Shaping Social Justice Leadership - Essay Example

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Individual Authentic Journey Report Managerial Leadership MGT3150 Academic Year Jennie O’Connor Davidson Uthayakumar M00313270 Table of Contents Executive Summary 3 Authentic Leadership Report 3 Introduction 3 Background of the Report 3 Report Aims and Objectives 4 Scope of the Individual Journey Report 5 Limitations of the Report 5 Justification of the Methodology Undertaken 6 Structure of the Report 7 Discussion 8 Personal Life Story 8 Self Awareness 8 Some of my Key Leadership Values 9 Honesty 9 Order/Discipline 10 My Lesson in Accuracy/Punctuality 11 Achievement/Ambition 12 My Strengths as an Authentic Leader 14 Good Listener and Communicator 14 Quick Learning 14 Innovative Problem Solving ability and Good Team Player 15 Smart Objectives 15 Some of my Weaknesses and the Measures that I will Take to Try and Correct Them 15 Dislike for Repetitive Tasks 15 Timidity and Uncertainty 16 Conclusion 16 Some of the Future Recommendations I can Make so as to Secure my Constant Growth as a True Authentic Leader 17 Bibliography 18 Executive Summary The sole purpose as to my writing of this individual authentic journey report is to attempt to highlight the different highlights in my life that have been instrumental in my development as an authentic leader. In the development of a proper individual authentic journey report, there are several different tools of enquiry that can effectively be used. In writing this paper, an auto ethnographical approach has been utilized. Autoethnography provides the user with a basic platform whereby the writer is the main subject of the general enquiry and as such, the tool will prove to be invaluable in the writing of this paper. Authentic Leadership Report Introduction Background of the Report As the age of materialism gradually grids to a halt, the entire concept behind the authenticity of leadership has in recent times been receiving significant amounts of general attention as more and more people continue in the search for what exactly makes people happy and provides meaning especially to their work lives. People are nowadays seeking to try and establish more meaning in their everyday lives. The general concept of “meaning” and “authenticity” can be deemed as appearing to be almost the same. However, it due to the efforts of the major philosophical movement that is commonly referred to as existentialism that has consistently been carefully studying the concept of authenticity over a time-period spanning many centuries that we are now able to better understand what exactly is authenticity in addition to developing an exact connection as regards to its relationship to the general concept of meaning. By taking the time to conduct this authentic leadership report on my own person, I hope to be able to further develop my own capabilities as an authentic leader by carefully establishing all my authentic leadership qualities as well as working hard to ensure that I improve on those qualities that I note to be impeding my growth as an authentic leader in today’s modern society. I believe that as an authentic leader, I will be more able to work towards changing the general society’s common misconception that most leaders and especially those who are in high positions within government and some of the large private corporations are invariably inauthentic. Report Aims and Objectives The prime aim of going through this journey of writing this authentic journey report was to try and establish what exactly were the main highlights of my life that invariably served to help me in my growth as an authentic leader in addition to playing a key role in defining my authentic leadership footprints. The world is steadily recovering from the recent global economic recession that was seen to affect many countries around the world. Although some of the country’s have successfully managed to rebuild their shattered economies, some countries in Europe such as Spain and Greece as still struggling with the effects of these recession a factor that has caused them to try and obtain bail out from different countries. It is quite imperative that the world’s entire global community in general tries to grow more authentic leaders so as to ensure that the global community is well guided not faced with the unfortunate grim task of their having to relive the grueling and harsh realities that faced most of the companies during the global recession. Scope of the Individual Journey Report The scope of this report will mostly be limited to my own individual experiences. The report will aim to highlight some of the defining moments in my authentic leadership growth and how undergoing some of my life experiences served to help contribute to my growth as an authentic leader. The report will also draw some key pointers on authentic leadership from various relevant secondary sources such as books, journals and websites. Limitations of the Report In conducting this report, I will invariably be faced with some limitations that are common to the use of an auto ethnographic approach as the basic tool in conducting a research project. Some of the main limitations that I expect to face include the tendency to overlook some of my life experiences as being rather insignificant in my development as an authentic leader though they might in fact be key defining moments. I may also be faced with the common challenge