Ways to Use a Failure in Life or Career to Improve Vision as a Leader - Essay Example

Ways to use a failure in life or career to improve vision as a leader Interview questions on John Smith, a corporate executive. In what ways does failure affect success? You seem pretty confident and successful. Have you ever exposed your team to the idea of failure to prepare them for consequences if the wrong choices are made? What does failure teach you about leadership? What do you think is the value of failure? What have been your four greatest failures and how did you overcome them? Are mistakes viewed as an integral part of the organization? Is transformational leadership a prerequisite incase of change after failure? How can having a failure change the way you make decisions or do business in the future? How? Some leaders seem to always make the right decisions and therefore experience a lot of success. How can too much success interfere with creativity? What if we could design a controlled failure system for work that could tap creativity without causing fear or stress? Question 1 One way of which you can use failure in life to improve your vision as a leader is by confronting failure and learning from it. Failure is regarded as one of life’s most significant enablers. What defines your character as a leader is what you do with failure (Harvey, p.1). Instead of running away or masking the failure that you experienced, you need to take time to have a reflection upon the situation. Confront the arising issues head-on and have an evaluation of what could have been done better and establish the lessons learnt. Besides, if other persons were involved either directly or indirectly, ask them to give you feedback and pin-point those opportunities that can be seized from this learning moment. Failure is the greatest source of understanding and know-how. It usually teaches you about revitalization, survival, and reinvention of yourself, as well as the people you are leading. Another way is through correcting mistakes. Action needs to be taken when an error is made. The action needs to be corrective rather than censure. Mistakes usually present a leader with an opportunity to develop and teach your staff. According to Harvey (1), as a leader, one of the ways you can approach errors is by judging if the action taken was a ‘mistake of the head’ or a ‘mistake of the heart’. A mistake of the head comes about when an employee intentionally performs something in wrong way and attempts to get away with it. In such situations you need to be very harsh. On the other hand, a mistake of the head occurs when a worker tries very hard to do the right thing, but for one reason or the other, it turns out to be wrong. In such cases, you need to be very lenient. Besides, in some instances you need to praise people for making a mistake since their intentions were so good. However, by chastising employees for each mistake, their focus would shift from excellence to self-preservation. This means that instead of working to succeed, they will work to avoid failure. Question 2 The transformational leaders influence core changes in the attitudes and assumptions of the organization’s objectives or mission. Therefore, transformational leaders are regarded as change agents. Summarily, the following characteristics developed by Lewis (1996) can assist identify transformational leaders: strategic thinker, ability to empower others, have initiative, possess a positive mental attitude, visionary, encourage human potential, readiness to change, effective communicator, and a skilled motivator. The transformation leaders are always seeking solutions that are comfortable that are both without restrictions and groundbreaking. The intellectual leaders are focused on the vision of the future thus ensuring organization has direction, unity, no personal interests override the general interest of the organization (Griffin, 45-48). On the contrary, the revolutionary leader is usually hinged towards changing everything and this can impact both positively and negatively as not all employees are geared towards accepting change. This can compromise on order and stability of tenure in the organization. This type of response would significantly affect the motivation of employees because employees behave and respond differently incase a change is effected. In relation to the impact transformational leader’s response to a failure would have on performance and behavior of employees, Herold, Fedor and Caldwell (347-351) established that transformational leadership is strongly related to follower’s change commitment than change-specific leadership practices, particularly if the change has a significant personal effect. Kark, Chen and Shamir (247-8) added that transformational leadership is positively related to followers’ dependence and their empowerment. Besides, personal identification mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and followers’ dependence on the leader, whereas social identification mediates the connection between transformational leadership and followers’ empowerment. Question 3 Failure is an integral part of life that contributes to leadership effectiveness since it helps you build your team and make the business better. It can also teach you who you can put your trust on and depend upon. John Smith a corporate executive from our interview reported that he was responsible for the business losing $1 million dollars in annual revenue. At that time he reported that his leadership style was relaxed and he trusted the management that he inherited rather