Valuable Lessons of Leadership - Essay Example

Reflective Journal Introduction: Leadership is about relationships one creates with others, what one does and credibility. It is about what one cares about and values. The more one knows about the world, the easier it is for them to approach leadership. One needs to have integrity and humility to be a good leader. One needs to stand firm on their believes while at the same time remain humble enough to know that they cannot do it alone but need help from other (Hart &Uhr, 2008). These are some of the lessons that I have learned in my leadership journey. My lessons in leadership started at a young age. As a first-born child in our family, it was natural that my parents expected me to be an example to my siblings and be responsible for them as they grew. Since both my parents were working, the responsibility of looking after my siblings fell on me. This means that I had to make decisions at such an early age. Moreover, I have been working for five years at King Khalid University Hospital as X-ray technologist. During these years of experience, I have worked with group as a team and in the last year I was the team leader. Due to this experience in working with different people as well as being a leader, my relation with leadership is good. On top of that, studying leadership in health care including workshops and modules activities have taken me into the leadership theories and taught me how I can know my strengths and weaknesses in order to improve. Honestly, I realized that leading people with different personalities and characters could be challenging (Townsend, MacBeath&Barwani, 2011)..This paper will reflect valuable lessons that I have learnedduring studying leadership in health careunit, workshops, some exercises and activities in the blackboard and extra reading with linking that knowledge with my previous work as a leader. Myself as a leader: When I think about myself as a leader that takes me back to my work while I was working as a team leader in the last year. Honestly, my awareness of leadership and my skills have been improved due to the personal experience and studying this unit which was really beneficial for me.As a leader, I learned to be proactive and to take responsibility for my actions. I always tell myself that I am the one to choose my mood, path in life, the way I respond to situations. For instance, when I was working as x-ray technologist team leader, I would take responsibility if any shortage has happened. This has proved to a very important on my role as a leader because I normally take full responsibility of my leadership role and try to accomplish what is expected of me. I also learned to respect all kinds of people. People are a major asset for any leader because, apart from executing what the leader desires to be done, they are also valuable sources of ideas (Lussier&Achua, 2010). A leader can get a lot of ideas from people on how to carry out tasks and to lead. This can be through advice, complains or just suggestions (Lussier&Achua, 2010). Respecting people has also earned me respect from them because they realize that I care and value them. Another lesson that I have learned and mastered as a leader is planning for the future. To achieve anything, one needs to set clear goals. I learned that setting goals provides one with the focus needed in accomplishing any task. Goals also put one on a certain path and prevent them from wandering from the intended task (Leatherman, 2008). As a leader, I realized that goals make you to know correctly how to go about issues and steer your subjects in a direction that allows you to achieve what you really need. It also paints you as a reliable person before the people you are leading. This makes them to look up to you for guidance, instructions on what to do and inspiration. Another life lesson I learned as a leader is to put first things first. Through my journey, I learned to prioritize certain things of importance such as my goals and work. Prioritizing helps one to arrange tasks or goals needed to be achieved in a sequence of importance. Prioritizing makes a leader to be more efficient and organized. This also allows one to achieve the more important goals instead of trying to achieve all goals at once. As a leader, I also think about others and what they desire to achieve in their lives. For instance, I normally look for a way I can achieve a win-win situation in every agreement or conflict. I normally look for ways in which I can achieve what I desire without making others lose what they desire to achieve what they desire to achieve. This makes me to employ diplomatic means of solving issues or even in striking a deal with other people. Sometimes I employ the services of a mediator in trying to bring people together to an agreement. Although sometimes it becomes so challenging, with some participants unwilling to relax on their stands, in most cases this method bears fruits and leaves everyone contended. Achieving a win-win result in conflict resolution also helps maintain the good relationships people share (Maxwell, 2007). Another big lesson I have learned as a leader is the art of listening. Listening is a crucial component of leadership because it allows you to understand others and their thoughts. This allows you to understand how