Leadership Skills for Social Worker - Essay Example

Leadership Leadership According to people like Jago (1982), good leaders are made; not born. That means if one has the desire and willpower, one can become an effective leader. In order for a person to become a good leader, it is necessary to undergo the never ending process of self-study, education, training, and experience. In this work, I intend to reflect on the various leadership knowledge and skills I achieved through my life experience and the way I achieved each of these knowledge and skills. Admittedly, the very first lesson I learnt about leadership is that leaders should possess self -knowledge and self-confidence. It happened because my job was relocated to another state. That meant either I had to stay away from y family or had to give up the job. I fell into depression at that point. Soon, I observed that my children and my whole family fell into depression following me. This observation made me reflect on the experience, and it resulted in a lot of changes in my attitude. First of all, I realized the fact that I was supposed to have self-knowledge and self-confidence. This was so because I had forgotten my role as the leader of my family. Without the knowledge about my role and without self-confidence in my role, I would not be able to influence my followers. That means it is natural for followers to depend on the leader at the times of crisis for guidance and motivation. If the leader is depressed and tensed as the followers are, the entire organization will collapse due to lack of proper leadership. That shows the need for a large number of other qualities too. The first one among them is the ability to motivate others. In my case, I had the strategy of trial and error for motivating my family because without adequate knowledge about how to motivate my children, I worked again and again to introduce newer ways to keep my children motivated. Thus, this trial and error method gave me better insights into yet another important quality a leader should possess; that is the ability to persuade and listen, or the ability to communicate. Based on the understanding, I had proper communication with my family, and the decision was that I would go for a course in Behavioral Science in order to become a social worker. Admittedly, this was the point of realization about another vital quality in a leader; the quality of risk-taking and entrepreneurship. That means I decided to set a goal, keep my followers motivated, and thus started working to achieve the goal. Admittedly, this situation was sufficient to make me understand the fact that leaders should be self-reliant and they should possess great tenacity and stamina. In addition are the qualities of enthusiasm and independence. The main fact is that most people cannot act independently or effectively without someone to guide them and motivate them. Thus, what a leader is supposed to do is not to blame others or circumstances but the leader is supposed to take charge of the situation and move the whole enterprise ahead. In fact, I acquired these knowledge and skills through self-reflection and reflection on experience. Here, it becomes necessary to look into Bass’ Theory of Leadership which provides three basic ways through which people become leaders. First of all, according to the Trait Theory of Leadership, some people become leaders due to their certain innate personality traits. Admittedly, I was a person who did not naturally possess many of the qualities required for a leader. Before this realization, I had less enthusiasm, confidence, and communication skills. In addition, I was less aware about the power and need of motivation in keeping followers motivated. Thus, I was not a man who was destined to become a leader by birth. The second important way is the Great Events Theory. According to this concept, a crisis or a great event may cause a person to rise to the occasion. This will bring out extraordinary leadership qualities in an ordinary person. A look into my case proves that I fit well into this category. Until this event, I never had realized my ability to become a good leader and to guide and motivate others. However, as the crisis arose, and as my whole family fell into depression and started looking to me for guidance and motivation, I started reflecting upon my own performance and became a good leader. There is one more way to become leaders. That is the Transformational Leadership. According to this theory, people can become leaders by learning leadership skills. Evidently, I have become a leader not through innate qualities but by learning. Admittedly, my learning took place in many different ways including self reflection, reflection on experience, trial and error and observation. In fact, this entire course of events made me realize one thing; leadership is a spiral upwards with self improvement, self-knowledge, seizing opportunity, taking risk, and keeping followers motivated. However, there are features which are in stark contradiction; like failure, depression, self-defeat, self-doubt and fatalism. Here, I hit upon another important idea too, that is leaders should be able to experiment and explore strategies even in the face of uncertainty. It happens because as I got unemployed, it was uncertain as to whether I would be able to successfully complete my Bachelors in Behavioral Science to become a good social worker. However I had to be strong- willed enough to set this as the goal even though there was uncertainty and to keep my family enthusiastic and focused. In fact, all this understanding resulted in lots of changes in my approach towards life. In my free time, I work with the youth in my church and at present, I am able to teach them how to have respect for themselves and for others; an essential quality for a leader. This helps them reflect upon their own abilities, roles, qualities and shortcomings. Thus, they improve themselves to become good leaders and social workers. Also, I myself grew strong in the realization of my role as a leader and also as a social worker. Yet another significant area was the improvement in my understanding of various factors of leadership. The factors are situation, communication, follower, and leader. The first point, as already discussed, is the various qualities which are necessary in a leader. I realized that as I showed more confidence and determination, my children and family too were able to develop more confidence in me and my decisions. That means it is the followers, not the leader, who determine the success of the leader. That again means if one is not able to convince ones followers, one is not a good leader. Also, through my observation, I found that even within my family, some members are easily motivated than others. That means the same style of leadership is not sufficient for different people. While some possess high levels of motivation, some are difficult to motivate. That means in order for someone to become a good leader, one should possess good understanding of human nature, their emotions and motivations. In fact, I am able to apply this knowledge when I work among cancer patients. I lost my mother and grandmother to cancer and thus I work for cancer patients in my free time. When I work among the cancer patients, I get a chance to observe various people and their various levels of emotions and motivations. The better I understand the need to know the features of followers in order to motivate them effectively, the better I am able to observe, reflect, and communicate. Thus, I find it easy to make others motivated and inspired. Another area where I worked is communication. I understood that both verbal and non-verbal communication can have huge impact on the motivational levels of the followers. To illustrate, when I was depressed about the relocation of my job, my appearance was rather dull, and the appearance alone was sufficient to depress my children. In other words, my depression was communicated non-verbally. Even before I told my children about the situation, they were able to observe something wrong. Also, I noticed that it is pointless for a leader to tell his followers to do something that he will not be willing to do himself. That means, if I am depressed myself, I will not be able to motivate my followers. This indicates the need to have strong conviction in ones own abilities and decisions in order to make others convinced in the capacity of the leader. It was found that when I overcame my depression and started talking about the new strategy, my children and family too regained confidence and enthusiasm. Thus, reflection and observation helped me gain this knowledge. Also, I observed that methods of leadership should vary according to the situation also. To illustrate, it was common for me to behave like a tyrant and use my power of authority to discipline my children when I found them doing something wrong in the past. However, in this new situation, it was found that my strategy of dictatorship only jeopardized the situation as it did not help my children develop any more confidence in my leadership because I was evidently shattered and it was communicated non-verbally. So, at that juncture, I was made to reflect upon what was going wrong, and I decided to change my strategy. As I communicated more with my children and as I showed the willingness to listen and to show empathy, I found that my children were more worried about the situation than I was. So, I decided to continue with the same strategy. Giving up my dictatorship that suited with my children previously, I adopted a more communicating, encouraging and motivating attitude to raise their confidence in my decisions. Later on, I adopted the same s strategy when I worked among the youth in my church. I found that when I communicate and listen to the youngsters, I am better able to convince them about the good intentions. Also, among cancer patients, I found it utmost necessary to listen and show sympathy while keeping them motivated and enthusiastic even during the hours of hardship. Admittedly, these factors would be enormously helpful in my future career as a social worker. I will be able to keep myself confident, self-reliant, motivated and focused, and I will be able to better understand the nature of various followers to motivate them effectively by adopting effective leadership styles. Also, I will be able to adopt my strategy depending on he nature of the situation. Lastly, I will be able to use self-reflection, reflection on experience, and observation in order to continue improving my own performance as a leader. References Jago, A.G .(1982). Leadership: perspectives in theory and research, Management Science 28(3), 316. Read More