Yet Another, Armstong Essay (Leadership Mistakes!!)

[SedyandIknowit]

Sooo... yeah. I finally finished (Correction: drafted) my essay. I wrote it and THEN looked at the critique forms, and noticed my introduction didn't quite line up and now I don't know what to do. My topic is Leadership Mistakes and What I Learned From Them. I started out by telling just one story and then wrote three things I learned from it. Now I've put a proper introduction in and the paragraph with the story in it is just sitting there.... awkwardly. hahaha what should I do?

Word count: 433 (With title)


Mistakes Are Your Tools for Success
   Like the rising sun, making mistakes is inevitable.  As a leader, you can use these mistakes to learn and better yourself to become a greater leader. After all, we learn more from failures than from successes. One of the mistakes I made as a leader happened day three of encampment when my flight was in the barracks. I could hear them singing and laughing while they pulled on their boots, combed their hair and made their bunks. Thinking of the previous day's perfectly made bunks I thought, "Oh, they've got this down." I spent most of the morning flight time chatting with the other staff instead of watching my cadets. A precious twenty minutes later I strode into barracks expecting to find the bunks made and the cadets dressed but instead found I was utterly mistaken; nothing was finished.
   When I looked at the half made bunks and the cadets running around with their hair still undone, I realized what I did wrong. I learned three valuable lessons from this error.  First, assumptions made about the abilities of your followers might not be valid. Invalid assumptions may be disappointing or even worse, catastrophic. You cannot simply leave your followers to themselves and expect them to behave and act the same way as when you were there, until they are well trained. Often people will take advantage of their authority's absence and do something they want to do, rather than the things they should do.
   Second, I realized there is no room for arrogance in leadership. When my flight won the Honor Flight Award the previous two days, I thought they could easily do it again. In my arrogance I did not listen to or watch precisely how my flight was doing. I looked at how they had performed in the past instead of how they were performing in the present.
   Finally, I learned that as a leader you should constantly put the needs of your people before your own desires. One reason I left them was because I would rather have spent the time chatting with the rest of the staff outside than watching my cadets like a hen pecking at her chicks.  It does not matter if you are not having fun or you are uncomfortable; you should always put your follower's needs first.
   Leadership is a difficult and complicated art; we will often fail and make mistakes along the way. You can let your mistakes defeat you, or you can study them and learn from them. Use them as a tool and conquer your failures. 


Advice would be appreciated.... =)

[coudano]

You know what, I liked it.
I think the mistakes and lessons are valid, and salient.
And this is an approach to this essay that I haven't seen yet (refreshing).

My main feedback for you is that the bottom paragraphs (3rd and 5th in particular) are pretty anemic.  They are sort of non-paragraphs, actually.  If anything I would consider finding ways to expound on those (good) ideas a little bit.  However, it could come at the cost of your setup in the introduction...   Tough balance.

Also i'm curious, since you referred to it, did the flight not win honor flight that day (?)  It doesn't sound like they did, but you never said.

No glaring grammatical errors...
I never count the title, or the name/rank/date in word count.

Watch yourself when you translate this into the speech.  You'll need to expound on this quite a bit to meet the minimum speech time window, it reads VERY quickly, if you just read it, you'll be done in about 2 minutes...

[SedyandIknowit]

Thanks for taking the time to review my essay Coudano! I appreciate it.

I did have a bit more difficulty with the last few paragraphs. You can tell just by looking at it that they get smaller as they go on.  I'll see what I can do..

Haha, my flight did not win Honor Flight that day...I think especially after the other flights heard our name the first two days, they really brought the competition up so we were not even close. We didn't get it any of the other days either, nor for the whole encampment. But that's fine, they got their stuff together (And so did I... ) and we came back and won the white glove award.
Would it be practical to include any of that in my essay? I looked at it and I could maybe put in the conclusion....

   Leadership is a difficult and complicated art; we will often fail and make mistakes along the way. You can let your mistakes defeat you, or you can study them and learn from them.  When I realized I erred, I was attentively lenient with my flight, I stifled my pride and I kept my flight's needs before my own.  When I improved myself, my flight also improved and later won the White Glove and Inspection Awards. Use your mistakes as a tool and conquer your failures. 

I am a bit nervous for the speech (Okay a lot nervous). But I do like the subject I chose and I feel comfortable with it. Again, thanks for the advice!

[coudano]

Trust but verify