Describe what you have learned about issues of leadership in your current role - Essay Example

Introduction Leadership is a challenging profession and need commitment, intelligence, understanding and exceptional skills. A leader influences his team to attain certain goals and guide the institution in a manner that makes the institution logical, effective and consistent. In this discussion, I will explain my experience about leadership issues in my current role.Discussion I work as an assistant manager for an educational office in Saudi Arabia. I am currently managing 50 educational supervisors, and visiting schools to promote principals and teachers of new educational methods.

This is a challenging and, at the same time, a great opportunity to experiment and develop my leadership prowess. I have learned that leadership competency is all about having the ability to operate and lead people in a diverse organization structures, skills, cultures and contexts. It is the ability to work or function with external and internal teams across various time zones, human resource policies and locations. This capability makes a manager or a leader adaptive to alterations in working conditions and able to develop effective teams.

Therefore, a leader needs motivation, commitment and understanding. This is because one is managing different people, with diverse cultural backgrounds, tradition, opinions and goals, is not easy, (Sadler 34). The group is motivated in diverse ways, and every teacher expects a different thing from an assistant manager. Therefore, as a leader one needs to be a team builder, motivator, coacher to ensure divergent views are integrated and needs met to achieve common goals. Leadership skills can perform an extensive part in development of one’s career.

Often one’s technical skills can enhance his knowledge, (Northouse 41). Leaders learn from their colleagues, teachers, his boss and experiment various skill. Therefore, leadership is character development and building process that enables a leader to enhance his leadership skills, identify his weaknesses and strengths and reinforce his leadership abilities. A leader must be a critical thinker, managing about 50 educational supervisors and visiting different schools to promote teachers and principals of new educational strategies need critical thinking.

He should predict possible challenges before they occur. Managing needs, extensive skills to allow development of educational methods that are cohesive, coherent and fruitful to the educational needs of students. Efficient listening is crucial for leaders. Without listening skills, a leader cannot get a response and opinions from teachers and principals and as sense of what members prefer about the teaching activities and projects. Listening will allow integration of different team members’ opinions to facilitate project success, (Sadler 39).

A leader must have the ability to facilitate communication among the team members in an honest and open manner. Efficient interpersonal communication is evident when group members listen to each other and try to build on each others contributions. Members of the group attain efficient interpersonal communication through strong leadership and self-regulation so that every member has an equal chance to contribute in the project.Resolving the conflict and decision-making are two key functions that are crucial for leaders.

For successful team development, I believe my ability to make the group function, devise methods and techniques for problem solving and decision-making is critical. Absence of consensus strategies for decision-making and conflict management may result in inconveniences, disputes, frustrations and incompetent decisions.Conclusion Leadership performs a profound function in the productivity of an organization. Effective leadership ensures coherence and cohesiveness of an institution. Works citedNorthouse, Peter Guy.

Leadership: Theory and Practice. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 2007. Print.Sadler, Philip. Leadership. London: Kogan Page Ltd, 2003. Print.