DSS Leadership – Assignment 6.0
Book – “Leadership from the Inside Out”

List the significant events in your life in chronological order and rate them on a scale of -10 to 10.

What do you notice about your StoryLine? What events stand out? What are the significant patterns of work, relationship, and or change that you see?

I notice that a lot of the events on my timeline happen together. Seldom is there ever one event. Several significant things occur around the same time period. When looking at my events in relation to my age and how I felt those events rated, no one time in my life is ever wholly negative or positive. There is a balance I am able to see with hide-sight and the perspective this exercise offers. A pattern which seems to emerge for me personally is that personal relationships fuel change within my career.

How have the higher ranked experiences shaped you? Your leadership? Your beliefs? Your values?

The higher ranked experiences seem to be centered around schooling, personal projects, or work. They shaped me by honing my trade skills and soft skills such as time management, collaboration, and communication. As a leader, a lot of these experiences put me in a leadership position, each event a bit more so than the last. I suppose in a way I was gradually getting my feet wet. Each event taught me something valuable about myself and others. Each event affirmed something I believed in and was striving for. Each event supported my values and made me feel fulfilled and like I was doing something positive with my life.

How have the lower ranked experiences shaped you? Your leadership? Your beliefs? Your values?

The lower ranked experiences tend to center around relationships. These events I feel had more of an impact on shaping me because I learned how to stand back up after getting knocked down. At each point, I was faced with giving up or being true to myself. In the extreme case of my mother’s death, it was the struggle of actually finding myself; my true self.

While these were undoubtedly negative experiences, they were crucial moments in my life. I had the option to take the easier route of being bitter, judgemental, and jaded, or the harder option of trying to understand and learn from the experiences I was faced with. My negative experiences showed me how I didn’t want to be, in terms of other people’s behaviors, and affirmed why I did want to be the way I chose to be.

Why is listening important? Why is communication important? Why is honesty and trust important?

These negative experiences shaped my values and beliefs more firmly and irrevocably than the positive experiences and while I may not have enjoyed them in any sense of the term, I am grateful for them. Because of these lows in my life, I have a better sense of who I am and why I am that way.

Who has most influenced you and your development?

My mom. Hands down. Without a second thought. Until the day I die my answer will always and forever be my mom.

What does your StoryLine tell you about the leader and person you are? What does it tell you about the leader and person you aspire to be?

I think my StoryLine shows that I am emotionally driven. I am connection driven. I am loyalty driven. I am caring and compassionately driven. As a leader, my efforts are centered around others. Creating events for students. Taking steps to become a trainer within my clinic. Working with younger or newer members at the dojo. I like teaching and showing people new things, cool things, things they didn’t think they could do but can.

I don’t really think I aspire to “be” anything other than myself. Events happen along the way and I make the choices I feel are appropriate and in line with my beliefs. I feel that by centering around the development of others, that my influence could potentially be far-reaching. Several of the key figures in my life have been teachers or instructors themselves. They not only affected my life but the lives of others. As we, the affected students, go about our own lives, we spread that influence to those we interact with; sometimes consciously and at other times subconsciously. We can never truly know how far reaching something as small as the comment, “I believe in you,” can be.