of not remembering the details of some of the experiences especially those that occurred during my childhood. An auto ethnographical approach may also cause be limited by the fact that in most instances, the writer is denied the detachment from the main story that is common with the use of most of the research tools. However, I will endeavor to use all my available resources and wit in writing this report, to overcome some of the challenges such as the inability to remember some of the details, I will resort to consulting with some of the close family members, relatives and even friends with whom we underwent the experiences together. I will also ensure that I attempt to uphold the highest levels of integrity in undertaking this project so as to ensure that I critically minimize overlooking some of the key experiences that I might deem as being inconsequential. Justification of the Methodology Undertaken Autoethnography can broadly be described as a research approach that is found to be not only ethnographical, but also autobiographical in nature. The main character in an auto ethnographic report is responsible for the connoting the Autoethnography while relying on the proper utilization of various ethnographic research methods. Similarly to ethnography, an auto ethnographic approach stresses on the connecting existing between one’s individual self and other individuals representing the general society. This aspect of ethnography is key in effectively distinguishing Autoethnography from some of the more common narrative-oriented styles of report writing such as journals, autobiographies and the use of memoirs. According to Ellis and Bochner (2000), Autoethnography is essentially an autobiography that is keen to ensure that itself consciously explores the continuous interplay that exists in the interplay of one’s introspective outlook while attempting to personally engage one’s self with some of the cultural descriptions that are commonly meditated through history, ethnographic explanation and history. When the term “auto-ethnography” was initially introduced by the anthropologist Heider (1975), the term “self” was not regarded to mean the main ethnographer self but rather was used to refer to the informant self. Autoethnography can be categorized into three different varieties. These are: Native anthropology: this is produced by native anthropologists from some of the people groups who happened to be formerly studies by some outsiders. Ethnic Autobiography: This is commonly written by members of a certain given minority ethnic group. Autobiographical Ethnography: This form involves the interjection of some personal experiences by anthropologists into the ethnographic writings (Reed-Danahay, 1997). In the writing of this report, an autobiographical ethnographical approach is thus best suited as it will help in pointing out the various defining moments that helped shape me as an authentic leader. Structure of the Report This report is designed in such a manner that it first starts by providing a brief executive summary that is helpful in explaining the key aims of this research process. A well structured table of contents is provided before the executive summary and will be crucial in helping ease navigation as one goes though the document. After this table of contents, an introductory section provides a detail background as to the relevance and importance of this report is aptly provided and is carefully structured to be followed by the main body of the report that provides the report’s main discussion area. An adequate and some of the possible recommendations are then added and to round up the report, a clear bibliography is provided. It should be noted that the reports different sections have been carefully subdivided into various subsections by the use of appropriate subheadings. This will help provide a clear understanding as to the main purpose of each individual segment of the report. Discussion Personal Life Story Self Awareness Self awareness is a critical aspect of authentic leadership as according to Cameron and Spreitzer (2012), a recent research established self-awareness to be among the four unique components that are key in the establishment of authentic leadership as a higher-order construct. The other three components being, balanced processing, internalized moral perspective and relational transparency. Being of Sir-Lankan origin, my parents initially had a rather hard time fitting into the new culture here in the United Kingdom. They often found themselves constantly segregated due to their different accent, religion and their basic appearance. They both found it to be rather difficult to obtain good jobs in this country despite their good education and being overqualified for some of the jobs they applied. This caused them to work extra hard so as to be able to prove themselves and be generally accepted in society. As I grew up observing them, I became aware of these challenges that they commonly faced while I was still at a relatively young age. While growing up and playing with my age mates out on the streets, we were all oblivious of the fact that we all essentially came from different backgrounds and viewed each other as equals. However, as we gradually grew up, some of my colleagues started segregating themselves based on their race, religion and ethnic background which caused me to acutely become self aware of my self. I constantly questioned why I was not born