Self-Analysis of Leadership Abilities - Essay Example

Leadership Abilities: Self-Analysis Leadership Abilities: Self-Analysis Strengths and Areas of Improvement This self-assessment of leadership style has greatly assisted me to identify my leadership strengths and weaknesses. The major strength identified is that my leadership style really encourages employee participation in decision making. To be clear, under this leadership approach, business strategies are discussed with employees before implementation and this practice greatly assists employees to obtain a clear view of what is going to be done.

Effective use of advanced technologies like email or voice mail for communication is another notable strength, for they ensure effective outflow of information. Since my leadership approach promotes active employee involvement, employees are more likely to take up the responsibility of their projects and complete them successfully within the stipulated time. As Kehle (2008, p. 26) purports, high level employee satisfaction is the main strength of the participative leadership style. In addition, this approach can effectively promote a sense of belonging and teamwork, which in turn can have positive effect on the overall organisational productivity.

At the same time, new hirers or inexperienced employees are not allowed to make decisions so as to maintain high level market competitiveness. Although this leadership style fosters greater employee involvement, it exercises better control over employees and changes strategies and practices once the operational flaws are identified. The major area required improvement is that I spend hardly enough time to develop leadership skills in my employees and this issue may adversely affect the performance sustainability of the organisation.

As Mattone (2013, p. 2) points out, a leader should focus particularly on succession planning. In addition, I do not pay much attention to employees who are making same mistakes repetitively. Here, I need to give specific focus to those employees so as to improve the overall productivity of the firm. 2. A Critical Comparison of the FindingsFrom the leadership style survey, I understand that my leadership approach is participative whereas the Bolman and Deal’s four framework approach to leadership indicates that I follow team leadership style.

Both these assessment techniques give almost similar outcomes and indicate that I have strong team development skills. The major common finding is that my leadership strategy gives particular importance to employee involvement and employee creativity. In addition to providing guidance, instructions, and direction to employees, my leadership approach fosters employees to come up with their own ideas and opinions. According to Mooney (n.d.), both the team leadership and the democratic leadership are open to suggestions, and hence employees can freely express their views and opinions relating to worksite environment and organisational performance.

These leadership assessments reflect that my leadership style can influence the emergence of innovative business ideas, which in turn would promote long term business sustainability. From the leadership style survey, I obtained a score of 37 for democratic leadership style whereas my score for autocratic leadership style was 31. It indicates that actually my leadership approach comprises the elements of both participative and authoritarian leadership strategies. The Bolman and Deal’s four framework approach to leadership also reflects the same thing by pointing that my leadership style gives specific focus to concerns for people as well as concerns for task.

In a critical evaluation, it is obvious that the findings from the leadership style assessments are not contrasting. ReferencesKehle, J. L. (2008). The Leadership of Ross O. Swimmer 1975--1985: A Case Study of a Modern Cherokee Principal Chief. ProQuest. Mattone, J. (2013). Powerful Succession Planning. US: AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn. Mooney, L. Qualities of a Participative Leader. Demand Media. Retrieved from http://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/qualities-participative-leader-5263.html