Leadership Assignment: Self-Reflection On Leadership Journey
Question
Task:
Leadership Assignment Task: Your task is to reflect on your own leadership journey up until now, your current role or position, how you influence others, how you lead, contribute to or react to organisational and cultural changes and your current level of self-awareness and self-confidence to lead others in your organisation and/or community.
Answer
Abstract
According to the investigation on leadership assignment, transformational leadership takes place as leaders carry out their positions so well that those who support them receive the trust, respect and loyalty. In turn, this affects or changes the actions of people. The other leadership style is entirely different from that of transformational leadership. The workers are inextricably inspired by transformational leadership to take the leader's lead, and they follow the path shown by the leader. The study focuses on the various stages that is faced by an individual to grow into a great leader or can develop traits to be a leader.
Introduction
In order to grow as a leader, it is important for any individual to establish various leadership qualities by overcoming various difficult situations(Naumovet al., 2017). A good leader has to fight against many challenges and establish themselvesas a successful leader and set an example for others to get motivated. In order to understand the leadership quality of a leader, one has to understand the journey of any leader like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs who has changed the way an organization works (Lavrentievet al., 2018). I had to face many obstacles in this journey and prove my skills. It is worth mentioning here that the leadership of some great leaders at different times has inspired me, which has helped me to concentrate on my work. Also, the support of colleagues in difficult situations has given me double the encouragement, which has directly helped me increase my own productivity. It should be noted that the leadership style of leaders like Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Bill Gates has inspired many to be a good leader in future and for me, Steve Jobs have motivated to be innovative and creative such that any kind of obstacle can be succeeded. As a result, I was able to increase my capabilities and potentiality to some extent. As a leader, I have always focused on increasing communication between employees, so that all employees have the opportunity to perform well and achieve all the goals and objectives.
Leadership qualities
Leadership quality enhances when challenges are being faced with proper strategy and must have the attitude to overcome any kind of hurdle to succeed.From a very young age, I have a passion for football and I was elected as my school’s football team captain because of my playing skills and due to my team management skills and leadership qualities I was given the responsibility of leading the team. I have a natural ability to motivate and inspire my friends and colleagues in achieving their goals. I was a go-to guy when it comes to solving the problem that my friends faced. Since my young age, I have had the tendency to take challenges and seriously and have always made attempts to be successful.As a Leader, it is important to have the capability to work hard and lead from the forefront. Based on my commitment and willingness to face any kind of challenges have helped me to win various football matches for my school and lead the team to success which was highly appreciated by all my friends as everyone liked the commitment I showed in every possible task. The primary focus that I always had is to recognize my fellow teammates rather than taking all the credit for myself. Motivating and giving credits to all teammates for any kind of success are the primary characteristics that a leader should have in order to succeed.
Influential aspects of my leadership behavior
In the workplace, I have several subordinates working under me,and in order to be a good leader, it is important to have great patience to listen to every subordinate. This listening capability has helped me to become a leader who can guide the team members to achieve personal goals as well as achieve the organizational goals and objectives as a whole. The past experiences that I have gathered by leading a football have helped me a lot in my current workplace. It is important to have proper communication and the past experience from leading the football has taught me to lead the team from the forefront as a leader such that the followers can get motivated and give their best to perform. A leader paves the way which is being followed by the followers and communication is the most important characteristic that a leader must-have. I have learned the importance of communication from my past experiences. In the current market scenarios, organizations face ups and downs all the time. During those down periods, I advise my subordinates not to panic and prepare their mitigation strategy. But while taking a final decision I always listen to my subordinates, consult with them and work as a group in facing the problem. In situations when I find my subordinate or subordinates imposing their ideas on the employees working under them, I also step in and handle the matter personally. Whenever required I rectify my subordinate and as them to handle the situation tactfully and diplomatically.
Other personality traits
I strongly feel that in order to achieve any goal needs a considerable amount of determination and creativity to generate innovation for success. Organizations sets targets every year which they expect to achieve. Sometimes they succeed other times they fail. I would like to identify two of the factors that lead to failure they are lack of determination and unorganized efforts. These two factors I have succeeded to overcome in the organization where I work. Whenever my organization sets a target my first job becomes to fragment the target into smaller objectives and then to organize and allocate the objectives to individuals who have the required set of skills to complete the objective in a designated period. Completion of smaller objectives boosts a scene of satisfaction among my employees. Satisfaction boosts innovation and determination leads to successful completion of targets. It is determined through which I overcome problems and difficulties that I face daily in my organization. I am gifted with the ability to plan my work in the most organized and collaborative way.
Gallup
Many times, our organization collaborated with Gallup which is an establishment specialized in solving problems faced by an organization and its leaders. Gallup has helpedme in creating a suitable workplace environment that can empower the employees to deliver as per the promises that the organization makes to the customers which on the other hand helps the business to prosper. Gallup also finds out the potential of every employee and redirects them in developing their strengths thereby increasing the productivity and performance of the organization as a whole. This has helped in facing different problems which have helped in grow as a leader by solving those problems provided by Gallup and helped me to prove my competency. I take a similar approach while assigned a target. I distribute the task among my subordinates based on their strengths and specific skill sets. So, I don’t feel any variance between the strategy that Gallup follows that defers from me.
Constructive Feedback
The aim of constructive feedback is to send a person feedback in order to better or correct them. This is important because it improves individuals' personal and professional development (Maenhout et al., 2021). Constructive reviews may, for example, improve the moral standards of employees. Constructive feedback is important for the continuous growth of workers. Feedback clarifies desires, assists individuals in learning from errors, and creates trust (Sun et al., 2017). Building feedback is one of the best things leaders can provide and also receive in order to develop much better leadership qualities. The constructive feedback should apply instead of making inferences and perceptions of what an entity may see or hear about the actions of another person.
