Leadership Skill Development and Application - Term Paper Example

Abstract For a long time now, people have embarked on a search to define and understand leadership. However, people have always used management and leadership interchangeably even though the two concepts are dissimilar. Leadership is a human concept that exceeds heroic acts. The principal objective of my paper is to demonstrate my ability as an individual to become a leader and execute good leadership styles by considering various own characteristics, leadership styles, personality traits, power and influence effects, and organizational politics. The availability of various self assessment tests for the past eight weeks has enabled the process of my evaluation to be easy and straight forward. This is because the assessment tests contain questions, observations and opinions regarding my ability to be a good leader and various leadership styles. With the inclusion of other people’s opinions on my character, there is need for me to evaluate my traits and leadership styles. The tests and results will help me to apply the lessons learnt both in my career and personal life. In the beginning of this paper, I explore my history as an aspiring leader, the changes I need to make in my life from the discussions and conclusions after the self assessment tests and the skills learnt from them. This will help me in my quest to be a successful leader in future. Leadership Just like any other individual in my class, I came to this class to gain knowledge and eventually pass my examinations and proceed to my dream career. However, as I attended this class, I realized that being in the college does not entail passing of examinations only. The last six weeks has changed my perception towards being an individual who would wish to lead others and achieve certain goals in life. The course on leadership has enlightened me on my personal traits and what it takes to be an effective leader. In addition, as an aspiring leader I was able to evaluate myself according to my prospective responsibilities over people. The self assessment practices helped me to single out my strengths, applications of values, skills and overall leadership styles. After my first assessment test, I realized that I have the potential to be a good leader. My score of 30 points placed me in a scale of high leadership potential. The test portrayed me as an individual who can easily delegate duties and lead people. That is, I am willing to be in charge of a given number of other people and listen to their opinions and implement some of them. A prospective leader has an elevated capability to lead other people (Lussier & Achua, 2010). This first assessment reflects my abilities to be a leader since I was a little boy. I used to be chosen as the captain of our home team every time in order to lead the other players. I used to lead the team to numerous tournaments, controlling my teammates, choosing the best eleven players to begin a soccer match and organizing the necessary records for performances. Even though I had not had any further experience as a leader, I learnt a lot then. For the other consecutive experiences, I have been a follower. My dream of being a leader enabled me to concentrate a lot as our leaders executed their duties in order to gain precious knowledge in applying the theory learnt in this class. As an individual, my score of 30 points in leadership potential assessment shows that I possess the various traits thus that show I have the potential to be a good leader. The potential comes with great accountability and commitment. This is because the test shows that my personality affects my leadership abilities. Further in the assessments, I had an opportunity to evaluate my personality traits and leadership ability. These traits tend to depict the best form of leadership. If I was to become a leader, there are various forms of leadership styles that I could choose from. These styles are largely defined by personal traits. The final analysis of the self assessment and the comparison with my brief leadership experience portrayed me as one who is admired by my teammates. They used to follow me since I was pleasant to them, kind, and had excellent sense of humor. I was also dependable and possessed excellent personal relations with each individual. As their leader I was never discouraged after failing in any task. Instead, I could easily endure the loss and seek to improve to avoid the recurrence of failure in the future . Attaining success in any organization goes along with a leader motive profile theory. This is where success depends on accomplishment, power and association. After the assessment, I realized that power is a factor for good leadership and is generally acquired and not given. As a potential leader I need to be pro-active in order to attain power. Furthermore, I am required to always take initiative of any tasks and responsibilities without being influenced by any other person (Lussier & Achua, 2010). In my relations with a given number of people, I realized that to achieve in my pursuit to be a successful leader, I should also be all round in terms of personality. This means that my value based leadership gives a massive accent on principles and religious approach of leadership (Lussier & Achua, 2010). This kind of leadership is important in situations where competition and unfair