Personal Leadership Development Plan - Essay Example

Personal Leadership Development Plan Step 1: Identification of Goals as a Leader Aspiration is a key dimension which leaders need to leverage for providing inspiration to their followers. Aspiration is a desire to reach the set goals in a successful manner which in turn can facilitate an organization to improve its position and attain greater distinctiveness in the business market. Aspiration is a process of reaching the star, but before reaching it I must check the ground upon where I am standing. As a leader, my aspiration is to improve performance and to always focus on how to attain goals in an ethical manner. As a leader, my interest is to comprehensively focus on my company’s goals and objectives (Bhattacharya, 2012). My motivation is to always concentrate on working staff and employees on every operational level because I believe that employees are the core assets and the backbone of an organization. As a leader, I believe in the notion that success is nothing but achieving an impossible dream. Moreover, success is attaining something by overcoming grudges, regrets or qualms. From my perspective, success can mean managing a leading business organization or possibly it can mean exploiting something for others without anticipating anything in return (Great Big Life, 2012). My desire is to be a successful leader, where I would sincerely attempt to focus on the need to understand myself and my followers in an appropriate manner. Moreover, as a leader my desire would be to lead an organization which has decentralized working procedure where employees participation is strong towards the decision making. There should be a mutual understanding between employees as well as hierarchies regarding any taken decision and also there must be a shared discussion among the employees (Forsberg, 2008). In relation to my career tracks, I hope to pursue a career where I am able to fulfill my potentialities in a comprehensive way and I am able to carry out my roles and responsibilities efficiently, which in turn would enable me to be regarded as an inspiration to others to follow. I aim to focus on being a successful leader in a decentralized organization where I would like to lead by example and guide my followers to attain the desired goals of the organization. In my career path, I would attempt to follow a motivational and participative leadership style to motivate and bring out the best in others. One year after my graduation, I expect to hold a lower managerial level position where I may lead a small group of people. This job might be as a sales executive manager in an organization where I would be able to advise my team members regarding sales and marketing activities. Five years after my graduation, I expect to be employed at a middle level managerial position where I would play a significant role in the decision making aspect in the organization. Furthermore, ten years of graduation, I expect to attain a high level managerial position where I would be able to take managerial decisions for the betterment of the organization and to take the organization to greater heights. At this level, I also expect to lead and support my followers as a charismatic leader. Step 2: Assessment of Leadership Qualities Honesty and integrity are the crucial components in my leadership style. In order to make people follow my direction voluntarily, it is necessary to make my followers to completely trust in my honesty. Moreover, I also make them believe upon my commitment, dedication and my unshakable ethics. My leadership style is based on the attributes such as openness, truthfulness and consistency by which I can inspire my team effectively. My leadership traits believe in taking responsibilities in every kind of situations. Moreover, my leadership qualities strongly depend on self-confidence and self-assurance by which I can take risks in any type of competitive situations. In order to inspire my followers to take up my guided path, my leadership style comprises genuine keenness, optimism, pragmatic viewpoints and enthusiasm towards my job tasks. Furthermore, my leadership qualities are devoted as well as committed towards completing my assigned job responsibilities efficiently. My leadership is always creative and focused towards developing innovative ideas while maintaining core value of a decision. My leadership style considers providing value as well as respect to the responses of every team member (Sullivan, 2012). I have participated in making assessments in relation to individual collectivism and transformational leadership. Individual collectivism is one of the significant dimensions, which is described by ‘cross-cultural psychologists’ in order to explain as well as predict disparity among various cultures. In relation to this assessment, I have recognized that I effectively provide importance on the aspects where I intend to maintain harmonious relationships with my colleagues so that they voluntarily follow my guidelines in their work procedures. Moreover, I also provide emphasis on the facets where I always help my colleagues in every aspect of their job, follow the advices of the colleagues regarding major decisions and follow the norms which are established for my colleagues. In this assessment, a score of 6 implies effective importance and 1 means not at all important regarding individual collectivism. My score in this assessment