Leadership and the Necessary Skills for Its Mastering - Assignment Example

Leadership ment LEADERSHIP MENT Introduction After shimmering on the various projects and things accomplished, the definition of leadership can be explained as the creating of smooth conditions that make people do what they should do at the appropriate time. The following descriptions suit a good leader. Be organized and composed. Organized leaders have attainable goals for the group and always stay ahead compared to the individuals they lead. Making every person in the group feel that they are part of the goals that the group desires to achieve Lead by example. This entails taking some of the group tasks and completing them well to set an example for the group Be honest, positive and encouraging to the group members. A good leader is one who makes the subjects hopeful even in the stressful situations. Due to my engagement in leadership, I have learned the following important points. I am capable more than I thought I was. When elected the chair of the student’s council, I never knew I would make it and balance it with my academic work, but today I have achieved the two successfully. Every journey starts with a mile. When an individual wants to achieve success, they have to start small after which they grow and develop. Persistence pays. The power of persistence is high but difficult to maintain as those above their subjects frustrate them. Due to what I have done within my leadership capability, I think I will adjust a little as I continue to nurture my leadership. My personal leadership style, however, will not change that much as I feel I have been a good leader who has led his people in the right direction. The only thing that I need to change is on the organization of the leadership materials that I commonly use. My new goals within the students’ council include mentoring for many students as I can and recruiting my fellow colleagues to engage in activities that have a positive impact on the society. The Scholarship, Practice, and Leadership Model The Scholarship, Practice, and Leadership Model mainly focus on the leaders and their progress in the turf of education. The model also known as SPL incorporates the practice, which is workplace and social contribution, scholarship that entails lifelong learning and leadership, which is the ability of an individual to have a positive influence on others. Information literacy emphasizes the ability of a person to ascertain and recognize the need for information. Based on this statement, leaders are obliged to locate and evaluate information that helps the society. Literacy is essential as it play a big role in influencing scholarship, practice, and leadership models especially in the field of education. Integration of scholarship and practice implies that the leaders must have theoretical understanding on some of the main essential leadership principles. For such a regulation to work, leaders should be able to obtain freely and clearly understand the information. Global literacy is like an epidemic in the American society. Universal literacy is essential in the society as it highlights the knowledge, skills, and confidence that are helpful towards sociological theories and concepts (Lewis, Green, & Surry, 2013). Possessing knowledge, skills and confidence help the literate individuals especially the leaders to succeed. Good leaders should be able to translate, analyze, understand, and alter the different kinds of information. Educational leaders make use of the various forms of information and improve the provided instruction by changing the method, mode, and presentation of the instructions (Lewis, Green, & Surry, 2013). Self-management and time management of an individual contributes significantly to the use of resources such as library and the internet. The scholarship, practice, and leadership are essential rudiments within tutelage. Team Collaboration Team collaboration is significant in leadership as the different groups can only achieve their objectives by working together. Whether the group leader works in close cooperation with a small or a large team, the tools to enable them work efficiently is necessary. The main purpose of the teams is to produce quality results and once that do not occur, and then working as a team is compromised. A collaborative team plays a great role in the success of a group. For the team to work together, the group leader should influence them to practice activities that strengthen the groups (Hill & Martin, 2014). When individuals in a group have the common goal and purpose, they will both strive to achieve their goals. A team mainly comprises of individuals working together to achieve the same objective. Some of the ways in which the group leader can ensure that the group members have common goals include, reviewing the teams charter, discussing reasons why the team exists, and creation of symbols that shows that the team works as a unit (Hill & Martin, 2014). Trusting one another is also significant for the teams to work as one entity. Communicating openly is also important for the teams to work as a unit. Miscommunication can lead to hard feelings amongst the group members thus undermining the success of the group. Some of the mechanisms that the team can use to improve communication include seeking to understand one another at all the angles and working to remove all forms of misunderstandings accurately and quickly. Since the team members come from all occupations, appreciating diversity is important in achieving the team’s success. The team should also balance its focus to meet the objectives of the team. The team leader should play an important role in ensuring that the team works together. New challenges Leadership presents the challenge to the abilities of the leader and the leader as an individual. In our modern world, things change, and that change leads to challenges that the leader cannot stop from happening no matter how good they are. How a manager handles a problem contributes in determining how effective they are. Some of the challenges that the leaders face come in the form of problems or people that bar them from achieving some of the set goals and objectives (Clifton, 2012). Most of the leaders view challenges as problems but that is not true as the challenges act as an avenue in which they can rise to another level. The challenges that a leaders faces include internal, external and those arising from their kind of leadership,(Kouzes & Posner 2012). External challenges such as lack of funding, interpersonal problems and constant opposition from the external forces, interfere with the works of the leaders. The economic, political and the social forces also affect the organization. Internal challenges that occur mainly prevent the organization from reaching its set objectives and goals. Leaders, in this case, have to overcome the internal challenges to achieve the objectives of the organization. The society poses new challenges to the organization due to the increasing globalization (Kouzes & Posner 2012). It is the work of the leaders to understand and tackle all the challenges for the organization to continue working smoothly. Negative and Positive Feedback Some of the fundamental parts of leadership include criticism and feedback. Positive feedback refers to the encouragement to continue doing something the way in which they are always done. Negative feedback states that an individual should stop or rethink on the manner in which they do things. In the recent past, people viewed positive comments as important to maintain workplace morale and avoid breaking the employee spirits. Based on the statement, “Growth always hurts. But, stagnation is death” it is important for a leader to give feedback since for growth to occur feedback must be there (Kennedy & Chen, 2015). Most