Strategic Leadership Assignment: Characteristics of Good Leader

Question

Task: The purpose of this strategic leadership assignment is to design your own personal strategic leadership plan to take you from where you are now to where you want to be in the future.

Answer

Introduction
As stated in this strategic leadership assignment, a strategic leader is defined as the potentiality of a manager, which expresses strategic vision within the organization. They also help in stakeholder management by providing detailed information and also fulfill the demand and needs of the stakeholders (Doh, & Quigley, 2014). These leaders also persuade and motivate others for achieving the vision of the organization. A good leader utilizes strategies for managing the employees within the organization. They are also known as the potential for influencing the members of the organization as well as to execute the change in the organization. Strategic leaders develop the structure of the organization, express the strategic vision as well as allocate resources for achieving the goals and objectives. These leaders also work in an ambiguous environment to handle the difficult issues as well as influence members to enhance the performance of the employees.

Strategic productivity is the main objective of a good strategic leader and to develop an environment where the employees forecast the need of the organization through their job (Eskerod, Huemann, & Savage, 2015). A good leader also encourages their employees within the organization to follow the ideas and to encourage productivity as well as the quality of the employees for better performance within the organization. This paper throws light on the essential characteristics of a good leader and provides an analysis of leadership along with the weakness and strength of stakeholder management. Moreover, the paper highlights the plan to develop leadership skill followed by a few concluding statements.

Essential characteristics of a good leader
A good leader should have different essential characteristics:
Good skill of listening: effective listening skills should be possessed by a good leader to communicate the vision and expectations of an organization. Moreover, a good leader should focus on both way communication that includes hearing and speaking (Carroll, &Buchholtz, 2014). This attribute highlights the concern about the employees as well as helps in achieving knowledge for solving any conflicts or problems that builds a strong culture within the company. Strong communication: a good leader should an effective communicator as an attribute. Strong communication is a soft skill practice that a leader should possess while leading a team or colleague. It is an important attribute to carry out meetings with the team members for achieving the goals and objectives of the organization.

Commitment and passion: enthusiasm comes from passion towards the organization and employees that is one of the important leadership qualities (Aarons, et al. 2016). A good leader always focuses on a commitment to become successful within the organization. Commitment and passion are some of the best characteristics to lead a team that provides the quality result as well as team motivation increases along with effort.

Positivity: a positive attitude is found to be contagious within a good leader that helps in leading a team surrounded by positive and happy individuals that influence to work hard despite the productive time. Positivity within a leader creates a supportive environment within the workplace culture and this strategy helps in achieving the goals of the organization. Innovation: a strong and a good leader requires realism and practicality that leads to innovation within the work and it requires a specific vision to execute it (Du, et al. 2013). A good leader should adapt and adjust according to the economic environment and should provide valuable skills within the organization to implement innovative methods that lead to achieving a competitive advantage within the organization associated with sound decisions.

Collaboration: the collaborative approach is another essential characteristic that creates transparency within the organization (Reid, 2011). Collaboration also creates trust and helps in supporting the vision of the organization. A good leader should improve the collaboration in various small projects developing an initiative towards the contribution of becoming collaborative.

Honesty: the characteristic of a good leader starts with honesty regarding the failure, success, and reasoning to choose specific goals and strategies over others that help in earning respect from the team. All leaders should be honest that includes transparency within the organization that creates a good workplace culture along with regulatory compliance that helps in achieving the desired result along with strategic goal.

Diplomacy: honesty is considered as the best policy within a strategic leader but tactfulness is also required (Zhu, Sun, & Leung, 2014). It is considered as a strategic approach that helps the leader to manage conflict utilizing sensitivity and negotiation and this is the main reason where diplomacy is considered as the essential characteristic of a good leader. Empathy: being empathetic acts as a therapist within the organization that helps to know the perspective of the employees for enhancing productivity and awareness regarding the challenges and demands of the team (Mok, Shen, & Yang, 2015). These characteristics should be executed along with resources skills and projects that help to become more realistic for achieving the timelines and goals of the organization. It also helps in performing the job appropriately by the team members.

Analysis of leadership and Stakeholder Management
Stakeholder management and organizational leadership play an important role to develop the human capital within the organization. Human capital is a concept that refers to the skills, education, and attribute as well as the capacity of an employee to perform as expected by a leader. Stakeholders and leaders should adopt a myriad of approaches and frameworks to foster the creation of human capital. An efficient and effective recruitment process does not provide a guarantee regarding the acquisition of talent that highlights an immediate impact on the organizations. This implies leaders, recruitment, and stakeholders where they adopt the approach for fostering the improvement in the field of knowledge, ability scheme for enhancing the workforce.

