Personal Leadership Development - Essay Example

?PERSONAL LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PLAN (PLDP) Due Step my goals as a leader I am a majoring in pre-pharmacy. My current goal is to achieve the necessary grades which will enable me to be admitted in doctor of pharmacy program. I would like to work during the summer as a student intern in a retail pharmacist until I finish school and graduate. Pharmacy is my chosen career path since I am so passionate about pharmacy. I will really appreciate if I did my doctor of pharmacy program at Purdue University. What makes me love the profession is my admiration of how pharmacists play a major role in ensuring patients are able to regain their good health. This makes me to have a sight in being the most respected pharmacist of the community (Yukl et al., 76). The type of organization I would like to lead is majorly a retail pharmacy because I would enjoy the direct communication I would be accorded with the patients and also working with my colleagues in completing each task efficiently. One year after graduation, I expect to be a pharmacist in a retail pharmacy. This is useful in me gaining experience by accepting responsibilities as a pharmacist. Five years after graduation, I expect a pharmacy manager in a retail store. This will be achieved through hard work, teamwork and helping new members in adapting to their new environment. Finally, ten years after graduation, I expect to be a regional pharmacist manager or intern coordinator. With experience and proficient in executing my job as a pharmacist, this type of leadership will put me in a position to give back to the profession. As an intern coordinator, I will stand a chance to be able to mentor and lead pharmacy students. Step 2: assessing my leadership qualities There are many assessments that had a greater effect into my life but the six most important assessments to me are self-confidence which entails: generalized self-efficacy, leader-member exchange, motivation to lead, influential tactics, emotional intelligence and participatory leadership attitudes. Generalized self-efficacy is an important attribute which shows the importance of having self-confidence for one to be an effective leader and leader emergence. Self-confidence is important to leaders as they show one’s ability to believe in being successful and be able to influence others to achieve a common desired goal or results. Generalized self-efficacy can be strongly manifested in an individual with high self-confidence which has an end-result of strong and effective leadership. In the assessment, a score of 6 represented a strong sense of generalized self-efficacy and a low score of say 2 shows a weaker sense of generalized self-efficacy. Faced with different situations, I have a capacity to succeed as evidenced by my high score of 5 since it indicates a strong sense of efficacy. I chose this assessment because of the score and I have the belief I have that, I will succeed and whatever am doing will produce a desirable result faced with a situation. Leader-member exchange is another assessment I chose because I it assesses the pros and cons of a follower while being supervised. In this assessment the quality of relationship exchanged between the leader and member is taken into account, a score above 6 shows a high quality and a low-quality relationship is shown by a lower score than 2. I have a score of 5.43 which shows my relationship with a leader was of high-quality. Motivation to lead is the assessment I also valued because it contained dimensions on what motivates one to lead. A high score say above 6 in all the dimensions shows a strong motivation to lead and a weak motivation to lead as indicated by a low score, say below 2. My scores in this assessment were 4.2, 4.11 and 4.7 which were relatively high and indicate that I love the role of a leader and like giving directions to my followers. Since I have a goal of being an intern coordinator, this assessment will be handy since I would like to effective lead my fellow pharmacist students for their benefit. Emotional intelligence assessment shows one’s expression of emotion and this can help in my ability to appraise myself and those of others. A high emotional intelligence is indicated by a score more than 4 and less than two for low level of emotional intelligence. My score was 4 and that shows that I have a high emotional intelligence which will be handy when I become a pharmacist (Colquitt, 388). Influence tactics are self-assessment attribute which deals with means through which one may influence others. The score reflects that I rely on rational persuasive approach to influence others through my leadership situation. The assessment also shows other forms of influencing others such as pressure, upward appeal, exchange, integration, coalition, inspirational appeal and consultation. The high score in rational persuasion shows that I strongly prefer using rationality in influencing others. This high score on persuasive than other influence tactics shows how much I value empowering rationality in influencing others. On top of rational persuasion, I prefer to use other tactics