people view you, how they rate you as a leader and how much you have endeared yourself to them. It also allows you to know the thoughts, concerns and views of other people you are not in touch with. Listening to others also makes them feel important and valued. This will also create a chance for you to be given attention when you speak because the people you lead will realize that you also care about what they have to say (Sarros, 2006). As a leader, developing listening skills has helped me to know how to handle various people and how to improve myself as a leader. It has also helped me to communicate well with other people as well as allowing me to learn from the people I work with. Despite being a leader, I learned that it is vital to work together with other people. Working with other enables a leader to tap on the skills possessed by these people and this helps him/her to accomplish his/her goals more efficiently and effectively. I also learned that working with other people enables a leader to create a good rapport with such people as well as endear themselves to them. Lastly, as a leader, I have learned to review myself constantly to see how I am performing. I do this by analyzing whether I have achieved the goals I set or not and also by engaging with other people and asking for their honest views about my leadership and that will be an effective way to review yourself first then try to find out more from people you work with(Ladkin, 2013).I see it more important that to provide an opportunity for people to write their views about my leadership without revealing their identity so that I can get honest answers from the people I work with and the people I lead. This will help me to improve in many areas of leadership and will make me into a good leader. My Strengths as a Leader: As a leader, I have a number of strengths. One of my strengths is organization.I try my best to beorganized in all the things that I take part and I believe organization is a trait that is necessary in leadership. An organized leader is able to make decisions quickly on what to accomplish in a particular time and how to accomplish (Ladkin, 2013). Organization has therefore made me an efficient and effective leader. This has earned me respect and admiration from other people. Discipline is another strength I possess as a leader. Discipline helps me to be focused. It also helps me to guide others to be focused too. This helps me to accomplish the tasks I set out to do. Indiscipline in a leader can make them to lose focus and determination easily. It can also make them to wander from the original intended goal (Leatherman, 2008). Another leadership quality I possess is empathy. I have the ability to identify with people in their situations and empathize with them provided such situations are not being used as excuses to avoid taking responsibility or contributing to the achievement of the set goals. Empathizing with other people has made others to view me as a caring leader. Recognizing the challenges others are going through and offering the little help I can has made junior members to realize that despite being a leader, I am also human with feelings. This has endeared me to the people I lead and increased their loyalty to me. Cohesiveness is also another leadership strength I possess. I possess the ability to bring individuals together to form a functional group. This also involves organizing people in a way that they complement each other and work as a group. It is crucial in any group to have an individual that acts the glue that holds all the people together because working as one normally brings success and achievement of the set goals. This trait also brings about togetherness among participants in a certain task as well as boosting relationships among working mates. Having the ability to bring people together and make them feel as part of a family has led people in work to consider the leader as their hero (Sarros, 2006). As a leader, I also always strive to be a role model to others. This means that I normally lead by example, which involves taking part in the tasks that need to be accomplished. This trait is very crucial in leadership because it helps one to be touch with junior members as well as identify with them (Ladkin, 2013). As a leader, I am also adaptable. I strive to adapt to any situation that is presented to me and make the best out of it. My ability to adapt easily to prevailing situations has helped me to navigate through problems and come up with solutions to do things when nobody seems to have any idea. This has helped me to gain more respect and command among many people who always look up to me for solutions to any problem they face. Adaptability also allows one to make the best out of every situation they face and ensure that despite the prevailing conditions, they still achieve their goals (Townsend, MacBeath&Barwani, 2011). I am also a maximizer in the sense that I normally look for ways to take advantage of the strengths of the people I am working with and making maximum use of them while trying to look for ways to alleviate their weaknesses. Maximizing on one’s strengths ensures that you achieve maximum output from the capabilities of such an individual. A maximizing leader normally looks at how they transform strong into a superb thing and believe