Transforming into a Transformational Leader - Dissertation Example

? Transforming Into a Transformational Leader of Transforming Into a Transformational Leader My brother-in –law worked for the German car manufacturer BMW as a manager for ten years. During this period I was staying at his house because of its proximity to my school. One thing that was quite moving was the way he related with the subordinate staff. He involved every member of the subordinate staff in every bit of organisational functioning .This motivated the workers because they had a sense of belonging to a larger goal, a larger vision and hence improved productivity. One charismatic man, who worked as a mechanic during that time recently traced my brother-in-law as he now owns a multi million dollar company in Africa that is involved in large scale car repair. My brother-in-law inspired a worker but built a leader at the end of it all. I instantly wanted and still want to be just like him, a transformational leader. Transformational leadership is a leadership style that focuses on ensuring change that is revolutionary to an organisation by being committed to the vision of the organisation. Transformational leaders ensure this by redefining employees’ objectives, goals, visions and missions. These leaders renew their subordinates’ commitments and restructure their strategies towards attaining goals by stimulating each other and inspiring their followers to become leaders as leaders grow into moral aides (Sullivan and Decker, 2005). Over the years, I have learnt that emotional intelligence is a prerequisite to any transformational leader. All the transformational leaders have a high level of emotional intelligence as it is what gives them the ability to accurately perceive and express emotion. Emotional intelligence is what gives transformational leaders the ability to access and generate thought feelings, to understand emotional knowledge and their ability to regulate emotions and ensure intellectual growth. Emotional intelligence incorporates the moral capacity of a leader (Bass, 1990) I would like to mature into the president of my current organisation, Blue Cross Blue Shield. To attain this position I have been cultivating my emotional intelligence where by my self awareness, motivation, self regulation, empathy and social skills. This means that for me to become an excellent transformational leader, I have to develop a high degree of understanding in what I am feeling, what it means and their potential positive or negative repercussions. Emotional intelligence will also support me in attaining measurable results when I become the president of Blue Cross Blue Shield. Since I got my job at Blue Cross Blue Shield, my major job description has been to train new and permanent employees to bring out the best in them and upgrading them to my organisation’s assets. I would like to grow further into a leader that put extra influence on employees by expanding the horizons in terms of goals. This would be done by elevating their confidence to perform and deliver more than what their expectations dictate (Conger and Kanungo, 1994). Naturally I am a charismatic fellow who arouses admiration. This is a strong quality that will provide intellectual stimulation, inspire and motivate my employees through the treating them with consideration individually. With expression of this behaviour the, by the time I graduate into the President of Blue Cross Blue Shield I would easily inspire my employees to attain their full maximum potential and display high levels of performance. I also have strong technical skills and intellectual capabilities which would help me guiding employees in technical work. My remarkable high degree of self awareness and emotional intelligence helps me in detecting my strongest and weakest points. This can help in regulation my leadership abilities (Lussier and Achua, 2004). Like my brother-in-law, I have high determination and vision however my weakness lies here because I have not learnt how to use it evaluate my employees potential and their capability to fully satisfy the current commitments while envisioning on how to expand their responsibilities further. Another point of my weaknesses as a person and trainer has been employing sympathy instead if empathy. I realised in order to be a transformational leader I should be willing to teach my followers and employees the hard way and appropriate way of improving their performance by letting them learn without interrupting however hard a skill might be. This is where I let in inappropriate emotions into work. To move forward and grow into a transformational leader, I have stated practising on how to sometimes let go and empathising. This will ensure that my employees are developed by challenging others who act on unfair basis and how to give constructive criticism (Sullivan and Decker, 2005). I have also been learning how to ask the employees to be in my shoes, that way they understand my strong stand on quality work without feeling like being harsh on them I plan to move to move to the leader I aspire to be, a transformational president to Blue Cross Blue Shield by using my emotional intelligence to incorporate problem solving strategies that I have acquired all through my years of education and work experience. This will involve starting to further communicate to my employees and inspire them to look beyond their self interest while at work but toward a common goal and vision. With the complex moral reasoning I have gained through life experience, I plan to draw on more relations under interpersonal situations and think about problems and solution in so many different ways to improve my pro-activity and start valuing goals that are beyond self interest for the good of every component of Blue Cross Blue Shield (Odom and Green 2003). In order become a transformational leader I have developed a plan to employ inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, individualised consideration and idealizes influence. In terms of inspirational motivation I intend articulate a clear vision to my employees and inspire them towards new