Leadership Blog #2

Ethics In Work
What?
I work as a leasing agent at a student apartment complex in Gainesville. Every day I give tours and work with future residents to sign leases and select where they will be living. This takes a great amount of ethics when working with contracts that cause students to take out loans and use their income or their parents money to live. I have to be sure to thoroughly explain the lease contract with the student and make sure that they know when signing the lease that they are executing a binding contract that locks them in for 12 months at our apartment complex. Even though it is my job to sign as many leases as possible and to keep my companies best interest in mind, I also feel it is my responsibility to keep complete honesty with the tenant and let them know everything that they are agreeing to within the lease. I am sure not to just tell them where to sign and trick them into signing or lie to them about what they are agreeing to.
So What?
In my job as a leasing agent it is so important to remain honest and demonstrate good ethics when dealing with contracts and money. Often, money will lead to greed and the law will be broken. I want students to make sure that they know this contract is over a $7,000 purchase on housing that they are agreeing to, more than several full time students make per year. Being honest is a key trait to a successful leasing agent, because it will pay off!
Now What?
Now that I am able to practice good ethics and honesty at my current part time job, I plan to have strong ethics in my career and life. With several of the recent corporate ethics scandals, it is obvious that bad ethics will shine through if used and that it is important to remain honest and use good judgment and it will pay off. If you lie, people will find out and other people appreciate honesty and good ethics. If my company makes me question my ethics, I am confident that I will have no problem finding another job with a company that I am proud to work with.

My personality type & how it can clash!

To begin, my personality type as classified by the Meyers-Briggs scale is: ESFJ. I am an extraverted, sensing, feeling, & judging individual. As I think back to a time when my personality has conflicted with someone else's I can think of many small daily instances. However, there is one personality conflict that I have struggled with but recently learned that conflict is not always a bad thing.

Having a strong judging trait, I am definitely always the one to plan and organize anything that my friends and I do. However, I am surrounded by many people including my best friend, roommate, and boyfriend that love spontaneous unplanned occurrences or to just follow the plans made for them without contributing. Recently, for spring break my friends and I took a trip to Mexico. I made all of the plans and spent hours researching hotels, flights, and activities for us to do. I was often frustrated at having to complete all of the planning and worried about others input once we arrived in Mexico and if the people who weren't planning would be mad at the choices I had made. I was also upset when the group wouldn't give me feedback on the plans I had made. Once we got to Mexico, everyone turned out to be grateful for my hard work and planning and we had an awesome time.

From this experience, I have learned that conflict and differences in personalities aren't always a bad thing. Although I was sometimes frustrated by everyone's lack of interest in planning the trip, if others were planning I probably would have felt overpowered and left out. I also probably wouldn't have enjoyed the trip as much because I would be thinking of how my plans would have been different and in some cases (and in my eyes) better. I realized that if there are too many people planning something, some events or activities would never occur due to a lack of agreement. In my situation, I was the planner and I needed a group of people to follow my plans with me to fully enjoy the trip.

In retrospect, and since I have learned more about different personality types: some people are planned and organized and some are spontaneous and lead spastic paths. Neither of these options are wrong or right and they both have their advantages and disadvantages. If we were all the same, what a boring life we would lead. Also, as I got to know my own personality type and the traits that contribute to it, I have learned that it is important to understand other peoples needs as well. If somebody else wants to help organize, divide the responsibility and work together to plan!