Reflecting on my past professional career, I have several managers and leaders who have both been extremely knowledgeable and I have maintained those traits while others have been completely unreasonable and have driven many employees away. The definition of a leader that I was drawn to is "a good leader spearheads change, accepts challenge and takes risks even if those risks lead to failure for the greater good." (Lush, 2019). For a manager, they are to ensure tasks are completed, and resources are used effectively and efficiently with a positive financial outcome. "Leaders and managers may exist at opposite ends of a spectrum, but they're on the same team and complement one another." (Lush, 2019).

For this discussion, I will be using my first manager when I got into the elevator industry. It was a small company where two individuals from trade started a business together named Steve and Mike (two different sides of the spectrum. Steve's (the name we are using) strengths as a leader are that he was very ambitious, knowledgeable, had a memory of an elephant, and could sell anything. He had grand visions of the business and grew the business quickly and became very stable. His leadership attributes matched many of the definitions from the weekly resources of a leader but lacked effective management skills. The management attributes were that he was high-strung, constantly yelling, consistently negative when 100% of the information was not available, and instilled fear (whether it was true or not) into everyone in the office. As a manager, he followed the thought that "management protects itself and key people, not the regular employees or team members." (Kumle, J., & Kelly, N. J, 2018).

Steve did have several positive effects on the business such as financial gains (that were passed along to employees), constant growth, and stability, which was his main vision for the company. In my opinion, there was a need for both management and leadership from him since this is a private business and he had to ensure that the company he built would remain and profit. The skills as a manager he had were very harsh and delivered with emphasis (times I would be reprimanded for hours at a time).

With all this said, there were lessons I learned that I still follow to this day. The first lesson I learned was the value of customer service and communication. I remember a statement that he made which was "We treat our customers like Nordstrom and everyone else treats them like Walmart." We provide services above and beyond and have a transparent line of communication whether the information we are delivering is good or bad. The second lesson is to know your product and customers. Being knowledgeable of the products you are supporting, who the customer is, and what they need is all that is required. A customer has a name and face, not just a number or a dollar sign

Respond to two or more colleagues in one or more of the following ways:

• Ask a clarifying question about the leader your colleague selected and/or their leadership behaviors.
• Share an insight from your colleague's analysis of how the leader affected the business environment or from the lessons they described.
• Offer an alternate perspective on your colleague's analysis.