that every individual has limitless potential to achieve whatever they desire (Sarros, 2006). This quality of a leader needs one to be keen to discover the unique talents possessed by all the people around them so that it can be easy to discover the strengths each individual has and exploit them. I am also a positive leader and I normally strive to create such attitude among other people. I normally take challenges positively and relish tackling such challenges. I am normally enthusiastic about tasks that I am assigned to do and always try to make people to see the funny side of work. Having a positive attitude towards anything is crucial because it helps one to approach any task with the winner mentality. This makes every task achievable and every challenge becomes easy to solve. As a leader, it is important that you create positivity among the people you lead because it is only through that they will be encouraged to achieve the set goals. Showing that the set goals are achievable and showing how they can be achieved makes a leader to feel reliable before other people as well as helping them to create confidence among the people they lead. My weaknesses as a leader Despite having strengths as a leader, I also have weaknesses. One of the major weakness I have as a leader is my obsessive desire to please everyone around me. I normally concentrate on making sure that everybody is satisfied. This has normally affected performance of tasks because sometimes too much time is taken on deciding which route to take in trying to achieve the set. My desire to please everyone so that I can endear myself to all has proved to a big liability because in some instances, I am unable to make decisions especially if such decisions seem a bit oppressive yetnecessary. This also makes me to in some cases, to fail to hold people answerable for their actions or ask them to improve their performance. This has made me to learn that to be more focused on attaining the desired results, it is paramount for a leader to have courage to face others on performance issues and speak their mind what they think somebody’s performance was, hold others accountable and let them know if their performance is below par, make decisions even in harder circumstances and make harder choices even if such choices might not be appealing to all (Maxwell, 2007). My desire to achieve all the set goals at all cost sometimes makes me to be a perfectionist. I am always determined to accomplish the set goals and whereas that can seem to be strength on my part, it is also a weakness in the sense that I run my team and myself to exhaustion while trying to achieve all the set goals. This is makes it hard for people to be more industrious in the long term as their returns diminishes (Lussier&Achua, 2010). This weakness has made me to learn that as a leader, one need to allow for small failures, let go if something is unachievable and understand achievement of most of the set goals is good enough. Over optimism about strategies, tactics and people is also another big weakness I have as a leader. The belief that people have limitless potential to achieve makes me to sometimes hang on to low-performing individuals for too long believing that I will manage to make them realize their great potential. This is the same case with strategies or tactics I employ in trying to accomplish anything. I normally too positive about certain tactics or strategies I employ in trying to achieve certain goals. This has proved to be a wrong perception because some people are either too unwilling to improve or they do not the needed capabilities to accomplish the desired tasks. Similarly, some strategies or tactics are normally not good enough to help leaders achieve the desired (Hart &Uhr, 2008). This weakness on my part as a leader has made me to fail to achieve the desired goals in the stipulated time or fail to achieve them at all. In addition, hanging on to low-performing people because sometimes I fear to offend them or want them to improve has, in most cases, led to overworking of the other performing individuals. Since I always insist on teamwork, the performing individuals are normally forced to perform more than they are supposed to because of helping non-performing workers to achieve what they are supposed to accomplish in a certain time. This has made to learn that as a leader, one has to sometimes make the hard decision and do away with some people or tactics. It is vital that as a leader, one needs to see things accurately as they are instead of how they should be. It is good to analyze the capabilities of the individuals they are working and evaluate how much they give and their limits, their loyalty to them as leader or the cause before and recognize the limitations of loyalty especially if remaining loyal to certain individuals is resulting to issues to others or the organization in general. Leadership Qualities: Any good leader must have certain leadership qualities that empowerthem to work well with others. Some of the qualities are innate while others are learned (Pringle, 2008). However, I believe that most of the leadership qualities most leaders are innate although such leaders need to go through a learning process to perfect such qualities. Some of the qualities I have as a leader include