Reflection on Meeting with Guest Speaker Beth Engelking, Essay Example

Meeting with Beth Engelking, the assistant commissioner of Texas Adult Protective Services was informational and made me think about mission, motivation and the role of a leader. The speaker impressed me with advanced, clear communication skills, as well as her well outlined vision. Her work and leadership has a great impact on about 1000 employees working in adult protection. She is an expert on her field; child, family and vulnerable adult protection, worked with families, children within state organizations. She is a truly professional leader who is able to set goals, execute them, motivate people in her team and across the state, while improving the level of service provided by the government on a constant basis. She clearly has a plan, as well as a backup plan, experience in delegating responsibilities, creating and managing teams through reward and recognition. The most important aspect of leadership highlighted by her was that leaders should not be afraid of making mistakes, instead, they have to learn how to deal with them.

She also talked about the quality of humility within leadership, and the importance of managing teams with respect. Leaders who are humble are liked more by their teams, even if this means that they have to admit their mistakes. This brings out the human aspect of leaders, and people can connect with them better. Leaders pretending to be “superhumans” are inaccessible, hard to communicate with, and not commit to. On the other hand, humility enhances communication, team learning and results in lower turnover. While the leadership roles associated with assertiveness and effective management, organization skills are still needed, the attitude of humility does create better results in learning, collaboration, process improvement and better overall results through learning and growing together, enabling employees to empower themselves.