of a different race but one particular incident in school caused me to be proud of my race, religion and background. My performance in school had always been average through out the better part of my educational life but one day, we were fortunate to have a new class teacher who happened to be of Asian origin. The new teacher noted my inferiority complex quite early and tirelessly worked towards constantly encouraging me to do better in school and be proud of whom I was. His seemingly tireless efforts eventually paid off and within a time period of a few week, I unlocked my potential and subsequently moved from being an average student that nobody paid any particular attention to being one of the best students in my particular school and classroom. It was then that most of the students started stereotyping students of Asian origin as being particularly brilliant and buoyed by this new found admiration from not only my fellow students but also, from my teachers, I became quite self aware and proud of myself. Some of my Key Leadership Values One of the key qualities of authentic leadership that has invariably been noted in various literatures is the importance of an authentic leader to be possess a deep grounding in values. Authentic leadership requires one to be able to operate from a very strong ethical stand point. Strong values such as honesty help authentic leaders in their shifting the prime focus away from their individual selves and focusing it on others. This helps them portray a deep understanding of the general interconnectedness of themselves to all others that might happen to be around them (Lyman, Strachan, and Lazaridou, 2012). There are several key values that I have managed to develop in my growth as an authentic leader and some of these include: Honesty During my early life as I had just started school, my average performance was quite a concern to my parents and I constantly endeavored to try and improve it but regardless of all the effort I happened to put into my work, I was unsuccessful in doing so. On one of the examinations, my teacher happened to incorrectly grade my paper and gave me an “A” in the exam as opposed to awarding me my usual “C” grade. After being handed the paper, my initial jubilation soon turned to disappointment as I quickly noticed this error. During the entire school day, I struggled with a heavy guilt conscience but ultimately decided not to point out this error to the tutor since as I then reasoned; I was not the one responsible for assigning the wrong grade. On returning home and presenting the paper to my father as was customary, my father quickly noted the error and enquired as to if I had altered my teacher as to the mistake. On my informing him that I had not done so, the pained look of disappointment on my father’s face caused me to realize the grave magnitude of my seemingly small infraction. My father took the time out to explain to me how what I perceived to be a small dishonesty can eventually grow to stain my character and cause me to grow up to becoming a dishonest person. The following day, he marched me to school and I shamefully explained to the teacher what had happened and promised never to repeat the mistake again. This early incident in my life caused me to realize the true value of honesty and I now consider honesty to be a vitally integral component of my overall character. In my dealing with people as an authentic leader, it has not been lost to me the deep appreciation towards honesty that is constantly exhibited by persons from all the diverse walks of life. Order/Discipline Growing up in our home, my father created a timetable that my siblings and I were required to ensure that we follow. As my siblings and I painfully found out any failure on my siblings or on my part to perform the assigned duties would result in one receiving swift and often painful discipline from my father. At the time I used to loath my parent’s insistence on the maintenance of constant discipline while most of my friends could easily get away with almost anything. In hindsight I have realized and come to truly fully appreciate the intrinsic value of this early lesson on the importance of discipline as discipline as a virtue has been of invaluable benefit to myself and the various people that I happen to interact with at home, work or even socially. I believe it to be relatively quite important for individuals to have set guidelines detailing the various rules and time scales to be adhered to as it a rather horrific thought to imagine a world without any law where everyone would freely do whatever they pleased irrespective of fatal consequences of their actions. My Lesson in Accuracy/Punctuality At one time when I was fresh from school and felt as if the world in general was essentially at my every beck and call, I successfully applied for a job vacancy and received a letter inviting me for the interviews that were to be conducted about a week later. Needless to say, the prospects of landing my very first job so soon after school made me feel quite jubilated and cocky about the whole experience. Back in Sri-Lanka, time moves at a considerably slower pace as compared to the United Kingdom, the culture there is such that it is quite rare for people to rush and do something and people have a relatively laid back attitude. My parents had had to struggle to adapt to culture in the United Kingdom after the relative comfort of the culture back in Sri-Lanka. My