Managing Your Human Capital Individual Reflection - Essay Example

Current Leadership Roles

Although I have not held a formal leadership position in my life, I have participated in various workplace positions and teams that required me to demonstrate leadership qualities. Furthermore, throughout my life experiences I have developed an interest in leadership especially in business management. As a call centre representative in the Page Plus company where I worked for three years, I held the responsibilities of communicating with other junior staff and colleagues about issues that relate to customers. We held meetings regularly to review the customers’ feedbacks, requests and complains. In all these situations, I played the role of communicating with various members of the organization to organize for meetings, inspire team members, and bring members together for discussions. Although I was not the team leader, my communication leader reflected the responsibility of a leader.

In future, I hope to hold leadership responsibilities of organizing employees, planning, budgeting, making strategic decisions, visioning, and setting targets for the organization. I believe that I have the ability to set the pace for others in a business environment to work towards shared organizational objectives. I would like to become a team leader who can set the purpose of the team, command respect and trust from the team members, and inspire others to pursue the same purpose. I would want to be in a position that I can unify members of an organization and solve disputes at the workplace faster and acceptably. It would be a great achievement for me if I inspire others to pursue their personal goals while at the same time following the culture of the organization to achieve organizational goals and objectives. This can enable everyone in the organization to achieve full potential and contribute positively towards the organization as a whole.

Leadership Qualities that I would like to develop

Key leadership qualities for inspirational leaders include: revealing weaknesses, becoming a sensor, practicing tough empathy, and daring to be different (Goffe and Jones, 2000). On the other hand, Ancona, Malone, Orlikowski, and Senge (2007) argue that the four capabilities of an “incomplete” leader include sense-making, relating, visioning, and inventing. Based on these leadership qualities and my current leadership roles and ambitions, the leadership qualities that I would like to develop are: revealing weaknesses, practicing tough empathy, daring to be different, relating, and visioning.

Revealing Weaknesses

Everyone has his or her own weaknesses, including leaders. By revealing their weaknesses, leaders show differences that are unique to them. Leaders may reveal that they are disorganized sometimes or irritable on Mondays (Goffee and Jones, 2000). According to them, revealing weaknesses can work for a leader because people want to see their leaders correcting their weaknesses before undertaking a task willingly. Revealing one’s weaknesses is the first step to acknowledge and correct them. It establishes trust with the followers and attracts support from followers. If leaders pretend that they are perfect in everything, nobody will see any need to help them.

I currently possess this quality as an inspirational leader because I have more than once showed that I can reveal my weaknesses. One thing that I like doing is building trust. I understand that no one will trust me if I do not admit my mistakes or weaknesses to them. They would want to correct me when I am wrong. If I blankly refuse to own up to some of my flaws, they will not help me. At the workplace, I often ask my fellow workmates if I have done anything wrong when they look unhappy. Sometimes they say I have become too strict and angry with them. That helps me to cool down and talk calmly with them. That way, I gain their trust and I can inspire them to work towards our goal as a team.

The development of this quality could help me to better support the employee value proposition because it enables me to understand the weaknesses that may lead to poor customer service. The organisation provides hefty salaries and other benefits such as holidays, but it does not offer professional development opportunities. If I reveal my weaknesses in the customer call centre where I worked, it would be possible for others to understand them and support me in advocating for professional development in the organization which is currently lacking.

Practicing Tough Empathy

Empathy means putting yourself in the shoes of others to understand their issues and help them. According to Goffe and Jones (2000), leaders should show concern for their teams. Indeed, good leaders do not have to go to a leadership training workshop to show their employees that they care. They empathize about their followers and care intensely about their employees. While empathy is considered as a soft kind of inspirational leadership quality, tough empathy can be exercised to give people what they need and not what they want (Goffe and Jones, 2000). In other words, tough empathy requires inspirational leaders to balance between respect for the task and for the individual. An inspirational leader gives selflessly to the people but knows where work boundaries lie.

As an inspirational leader, I believe that I possess this quality because I always show concern to my team members. While at home, work and public places I always like listening to others so that I can understand them and help them to achieve their personal goals and organizational goals while undertaking their tasks. However, I do not empathize too much to the extent of interfering with the workflow. For example, in a recent training initiative I was a member of a group in which we were required to complete an exercise of conducting surveys together. One of the members had personal problems at home and had to leave on the first day. Other members were not happy about it but I empathized on her and played her part. The next day she also complained of another issue and I toughly explained to her that she should draw boundaries between work and personal issues. She stopped her personal issues and played her part in the second day. In the end, we completed our exercise successfully.

This quality of tough empathy can help me to support the employee value proposition because it enables me to show concern to customers and employees in order to support the benefits package and paid time off plans of the organization. Employees at MMO are leaving despite hefty benefits because they do not get professional development. As an inspirational leader I can show tough empathy by drawing the line between respecting employees’ needs for professional development and their work performance.

Daring to be different

Daring to be different is a leadership quality that allows inspirational leaders to capitalize on the things that set them apart as unique individuals. Goffe and Jones (2000) suggest that using the difference of a leader is the most important quality of an inspirational leader. Differences are used to establish a social distance between the leader and his followers. An inspirational leader exhibits differences in dress style, physical appearance, loyalty, expertise, imagination and a simple handshake that most people ignore (Peters & Austin, 1985). However, if these differences are not communicated effectively it may take long before one becomes aware of them. Inspirational leaders use these differences to motivate others to perform better at the workplace.

