The Key Aspects of Leadership - Essay Example

Reflective Paper: Leadership The paper presents a personal vision of leadership. On the basis of my personal professional experience, leadership lessons of my father, valid examples of world’s leaders I try to represent and explain my own vision of leadership. Introduction The issue of leadership has always been a crucial issue for my personal interest. Leadership is one of the characteristics natural of me. Basically, the one, who wants to be a leader, he wants “to influence a group toward the achievement of goals." (). According to Fairholm (1998), there are four leadership “Cs”: Communicate, Collaborate, Coach and Catalyze." Moreover, I agree with Jim Collins, because he claims that the leaders try to do something good for their companies first of all and not for themselves. Consequently, I try to develop my leadership features not for myself only, but for the future of the company and in order to facilitate the work of engineers, which are under my supervision at work. Leadership issues from a personal background Actually, I have an interesting and a complex way to leadership skills development. On the one hand, I think that my leadership features are inborn. I would like to mention about that in the beginning of my reflective paper. I will always remember of my father, who passed away several days ago and more than 500 people came to his funeral. He was Captain Dhirendra Agarwal. He was a navy captain and then he had his own successful business, but he had worked since 18 years old. He raised his sister and brother by himself and then raised his children as a single parent. My father is my mentor, my teacher and my inspiration in life. Therefore, my model of leadership has been developed in compliance with the principles of paternalistic model. A parental figure represents “a confident, self-assured person to look up to” (Good Father Makes a Good Leader). But, I would like from the very beginning. In my childhood I was Table Tennis captain; led the team twice, once winner and second times runners-up in the interschool at the city level and organized a team of 15 students for hiking at school. While organizing other pupils from my school I was usually directed by the principle of equal partnership. I think that I can correlate my initial practice of leadership with the suggestions, developed by Japanese managers: I supported initiatives of other pupils and promoted great participation (tried to avoid manipulation) (Japanese Business, Lecture Notes). Moreover, when I showed my leadership features at the University I clashed with some more challenges. I was the Student representative at Glasgow University for Electronics. During that period I followed the principles of a paternalistic model of leadership. Actually, this model of leadership was chosen by me from the leadership practices of Korean business world and management. I made basic decision (i.e. followed the principles of senior-level managers’ authority) (Korean Business, Lecture Notes). From another point of view, I liked this model because it enabled me to establish friendly relationship with other team members (i.e. Inhwa (harmony)-based decision making or informal consensus seeking through establishment of good personal relationships with subordinates). Moreover, employee empowerment is another advantage of the model of the Korean leadership. Thus, when I worked as Shift Manager at Pizza Hut, Scotland, I preferred following Western leadership principles. I followed the principles of Prof. John Kotterman in his book “A Force for Change”. He claimed that the main goal of leadership is to make innovations and changes, at the same time proving stability, efficiency and order (Kotterman, 2006). Thus, I followed the main principle of leadership, a principle of change. Another research, Graetz in her research (2004) “Strategic change leadership” underlined that leadership is very important for the modern business world, where leader’s charisma is very important: “effective change leadership is possible if leaders are endowed with charisma, innovative knowledge and personal experience and skills” (Graetz 2004, p. 550). The idols of leadership Besides the scientists and researchers, who considered a problem of leadership, I tried to follow the example of my idols of leadership. George Washington is one of those leaders, I wanted to follow. He claimed that it is very important to remain a tough man. Moreover, his persistence, bravery and organizational skills have inspired me during all my life. For example, when I was a student at the University of Glasgow, Scotland (January – June 2007) I worked hard at a team project introducing a new product, including marketing, promotion and advertisement of the product. The product Autorun is automatic bathtub filler, capable of filling a bath to a desired level and temperature with memory to store individual bath preferences. On the one hand, this advertising campaign was rather surprising for me. I had many doubts that some people would like to buy this product. Then, I tried to follow leadership principles of George Washington and remained persistent and a “tough” man. As a result, my product was successful. Actually, I have many other leaders, who are worth being followed. These are: Alexander the Great, Mother Teresa, NetajiSubhash Chandra Bose. From my point of view, all of them reached success and reflected their leadership