is 3.72, which means that I always follow decentralized leadership style where I effectively concentrate on participation of my followers regarding any major decision. Furthermore, this score implies that I always prefer to provide support to my colleagues regarding any job issue and maintain a mutual understanding between me and my followers (Moorman & Blakely, 1995). Another assessment which I have done was regarding ‘transformational leadership’ where my rating lies between moderate to high level. In this assessment, I strongly focus on the dimension of inspiration where I always encourage my followers with my future plans and also look after that whether they are conformable with those plans or not. My leadership style motivates them to take the best possible path to attain organizational objectives. I have established attractive reward systems where I provide special recognitions when work performances of my followers are very effective towards the organization. I always provide them with good advice and lead my followers with superior instances. My leadership focuses towards generating new opportunities, where I encourage my followers to work as a team regarding any job task. My leadership style comprises ideas that help my followers to take on and overcome challenges in any critical situation. My leadership focuses on being transformational in nature where I always motivate and inspire my followers towards attaining the organizational goals (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman, & Fetter, 1990). With regard to the entire assessment, the personal support score is 6.67, goal emphasize score is 7 and work facilitation score is 6. The scores of these categories imply that my leadership style should be charismatic, enthusiastic and transformational. The key focus area of my leadership is to understand different individuals’ feelings and issues towards any job tasks. Moreover, my leadership always desires to give support and help my followers regarding their personal problems. In addition, my leadership primarily emphasizes on providing inspiration to my followers where they are encouraged to enjoy their job roles in order to fulfill their own individual as well as organization goals. Step 3: Description of the Ways in Which the Course Has Helped to Improve As a Leader In relation to the course, a few of the concepts that I have found interesting include the qualities of a successful leader, transformational leadership and individual collectivism. Through the learning obtained during the course, I have realized that leadership is not only about directing and giving instructions to others, but it is also related with the employees and understanding about their feelings, resolving their issues and supporting the employees regarding the organizational job tasks. I have recognized that a successful leader should always strive to maintain the organizational culture in a very ethical way by reducing the conflicts among the employees. Individual collectivism is the idea which has helped me in order to improve my leadership style. Through this idea, I have learnt to develop myself as a successful leader in the eyes of my followers. With the help of this idea, I have learnt the art of encouraging, facilitating and fostering the desires, needs and values of the group of my followers. With regard to transformational leadership aspect, I have learnt the various ways which can be implemented to influence my followers through emphasizing on my values, vision and passion. With the help of this aspect, leaders can articulate a persuasive vision regarding the future of the organization by which they can influence their followers to pursue collective purposes. Moreover, from this idea, I learnt the key aspects that can facilitate to enhance motivations, self-esteems and performances of the employees towards their job tasks in order to fulfill the organizational goals. With the regard of this idea, I recognized about the importance of give and take relationship with my followers and have also come to know that employees can be encouraged by introducing attractive reward systems which can significantly augment their productivity. References Bhattacharya, S. (2012). Ability, aspiration & attitude matter in potential leaders: Prithvi Shergill, HCL. Retrieved from: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-07-31/news/32961605_1_hcl-technologies-higher-levels-employee-first-customer-second Forsberg, K. (2008). Goal-based Leadership – Introducing a new strategic management approach. Retrieved from http://www.kristerforsberg.com/documents/WhitePaper_Goal-basedLeadership.pdf Great Big Life, (2012). Desire-Led Leadership. Retrieved from http://greatbiglife.co.uk/desire-led-leadership/ Moorman, R. H. & Blakely, G. L. (1995). Individualism-Collectivism as an Individual difference Predictor of Organizational Citizenship Behaviour 16, pp. 127-142. Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Moorman, R. H. & Fetter, R. (1990). Transformational Leader Behaviours And Their Effects On Followers’ Trust In Leader, Satisfaction, And Organizational Citizenship Behaviours 1(2), pp. 107-142. Sullivan, O. (2012). Leadership traits that most impact success and the pitfalls that lead to derailment. Retrieved from http://www.strategic-hr-network.co.uk/admin/UploadFile.aspx?path=/UserUploadFiles/FREE%20content/2011/Leadership-Traits-That-Most-Impact-Success.pdf Read More