activities are common in businesses and other organizations. Without the necessary ethics and principles, the dominant parties during competition and unfair dealings would not remain at that position. Therefore, whenever such a situation reverses, the opponents tend to revenge causing harmful consequences to the leader. Consequently, spiritual quotient in value-based leadership is considered to be crucial for me is such a case. Therefore, I am required to input my honest and open minded suggestions to solve such a stalemate while maintaining my own ethics and values. Further tests taught me that as an aspiring leader, I should always have my interests linked to the vision and the mission of my organizations. A vision is what the business owners’ look forward to in continuing basis. On the other hand, mission characterizes the main objective of an organization. Therefore, I should have a clear perspective of the organizations vision and mission. Otherwise, I would fail in dealing with both the micro-level and the macro-level of the particular organization if I do not put the interests of the organization at the forefront. In addition, I should not only pursue the stated vision and mission but should also put efforts to add to their extension in order to achieve. Theory X and Theory Y are generally theories that attempt to illustrate both extremes with respect to the employees’ mannerisms. Theory X portrays employees as individuals who are not interested in the job they undertake. Therefore, the employees require motivation and coercion in order to execute the assigned duties. In contrast, Theory Y makes the assumption that the staff is extremely interested in the duties assigned to them and that they always take responsibility of the things they do (Lussier & Achua, 2010). As an aspiring leader, I am more of the opinion put across by theory Y that individuals love their jobs and only need good working conditions to execute their tasks. They do not need any motivation or coercion to work. I learnt that if employees are not at ease with their places of work, they tend to look for something else to do or protest against the unpleasant things at the work place. Conversely, theory X can also be applicable according to the type of employees I deal with. Some employees need supervision and control to perform as required. I also had an opportunity to look at the results of a research done at the University of Michigan and Ohio state University in 1940s on a leader’s style of leadership. On the accompanying self assessment test, I evaluated my ability as a leader and what is required of me to ensure optimum performance. Based on my experiences as a follower, I observed that a good leader should not mind occasional lateness to work. He or she needs to give permission to subordinates for attending personal matters in addition to encouraging the subordinates to improve their career by pursuing specialized studies. Moreover, a good leader should be autonomous and should not make premature evaluation. Therefore, a good leader should be sensitive to the subordinates’ issues that go beyond work (Lussier & Achua, 2010). This experience made us happy as followers and the result was ultimate performance with minimal supervision. I felt that it will be important for me to care about the lives of my followers in future in order to make them comfortable at work to ensure maximum output. Influence or power is displayed by an individual’s ability to change the actions and mannerism of others (Lussier & Achua, 2010). According to the assessment, I learnt that the choice of influence I would exert on a person is determined by the level of power related traits I possess. I further learnt that to be a successful leader in the future, I should have the ability to influence people through motivation thus increasing their assertiveness. From my experience as a follower, I learnt that resistance to influence results to changed influence mechanism where the use of intimidation and promises is evident. The assessment also helped me to realize that I need to sharpen my motivation tactics since this would affect my followers’ behavior in pursuing a certain outcome. I have always valued the experiences I had as a follower since I also experienced the organizational politics and political influence in an organization that resulted to both positive and diverse outcomes in or place of work. I noticed that I had the tendency of involving myself with the positive politics. However, politics are highly linked to personal interests. Therefore, it is imperative for me to put the interests of an organization before my personal interests in order to succeed as a leader in the future. Within this, I realized that I should improve on the means I intend to use for protecting employees from negative organizational politics in order to enhance their performance while matching organizational values with those of the employees. Other traits that portray a successful leader include the ability to network and negotiate. A leader is required to form network groups where information is shared hence gaining improved capacity to tackle various organizational issues (Lussier & Achua, 2010). As an individual, I realized that I am good at negotiations where I usually other people’s opinions seriously. Negotiation would help me to avoid pointless conflicts. Another self