I currently holds an Associate of Arts degree in art, and have taken twelve plus hours of early childhood education classes.  I am also a proud and happy mother of a 19 month old daughter.  This May, I will receive my Bachelors of Arts degree in General Studies.  I hope to find a job substitute teaching, or working in a day care center to get my foot in the door and save money for my future plans.

My five year plan includes opening my own business.  The business I want to open is not focused upon making money.   My hopes are simply to one day run a child care center.  Not one out of my home, but a nice sized business in a building I will hopefully own.  I want to have between ten to twenty employees depending on the amount of children and licensing requirements as well as my demographic location.  All of my employees will be educated with the appropriate degrees and certifications needed to do their jobs legally, professionally, and more importantly with confidence and competence. 

The ideal leadership style for me is a democratic one.  This style of leadership will allow me to participate like all the other employees under me.  I hope to let others under me help make decisions concerning important things.  I will have control and still have the responsibility to make the final decisions, but with the advice and help of my employees.  I believe running a child care center will allow me to be the type of leader who participates and facilitates. 

I will be able to participate by taking care of the children alongside my employees.  I will be interacting with my employees regularly; this will allow us to maintain productive, colleagial relationships.  This way they feel comfortable with me and will offer their views and opinions that may help to run things more smoothly.  I will be interacting with children — that is the whole point of opening a child care center.  I will also be interacting with the parents of the children.  I will need to make rules for everyone to include the parents, as well. 

A problem could easily occur while trying to juggle rules for the kids, the employees, and the parents.  I will have to have help with some things.  I am not a huge fan of paper work but running a childcare center requires considerable recordkeeping.  This includes schedules, time sheets, and tax information.  Individual files on children are to be kept as well.  I will probably have to hire someone to help me with my recordkeeping and filing.  Most likely, this be the same employee who makes up the schedules, as well.  I will also have to be strict about cleaning requirements in the child care center, inside and outside, especially in the restrooms and on the playground.

I will be working close to my employees and will require feedback and good communication on a regular basis.  This will allow me to lead by example and at the same time get to know the bright individuals I hired to work for me.  The best bosses I ever had were sitting beside me, not standing behind me, looking over my shoulder.  I will also give my employees their personal space.  I will trust in their abilities — I will have to, I cannot work 24 hours a day.  I will give my employees opportunity to provide activity ideas for the kids.  Because they are qualified employees, I will also let them make judgment calls when the situations arise and they are within my employee’s range of abilities and experiences. 

Everyone I hire will know, or be trained, regarding how to handle emergency situations, and everyone should be able to make logical decisions about small problems that could happen in order to work for me.  If a problem occurs when I am not available, my employees will be able to call me at any time, and will have access to all emergency numbers.

Running a business is difficult enough when things go well; and, when employees don’t show up for work it can cause major challenges to the business.  I plan on making it easy for employees to work together to fix any scheduling problems.  This will delete the need for unnecessary call ins and excuses, keeping trust higher in the work place.  Trading shifts with position qualified employees will be encouraged, so people get the best schedule for their needs.  Call-ins will be reprimanded with a three strikes and you’re out rule.  Termination being the end outcome, but not the desired one.  In a business with so many regulations to follow given by the Government it is necessary to run a tight ship.  To balance out the strikes, I will also give bonuses to those employees who never call in.    

I don’t believe I would have any kind of problem with incompetence or confidence with any of the  employees under me.  Those kinds of people do not thrive in a child care.  I would also have a strict screening process.  Child management and care is only for some types of people.  Besides, kids are complex and dynamic.  If I made a mistake and hired a person who was not confident one of two things would happen.  First, hopefully, they would grow confidence because the environment promotes growth.   Or, if that did not happen the employee would quickly be let go. 

The process I choose to manage my child care center is probably not the way I would run a factory or large corporation.  As an example, I would not be able to trust my employees to make their own schedule if I was running a large hotel chain.  Most likely, I also would not be making the beds or cleaning the bathrooms if I owned a hotel chain (probably would if I only owned one or two hotels).  Another example where I may be similar in my leadership style is a catering company; it is more comparable because of the intimacy and size of the business. 

I realize that opening a child care center is a lot to juggle so I will probably find a business partner, if possible.  My cousin is also interested in the same things as me, childhood education and art.  She wants to run an art therapy center for children with disabilities.  I think this is a wonderful idea.  We have discussed going into business together, we just have to choose the direction we want to go.  Though she has the same goals as me, she has different leadership traits than I do.  I think her organizational skills would complement my gap in this area.  She has the structured administrator attitude about work.  Both my cousin and I will probably require more training and education before attempting to open any child care center or an art therapy center by ourselves.

My cousin and I are both goal driven at this point in our lives.  We know what we want and will do what it takes to get there.  Honestly I don’t know if I could do it on my own.  My positive leadership skills still need polishing, and I have negative traits, like poor organizational skills that may hold me back from obtaining my dreams.  I think my cousin could be the complimentary partner I need to fulfill my dreams of running any kind of center for children.