Significance of Constructive Feedback
Constructive feedback has helped me a lot in developing my leadership qualities and skills. Receiving feedback from the group projects or from football matches or from work projects the positive and negative feedback received for my work has helped me in understanding the kind of flaws that is present within me and has helped in mitigating those flaws with proper determination. Every time I have taken up any challenge and after the completion the feedback I received helped me in understanding that I can do much better and identified the flaws present in the previous plan which I change in my next conquest. Even I provide constructive feedback to my followers and colleagues in the workplace such that they can also change their work pattern for better performance. I also advise my subordinates to engage themselves in discussion to yield better results rather than imposing what they think is right on others. I think this balances the relationships between the different levels of management and promotes a healthy and workable environment. But on fewer occasions, I had to take decisions singlehandedly. In the recent past, our organization was going through a tough time when I had to step up and make decisions which I feel was very hard for me to take but for the betterment of the employees, I took the decision to help the organization to come out of the problem. It is a much important strategy to have constructive feedback in order to be a better leader in the future like Steve Jobs or Tim Cook who have shown the world that being a good leader can help in making innovation and creativity.
Transformational Leadership Model
As a leader, I feel that transformational leadership theory suits me the best because I believe in working collaboratively rather than imposing my decision on others. Forcefully imposing decisions on others can work but in a situation where the team members don’t have the capability to make a decision but transformational leadership gives an opportunity for every subordinate to come up with new ideas and creativity such that better innovative ideas can be developed to overcome hurdles (Chandrasekara, 2019). As a role model in the team, I have tried to keep the other members of the team as confident as possible. I have tried to understand the priorities of my team and try to meet those requirements. It should be noted that the term transformational leadership was first used by James V Downton. Emphasis is placed on inspirational motivation under this leadership style. I have tried to motivate everyone in the team to work together in various ways. I have also used idealized influence as a method of transformational leadership. I followed it well myself before setting out the principles and regulations of idealized influence for my team. As a result, I was able to easily gain the trust, loyalty, and respect of my followers. So later on my followers cooperated with me, as a result of which I have gained a lot of benefits while achieving goals. It is worth mentioning here that I have tried to give as much importance as possible to intellectual stimulation which is an important principle of transformational leadership.
As a leader, I have always focused on the innovativeness ability of my team members and tried to motivate them as much as possible. I always praise authentic creativity and troubleshoot any kind of problem. I have always tried to guide everyone to solve problems in different complex situations and guide them how to solve problems. A great inspirational and transformational leader always makes some decisions that are able to eliminate many of the threats that come within the organization. Therefore, the leader has a huge role in the success of an organization(Murphy & Anderson, 2020). However, the support of team member’s acts as a backbone to a leader’s success. For example, leaders like Steve Jobs, Tim Cock have always defended their organization from various threats and focused on how to increase productivity in the organization. As a leader, I have always tried to ensure the well-being of my team members. I have never compromised with the well-being of my subordinates. I adopted transformational leadership as my leadership style, as it has several advantages. Transformational leadership has enabled me to easily balance my organization's short-term and long-term goals. In addition, through this leadership style, I have been able to adapt and properly implement new ideas, which has greatly increased the productivity of my organization compared to the past. Needless to say, I have been able to build the spirit in the team members through this leadership style and the mutual trust between my team members has increased and the bonding has become stronger.
Conclusion
In general, leadership refers to the ability to influence, modify, and establish one's own control over the behaviour of others. A leader always needs to have a clear vision before initiating any work. In other words, leadership is a quality by which other members of the organization can be guided. As a leader, I have always wanted to make some important contributions to the organization and I have been largely successful in this endeavour because my subordinates have supported me as much as possible. It is worth mentioning here that I choose transformational leadership as my leadership style because I felt that through it I would be able to support and benefit my subordinates. However, my surroundings have helped me to succeed as a leader.
References
Chandrasekara, W. S. (2019). The effect of transformational leadership style on employees Job satisfaction and job performance: A case of apparel manufacturing Industry in Sri Lanka. International Journal of Economics, Commerce and Management, 7(7), 385-391.
Lavrentiev, S. Y., Krylov, D. A., &Korotkov, S. G. (2018). Conceptual theories of forming leadership qualities of a competitive university student. In Issues and Trends in Interdisciplinary Behavior and Social Science: proceedings of the 6th International Congress on Interdisciplinary Behavior and Social Sciences, ICIBSoS (No. 2017, p. 231).
Maenhout, G., Billiet, V., Sijmons, M., &Beeckman, D. (2021). The effect of repeated high-fidelity in situ simulation-based training on self-efficacy, self-perceived leadership qualities and team performance: A quasi-experimental study in a NICU-setting. Nurse Education Today, 104849.
Murphy, W. H., & Anderson, R. E. (2020). Transformational leadership effects on salespeople’s attitudes, striving, and performance. Journal of Business Research, 110, 237-245.
Naumov, O. B., Kovalenko, O. M., &Savin, S. Y. (2017). Technique of assessing future managers’ leadership qualities in modern socio-cultural environment. ????? ? ??????, (10), 126-132.
Sun, J., Chen, X., & Zhang, S. (2017). A review of research evidence on the antecedents of transformational leadership. Education Sciences, 7(1), 15.