assessment test, enlightened me on the larger framework of emerging contemporary views on leadership styles, leadership recognizes a set of characteristics that contribute to the leadership process. I realize that communication and crucial while dealing with people and entails listening to others, conveying your own opinion and giving feedback in time. I learnt that if I take time to listen to others by showing interest and concern, I would be successful in winning over the ability to control my followers towards various changes I would want to implement. Just as I expected, effective communication would help me to understand my potencies and weaknesses from diverse opinions of people around me. The assessment on listening skills evaluated the frequency of my personal behavior. My total test score of 50 points showed that I am an average listener. This was in line with what I expected since I usually take time to listen to people, avoid destructions whenever I am listening to others, and I possess the patience to wait for the people talking to me to finish up their part of the dialogue without interruptions. Moreover, I am capable of often evaluating people’s words and their verbal communication ability. As a leader, this would use this ability to deal with my subordinates with ease (Lussier & Achua, 2010). In the test for my behavior, potency and weaknesses, I found myself as an individual who has the strength of commencing and maintaining a conversation with ease. At times, I become dominating in our conversations depending on the status of the other individual and the motive of our conversation. There are some areas of my weaknesses that I need to improve on is my listening skills. I need to accommodate more other people’s ideas and give them time to pass their opinions across during our conversations. Secondly, I should learn more on how to handle my emotions during a conversation irrespective of the topic. I am good in giving feedbacks to the other people. I have the ability to usually return messages as required to the respective people who need the information. At this point, I only need to maintain my character; otherwise, there is not a lot to be improved. On the other hand, I really take pleasure in coaching people. I have a good reputation among my friends due to the portrayed capacity to guide others. This character would help me to be a successful leader in the future. The area I need to improve on is leniency. Due to the high regard expressed to me by my friends, I am normally compassionate towards people who do me wrong this is in line with being a good leader according to the traits depicted in the book of leadership. Another aspect of leadership that needed a lot of consideration is the diversity of cultures. The internal relations may bring conflicts of opinions due to diverse believes. Being an aspiring leader I learnt that I need to improve on how to handle such conflicts successfully and ensure togetherness in the job relationships. In such conflicts, I am required to listen to all the issues that caused any conflict. When it comes to conflict styles, I realized that I am biased towards the use of the collaboration style to resolve them. I realized that I have the ability to confront others when in a conflict as I try to pass across my opinion on the issues regarding the situation. From the assessment, I learnt that I need to improve on avoiding the usage of force since being assertive may be mistaken for passing my opinions forcefully. During a conflict, I noted that I am normally quick in adjusting towards the solution of the issue or issues at hand. I do this to ensure that I meet other people’s needs too. Followership and personality also affects the dyadic relationships amid the subordinates and leaders. My personality affects my dyadic relationships, followership and delegation. From the assessment, I learnt that I have the agreeableness Big Five personality. I have always had the need for affiliation where I create a good relationship with my leaders in order for them to assist me in achieving some of my job-related needs. Just like a few focused followers, I realized I have a desire to be promoted in an organization’s ranks. In order to pull through as a follower, I realized that I have a low need for power and this explains my good relationship and potential promotions that I enjoy while working. However, my aspirations to be a good leader require me to have a high need for power in order to have the capacity to influence my followers. I also realized that I have the ability to adjust myself and handle new things that may be delegated to me as a follower. From the book, it has been made clear that teamwork enables effectiveness in completion of joint tasks in an organization. It also shows common understanding and commitment to group goals on the part of all the workers (Lussier & Achua, 2010). Overall, this course on leadership has enabled me to have the much needed knowledge required to be a successful leader. The availability the self assessment tests have enabled the procedure of my evaluation to be easy and frank. I have also successfully identified my potencies and weaknesses with regard to my aspirations as a leader. Reference Lussier, R. N., & Achua, C. F. (2010). Leadership: Theory, Application, & Skill Development (4th ed.). Mason, Ohio: South-Western Cengage Learning. Read More