of the successful leaders are experts in providing feedback that aim at making the organization grow. Feedbacks whether positive or negative, are essential for the growth of an organization as they provide clarity on the direction to follow. When giving negative comments, the leader should connect to the recipient as that helps in achieving a positive impact. The leader should also run a background check on the recipient to know the best way to use to approach them. Using one or two words to address the matter is important as that helps in avoiding to make the matters worse. Optimism is also important when giving negative feedbacks and as such, leaders should emulate that to avoid breaking the morale of their subjects. Emotional intelligence Emotional intelligence is of significance to leaders as it enables them to manage their emotions and of those around them. A perfect leader in this scenario refers to an individual who does not let their temper get out of their control irrespective of the situation in which they are. Leaders should have a high level of emotional intelligence to be able to manage those around them. Persons with a good level of emotional intelligence know what they feel. Such leaders can make the meaning of their feelings and analyze the impacts such feelings have on other people. Having the high level of emotional intelligence is important for leaders to achieve success. A leader who stays in control when stressed is more likely to succeed compared to the one who continuously yells at his crew when under pressure (Mersino, 2013). Emotional intelligence comprises of four components that include relationship management, self-awareness, social awareness, and self-management. Emotional intelligence is one of the essential components of effective leadership. A leader who does not have the emotional intelligence cannot articulate the issues affecting the people they lead. Leaders who do not take control of their emotions can cause mistrust amongst the people that they lead which in turn can significantly affect their working relations. Self-awareness Based on the works of the American psychologist Daniel Goleman, Self-awareness is one of the elements of emotional intelligence (Gallagher & Costal, 2012).Individuals, who are self-aware, know their feelings. Such individuals can analyze the effects of their emotions on those close to them. Individuals who are self-aware and are in leadership positions are aware of their various strengths and weaknesses (Gallagher & Costal, 2012). Self-awareness is important to those in leadership positions. It helps the leaders to get better as they can precisely evaluate themselves. Self-awareness also helps those in leadership positions to make the right decisions since they know the areas in which they are incapacitated (Gallagher & Costal, 2012). When an individual is self-aware, they have the knowledge about themselves and as such, they have the ability to remember some of the past mistakes that they did and address them. A leader can keep a journal and slow down to improve their self-awareness. Keeping a journal is important as that can help an individual develop their self-awareness. If a person can spend at least a few minutes during the day to write down his or her thoughts, it can help in improving their level of self-awareness (Clifton, 2012). By slowing down after experiencing intense emotions, one can boost their self-awareness. Self-management Self-management refers to the personal development of an individual. Leaders should be able to develop themselves before telling their people the importance of managing themselves. Leadership has two dimensions that include the external and the internal. The external dimension refers to the activity of making things run smoothly the way they should. The internal dimension focuses on the beliefs, personal attitudes, habits, and emotions of an individual. Just like any other individual, leaders have to deal with their teams and themselves despite the changing environment (Papp, 2012). For an individual to provide competent leadership, they need to have the three critical abilities that include focus, awareness, and execution. For an individual to make effective decisions, they should have a high level of knowledge. Self-management is significant to all persons, not just the leaders alone. For individuals to be able to manage themselves, they should focus on living by their values (Papp, 2012). When a leader does not live by their values, they will tend to confuse the people that they lead. Self-managing leaders should also be able to speak up since no one will be able to make up what they are thinking. Most of the people that the leaders lead are not able to mind read and as such, they should open up. Self-managing leaders should also be able to keep their promises to capture the trust of their subjects otherwise; most of the subjects will lose trust on them. By being productive and creating new ideas an individual can achieve personal development. Social awareness Social awareness is critical to leaders as it enables them know what other people think about them. Social awareness allows the leaders to appreciate and report to the needs of other individuals (Kaye, Fox, & Urman, 2012). Social awareness comprises of three competencies that include empathy, service, and organizational awareness. Empathy refers to the ability to understand the concerns and the emotions of other individuals. Empathy is one of the necessary skills that leaders possess. Leaders who have empathy interact with individuals in an open platform and as such avoid hurting the feelings of other people. Organizational awareness is necessary behind the networking scenes as it makes a person read the politics and the emotions of a group (Kaye, Fox, & Urman, 2012). Service orientation makes the leaders meet the needs of their people. Using empathy, the leaders; will be able to understand the needs of their teams. Conclusion Leadership is the process of leading people in the right direction and making them do what should be done at the appropriate time. Leaders need to observe necessary skills to achieve their goals and objectives. Some of the insights that managers need to know is their degree of emotional intelligence, manage themselves, and be aware of themselves. Social awareness is also significant for leaders to achieve their objectives. References Clifton, J. (2012). A Discursive Approach to Leadership Doing Assessments and Managing Organizational Meanings. Journal of Business Communication, 49(2), 148-168. Gallagher, D., & Costal, J. (2012). The self-aware leader. Alexandria, Va: ASTD Press. Hill, R. M., & Martin, B. N. (2014).Using Social Network Analysis to Examine Leadership Capacity within a Central Office Administrative Team. International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research, 6(1). Kaye, A. D., Fox, C. J., & Urman, R. D. (2012).Operating room leadership and management. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2012). The leadership challenge: How to make extraordinary things happen in organizations. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Kennedy, G., & Chen, H. (2015).Practical Tips for Developing Leadership Skills Early in a Career.In Leadership in Surgery (pp. 91-98).Springer International Publishing. Lewis, J. P., Green, A. M., & Surry, D. W. (2013). Technology as a tool for diversity leadership: Implementation and future implications.Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference. Mersino, A. (2013). Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers: The People Skills You Need to Achieve Outstanding Results. AMACOM Books. Papp, E. (2012). Leadership by choice: Increase productivity and effectiveness by understanding your strengths. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley. (Papp, 2012) Read More