As a good leader, I have adopted a transactional and transformational leadership style for fostering the creation of human capital. I have utilized an effective leadership style to Foster human capital creation contributing to high efficiency, productivity as well as innovation within the organization. It is suggested that an efficient and effective leader should combine both results-focused and social skills as their tendency to lead the organization. Moreover, a good leader helps in managing the stakeholders through integrity, encouragement, inspiration, recognition, communication as well as a vision to support the demand and need of the employees as well as the stakeholders of the organization.

As an organizational leader, I have accomplished some of the functions for ensuring the value of stakeholder management that fulfills the demand and needs of the organization. I am also provided an effort to improve the value of the workforce to meet the need of employees and the organization that makes the stakeholders satisfied. The transactional and transformational leadership style helped me to nourish the workforce through experience education and training (Arif, et al. 2017). This leadership style has influenced me to identify the needs of the stakeholders within the organization.

As a good organization and leader, I have implemented transformational leadership apart from transactional leadership for managing the stakeholders appropriately. Further, I have managed the changing origins of the organization concerning technology as well as several aspects of market dynamics to fulfill the demand of the stakeholders. I have taken help from the experts and technology professionals to predict the innovations in the future for influencing the modern business model as well as operations that will help to retain the stakeholders within the organization. This leadership model has concisely helped me to motivate the stakeholders and to encourage the employees in a similar way for creating a change as well as innovation (Gillet, et al. 2013). On the other hand transactional leadership has helped me hand-in-hand to utilize different strategies of communication for influencing the stakeholders as well as to develop my performance exceptionally.

Strength
As a good leader, I have identified that a good stakeholder should have strength in the process of decision-making Strategies and vision that will help to achieve the goals and objectives of the organization (Al-Ali, et al. 2017). Moreover, I have influenced the stakeholders of the organization to create a buzz and to go live during the product launch as it is considered one of the strengths of stakeholder management. Another strength of stakeholder management is expertise in existing processes and systems where a leader should assist stakeholders in providing effective effort for achieving the goals of the organization having a high influence utilizing the transformational style of leadership. On the other hand, transactional leadership also helps to enhance the strength of the stakeholders as well as an important initiative, and adapting certain change is a strength that I have identified as a leader while managing the stakeholders. Along with this, utilizing this style of leadership along with the different strengths of the stakeholders helped me in taking appropriate decisions during any conflict between the stakeholders and the management of the organization (Kacmar, et al. 2013). Moreover, there are different stakeholders those possess various strength and acts as an assistant to achieve the objective of the organization along with the help of a leader. ?

Weakness
The stakeholders also comprise different weaknesses that I have experienced is the availabilityof time. I have also observed that this is not a high priority during a project for the stakeholders, which is one of the weaknesses where I have assisted them as a good leader utilizing the transformational and transactional style of leadership. Another weakness that the stakeholders often perform is the tendency for customizing a new system to fit the old working methods. Moreover, I have identified as a leader that the stakeholder management has a different weakness as per the group that also includes a lack of target message from them create a difficulty for the management as well as for a leader.

Lack of communication with the management as well as with the organization is another weakness that creates a negative influence (Mo, & Shi, 2017). I have utilized a transformational style of leadership to identify the weakness of deficiency in communication that does not develop the bond between the organizational management, leaders, and stakeholders.

Action Plan

Conclusion
It can be concluded from the above statements that the role of leadership in stakeholder management is associated with the workforce and it is essential to adopt an effective style of leadership along with educating and training employees. This process also helps in fulfilling the demand of the stakeholders followed by achieving the goals and objectives of the organization. Organizational leadership influences the management of the stakeholders as well as it is integrated with the social skills and the desired result is generated associated with communication and empathy along with passion and analytics to strengthen the relationship between the stakeholders and the employees. The role of the leader is essential and vital where the Action Plan defines the skills that should be developed within a leader for leading a team among numerous challenges.

This is the core function of a leader to manage the stakeholders despite the strength and weakness as it fosters human capital creation by adopting an effective style of leadership. Further, it can be concluded that the role of a leader influences the business operation within the organization that helps in the appropriate management of the stakeholders. It is also required to think in an innovative way for handling the problems and issues within the organization that helps the employees to enhance their productivity, as well as support from the stakeholders, which is also an effective method to strengthen the platform of the organization. This paper has represented the essential characteristics of a good leader and has provided an analysis of leadership along with the strength and weaknesses of stakeholder management. Along with this, the paper has highlighted an Action Plan that is framed to develop leadership skills. ?

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