honesty, commitment, fairness, frankness, imagination, humility, boldness and a sense of humor. I normally strive to achieve the goals I set with honesty where I deal honestly with all the people I am involved with. This has earned me trust from other people. My commitment to what I intend to accomplish is normally seen in my willingness to take part in the tasks that need to be accomplished as well as leading by exampleI take time to encourage other on the achievability of the tasks at hand. My dedication to set goals has inspired other people I work with to the same level of dedication. Fairness involves giving credit to people who deserves it. I always give credit to people I work with whenever their performance is outstanding. Recognition of one’s efforts goes a long way in motivating such an individual and others to work even harder and give their all to accomplishing their tasks(Pringle, 2008). Conversely, I take responsibility for failure whenever it goes. This is to indicate that as a leader, I should have looked for ways to avoid such failures. I also strive to spread the praise throughout the group so that others do not feel so much left. I point out the good qualities of an individual and the areas such an individual has been outstanding. However, sometime I criticize my group members and point out to them where they need to improve. Humility helps me as a leader to recognize that I am not better than other people. This has made to appreciate weaknesses and limitations among other people and try to help them through overcome such limitations (Pringle, 2008). Identifying with other people has also helped me to develop a good a rapport with them and this has resulted to greater among all members. Frankness, as a leadership quality, allows me to give an opportunity to others to express their concerns, complains and new ideas even if I do not concur with their way of thinking. I strive to avoid being judgmental of people because that prevents me from giving an unbiased assessment of their ideas. Frankness has allowed me to draw on other people’s ideas to come up with solutions to solve the many problems I encounter while executing tasks or trying to achieve the set goals. In addition to allowing me access to an array of ideas, openness has also helped me to build mutual respect and trust between my followers and I. My team members normally feel as part of a family because everybody’s idea, concern or complain counts. Apart from frankness, I am also imaginative. This quality has been crucial to me as a leader because it has provided me with an opportunity to come up with new ideas. As a leader, one needs to be imaginative because it allows them to think outside the normal realm, which normally limits the number of solutions, that one can use to solve a problem or tackle an issue(Pringle, 2008). Imagination also allows a leader to see things differently and discover new but subtle developments, which can be helpful (Pringle, 2008). Viewing things differently allows a leader to lead followers in a new direction. Providing direction to other people helps confirm one as a leader to other people. I am also a fair leader. I usually deal with others justly and consistently. I never judge a person blindly or without proper evidence. I check all evidence and facts and allow everyone to present their facts or arguments before passing judgment. A leader should always be slow to judge. He/she should deliberate on issues, analyze them keenly and try to discover the hidden truth before announcing judgment. Being fair in judgment has made other person to see me as a reliable leader who is not swayed by what other people say or tell me. My assertive nature as a leader has made it possible for me to state clearly what I expect from others. I normally tell my team members on what I expect from them and how I expect them to do it. Assertiveness has been instrumental in achieving the desired from the people I lead. It also helps to avoid having misunderstandings in my team (Pringle, 2008). Although I am assertive as a leader, I also strive to understand whatpeople expect from me as their leader. I do this by allowing them the opportunity to express their concerns, expectations and complaints about past dealings. Sense of humor on my part as a leader is used to show my human part. Normally, leaders occupy a position that is removed from the one occupied by other people. Sense of humor is therefore a way of connecting with the people and showing them that just like them, you are also human who is capable of enjoying a light moment. I also use sense of humor to diffuse hostility between different members of my team, relieve tension and remove boredom in the workplace. Sometimes the intensity of a task can get its toll on some members and this leads to high tension. Bringing in humor relaxes everyone and makes work less boring. Challenges in Leadership Leadership has numerous challenges that one who is in this position has to tackle. There are both internal and external challenges. Internal challenges in leadership emanate within an organization in which a leader works while external challenges are the obstacles or problems in leadership that are caused by outside factors. Some of the external challenges in leadership include lack of funding in an organization and other resources, interpersonal