features, because they had a strength of a spirit, a strong will to live and they managed to cope with different people in their lives. What is more important is that in spite of their success, these people did not neglect others and did not try humiliating other people. Thus, except the qualities I received from these leaders, I also realized the importance of equal attitude with other people. For example, my current professional working experience is at Trescal (Belgium), where I supervise three service engineers with responsibilities including revising and maintaining quality standards, customer service representation and chairing meetings. Therefore, I meet with different people and I never oppress them. If I see that an engineer does not work hard or he has made a certain mistake, I try to understand the root of the problem and to find out what is wrong with an experienced professional. First of all, I try to correspond to my requirements myself. Then, I ask other staff members to keep up with time, to meet deadline etc. Other leaders, who inspire me, according to INFJ are Bob Dylan, Luke Skywalker, Robert Burns and Nelson Mandela. All of them are men of strong spirit, courage and brevity. What I like most is that Nelson Mandela has many features in common with my father, who is my life leadership inspirer. My father became a Captain and established his own business, because he knew that it is desirable to remain patient and tolerant. Moreover, there is no need to burst into tears or to be in despair if something terrible is wrong in life. Thus, my father had to raise his brother and sister and then he had to raise his own children by himself. Actually, he knew that “nothing is black or white”, as Mandela said. Therefore, the most important thing for a leader is to remain patient and tolerant and remember that everything what happens in our lives happens for the better. It is possible to include a citation about Mandela’s leadership style: “More than ever leaders need to think like Mandela – they need to be comfortable with contradiction; they must be able to listen and they must invite authentic dialogue and debate. When they do these leaders will not fall into either-or thinking and will make profoundly and fundamentally better decisions” (Mandela). Therefore, my father has always told me about different challenges of decision making. Currently, I understand that it is necessary to follow the rules of Mandela as well. For example, real leaders are driven by the things they must not do and not by the things they must do. Moreover, a healthy self-criticism is another important factor for a modern leader. Thus, he should claim about his flaws and underline his honesty. I am not an ideal man and not an ideal leader. People around me are not ideal as well. Thus, it is better to work in favor of self-perfection. Actually, I think that there is a lack of honesty of modern leaders nowadays. All of them do not want to look in the mirror and work at their flaws. I think that one of the possible ways to work at a personal self-advancement is to confess one’s flaws and work hard in coming over them. This is the way Nelson Mandela did. This is the way my father did. Thus, I try to follow them. The way I improve my communicative style I borrow from another prominent leader, Robert Burns. In accordance with Burns the first and foremost step in an individual’s development is to focus on tactful attitude to people around us. Moreover, there is a need to know exactly what you want from your life. Thus, it will be possible to know how to act under different conditions and interacting with different people. Thus, leader, should project his immense energy, inspire other people and work at self-improvement. Conclusion Therefore, my transformation and development of leadership vision is a complicated and challenging path. I feel myself doing right, when practicing my leadership skills, because I have a strong emotional and spiritual support of my father. Moreover, famous world’s leaders are also my inspirers and I think it is necessary to take into account their live ways and advance my own vision of leadership, which reflects a realization of brevity of my character, courage and strength of a spirit. Reflecting my personal experience about leadership, I would like to underline the use of summarizing the main points on leadership, which are dominant in my life. Consequently, the best way to improve and develop leadership skills is to extend the limits of world outlook and refer to the leadership studies and researches. Thus, while improving my leadership skills I am referring to the current developments in the field of management and leadership in order to broaden my expertise in the issue of leadership. Works cited 1. Collins, Jim. Good to Great. Retrieved from: . 2. Fairholm, G. W., 1998. Perspectives on Leadership: From the Science of Management to Its Spiritual Heart. Quorum Books. 3. Father as Leader. Retrieved from: . 4. Good Father Makes a Good Leader. Retrieved from: . 5. Graetz, F., 2000. Strategic change leadership. Management Decision, 38/8, pp. 550±562. 6. Kotterman, J., 2006. Leadership versus Management: Whats the Difference? The Journal for Quality and Participation, 29, p. 43+. 7. Mandela: His 8 Lessons of Leadership. Retrieved from: . 8. Primitive Leadership. Retrieved from: . 9. The Must-Have Leadership Skill. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from: . Read More