How to Become a Leader of Saudi Aramco Company - Essay Example

Personal Leadership development plan Introduction In this paper I would like to prepare a personal development leadership plan in my objective to become a leader in Saudi Aramco Company. Having had 7 years of experience in the oil industry as a production engineer, I have noted with due concern that leadership is wanting in this industry. I will therefore analyze the requirements of the targeted job in relation to my portfolio of skills including my strengths and weaknesses in regard to the requirements of a goal in mind for which I am willing to know my deficiencies in terms of skills. An action plan has to be undertaken on how to correct these deficiencies and to improve on my weaknesses to take advantage of my strengths in attaining influential and motivational skill that will benefit this company and the oil industry at large. This paper will therefore aim at providing success under my leadership. Any effective leader should be able to draw on his or her strength to better lead their subordinates. From my seven years’ experience I have been able to identify many of my strengths. For instance I have come to realize that am highly organized. Organization is a key and important aspect of leadership. Throughout my career I found it easier to have a to-do-list that I follow and manage every day. This makes me see vividly the tasks that are ahead and the necessity needed to complete them. When the list is followed an order is created to an otherwise chaotic situation. My subordinates will be able to look to me to provide clear instruction on the day’s task that need to be done. This can include giving meeting agendas, personal goal and follow up emails. I will enhance this application type of structure in the organization that I am leading. 2. Strength and weaknesses The other strength that I believe I poses is communication skills, this are the key skills that are responsible for successful working partners. I found in groups that I worked previously in this field of production that I communicate successfully with others. Proper communication skills are achieved by selecting the appropriate mode of communication which your receivers can comprehend. Working in groups, it is easily seen by the outcome of the final project if good communication between group members were achieved. Relationship is very important and I began to realize this form my undergraduate program. In high school I was involved in student government and science club, where I was a leader in both. It was that during those times I realized that keeping relationship positive and professional better outcomes are guaranteed regardless of the goals. I have learnt to keep a strong relationship with the people around me. A cordial relationship with the higher authorities or the subordinates will enhance respect and obedience. The production in the oil company requires respect and obedience, this will make the directives that I have issued to be respected, and followed to the latter. Everybody has his weakness, and before I proceed to be an effective leader in the company I will have to realize my weaknesses. This will help me to manage them so that they won’t become a hindrance to my leadership. Despite the fact that I am an organized person i also realized that I have problem with time management. This challenge I also realized when I was doing my undergraduate program. The problem is that I tend to set so many projects to accomplish at once. This weakness can be due to my ambitious nature, the best way that I am going to deal with this weakness is to set few tasks that are accomplishable within the stipulated time. Time management is very important in any task and especially in my line of specialization, production engineering. The other weakness is that I find it very difficult to accept failure. This is something that has affected me positively and negatively. I always strive for excellence in every task I perform regardless of how big it is. When I have put time and effort into a certain goal and the end result is failure, I become discouraged and upset. I have come to realize one doesn’t need to be a perfectionist to be a good leader, role model or prosper in any task. To attain any task to 100% perfection is not possible. On the positivity of this character of not accepting failure, it can fetch huge rewards if well managed and realized. 3. Professional and Personal Goals Setting goals is very important part of growth and development as a leader. When creating goals it is crucial that one makes use of SMART guidelines. A SMART goal is one that is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. I have used the following professional and personal goals using the guidelines of SMART. As my career progresses and leadership style changes I will have to be making adjustment to ensure that they are SMART. The professional goals that I am planning for the subsequent years, is to first finish my master’s degree, attend seminars on oil production both at international level and at national level. Although I am a senior person at the company I will also eye to climb the corporate ladder, and seek higher managerial level in the organization. I have a lot of personal goals that I have set for myself in the subsequent years. Some of the personal goals I have set include getting me a mortgage, to have a healthy lifestyle and maintain a workout schedule. 4. Competency development plan Leadership can be one of the most important aspects of management (Weihrich, et al, 2008). To be an effective leader it will be important to understand some leadership styles such as transactional leadership, transformation leadership and situational leadership style. This styles can enhance my competence. It is important to constantly develop skills that will help shape the future growth of a leader. By identifying competencies to learn, a leader has to self-assess and find areas that he or she may lack. To be a leader it takes a person who is willing to be flexible. One of my greatest qualities I have learnt from my close friends and relatives is to always place myself in someone else’s shoe when conflict arises or when making a decision. It is my obligation to view both side of the situation in solving a conflict. My motivation to always succeed comes from my passion of helping others. All my life I have helped people starting from my colleagues, friends and relatives. I am not choosy I considered everybody equal and deserve a chance in every opportunity. These people are the responsible for making me realize my strengths and weaknesses. It is also important to remember that building relationship is important for a leader. Over the past I have held many leadership roles and responsibility but I have also worked with people I knew personally, to an extent. Whatever the experience I have had in the past will be important to make me better in the upcoming leadership. There are a lot of leadership wrangles in any form institution and for this reason am very sure that it is going to happen in my engineer career. Production is a very crucial department in any organization. In production one can’t help but rub shoulders with leaders from other departments. This could be accountants, public relation officers, general manager and any key officials of the company. The leadership environment is not new to me; the first discussion group that I chaired in high school gave me the firs environment. Some people are quiet, talkative, and rebellious, opposite and others are active. It is upon the duty of any leader to make sure that he coordinates this diversity to have positive outcome. I am a strong believer of democracy, and I sometimes use evaluation questionnaire to assess myself. This involve setting up some questionnaire that I issue to a sample of my subordinates in order to assess myself this has enabled me to identify the places that am weak in my leadership and what ought to be done to improve that condition. The feedback is very important and this has made most of the people I lead to believe in me and duly support me. Sometimes I receive negative criticism of which I have learnt to handle. Most leaders don’t know how to handle negative criticism, making them to make irrational decisions from anger and frustration of the critique. It is also important to accept and adopt to change as a leader, change is inevitable and it will have to occur. Leadership is not anything that is close to a bed of roses, it sometimes become so stressful. The stress can be from pressure of the job, as an engineer some technical aspects don’t work out and this may sometimes fail production. It is important to manage stress both to myself and to the people I lead Bibliography Goleman, D. 1998. What Makes a Leader? Harvard Business Review on What Makes a Leader. Boston: Harvard Business School. Maxwell, J. C., & Dorvan, J. 1997. Becoming a Person of Influence: How to Positively Impact the Lives of Others. Nashville: Thomas Nelson. Appendix A Summary of the leadership development plan Development area Key activities Performance measure Target date 1st year (Jan-June) Analyzing my strengths and weaknesses Consulting my close confidants and enquiring of my weaknesses Rectification of my weakness There will be inspiration from my juniors June 25th 1st year (July-Dec) Application of the corrected areas Starting to accept my weaknesses, such as accepting failure Ability to control and manage the weaknesses December 20th 2nd year (Jan-June) Setting of objectives Formulation of the best personal goals The adoption and application of the set goals Completion of my master’s degree Attendance of oil production seminars April 17th 1st year (July-Dec) Setting of strategies Formulation of the NeXT’s period strategies about leadership the strategies should be written and documented for reference purpose December 20th 3rd year (Jan-June) Application of leadership styles (Transactional and situational) The application of transactional leadership will have the benefit of; This will enhance my role of supervision, organization, and group performance It will enable me to promote compliance through rewards and punishment There is ambiguity underlying its influences and processes May 30th 1st year (July-Dec) Application of leadership styles (transformational and situational) Transformational leadership will enable; In the inspiration and inspiration of my followers to achieve extraordinary outcomes Differentiation of the behaviors among the members might be difficulty December 15th Read More