In my daily life, I have exercised this quality significantly. For example, in my position as a customer care representative I have acted as a secretary by coordinating and communicating issues and meetings to be attended by fellow other employees. This role enabled me to communicate my differences in terms of loyalty to the company and expertise in customer service. I have also been outstanding in my writing skills in every that have joined. I have always been given the role of data entry and writing minutes and other items due to my speed and creativity in writing. I have exercised this difference on several occasions at home and at work to help others with their tasks.

Daring to be different can also help me to support the employee value proposition at MMO by communicating my difference in loyalty and expertise to the management so that they can allow me to give ideas about how the value proposition can be improved to include professional development. Rather than leaving the organization, a leader could show their difference from those who are leaving the company by giving appropriate ideas that can help the company to improve its value proposition for employees.

Relating

Ancona et al (2007) argue that effective leadership can be enhanced through building trusting relationships. A good leader should connect with others in their inner circle emotionally and inquire and advocate for the feelings of others (Giuliani and Kurson, 2002). Like empathy, relating allows leaders to understand the thoughts and needs of the followers in order to help them meet their goals and the goals of the organization. While relating with others, the leader should listen to other people’s points of view and give their own views to differentiate between opinions and facts. Good leaders understand other people’s views and stand up for their own views.

I have demonstrated the quality of relating on several occasions. First, I always collect ideas and experiences of other employees at the workplace to help me relate with them appropriately. It also helps me to solve disputes at the workplace by understanding other people’s feelings and responding to them appropriately. For example, I solved a dispute between two neighbors at me residential neighborhood when one of them stole money from the other. I listened to their views and realized that the thief did not have anything to feed her children, and she took all measures to help them including stealing. However, after my intervention victim gave her a job as a house help and deducted money from her salary until all the money she stole were recovered.

Relating can also help me to support the employees’ value proposition of MMO, my organization. The company offers sufficient benefits and holidays to motivate employees. I can support this EVP by understanding the views and thoughts of all employees about the benefits package. This helps the company to develop packages that meet the needs of the employees, leading to employee satisfaction and lowering the employee turnover rate in the company.

Visioning

Visioning quality of leadership involves the creation of compelling images of the future. It entails setting the direction for organization. It sets a map for what could be done so that employees can focus on doing it. It tells followers about how the leader wants the future to look like. It is an ongoing process that should be implemented collaboratively (Bethel, 2009). The leader should convince others to buy the organization’s vision by telling compelling stories and a clear picture of what will be achieved by accomplishing the vision.

I have demonstrated this quality in several occasions in my life. I have set a vision and convinced others to work towards it in the workplace. I suggested to my team members to envision situations in which all customers are satisfied and no negative feedback or complains are received from the customers. This vision helped employees in the call centre to handle customer requests effectively to satisfy them and exceed their expectations.

Envisioning can be used in my organization to support the EVP by creating a compelling story about employees’ job security. In this case, employees are convinced to buy the idea of zero employees’ turnover. This vision should be communicated persuasively by providing alternatives for employees to meet their professional development needs while at the same time benefiting from their high remunerations.

Personal/Organizational Goals

Revealing Weaknesses

• My personal goal – I want to let others see my weaknesses so that they can help me to improve on them.
• Implementable Actions – I will make sure that I admit every mistake I make and ask others to understand me and support me. I will be careful when communicating with others to identify points of dissatisfaction so that I can identify my weaknesses.
• Measure – improve my self-evaluation to identify my weaknesses. Keep track of how many times my weaknesses come up.

Practicing Tough Empathy

• Personal Goal – I would like to listen to all employees equally and show that I care. I want to strike a balance between respect for individuals and tasks.
• Implementable actions – I will make sure that I convince employees that I care about their concerns. I will ensure that employees get what they need but not at the expense of the most important tasks at the workplace.
• Measures – increasing the number of informal meetings with employees to talk freely with employees to show that I am concerned. Monitoring the behavior of employees to ensure that their personal concerns do not affect their work performance.

Daring to be different

• Personal Goals – to show my unique qualities such as loyalty and expertise to my organisation
• Implementable actions – I will act upon all my job specifications and improve my work performance to meet organizational objectives.
• Measures – evaluate my performance by keeping track of the number of positive feedbacks from my managers, other employees and customers

Relating

• Personal Goals – I want to build personal relationship with employees. I want to understand the thoughts and feelings of employees. I would like to solve conflicts and disputes effectively at the workplace.
• Implementable actions – I will meet and communicate regularly with employees to build good personal relationship with them. I will listen to employees carefully to understand them. I will collect employees’ opinions and views and provide my own views for everyone to understand.
• Measures – recording the number of meetings and positive responses of employees. Keeping track of the negative and positive concerns of employees. Recording the views of employees and evaluating them against recommended standards.

Visioning

• Personal Goal – to develop a shared vision for the organization.
• Implementable actions – I will work collaboratively with employees to create a compelling story about the future of the organization and persuade others to buy this vision
• Measure – Record the number of employees who support the vision