Can individual can have significant impact on an organization through his or her actions, beliefs, or failures?

I believe an individual can have a significant impact on an organization through his or her actions, beliefs, or failures. I will answer this question by stating my opinion on how I view the importance of being in touch with my actions, beliefs, and shortcomings and how my leadership can impact others.

An unknown author once stated:

“Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”

I believe that once I have gone from thoughts to words and then words into actions. I form habits. My habits will become the way I am judged by others because in general, people are judgmental, and they judge by what they see. If people disagree with their perceived judgment of me, this could affect how they interact with me as a project manager. Their reaction might be to not fully adhere to the project goals and objectives because they do not believe in me as their leader. By not adhering to the project goals and objectives a project may not become successful. An unsuccessful project can impact an organization's profit and loss, influence future projects, and cause me to lose my job.

I definitely have my own set of beliefs. A belief system based on proper morals, education and experiences is crucial to making me who I am, and I should always follow my beliefs. A problem will occur when I am inflexible in my beliefs. To avoid this, I follow Stephen Covey's statement of "first seek to understand and then to be understood." Other people can sense when I am being inflexible, and not listening to what they have to say. This could cause them to feel their opinions are not important, that they are being judged, and make them hesitant to share their opinions, feelings, or suggestions on a project. Without question when this happens a team’s ability to perform successfully will be diminished.

I believe my "failures" are never failures. I believe people spend too much time on the definition of that word, and if they feel like they failed, they will either be ove serious on projects, or scared of them. I take the approach that if I failed in a project than at least I learned what not to do in a particular situation and use that knowledge as a baseline for future projects. This makes me more confident going forward, and this confidence is noticeable to others. Confidence in me will instill confidence in others, and my future projects will have a better chance of success.

I believe a proper leader will have emotional intelligence and be able to address their actions, beliefs, and failures similar to the examples I gave above. If a leader can manage their own actions, beliefs, and failures this ability will impact their teams and as Anthony Mesino states, "PMs that master emotional intelligence will set themselves apart from other PMs."