To Our Fallen: Personal Values with Job Performance

A manager’s personality has everything to do with performance; for his/her ideology is a controlling mechanism that influences behavior and job performance. All management styles vary in degree, despite this, most styles usually mirror a person’s personality and motivation.

In my time, I’ve had a share of managers and born leaders. One individual, specifically, I’ll never forget. Why, because she was human, a great friend, and followed a code that if “you want followers to follow you, you have to follow them first.” This truly was an inspiration.

She always had a willingness to learn, either from personnel, or from people above her. Similarly, she was humble and possessed a knowledgeable expertise of any working environment, which fed the deftness of her precision. Possessing the ability to succeed in any multi-tasked and multiple structured working environment, her versatility unlocked a door of envied job functions.

In a supervisory position, she was always straight to the point, using descriptive and non-descriptive communication skills to accomplish any task. Although a leading ranking individual, she exercised the functions of a team player and a team leader. Regardless of the function she performed, she placed a large amount of effort to bond together a team of members and tasks. I’ll never forget her saying, “my leadership is encouraged by the growth of values inside my family.” With the support of her family and the interaction of a valuable family oriented culture, she was able to reflect the values she learned at home, throughout the workforce.

“I am the way I am because of my family…I believe that the values I teach and learn at home are the same values I echo upon on our troops and the captain, and also the other way around…what I teach and learn at this command is what I teach and learn at home.” Her accomplishments of daily tasks were always founded from the seed of family responsibility and beyond a doubt, her great personality and honor. The saying goes, “never judge a book by its cover.”

In spirit, in order to really understand a person’s values, one has only to communicate and open an ear. If she were still here today, I'm sure she would agree. To our fallen in Iraq, God Bless.