The Philosophy and Skills of Leadership - Term Paper Example

?Leadership Self-Assessment Journal The Philosophy and Skills of Leadership My basic philosophy of leadership is that it is something that provides people with guidance and a direction in which to move. The direction is decided based on the strategy of the individual who is called as the leader. It is for the leader to decide whether he has to establish that strategy alone or in due consultation with the followers, though the ultimate decision that is enforced comes from the leader in either case. Goals are achieved in teams and teams need someone to steer them toward the goals. There has to be an individual in which the team can place its complete confidence and on whose instructions, they can work irrespective of their individualistic differences for the greater cause i.e. the achievement of the goal. That individual is leader. Leadership is manifested in the thinking and ideology of the leader. For some reason, the leader is superior to the followers. “Plato proposed that leadership requires a special talent, and only those few who possess such talent should be trained toward its proper utilization. Having rigorously developed this talent, the philosopher-kings, the guardians, should rule” (Cawthon, 2002, p. 10). This superiority may come from greater experience, knowledge, skills, or some other quality that is of great value and significance in the achievement of the goal that the leader and the followers are mutually interested in achieving. In the absence of leadership, the team becomes just a crowd or a bunch of people with conflicting views and ideas. They might have all the skills required to achieve the goal, but their skills cannot be put to the right use without proper leadership. There are certain skills that are extremely important for an individual to attain to be effective as a leader. Some of these skills include; knowing where to draw the line between the leader and the followers, maintaining integrity as a leader, carrying out negotiation effectively, the ability to constantly motivate the followers, and emotional intelligence. A leader has to distinguish himself from the followers in order to retain his status as a leader. If he does not know where to draw the line while interacting with the followers, he may practically weaken his role as a leader even if he theoretically is supposedly a leader. This skill is more in-born than taught. It requires right decision-making while dealing with the followers. The leader should know how to interpret his strategy for the followers, how much information to give to the followers, to what extent can the followers be involved in the decision making, and where the relationship between the leader and the followers transforms from casual to strictly professional. This line is difficult to draw particularly in the social networking age of today where the leader and the followers come at the same level being friends at the social networking websites. Leadership is a full time job. One cannot be a leader just at the workplace and not be a leader outside the premises of the workplace. What an individual does elsewhere sends messages and signals to the followers about the philosophy, ideology, and character of their leader. Followers tend to judge the leaders from their dealing with others in everyday life and not just at work. This makes maintaining integrity as a leader difficult since one is prone to making mistakes as a human being. No individual can succeed as a leader without having sound negotiation skills. The most important skill that makes an individual an effective leader, in my opinion, is the negotiation skill. In the present age, a leader faces many challenges with respect to negotiation that are embedded not only in the differences of views, personality traits, and cultures of the leader and the followers but also in the limits on language competences while working in a culturally diverse environment. Cultural diversity is one of the most fundamental features of the workplace in the contemporary age. In order to understand the followers and make himself understood to the followers, it is imperative that the leader identifies all sorts of barriers to communication and takes necessary measures to remove them. Success of a leader is estimated from the extent to which the followers are motivated to achieve the goal because while the leader shows them the path, it is actually the followers that walk that path and really do the work. Motivation of the workers plays a decisive role in the extent to which they utilize their time constructively while at work. The responsibility to keep the organizational personnel motivated for work primarily rests with the leader of the organization. Motivating the employees is easier said than done! An in-depth analysis of the motivational theories suggests that a leader may have to face numerous challenges to keep the followers motivated. The dilemma is manifested in the fact that while it is extremely important to reward the employees for their good work to show appreciation for them as the incentive theory of motivation suggests, the leader often has to address the concerns of other employees who think that they worked just as hard as the rewarded employee but did not get their share of reward by the leader. This requires critical insight, emotional intelligence, and articulate mannerism. My previous journal entries suggest that I am more driven by the need to achieve and affiliate myself with other people and tasks than gain power. This leads me to think that I have great potential to become a democratic, a transformational, as well as a charismatic leader. “Power is neither good nor bad; it’s what you do with it” (Lussier and Achua, 2013, p. 140). Being an autocratic leader would be my last choice given the circumstances and needs that the contemporary businesses have to deal with. In the present age, there is a lot of emphasis on creativity and innovation, which is very hard to achieve without full cooperation, help, and insight of the followers. Good ideas can come from anywhere and establishing good accessibility between the leader and the followers is a prerequisite of that. However, as a person with a high need for affiliation, it is critically important for me to be able to use that affiliation only for the purpose of achievement of the organization’s