3 Years Later

3 years ago, I was accepted into the Lockheed Martin Leadership Institute. 3 years ago, I was nervous, excited and wishing I hadn’t turned in that application. 
3 years ago, I was a sophomore in college ready to conquer the world. I was eager. I was over involved. I was looking at the senior members of the institute thinking, “wow, I wonder if that will ever be me.” Well 3 years have passed and here I am, the girl I didn’t know I had in me.” 
When I sat down to think about stories I could share with you, hundreds flooded into my mind but more important than who I was with and what we were doing, was the one thing that linked every story together. What every story had in common was transformational leadership. These people make me confident. They make me feel like I could take on any challenge and achieve anything. They make me feel proud to know them. 
Through intensive study and reflection the Lockheed Martin Leadership Institute has transformed my leadership awareness, including my awareness of myself, my awareness of others and my awareness of leadership in business. Awareness involves not only the knowing something or being conscious of its existence, it involves understanding. Three years ago I could not have imagined the transformation of my own awareness during my leadership journey. 

The development of my personal awareness has influenced me “To set an example as a person of character and intelligence to inspire others to be the change they wish to see in the world.” This vision statement is a reflection of my core values. Not only have I been able to develop a sense of my own personal values, but I have been able to mature my own leadership personality through work in the leadership institute. It’s amazing how much you learn about yourself once you step back and reflect on your own strengths and weaknesses. When you are pushed to ask yourselves those hard questions. Unlike other groups who might read a Myers Briggs report and reflect on them during a three hour period, my peers and I have spent three years reflecting and learning about ourselves as leaders. Instead of downplaying your strengths, we have worked to enhance them and use them in our leadership style. And instead of hiding your weaknesses, we are working to embrace them and taking action to improve them. 

You may think of some certain characteristics when describing CEO’s and other great leaders, but all leadership styles may not be the same. We have done as much reflection on other people’s leadership styles as we have our own. In order to work effectively in teams, understanding and accepting differences is highly important to leadership. Being an effective leader also is highly dependent on emotional and cultural intelligence. Through workshops, presentations, and projects the leadership institute has constantly emphasized the development of these important leadership qualities. In events like Start the Trend, we have learned to address and approach difficult issues like the lack of diversity in the workplace especially in STEM fields. We broadened our cultural horizons by interacting with foreign leaders, like Jon Paul (a self-starter and head of the nonprofit Vision for Life in Rwanda), and celebrated cultural differences through the Miami meets India celebration through conversation, food, music and dancing. Throughout the past three years the Lockheed Martin leadership institute has fostered my growth in the understanding of others, especially by emanating cultural intelligence and emotional intelligence, which is highly important to instill confidence in teams and followers. 

The leadership institute also emphasizes leadership in business. We have interacted with leading business experts including Jeff Wilcox (the Vice President of Engineering and Program Operations at Lockheed Martin), Charlie Haddad (a Senior Advisor in Medicines Development and IT at Eli Lilly), Nicole Smith (a Project Manager for the Orion Testing at NASA ), and Madison Albreight (the first female secretary of State) just to name a few. Each of these leaders has brought their own unique perspective and approach to leadership development and shared their struggles and successes of their leadership development journey with us. Our second year in the leadership institute, we created our own podcast company. Working in multiple teams together to draft a business plan, created a working company management structure, interviewed guests, generated audio podcasts, and designed a website. This podcast company, Listen4Insight, allowed us to experience the forming, storming, norming and performing stages of a team that four years of college classes had not given us. Not only did we work with professionals on team performance, but we also began to look at how our skills as leaders could effectively be used in future work by learning about and creating our own strategic analysis. 

The Lockheed Martin Leadership Institute has created a learning environment that has fosters transformational leadership by developing the member’s vision, personal conviction, team confidence, and emotional and cultural intelligence. Over the past three years, I have watched the transformation of cohort four into leaders that will use their leadership development to inspire others to be leaders in their own capacities.