Essay on Personal Leadership Action Plan and Report
Question
Essay on "Personal Leadership Plan" The students will reflect upon their individual learning from this subject (self-awareness, teamwork and leadership, academic and professional communication) to prepare a Personal Leadership Action Plan and Report. This Personal Leadership Action Plan and Report will be a maximum of 2000 words, including references. It will identify current strengths and areas for professional and personal development for themselves as leaders &/or team members. Information for this Personal Leadership Action Plan and Report should be gained by the participants reflecting on their own personal experiences, involvement in team activities, enhanced self-awareness and assessment exercises whether undertaken within or outside of class (such as feedback from the 360 degree questionnaire) and the reference material identified for this subject. A minimum of 4 references from this subject must be included in the preparation of this piece of assessment. The Report will consider and record: ? The student’s career journey to date; where the student thinks he/she is in their leadership journey; ? The student’s career goal; ? Identification of actions the student needs to take which would build on his/her strengths and/or minimise weaknesses in order to move towards the stated career goal; and ? What the student thinks he/she needs to do to move to the next stage in their career. The Personal Leadership Action Plan will include: ? A 1-2 page plan with a set goal; timelines; broad, realistic actions; and measurements of success. I am attaching my resume for your reference. Maybe you could use the duke of edinburghs award to show self development/ leadership etc. It should be relevant to what we learnt in class which is the following peter gronn - distributed leadership (Main guy) Great Man Theory Simon Western - Critical Leadership Negative capabilities Marshmallow experiment – kids – emotional intelligence Daniel goleman model Leadership styles Lars Sudmann speech – Leadership = too little time X People X Power Myers Briggs Indicator Implicit Associate Test Role Boundaries Implications Overview of leadership thinking. How its changed - I ve attached this file also I ve also attached a sample essay of the topic and also what they look into when scoring/ marking us. Also attaching a few slides from the class I d really like a good essay that stands out. Please argue with a few scholarly articles and agree with a few.
Answer
Introduction: The role of a leader is very crucial in an individual’s personal and professional setting. During my tenure in my professional setting, I have realized that the leaders are the ones who have the power to bring about a certain degree of change in the team and organizational setting.The journey in the personal and professional setting has taught me to work on a number of aspects such as the self-awareness aspects, team-building skills and overall leadership skills (Brown, 2003). The role of the leaders is important in the personal and the professional backdrop. My education including my graduation degree and my post graduation degree helped to understand that there is vital difference between the theory that we learn in textbooks and the real-life situations that arise in the organizational setting (Cashman, 2017).
Career Journey: After completing my B.com from Osmania University, Hyderabad, I wanted to experience the professional world so I worked in a few reputed organizations where I could gain quality experience. Then I went on to pursue my MBA from one of the most reputed universities in Melbourne known as La Trobe Business School. In fact, currently I have pursued the course and I would be handed over the degree in the year 2020.I started my career as a customer service executive which helped me to get acquainted with the work that is conducted at the ground level. After gain experience in the area, I believed it was time for me to expand my skills and capabilities as a leader. My work experience in HSBC bank as the Assistant Manager in the operations department helped me to understand the technicalities of the work. I was basically responsible to manage a team of 15 members and evaluate their performance. The experience helped me to act as a team leader and identify their core strengths and challenges. After serving in the company for almost a year, I moved to Infinity Tobacco Pvt Ltd where I was appointed as the General Manager and the Marketing Head. While serving in this organization as a significant senior management member I came to realize the relevance of the leadership skill. I was involved in a wide variety of activities such as the fixing of prices, building the brand image, evaluating the financial aspects of the offerings such as the budgets, and allocating available resources. The experience as a leader and a learner was highlight enriching for me due to which I served the organization for approximately 4 long years.
Current position in the leadership journey: My experience over the years has taught me to understand the difference between the traditional style of leadership and the modern style of leadership (Edie et al., 2016). During my initial experience in the professional setting, the leaders basically focused more on their authoritative power and their superior status in the organization. I had observed this especially when I was serving as an executive. But as I moved on to different organizations and had to take up the role of the leaders, I realized that today the concept of “leader” and “leadership” has undergone a transformational change. When I joined Infinity Tobacco Pvt Ltd, I realized that the company had high expectations from me. I wanted to be an inspirational leader who could carry his team and subordinates forward in a harmonious manner. Thus my leadership approach fundamentally focused on the teamwork and robust communication (Goltra, Goltra& Peter, 1998).
I took up the role of a transformational leader who was different from the traditional kind of leader. I made sure to focus on the key strengths and capabilities of all the members so that we all could grow together as a team and as an organization (Gronn, 2002). Today I am a confident leader because I have realized that the success of a leader does not depend on him alone but it also depends on his team members and followers.
