Leadership Means Taking the Initiative to Lead - Essay Example

I was able to show my capabilities in taking initiative when our director went out of the country at the same time that our team had a crucial project deadline to meet. Ordinarily, the marketing team engages with the referrals and discusses clients’ financial goals to work with our company. After this, the necessary information is relayed to the solutions team, which is headed by a director who delegates appropriate tasks to specialists from all areas of financial planning and works closely with the proposal coordinator, who integrates different parts of the illustrations from each corresponding specialist and finalize them into a coherent plan.

With the director out of the country, my teammates simply put everything on hold. Realizing that we run the risk of losing a client with no one left in charge, I decided to step up and put our team together. I called up my team for a meeting to come up with a plan for action to complete the project. I delegated relevant tasks to each specialist and constantly met with them to follow up on their progress.
I asked each specialist to keep the client’s goal in mind, cross-check each other’s work and monitor the work’s integration into the presentation as a whole. I also decided to let our team work closely with the marketing team because they were the ones who would take over the next phase of the project.

Needless to say, the director was impressed at how I proactively attended to the case in his absence. He recognized the deep understanding that I had of the mechanics of our company.
I consider this particular moment crucial in my development because it made me realize that the success of any endeavor will lie largely on the leader who is able to recognize that the project’s success is actually dependent on the performance of the team as a whole. Read More