mother had always insisted that I try as much as possible to ensure that I was always punctual in all my endeavors but this well meant advice would constantly go unheeded. On the material day of the interview, as was customary of me, I woke up late and lazily dragged myself all over the house as I prepared for the interview. This resulted in my arriving for the interview several hours late. I was ushered into the human resource’s manager’s office who informed me that although on paper I had been their best candidate, my disregard for punctuality had caused me to fundamentally lose the job mainly due to the fact that a suitable candidate for the job position had promptly been found soon after the interview. I went home that day feeling deep resentment at my self and resolve to always ensure that I am always punctual. Although at first it was quite a challenge, I have gradually become more and more punctual and it is my belief that punctuality is one of my most important values. Achievement/Ambition My deep-rooted ambitious tendencies can probably be traced to my parents Asian origins as most Asian parents, inclusive of my parents, are constantly encouraging their children to ambitiously work hard and ensure that they eventually become respected engineers and doctors. As such, I have grown up with constant encouragement from my parents who would never allow me to settle for less than what was due to me. Even though sometimes my own ambitions were seen to fail, nevertheless, my parent’s constant encouragement inevitably caused my own ambitions to grow and for this, I fell that I am forever indebted to them to achieve my achievements. The Motivations in My Life My parent’s devotion toward my overall success can never be over emphasized. From the moment that they chose to leave their Sri-Lankan homeland and forsake their well respected and established stature in society so as to offer my siblings and I better opportunities in life, their has been a life of constant sacrifice for my siblings and I. The innumerable life lessons that my parents were careful to teach me in life, served to mould me into the authentic leader of integrity that I am today. It is to this end that I am constantly deeply motivated to try and become a better person as well as a more authentic leader by the day. I aim constantly motivated to become the authentic leader and person of integrity that my parents have always seen me to be. Although this journey has not been easy, I am determined not to fail in the attainment o this objective. I am also greatly motivated to help those around me to becoming more satisfied and happy with their success. Through out my life, I have often come into contact with many persons whose success has not made them happy or satisfied with their life. I believe that for one to be truly successful; they should be able to be happy and enjoy their success. Good authentic leadership can help people in the attainment of this true success and happiness. Motivation is a key factor in authentic leadership. As an authentic leader I am constantly searching through the events unfolding in my life story so as to obtain and provide motivation to those I happen to lead. In the event that I happen to experience significant levels of both pain and adversity, I quickly rally myself and use these experiences to essentially motivate myself to move forward. Commitment At one of my first jobs, my employer identified my great leadership capabilities and after several months of being mentored, he eventually appointed me as one of the lead negotiators in a very crucial negotiation. I took to the negotiations which were to stretch out over a period of several days quite enthusiastically and actually did very well. However, as they continued to drag out, I started getting frustrated and once forgot to attend a negotiation session. The caused the company to loose out as I was supposed to bring to the meeting some vital documents. My employer was very disappointed in my lack of commitment to seeing the deal through and seeing his disappointment after he had invested so much time and effort in mentoring me, I promised myself to always ensure that I always made meaningful and enduring commitments. With time, my employer saw my renewed commitment and once more took to mentoring me. His mentorship and that lesson on the value of commitment have greatly served me in my growth as an authentic leader. My Strengths as an Authentic Leader Good Listener and Communicator One of my key strengths as an authentic leader is the ability to easily communicate with others. This has been of invaluable help to me and has enabled me to be able to carefully take other people’s varied views and opinions into consideration before I eventually make any choices or decisions. This quality has been crucial in bringing to my attention some important aspects that I might have overlooked but others had noticed. It is because of this attribute that I am able to easily work with others both at the University and at work. Quick Learning My quick learning abilities have been helpful in my development as an authentic leader. Quick learning has been of vital help for me as I am able to not only learn from my very own mistakes, but also from the mistakes that might have been done by others. Wherever I happen to make a mistake as is bound to happen as a result of human nature, I make a note it and ensure that the next time round I use the experience to