Knowing my style of leadership from an INTERVIEW.

Recently I went for an interview in NCS, for a network engineer position. There is a few questions which I would never expected. One of the questions is about my leadership. Because from my resume he understand that at a young age, I am expose to leading people and in the army I am an officer, plus during the interview he asked me what I am proud of, and I answered leadership. So he asked me what is my leadership style and what do I see myself as what kind of leader I am.

Guess how would I answer this question. I said that, from secondary school I am from the Boys Brigade and expose to leadership at a very young age, I am currently also an active officer. In the army, I proved my leadership skills again by performing as a SAF officer, leading a platoon.

So I felt that time a leader should be able to change according to situation, as for me when I am leading boys, I would use more autocratic, because they are not yet mature and you always need to discipline them, and guide them. In the army I would use a mixture of democratic and more autocratic, because they are more mature and can ask what is their thinking and what they can suggest in that situation, the autocratic thing is due to my rank, and my needs to command them, plus the army environment would always need to decide immediate and that leads to less time in gathering information or opinion.

I felt that a leader should always kept learning and humble himself in all situation, as I say a good leader in not in leading, is good in listening and sensitive to his men and commander. To listen to men needs quite a number of experience and observation skills, is often more difficult than listening to your commander.

Keep on learning will help to increase the experience of the leader, so that next time he can have more ingredients to do a better concoction of leadership for that situation.