Thursday, June 23, 2011

The importance of great leadership

While convalescing last week I was thinking about how important it is to have strong, supportive leadership in the workplace. As a newbie in any career, you rely on supervisors, managers and superiors to mentor, guide and lead. Under the right conditions you can flourish in your role and be rewarded. Under not so right conditions your self esteem and sense of purpose can plummet. In my worklife so far I've experienced both. I've worked in places where I didn't feel I could speak up and voice an opinion, where hard work is not acknowledged or rewarded, where new ideas are discouraged, where every move is scrutinised, or worse, where you are completely ignored and disregarded. Luckily those time are behind me because where I am now is the complete opposite. I am so grateful to be in an environment that is supportive, encouraging, innovative and engaging. I feel like I'm part of a team that includes all levels of staff with many different backgrounds, talents and interests. I've learned so much from all my supervisors and managers (and the whole team) about communicating, working together, planning, organising and teaching. I know I might not always be so lucky, but I hope I've learned enough from current and past experiences to realise when I'm not flourishing and to move on before my self esteem plummets. Of course there are good days and bad days in any workplace. But hopefully the good outweigh the bad. If they don't it could be an indication that it's time to spread your wings elsewhere.

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