Leadership: Critical Self-Reflection - Assignment Example

 Leadership: Critical Self-Reflection Leadership is essential for achieving desired goals and in tasks that involve many people to come together. It is important to understand what leadership is all about in order to be effective. Through the learning obtained from the course, a critical self-reflection about personal leadership based on my previous leadership role will be presented in this paper while identifying the areas of improvement and behaviors that would be required for becoming effective before concluding with key findings. As the football team captain during my high school, I experienced the most challenging leadership role. Leadership to me till then was to exercise power on others with the use of my knowledge and skills. My assumptions regarding the leader’s role were limited to directing others and putting their skills to proper use in order to win the game or complete the task. I was chosen the captain of the team based on my performance during previous football tournament held with other schools. I scored the highest number of goals, which helped in our school winning the trophy. I was appreciated by all for this performance and everyone in the team and the sports committee accepted me as the captain. We continued to win most of the matches for next one year after I was chosen as the captain; however, we failed to win even a single match when a new team was formed with some old players and mostly new players. After we lost about 5 matches at the inter-school level, I was asked to leave the captaincy, which left me utterly disappointed. As a leader, it is important to achieve the desired results by inspiring followers. Leaders have the responsibility of motivating the followers to stay focussed towards the goal and also to coach and guide them. This can be done only when leaders possess the necessary skills and capabilities related to a particular task; however, leaders’ coaching skills are also equally important. For effective coaching, leaders need patience, communication, connectedness, and strong interpersonal relationship with the team members. Certainly, I possessed excellent skills pertaining to this game, such as, gaining possession of the football, maintaining and releasing the ball. I was also good at positioning the players strategically that would help in scoring the goal. Ironically, the feedback that I received was quite surprising. My team mates told me that I did not give attention to what they had to say and did not entertain their inputs when making strategic decisions related to the game. Moreover, the football committee head told me that I had to be more patient while dealing with younger players instead of showing an overpowering behavior, though that, to me, meant directing and coaching the youngsters. Based on the learning obtained, this behavior can be related to the task-oriented leadership style, as described in Blake and Mouton’s managerial grid (Northouse, p.78). With very high emphasis on task and goal and less focus on relationships, emotions, communication, coordination and encouragement, this style can be effective for short span of time. Northouse (p.26) identifies five main traits of an effective leader, namely, intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity and sociability. Learning related to leadership indicates that these traits have multiple perspectives. Intelligence points to knowledge, cleverness and the ability to learn quickly with keen observation. Self-confidence comes from knowledge and courage to take difficult decisions. Determination deals with the ability to be focused and committed towards achieving the goal. Integrity is about behavior, thinking, and the ability to build trust in others as well as treating others with respect. Sociability refers to the ability to build effective interpersonal relationships with mutual trust, understanding and patience. However, what Northouse fails to point out here is the need for an ability to create and share, or align the team towards a common vision, which is an important part of leadership. The ‘vision’ perspective has been associated with transformational leadership (Northouse, p.200). Nevertheless, every leader at every stage needs a vision or a goal that binds together the team members. Literature concerning leadership asserts that effective leadership is the one that can identify the followers’ needs and can adapt to the followers’ needs (Northouse, p.100). This has been the underlying principle of Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational leadership approach (Northouse, p. 99). This approach has provided a much meaningful understanding about my own leadership, which was more of authoritative. In order to be successful, adopting situational leadership seems to be a practical and also a challenging solution. Attempting to adopt the situational leadership approach that requires for a leader to be directive, supportive, participative and delegative for different followers depending upon their developmental levels would be highly challenging; however, I intend to adopt this approach by using SMART approach. In any leadership role that I may take, I would first set clear goal for the team. If need be, I would assign individual objectives for different team members that would help them reach the common goal in near future. These objectives will be periodically measured so that the team members are aware of their performance and the impact of their efforts towards achieving the common goal. The members will be constantly monitored for performance, and will be appreciated for improvements, or will be provided feedback and support. The relevance of these objectives can be assessed based on their performance and improvement. For instance, the youngsters in the football team will be made to take extra practice sessions with individual targets assigned to each player depending on their mutual improvement areas. Their individual performances will be monitored and the same be compared during their practice sessions with the entire team. These achievements will be tracked and praised for their hard work. The experienced players will be delegated with responsibilities of coaching the youngsters, which will also motivate the experienced players. In addition, Kaplan’s guiding points towards becoming an effective leader would be of great help in improving my leadership skills (p.1). Of his seven areas, three are of utmost significance for me. Firstly, I have to keep in mind the changing needs and demands that pose serious challenges to the outcomes; to handle these challenges, I should constantly perform evaluation and alignment of strategies and practices adopted for accomplishing a particular goal. During my tenure as the football captain, I failed to assess the situation that demanded much involvement from my side to coach the youngsters with patience and empathy, which caused our failures. I continued to be authoritative with young players who actually needed guidance and coaching; instead, I expected them to play like others and achieve high scores. I will have to assess the situation and change my style accordingly in order to be effective. Secondly, I have to learn how to lead under pressure without being arrogant and impatient. My behavior will affect the self-confidence of team and also my image negatively. I should learn to accept others’ mistakes and help them find solutions instead of reprimanding them. I now realize that making others perform is my responsibility as the leader. Moreover, my followers tend to ape my behavior which makes it all the more important for me to adopt a patient, professional and mature persona during times of high pressure. Thirdly, I will keep in mind that my behavior reflects what I am trying to accomplish or who I am. This is important because the authoritative behavior portrays me as an autocratic leader, which was only my misconception about the leadership role. Adopting situational leadership poses greater challenge in terms of how I behave at various times with different types of followers, which might show my personality as misleading if it is not congruent with my beliefs. Considering that my personality is authoritative, I will try to be more assertive and rational during my interaction with team members. I will listen more and express less in order to understand others perspectives and opinions. Increased interactions will help being more assertive and also in making sound decisions with others involvement. In conclusion, effective leadership is the ability to continuously influence followers towards achieving common goals. Effective leaders must possess specific qualities that are put into use to achieve the upcoming goals. Now, my understanding about effective leadership has shifted from exercising power and authority to situation-based behavior. For this, there are some specific behaviors that I need to adopt such as, patience and listening; appreciating followers for their performance; supporting followers by providing required help in terms of coaching, guidance, appreciation, feedback; trusting team members’ abilities by allowing them to participate and take up ownership for specific activities based on their strengths. While adopting these behaviors, I will also have to constantly evaluate and align strategies and plans to suit the demands and situations; I will have to inculcate more patience and tolerance to deal with high-pressure situations; and, I need to be true to myself when it comes to my behavior and personality. Works Cited Kaplan, Robert S. “What to Ask the Person in the Mirror”. Harvard Business Review, vol. 85.1 (2007): 86-95. Northouse, Peter Guy. Leadership: Theory and Practice. 6th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2012. Read More