The Importance of Leadership - Case Study Example

Reflective writing Reflective writing Mentoring is a relationship between two people – the "mentor" and the "mentee." As a mentor, you pass on valuable skills, knowledge and insights to your mentee to help them develop their career. As a young man I consider the mentoring is a development strategy for a youth’s successful path to adulthood. In a structured mentoring program, a supportive individual works with a youth to build a relationship by offering guidance, support, and encouragement to cultivate the youth’s positive and healthy development. Often, mentoring programs are designed around specific goals, such as academic achievement, career preparation, and behavior modification. Mentors should understand they are not meant to replace a parent, guardian or teacher. A mentor is not a disciplinarian or decision-maker for a child. Instead, a mentor echoes the positive values and cultural heritage parents and guardians are teaching. A mentor is part of a team of caring adults. A mentors main purpose is to help a young person define individual goals and find ways to achieve them. Since the expectations of each child vary, the mentors job is to encourage the development of a flexible relationship that responds to the mentors and the young persons needs. Mentoring is a relationship between two people – the "mentor" and the "mentee." As a mentor, you pass on valuable skills, knowledge and insights to your mentee to help them develop their career. Mentoring can help the mentee feel more confident and self-supporting. Mentees can also develop a clearer sense of what they want in their careers and their personal lives. They will develop greater self-awareness and see the world, and themselves, as others do. For an organization, mentoring is a good way of efficiently transferring valuable competencies from one person to another. This expands the organizations skills base, helps to build strong teams, and can form part of a well planned Succession Planning strategy. Many apprenticeship schemes are based on the principles of mentoring. When starting my mentoring program, decide what the minimum (weekly or monthly) time commitment for mentors should be. Include time required for training, meeting with the young person being mentored, following up on any issues that arise, attending sessions with other mentors, and learning about available resources. I should able to provide sound advice and accurate information on issues ranging from schoolwork to family relationships to peer pressure. Giving and receiving feedback Feedback is an important part of our communication process. Without feedback we do not know when we have done something well or could perhaps improve upon something. Many people find it much easier to give feedback when it is positive than when it is negative. How do we grow to be successful leaders? Most of us would invariably say, we have learnt from our experience. Thats absolutely correct! A powerful source of understanding self is from what we get to know about ourselves from others. How do we take "Feedback" from others - be it about our behavior or performance? We tend to become defensive while giving and taking feedback. Our acceptance to "feedback" is also partly determined by the manner, in which others give us feedback. Feedback giving and receiving is a skill, which we must develop to be effective mentors or leaders. It is also the "foundation" of any performance appraisal process. Last week a colleague paid me an unsolicited, surprising, and helpful compliment. It caught me completely off guard, which got me thinking about giving and receiving feedback. Feedback is one of the most useful resources for building our brand. In order to talk about what value is brought to a given situation we have to know our self. Without feedback, we can become trapped in our own minds amidst our own perceptions of our performance and interactions. Asking for others’ input is tremendously valuable because it can help us recognize areas for improvement we did not realize needed work or, conversely, recognize strengths you did not realize you had (“blind spots"). It can also help us measure progress or put aside fears that we are weak in certain areas – we may be dwelling on perceived weaknesses that others do not see. Bottom line, you need to ask people, at all levels and from all aspects of your life, for their feedback. This is often structured or prescribed in the form of supervisor performance reviews, internship learning agreements and check-ins or grades from professors. Get even more value by seeking informal feedback from mentors, peers, fellow interns or co-workers, family and friends. Ask people out to coffee or lunch or send an online. Because of the benefits listed above, feedback is a gift. Which means we should be seeking give as well as receive? Leadership The importance of leadership, especially in a business and education organization, can never be overemphasized. It is proper leadership which motivates the members of an organization and inspires them to work towards a common objective. It is also proper leadership which creates a favorable work culture and environment within an organization therefore, inculcation of leadership skills is of extreme importance. As a leader it is very important to have an impressive voice and excellent oratory skills. This will draw people towards the leader and then listen to him and her. From my short experience , because I used