like integration, consultation and inspirational appeal. This has helped me in achieving my goals like working as a pharmacist. Consultation with patients is an important aspect for pharmacist. Integration is important as it helps me to be able to work with my other members of the pharmacist (Triandis et al., 1112). Participatory leadership is an important aspect in self-assessment in leadership as it deals with people’s attitudes. Four attitudes can be identified by a series of statements and they include: attitude towards the abilities of an average person, attitudes towards information sharing, attitudes towards participation and attitudes towards supervisory nature of controls. The high score in all the four attitudes shows that I favor subordinates, their strengths and how they give their best towards organizational activities. This is theory Y kinds of leadership as they tend to value participation leadership (Earley, 558). A theory X kind of leader is the one who score lowly that is 2 or less in this kind of assessment and they shows hesitancy in appreciating the work and contributions of his subordinate. These leaders tend to shy away from participatory leadership. I had scored highly on my person’s capacity, this is an indicator that I belief that subordinate have the learning abilities, accept leadership skills and embrace self-direction and self-control. I really agree with this score because I belief that I have the capabilities to learn and accept leadership roles. My willingness to learn and accept leadership roles are important in my profession in pharmacist as it will enable me to run more and more when new drugs are invented since I can learn more about them (Matsumoto et al., 750). In participation, I scored fairly high which is a big indicator that I value to get involved and influence my followers since I belief that followers will be encouraged when the see their leaders getting involved with doing the job. As the intern coordinator this high score reveals my ability to see intern students are potential future pharmacist and should get involved now rather than latter. Step 3: improving my leadership The concept I found interesting are: theories of born leader versus developed leader, three psychological commitment, and traits of leadership, leadership and role of gender. The sociologists believe that leadership is a social process defined through interaction while the Great Person Theory states that leaders are born with leadership characteristics. I will tend to favor sociologists since I believe that leaders are not born with leadership characteristics but through interaction, one can be able to make a good leader. I do support them because a few years ago, I was not outgoing but with interactions and life experiences, I can now take more leadership related responsibilities. The three forms of psychological commitments are interesting to me because a leader will increase his leadership aspects like trust, fairness and ethical behaviors by effectively managing these commitments. The traits of leadership do interest me because it tends to support the fact that a person can become a leader if they work on these traits. The role of gender was interesting to me since I noted that men and women still differ in their interpersonal style when it comes in leadership. Men are competitive, analytical, and autocratic and favor hierarchical authority and high leader control while women are more democratic in that they are cooperativeness, collaboration, lower leader control and intuitive problem solving (Podsakoff, 134). Finally, the concept of narcissism was vital to me since it is the driving force behind our desire to obtain a leadership position. Narcissistic people always believe that they are superior and others are inferior. This concept is important to leaders who value the title which cones with their position and by appreciating that leaders are superior to their followers. References Colquitt Jason. “On the Dimensionality of Organizational Justice: A Construct Validation of Measure”. Journal of Applied Psychology 68 (2000) p. 389 Earley, chrristopher. “Social loafing and collectivism: A Comparison of the United States and the People’s Republic of China.” Administrative Science Quarterly 34 (1989) pp 555-81. Matsumoto David, Weismann Michelle, Preston Ken, Brown Bonny and Kupperbaunch Cenita, “Context-Specific Measurement of Individualism-Collectivism on the Individual Level: the individualism-Collectivism Interpersonal Assessment Inventory,” Journal of Cross- Cultural Psychology 28 no 6 (1997) pp 743-67. Podsakoff Philip, Mackenzie Scott, Moorman Robert, and Fetter Richard, “Transformational Leader Behavior and Their Effects on Followers’ Trust in Leader, Satisfaction and Organizational Citizenship Behaviors,” Leadership Quarterly 1 no.2 (1990) pp107-42 Triandis Harry, Mecusker Christopher, and Hui Harry. “Multi-Method Probes of individualism and Collectivism.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. (1990) pp 1006-1020 Yukl Gary, Sandall Darrel, Walton Abram and Knight Aldis. Leadership in Organizations: Text and Supplemental Workbook. New Jersey: Pearson, 2011. Print Read More