make the right choices. Innovative Problem Solving ability and Good Team Player Another factor that can be attributed to my quick learning abilities is my uncanny ability to quickly resolve any problems that occur at home, work or school using very innovative and ingenious methods while at the same time ensuring that the eventual quality of my work output does not in any way deteriorate. This aspect of my leadership personality has made me quite popular both at work and at school as most people prefer working with me due to the prevalent certainty that I will effectively tackle any eventuality that might occur. I am also satisfactorily able to function very well both in an appropriate team setting as well as on a mostly individual basis. My team playing abilities were carefully natured during my formative years when I played football. Football is a good team building game as for your team to win, it has to be able to effectively work together as a single unit. Smart Objectives Some of my Weaknesses and the Measures that I will Take to Try and Correct Them Dislike for Repetitive Tasks One of my key weaknesses is that I dislike having to perform repetitive jobs. Having to perform repetitive tasks repeatedly for several days generally causes me to become less enthusiastic about my job in addition to causing me to become bored. This has often resulted in my work performance level to sometimes be relatively poor. In order to amend this weakness, I aim to try and improve my focus and concentration as it is vital for me to do so as most high level leadership jobs have been seen to be mostly repetitive in nature. I will register to attend several seminars and training programs that will help me develop more focus and concentration when I happen to be assigned repetitive tasks. Timidity and Uncertainty I am often at times faces with a lot of uncertainty when faced with some difficult decisions. I sometimes lack the quality of taking bold steps and making adventurous decisions. I will need to develop my ability of not always taking the easiest way out and avoiding some of the more challenging situations. In order to be able to further develop and enhance my decision making ability, I will seek an authentic leadership mentor who will help me work at strengthening my resolve when faced with difficult decisions. Conclusion As highlighted in this report, my personal growth as an authentic leader has not been without its various challenges but I have managed to ensure that I constantly put a lot of effort in trying to work at improving my leadership capabilities. Although I have been faced with myriad of challenges in my general growth, there have also been occasional glimmers of hope in the person of my friends and family who have always constantly encouraged me to try and ensure that I am the best I can ever be and to this end, I find that I am eternally grateful to them. I will ensure that I constantly work at improving my authentic leadership abilities so to further develop my leadership abilities. Some of the Future Recommendations I can Make so as to Secure my Constant Growth as a True Authentic Leader Throughout my growth and development as an authentic leader, I have constantly been faced with the question of what exactly it means to be an authentic leader? What are some of the life challenges that happen to face authentic leaders? What are the basic steps that should be taken by an individual in their establishment as authentic leaders? Why are some individual leaders considered to be inauthentic and what can I do to avoid being classified as one? And what are some of the constant challenges that commonly face authentic leader? It is these and many other related questions that served to motivate me to try and carefully study some of the leaders that are commonly perceived as being authentic leaders. During my observation of these leaders, I tried to establish that there were some common psychological growth factors that invariably helped these leaders in successfully encountering and eventually embracing their own authentic selves. Authentic leadership requires that I in-future endeavor to ensure that I always act out in a consistent manner; I establish sets of internally derived sets of morals that are found to be in line with a higher purpose (Bolden, 2011). I noted that as authentic leaders we all eventually have to invoke the powerful power of choice and constantly unleash positive change in our own individual lives while not neglecting to effect the same in the lives of those that we may happen to encounter. Bibliography ELLIS, C. & BOCHNER, A. P., 2000. Autoethnography, personal narrative, and personal reflexivity. In: Denzin, N. & Lincoln, Y., 2000. Handbook of qualitative research. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. HEIDER, K.G., 1975. What do people do? Dani auto-ethnography. Journal of anthropological research, 31, 3-17. REED-DANAHAY, D. E., ed., 1997. Auto/ethnography: rewriting the self and the social. New York: Oxford. Cameron, S. K., and Spreitzer, M., G., 2012. The Oxford handbook of positive organizational scholarship. New York : Oxford University Press. Lyman, L., L., Strachan, J., and Lazaridou, A., 2012. Shaping social justice leadership : insights of women educators worldwide. Lanham, Md. : Rowman & Littlefield Education. Bolden, R., et al. 2011. Exploring Leadership: Individual, Organizational, and Societal Prespectives. Oxford Unversity Press. Read More