hat being proactive in ensuring that the system is better. This failed relationship forced to look for ways of ensuring that the system was efficient and interdependent on decisions made by every departmental leaders. Secondly, failure allows you to become stronger and wiser. According to (Llopis), failure usually shapes you as a leader. Having such an attitude makes you to become fearless when embarking on new ventures. John Smith, a corporate executive reported that failure leads to the most rewarding opportunities and learning in his career including people hired, decisions made, investments made, and the relationship he invested in. This is because basing on your failed experiences; you will now be in a better position to navigate through new situations. This allows you to start seeing opportunities with greater focus and clarity. Question 4 First, define your goals with clarity and focus. As a leader you need to establish objectives which you would attain after a particular time. The goals need to clear and you need to strive to attain them. The interviewee established that he set a goal of advancing his career, improving the business revenue and enhancing creativity and innovation in the firm. Secondly, formulate a comprehensive plan of how to accomplish your goals. By following this plan in detail, you are actually reducing the chances of incurring failure in your business. When Smith lost $1 million in revenue, he came up with a detailed plan to make the system more effective, so as to attain the goal of a united and a stronger team. Thirdly, be a lifelong learner; you need to continue to educating yourself. This is because new and better methods of doing business are coming up which you may not be aware off that led to your failure. Smith noted that he is currently perusing further education in order to improve on his corporate knowledge and skills. Fourth, do not quit because you view failure as a possibility; have courage in the face of adversity. From the interview, Smith reported that most people have a tendency to quit when faced with a disruption that has been brought about by failure. House and Adita, (472) noted that failure usually gives you hope if you permit yourself to manage through the adversity rightly Lastly, if you make mistakes, you need to acknowledge your responsibility. Great leadership is actually being accountable for your actions. The ability to hold yourself accountable enables you to persevere and become a better leader. Therefore, when attempting something new mistakes are inevitable. By acknowledging your mistakes, you create an environment where people are not afraid of making mistakes since they are viewed as an integral part of the organizational process. From the interview, when people are afraid of making mistakes, they will do least amount of work besides showing little creativity and initiative. They would also shirk from responsibility, and searching for reasons that it is not their work. Question 5 One way, ways in which experiences with failure and leadership impact on risk taking and decision making behaviors of an individual on a leadership track is that after failure, you can come stronger than before since you will be better equipped to navigate through new situations. This attributed to the fact that you would have taken time to reflect upon what you could have actually done in order to avoid failure. Decisions are regarded as the heart of success. Therefore, at critical moments such as after a failure, it can be nerve racking, perplexing, and very difficult. Experience with failure offers individuals with new ways of viewing at things which were initially puzzling to them. As a result, it stimulates people to think about their old problems in new ways. Consequently, not all the persons that have experienced failure would decide to take the risk of coming back again and seek new opportunities, most of them decide to quit. When one has the experience of failure as a leader, he/she will have his/her motivation either diminished or ignited. Motivation is viewed as a fundamental building block in the development of effective and efficient practices in the organization. Yukl (45) argued that motivation is leads to the carrying out of an activity in order to obtain separable outcome. Motivation is therefore linked to the decision that one takes after failure. When a leader is motivated, he/she has the taken the risk of using failure as an avenue of building success. On the other hand, lack of motivation will not push you further after failure as a leader. Works Cited Griffin, R. Management. Belmont: Cengage Learning Publishers, 2010. Harvey, Andrey. "Use Failures Lessons to be a better leader." The Wall Street Career Journal 1 (2012): 1-2. Herold, David, et al. "The Effects of Transformational and Change Leadership on Employees’ Commitment to a Change: A Multilevel Study." Journal of Applied Psychology 93 .2 (2008): 346-357. House, R. J. and Adita, R. N. The social scientific study of leadership: Quo vadis? Journal of Management, 23, (1997), 409–473. Kark, Ronit, Gilad Chen and Boas Shamir. "The Two Faces of Transformational Leadership: Empowerment and Dependency." Journal of Applied Psychology 88.2 (2009): 246-255. Lewis, Phillip V., Transformational Leadership: A new model for total church involvement. Broadman & Holman Publishers; Nashville, Tennessee 1996. Llopis, Glenn. "5 Things Failure Teaches You About Leadership." 20 August 2012. 24 January 2014 . Yukl, G. A. Leadership in Organizations. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 2010. Read More