Category: Leadership Skills

As I considered the month’s final blog post, I recalled lifeFocus, a book that I picked up while at FamilyLife’s “Weekend to Remember” with Jennifer in 2005.  The book’s subtitle is “Achieving a Life of Purpose & Influence.”  The author, Jerry Foster, wrote this in my book, “Enjoy your personal journey of influence (Romans 12:1-2).”  That’s my fifth leadership tip – “Enjoy the Journey.”

Interestingly, I had forgotten that I posted a summary of this book before the school year started!  So, I obviously needed the reminder…

My last post focused on my 90 year-old grandmother, Mano.  Foster encourages his readers to imagine this scenario:  see yourself in your nineties…in your ideal setting.  What do you hope you could say about the life you have experienced?  What would you like to see on the bottom line of your experience portfolio as your life draws to a close?

You can’t change your past, but you can change your future.  You can commit to and take steps toward acquiring true personal wealth. Achieving great success is usually a process that takes years of putting in time, working hard, climbing the ladder, and earning our stripes. We must enjoy every step of the journey instead of always focusing on the prizes at the end.

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One of my leadership tips is “Do what you love…love what you do.”  That approach has served me well for more than 20 years.  In fact, my career started as a GS-3 Cooperative Education Student Trainee (NASA doesn’t even have GS-3s!) with the Department of Health & Human Services’ Regional Personnel Office in Dallas, Texas.  Following that tour, I worked for their Assistant Secretary for Personnel Administration in Washington, D.C.  From those experiences, I learned that I wanted a career in Human Resources, so I pursued a Master’s degree in HR management from Texas A&M University then became a Graduate Cooperative Education Student with NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in 1995.

Now, just a little more than 20 years later, I’ve been promoted as JSC’s fifth HR Director and recently became a member of the Federal Government’s Senior Executive Service (SES).  As the keystone of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, the SES was established to “…ensure that the executive management of the Government of the United States is responsive to the needs, policies, and goals of the Nation and otherwise is of the highest quality.”

Last year, I learned that NASA’s Associate Administrator (the highest ranking career senior executive at NASA) required new SES members to read The Shadow Side of Power: Lessons for Leaders.  So on Easter weekend 2015, I read it.  Now, as I prepare for my SES orientation, I thought it would be a good idea to review what I learned…

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