Career goals: Currently, my career goal is to an effective and influential leader who can make a valuable contribution to the organization as well as the subordinates. I want to be a leader who can focus on the needs and requirements of all the stakeholders of the organization. While acting as a leader, I want to make sure that I can integrate the professional and ethical approach so that a positive change can be brought about in the organization in which I will work in the future.
Building of key strengths: My experience in the academic setting and professional setting has played a crucial role in my life. I believe, the current strengths that I possess relating to self-awareness, teamwork and leadership are due to the highly valuable experience that I have gained in the past years. But I still believe there is significant scope to polish my core skills as a leader because the organizational setting is undergoing transformational change all the time (Goleman, 2001).
Self Awareness – My ‘self-awareness’ skill has helped me to assess my performance and my team’s performance in the past. In the initial; stage I was facing challenges to assess my performance. But with time I was able to set standards and benchmarks against which I was able to assess my performance as an individual and as a leader. I believe, I still have scope to enhance my ability to judge my own performance in the organizational context.
Teamwork – My academic knowledge helped me to understand the relevance of teamwork in an organizational context. But the practical experience in the real-life organizational setting helped me to identify the main challenges that arise while working in a single group. But the effectiveness of a team is totally dependent on the leader and the contribution that is made by the team members (Lee, 2017). I have a strong team spirit that has helped me to be an effective leader in the past. While managing the team of 15 members in HSBC bank, I realized that one of the most important elements of a strong team is the transparent communication model.
Leadership – My experience as a leader has been highly valuable for me over the years. I have seen a number of styles of leadership in the organizational environment. When I was working as an Assistant Manager in the HSBC bank, my leadership skill was put to test because it was the first ever opportunity that I got to showcase my leadership skills. In Infinity Tobacco Pvt Ltd, I adopted the transformational leadership style and gave enough freedom to my subordinates so that they could be creative and add value to the organization in their own way (Northouse, 2018).
Academic and professional communication: My experience in the academic and professional setting has helped me to realize the relevance of communication in the business setting. I need to work on strengthening my communication approach so that all the team members can feel to be the part of the team. I have designed the below personal leadership action plan that can help me to grow my latent skills and capabilities as a leader (Organ, 1996).
Personal leadership action plan: The fundamental elements that have been included in the planning model basically focus on my leadership skills, communication ability, and team building skills.By strengthening my skills relating to these aspects, would be able to strengthen my leadership approach in the dynamic professional setting (Taylor, 2004).
In order to strengthen the skills relaying to my leadership capability, it would take around 6 months. During this time I would be able to interact with more number of people which would help me to enhance my communication approach. Similarly, the current MBA course would allow me to work in teams and thus I would understand the mindset of different team members. This exposure would allow me to understand the strategies that I can use in the future to interact with different team members.
Realistic actions: While working on the academic projects and assignments, I would be able to interact with people from a different setting. This exposure is a necessity for me as it would help me to work on my team building skills, communication skills and leadership skills.These realistic actions would help me to work on my current skills and capabilities as a leader (Western,2013).
Measurements of success: In order to measure my leadership skills, I would use the 360-degree feedback mechanism so that all the team members in the academic scenario could give their opinions about my leadership ability. Similarly, I could also refer the grades that we as a team would earn during the course. It would help me to understand whether I am able to effectively able to lead a team of people or not. These simple measuring indicators would be highly effective in my case because I would be able to identify the exact leadership areas that I further need to work upon in order to be a great and effective leader in the dynamic organizational setting. I believe that the personal leadership action plan would be an ongoing process that I would have to work upon on a regular basis so that I could strengthen my core leadership ability.
Reference List
Brown, R.B., 2003. Emotions and behavior: Exercises in emotional intelligence. Journal of Management Education, 27(1), pp.122-134.
Cashman, K., 2017. Leadership from the inside out: Becoming a leader for life. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Edie, A.H., Marshall, E.S., Winters, C.E. and Mariani, B.A., 2016. Faculty Leadership Development: Mentoring, Team Leadership, and Community.
Goltra, P.S., Goltra and Peter S., 1998. Method for entering information into an electronic patient chart, and protocol auto-negative capabilities.U.S. Patent 5,812,984.
Gronn, P., 2002. Distributed leadership.In Second international handbook of educational leadership and administration (pp. 653-696).Springer, Dordrecht.
Goleman, D., 2001. What makes a leader. Creative management, pp.125-39.
Lee, G., 2017. Leadership coaching: From personal insight to organisational performance. Kogan Page Publishers.
Northouse, P.G., 2018. Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.
Organ, D.W., 1996. Leadership: The great man theory revisited.
Taylor, F.W., 2004. Scientific management.Routledge.
Western, S., 2013. Leadership: A critical text. Sage.
