Artifact 3

Narrative

In my first career, I spent 11 years serving as an officer in the United States Marine Corps and was expected to lead and develop young Marines from the moment I was sworn in. When I decided to leave the service, I transitioned into a new industry and role that required me to become an individual contributor with no direct reports assigned to me. In my capacity as the new person on the team with very little experience in the field of customer success, I utilized what Weick (2005) called a retrospective development of images to rationalize my surroundings, or sensemaking ability to find opportunities to continue leadership development without the authority or capacity I once held as a Marine. (DEL OUTCOME 1).  

During my first six-months, I felt compelled to directly address critical gaps in the company’s culture with the CEO and ultimately helped drive the implementation of a weekly learning and development meeting where individuals can join and discuss different topics weekly. By speaking up immediately against problematic and ethical issues that were raised, I was able to seize an appropriate moment for our company to address the issues while they were happening instead of allowing them to be swept under the rug. Due to the timeliness of action, I was able to assist the company in diminishing practices that did not hold value for them. In this specific case, one of those practices was an unspoken culture of not voicing opinions in open meetings and only discussing them internally amongst small groups of employees (DEL OUTCOME 2). Johnson (2019) discussed the shadows of leadership or the ways in which leaders ethically falter due to factors like abuse of power, mismanagement of information, and misplaced or broken loyalties. I found in this position that some of these factors were brought to light because of my outside perspective and ability to provide unbiased feedback as a new member of the team. The ethical standards I have held myself to for an entire career before leaving my military service have helped build the resiliency and courage to assist my new company in development habits that will ultimately develop better leaders and people from our staff that might otherwise have been overlooked.