8. Effectively and regularly assess and adjust your leadership behaviors to more effectively meet the diverse (including cultural, socioeconomic, ethnic diversity) and changing needs of the communities/people/organizations with whom you’re interacting.

The image to the right is a picture of me out to eat with one of my flights from training. As you can see from the picture, we all look very different, and we were. Different ages, backgrounds, skin colors, and genders, but this did not stop any of us from becoming an effective team, and more so, friends. 

The United States Military is very diverse, every single person you encounter while in the military is from a different state, country, or just background in general. When I was enlisted, every conversation I had needed to be adjusted based on who I was speaking to.

I had people ranked both above me, and below me, from completely different walks of life. I had friends from foreign countries, and coworkers from different cultures. I believe that I am very effective at recognizing, and respecting diversity. 

I remember a time when I had first enlisted, there was a man who talked with his hands a lot. This is not an abnormal thing to me anymore, but at the time the way he was doing it made me feel disrespected as if he was doing it intentionally to upset me. I simply paused the conversation and spoke to him about it, and he explained that that is just how they talk where he is from, although it was different to me, I understood and moved forward from there with the understanding that he was not being disrespectful and it was simply how he communicates. 

Overall, I think I am a very accepting and understanding person. I do not judge anyone based on what they have or where they come from. I believe that everyone has struggles and these struggles have shaped us all to be who we are today, and I am not the person who is allowed to judge them based on how they have gotten to where they are or what they are doing now that they are here. When I am speaking to someone now, I first try to understand where they are coming from, see things the way they see them, and then without bias I can move forward into whatever conversation it is that we need to have.