goals and draw the line where it comes in the way of being an effective leader. One can only behave rationally in a certain context when one’s goals are clear and perceptions are aligned to achieve those goals. To be able to draw optimal benefit out of my need for affiliation and deter its possible negative effects, I shall keep all things secondary to work while playing the role of a leader. When one is clear in the mind that work is the most important, personal ego, favoritism, and such factors start to lose significance. I am happy to have scored the highest in conscientiousness among other personality traits because in order to be an effective leader, it is imperative that one is dependable and shows integrity. Dependability is important for the owner of an organization because this is linked with the ability of the leader to achieve the assigned goals. On the other hand, integrity of the leader is critical to his/her success as a leader because it decides what impression the followers will get from the leader. Lack of integrity in the leader inculcates disrespect for the leader in the hearts of the followers and this affects their relationship negatively. “The single biggest lesson of my career in small business is that the guy or gal in charge sets the tone. If you are dishonest or disingenuous with your customers and employees, they will be that way to you. What’s more, it’s the little things that can bite you in the behind” (Kiisel, 2013). I am happy to have particularly taken the Big Five Personality Traits’ assessment because has instilled this confidence in me that I am dependable and can thus undertake any task. Unfortunately, my journal entry suggests that I am weak in negotiation. There are two basic factors that make me weak in this skill; firstly, I am a very soft-spoken person and secondly, I do not have competence in a lot of languages; I only know English fully and have a very basic, if any, knowledge of French and Arabic. While such a soft-spoken person as me may not face a lot of problems when time constraints are flexible, it becomes difficult for such a leader to manage things when the team is running short of time and the deadlines are very near. “These conclusions came from research by The Industrial Society, carried out among 3000 business people. The survey, "Liberating Leadership," identified 38 key competencies for leadership, and exposed some myths about modern leadership, derided by some as ‘too soft’ and people-centred” (Farrington, 2013). While it will take me time and experience to master the skill of negotiation, I intend to read a lot of books written by professional writers, scholars, and experts in the field of communication to learn the golden principles of negotiation and apply them in my profession. Books offer a wide pool of information and it is always wise to learn from others’ experiences rather than reinventing the wheel. I would also try to expand my knowledge of and competence in other languages. This would be easy for me to achieve using language tutorials available over the Internet as well as the language books. I understand that I may not be able to learn a lot of languages completely, yet one can dramatically improve one’s competence in new languages with determination, consistency, and hard work. While assessing myself for job motivators and maintenance factors, I deemed motivation more important than maintenance. I believe in the power of motivation; it can work wonders. As a responsible leader, I need to develop an effective system of employee recognition. Employee recognition is not limited to points and gifts. The definition of employee recognition extends beyond that to include changing the corporate culture so that the organizational goals can be achieved and the followers can be connected to the core beliefs and values of the organization. Strategic employee recognition offers the advantage of having a positive influence upon the financial situation of an organization in addition to raising the level of motivation of employees and improving employee retention. As a leader, my attention will be primarily focused at developing such an employee recognition program so that not only my followers remain motivated, but also I have a transparent system that lets them know what my criteria for rewarding are and that I have not sided with the rewarded employees. While assessing my leadership capabilities in light of the Big Five Personality Traits, I found out that I have a high level of emotional intelligence. I would utilize this emotional intelligence to deal with the followers who feel unrewarded or less appreciated. Concluding, leadership is essential to keep the team organized, focused, and directed toward achievement of the goals amidst different sorts of complexities and challenges. A leader enjoys a higher status than the followers at work but this comes with a lot of responsibility. Some very important skills required to be successful as a leader include the ability to maintain just the right distance from the followers, the ability to maintain personal integrity, the ability to negotiate successfully with others, the ability to keep the followers motivated, and emotional intelligence. While some of these skills can be learned, many of these skills are related to the personality and personal thinking of the leader. A leader needs to steer his own thinking in the right direction in order to make informed decisions. An in-depth self-analysis of my leadership suggests that among these skills, I am the strongest in the skill of being conscientious and the weakest in the skill of negotiation. I plan to bring improvement in my skills by learning from others’ experiences and applying theoretical concepts and success strategies in real-life situations. References: Cawthon, D. (2002). Philosophical Foundations Leadership (Clt). New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. Farrington, J. (2013). Our Followers Want Tough Leadership. Retrieved from http://www.allbusiness.com/company-activities-management/sales-selling-sales/14267336-1.html. Kiisel, T. (2013, July 23). Can You Trust Your Employees? Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/tykiisel/2013/07/23/can-you-trust-your-employees/. Lussier, R. N., and Achua, C. F. (2013). Leadership: Theory, application, & skill development. Mason, Ohio: South-Western Cengage Learning. Read More