the past is what I need to focus on and not worry so much about the things that have been out of my control and will remain out of my control most likely forever. Finding this balance is essential in achieving new heights of leadership development and displaying one's authentic true self.
Values are what make up one's authentic self and help construct its outward identity. I believe values are dynamic ideas that are relative in nature but serve a common purpose as well. Individual values are indicative of society's values which requires the individual who desires to improve one's leadership skills to purely examine where from they would draw inspiration. Values are also hard to define and not easily communicated between individuals and groups. It is important for the leader of any one group to establish group values if they are interested in others following their lead. Creating a vision where these values are explicitly and implicitly practiced has proven to be a successful method of organization in my experiences.

My values are derived from many different sources. My upbringing and my family has provided me with a base of values that have served me well throughout my life so far. Treating others as you would like to be treated remains a core value for me that I learned from my parents and family. Maintaining this balance and having strong consideration for others remains a core value for me. However, I do have different values than I did five or ten years ago. Today, I valued different things that I did when I was a child or a teenager. This constant change reflects personal growth and the ability to adapt and overcome certain prejudices that have been possibly misunderstood in my younger days.

Strong leadership values should include, justice, fairness and truth. Keeping a balanced attitude were others can be expected to be treated fairly is essential for anyone attempting to lead a group of people. It is most likely impossible to be fair to everyone all the time, but valuing fairness and equity, especially within the group will serve the leader well in creating a disciplined and well ordered human machine. Discretion and special circumstances should be treated as such and not abused or overused to create artificial relationships which may prove to be detrimental to the group in the long run.

Seeking feedback on my leadership behaviors has proved to be beneficial for me as well. Speaking with not only my friends about certain instances where were their review would be helpful, but also speaking to respected elders within my family and community to receive useful information to apply to my leadership skills. Self-assessment using leadership tests have also served me well as they have pointed out different ideas and careers which may be applicable to my certain leadership style. These feedback tools provide another method of valuation and self-discovery. Without seeking the help of others, I will often fall into the trap of believing my own greatness and realize that constructive criticism is key in keeping my attitude in a realistic state. I will continue to use different and new methods of feedback to help continue with my development and ultimately reach my leadership potential.

Selecting a role model to base my leadership style upon is a difficult task because of the problems dealing with relativness and individuality. While I respect the courage of individuals that serve within the military or perform other dangerous selfless acts, I realized…