to work for two years, a leader needs to have a clear voice in the sense that he is clear in his head about what the objectives of the business organization are, how the work will be delegated and how and within what time the objective will be achieved. If the leader is not clear about all these things he will never be able to convince other people in the organization about the same. And since no one can ever do anything until and unless they are completely convinced about it, the organization will suffer as a whole. Other issues that might hinder the development of leadership skills is lack of vision, lack of confidence, lack of organizational capability. I believe that to be a leader, I do not have to be an elected official, or a CEO. A leader is someone who others consistently want to follow for new trends and ideas. I need to lead because it helps me grow and expand my lives. There is almost nothing as challenging as leading groups of people. As a leader, i may need to communicate to large numbers of people, negotiate, and handle dicey situations. I will become more confident in myself and in my world if I take action to lead others around me. Knowing your personal strengths and weaknesses can help us a lot in choosing the right career or making good decisions. Because if we are able to focus what we do around our personal strengths, we have the chance to create something remarkable, while making it look like it’s almost effortless for us. what is my strengths points? I always ask myself this question and also my weakness points, sometimes my answers not perfect , like to say my strength comes from my skills and my ability to work hard ,,,and so on ,, I do not consider this answer. I think the answer should contain experiments that make me discover myself well. According to Clifton strengths Finder THEMES my strengths are that:: Belief: People strong in the Belief theme have certain core values that are unchanging. Out of these values emerges a defined purpose for their life. Developer: People strong in the Developer theme recognize and cultivate the potential in others. They spot the signs of each small improvement and derive satisfaction from these improvements. Positivity: People strong in the Positivity theme have an enthusiasm that is contagious. They are upbeat and can get others excited about what they are going to do. Relator: People who are strong in the Relator theme enjoy close relationships with others. They find deep satisfaction in working hard with friends to achieve a goal. Significance: People strong in the Significance theme want to be very important in the eyes of others. They are independent and want to be recognized. lets suppose that , as a leader of small teams i will use my strengths five points, I involve people in the decisions so that they feel involved and ensure they have the opportunity to contribute to tasks facing the team. I manage the information, plan and organize and make the decisions as required. With my strong communication skills, I have been able to motivate the staff to higher standards of performance meaning we have also helped our profits figures through increased sales and tighter cost-control. Alongside this I have encouraged innovation and my team has produced several very good ideas for new products. Most importantly I actively seek to develop members of my team for their own careers sake but also for the future of the business itself. This means I also look for personal development opportunities to ensure my skills are kept up to date. Skill assessment criteria Goal Performance Criteria Excellent OK Not so good In six month’s time I will .... have a car Knowledge An extremely good knowledge of the car market. A good knowledge of the car market. No knowledge of the car market. Skill An extremely good negotiator. A good negotiator. Not a good negotiator. Values Big, safe (Jeep). Economical. Not so big not so safe or economical. Small, unsafe and expensive to run. People Work with salespeople. Worked with some people. Worked alone. Learn A very good understanding of the qualities of a car. So a of knowledge Don’t know the car. Integrate Makes me happy. ---- Not happy. Goal Performance Criteria Excellent OK Not so good In six months time I will .... open new business Knowledge An extremely good knowledge of the business and market. A good knowledge of the business and market. No knowledge of the business and market. Skill An extremely good business skills. Good business skills. No business skills. Values (Communication, honest, fair, creative, organized and negotiator). Sometimes hard working patient, content, fair and creative. Small, unsafe and expensive to run. People Work with chinese people, customers(women).(Rami) Work with staff, bank and government. Sometimes work with suppliers, customers, staff, bank and government. Rarely work with customers suppliers, customers, staff, bank and government. Learn A very good understanding of the qualities of a car. A life about what makes my business successful. Integrate In my professional life I am successful, wealthy and famous. Partly successful, wealthy and famous. Not successful, poor and not on google. References http://www.strengthstest.com/theme_summary.php/ http://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/leadership/leadership-functions/become-community-leader/main http://www.bodhih.com/leadershiptraining/effectivefeedback.html http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCDV_24.htm Read More