problems within an organization or group and opposition from the community (Townsend, MacBeath&Barwani, 2011). Any organization or group needs funds to run its activities. Some of the funds are used to buy resources while others are used to remunerate people in the organization. However, in some cases, such organizations or groups can lack the funds. For instance, while working as an x-ray technologist, the health facility I used to work would sometime lack the needed funds to run it. Such a situation is very hard for a leader to handle because normally all eyes are turned to them for answers. The situation is normally worse if the organization lacks funds to pay workers. The heat is normally turned to the leaders who are asked to provide the funds. In most cases, leaders in such organizations are accused of embezzling funds meant to remunerate workers. As a leader, I once faced such a situation. I had been put in charge of a research group and yet the administration did not provide enough funds for the research. I had a hard time trying to explain to the members, some of whom believed that I had squandered the money. Another external is the interpersonal problems such as conflicts among workers. As a leader, one has to come in and try to solve this problem. A leader has to be a mediator in interpersonal conflicts because such conflicts derail performance among workers. A leader also faces the challenge of motivating workers who might be unwilling to put in more effort to achieve the desired goals (Leatherman, 2008). Opposition from the community can also be a challenge. This is especially worse in organizations such as schools where the community has a large stake in them. Opposition from the community can be due to negative attitude of the community members about the leader due to race, color or even origin. Opposition from the community can be challenging to a leader because the community members can influence other members of the organization to turn against their leader(Leatherman, 2008). Internal challenges, on the other hand, come from the leader or the leadership itself. Although leadership offers an individual the opportunity to show what they can do best, it also exposes their limitations. Some of the internal challenges include lack of confidence, fear, impatience, insecurity and intolerance (Lussier&Achua, 2010). A leader who is fearful is likely to make wrong decisions because of the fear of taking risks by experimenting with other new ideas. This is the same case with a leader who lacks confidence in themselves to make decisions. Such a leader will rely on others to decide for them. An impatient leader is quick to make decisions and pass judgments without careful analysis. Such a leader is also likely to make the wrong decisions, which can adversely affect an organization or the activities of a group. There is also the issue of intolerance among leaders. An intolerant leader is one who cannot tolerate divergent views from other people. Such a leader views different views from other people as an opposition to his authority. Such a character is a big challenge to leadership because it alienates the leader from other people. It can also instigate opposition from other people or demoralize workers from putting in a lot of effort in their workers (Hart &Uhr, 2008). A leader also faces the challenge of ensuring the set goals are achieved and it is up to the leader to make other people to work to achieve the goals. Conclusion My leadership has been long but very exciting. Although it is normally argued that leaders are born, I believe that the experiences one goes through play a big role in developing such an individual into a leader. In addition, the type of experiences one encounters determines the kind of a leader they become. In my journey I tried to reflect all of my perspectives regarding leadership. Moreover, I have linked what I have learned throughout this unit, which was really beneficial for me and my personal experience in order to develop my thoughts regarding leadership. I was applying some skilled that I learned here while I worked but without knowing that it is part of the leadership. However, after studying this unit my thoughts have been really improved regarding leadership. I really would like to thank you all my tutors on your support and your professional ways to convey this valuable concepts. References Hart, P. .,&Uhr, J. (2008). Public leadership pespectives and practices. Acton, A.C.T: ANU E Press. Ladkin, D. (2013). Authentic leadership: Clashes, convergences, and coalescences. S.l.: Edward Elgar. Leatherman, D. (2008). Quality leadership skills: Standards of leadership behavior. Amherst, Mass: HRD Press. Lussier, R. N., &Achua, C. F. (2010). Leadership: Theory, application, skill development. Australia: SouthWestern/Cengage Learning. Maxwell, J. C. (2007). The 21 indispensable qualities of a leader: Becoming the person others will want to follow. Nashville, Tenn: T. Nelson. Pringle, P. (2008). Top 10 qualities of a great leader. Tulso: Harrison House Publishers Sarros, J. C. (2006). The character of leadership: What works for Australian leaders - making it work for you. Milton, Qld: Wiley. Townsend, T., MacBeath, J., &Barwani, T. A. (2011).International handbook of leadership for learning. Dordrecht [etc.: Springer. Read More