ideas and goals. This is to ensure my employees and trainees develop a common motivation in achieving their goals. This is also to ensure that every employees purpose in thee achievement of a shared goal and vision and setting of high performance standards for them to achieve their objectives (Yammarino and Bass 1990). This will be done through my display of enthusiasm at work, providing my employees with motivational material to read and listen to, stimulating teamwork and highlighting positive outcomes. In the midst of all these I will encourage my employees not to be resistant to change if it will better their lives. Secondly, I plan to intellectually stimulating my trainees and employees by encouraging them to cultivate their creativity, learn new ways of accomplishing their goals and explore new opportunities that come their way. This also will involve developing their ability to interpret and solve problems in different ways. This would be achieved by encouraging the employees to be innovative and creative, by creating a conducive environment enough for information exchange to be possible and by heightening the sensitivity to changes in the environment and most importantly encourage employees to openly speak about ideas without fear of ridicule (Kanungo and Mendonca1996). The way for me to become a transformational leader is through the employment of individualised consideration which involves treatment of employees as individuals and not just members of a group, encouraging them and providing them with support on individual basis without generalisation (Couto 2007). This is to be achieved through open communication between me as the president and my employees to ensure that every employee’s contribution to blue cross blue shield is recognised. Free flow of information from the lowest ranked person in blue cross blue shield is instilled. I also plan to achieve these by assigning roles to my employees by considering their level of skills, talents and ability to learn to ensure every individual get a well deserved job based on merits. This will be achieved through ensuring fair distribution of work, listening too each and every employees concerns, boosting self confidence among employees by providing them with remarkable statement of congratulatory statements or incentives as a way of praising them and advising and counselling them on individual basis( Bass and Avolio 1993) Bottom line, I intend to become better at individualised consideration by being compassionate, responsive to Blue Cross Blue Shield employees, recognising their achievements, appreciating them and celebrating their accomplishments. Lastly, idealized influence will be a tool to use to become a better transformational president to Blue Cross Blue Shield. This involves loyalty, trust, admiration, and respect among employees through my expression of charismatic behaviour toward the vision and because of these the employees are able to imitate their president and make my ideals part of them (Hacker and Tammy 2004). This will be achieved through leading by example, showing optimism and confidence in our journey too achieve blue cross blue shield objectives, projecting a visions and giving realistic guidelines on ways of achieving it in a charismatic manner, exchanging and sharing information, risks and ideas with employees and displaying very high discipline and moral conduct as the president to ensure that they live and work by my example (Popper 2005). By following these steps I will get to the leader I wish to be whom my employees and trainees trust and have confidence in to be the driver towards achieving the organisation’s vision and objectives. The application of what I have learnt to instil positive change in the effectiveness in the strategies of the organisation will also be possible through various activities. I have learnt activities like seminars, group sharing, journaling, community outreach, sports and games are some of the ways one can mature into a transformational speaker (Miner 2007). The employment of these activities with the plan put in action would ensure that would create a more conducive for employees and enable be to become a better transformational leader. References Bass, B.M. (1990a). Bass & Stodgill’s Handbook of Leadership. Theory, Research and Managerial Applications (3rd Ed.). New York, NY: The Free Press. Bass, B.M., & Avolio, B.J. (1993). Transformational leadership: A response to critiques. In M.M. Chemers & R. Ayman (Eds.), Leadership theory and research: Perspectives and direction. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Conger, J.A., & Kanungo, R.N. (1994). Charismatic leadership in organizations: Perceived behavioural attributes and their measurement. Journal of Organizational Behaviour. American Library. Couto, R. A. (2007). Reflections on leadership. Lanham [u.a.: Univ. Press of America. Hacker, S., & Tammy, R. (2004). Transformational leadership: Creating organizations of meaning. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: ASQ Quality Press. Kanungo, R. N., & Mendonca, M. (1996). Ethical dimensions of leadership. Thousand Oaks [u.a.: Sage. Lussier, R.N. & Achua, C.F. (2004). Leadership: theory, application, skill development (2nd Ed.). Eagan, MN: Thomson-West. Miner, J. B. (2007). Organizational behaviour: 4. Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe. Odom, L. & Green, M.T. (2003). Law and the ethics of transformational leadership. Leadership and Organization Development Journal, San Diego, CA: Academic Press Popper, M. (2005). Leaders who transform society: What drives them and why we are attracted. Westport (Connecticut: Praeger. Sullivan, E. J., Decker, P. J., STAT! Ref (Online service), & Teton Data Systems (Firm). (2005). Effective leadership and management in nursing. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson/Prentice Hall. Yammarino, F.J., & Bass, B.M. (1990). Long-term forecasting of transformational leadership and its effects among naval officers: Some preliminary findings. In K.E. Clark & M.B. Clark (Eds.), Measures of Leadership. West Orange, NJ: Leadership Library of America. Read More