Leadership, Self-awareness, And Performance Enhancement

Understanding the Concept of Leadership

The purpose of this essay is to identify myself at the leadership position. I will try to enhance my self-awareness on my capability as a leader and identifying the areas of improvement. To serve this purpose, I will refer to my experience in class, evaluate activities, my learnings, and of course the results of two tests that I undergone. Additionally, there are some notes, which I have written while being in the class and also at home provide insights. I have also used these information to support me doing this reflective piece of essay.

It is not easy to define leadership; however, it is still necessary to understand the meaning of leadership as this is one of the most talked about terms in a range of areas of activities. Leadership is not just about managing operations and supporting the business to achieve its long-term goals. It is also about creating motivating factors within the organisations to motivate a group of people and inspire the performance. It is about communicating ideas appropriately to stakeholders and encouraging employees to participate in brainstorming sessions (Lievens et al. 2018).

The term leadership as according to (Lievens et al. 2018) is influenced by how people think of a leader. People can have varying and flexible opinions of leaders. They select a leader thinking that the selected leader will help them in fulfilling their thoughts and desires. However, it is never guaranteed that the selected leader will last longer. Indeed, the selected leader can also be dethroned by the same group of people. People keep thinking of a range of leadership skills once they are not satisfied with the current leader. Hence, it is important for leaders to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses to be able to avoid such circumstances from happening.

With regard to understanding the concept of leadership, “Trait Theory of Leadership” says that leaders share a range of inborn personality traits (Matthews 2018). Even during the class activities I had the opportunity to learn about a few leadership traits like creativity and innovation, decision-making capabilities, good communicator, delegation and empowerment, inspire others etc. The activity help me understood that to be a good future leader I need to work upon a few weak areas in me.  

Talent management theory states that an organisation should continually seek to improve its performance while not waiting for the external business environment to improve. This is an increasingly growing practice across the global firms. Talent management as I understood from the class activity can be attained by applying relevant strategies, techniques and technologies. Strategies will include like coaching, mentoring and training & development programs. Techniques will comprise of implementing the lean approach and applying total quality management (TQP) in the organisational practice (Gallardo-Gallardo et al. 2015).

Identifying Personal Strengths and Weaknesses

The class activity provided me opportunities to learn something about the online resources. The activity did explore a range of online resources like website articles, official website of companies and much more. The activity was like path guiding to me and I will definitely take help of these resources while implementing and following my personal and professional development plan.

The feedback sheet was also very helpful as this helped me to identify a few areas of improvement in my leadership. Performance initiatives was appreciated in the feedback sheet; however, I could learn that both internal and external factors affect a business. I got appreciation for culture initiatives as well. However, I need to work a bit in this regard as according to the feedback my research lacked a depth analysis of the content. I was also being appreciated for my engagement into different activities. However, I could not actually identify the strategic human resource management (HRM) issues. Overall, the piece of feedback suggest that I have a good understanding of various organisational practices; however, I need to work a bit to go more insight the topic. Moreover, this will also help me effectively to perform as a leader.

A session with the guest lecturer “Katherine Dziaman Group CFO” was immensely educating. The lecturer shared some of his experiences of being a leader. I could learn that some leaders have the inborn leadership qualities. Initially, I used to think that both managers and leaders are the same people. However, I was wrong totally. The lecture did help me to understand that leaders can be the good managers but all managers cannot necessarily be the leaders. Leaders know how to motivate its stakeholders. This is why they give emphasis on talent management and performance management. With these, leaders ensure being competitive in distinguished circumstances (Bennion, Duerden and Whitehouse 2016).  

This section of the essay analyse the results of the two tests, which I undergone to check my ability in leadership roles and interpersonal skills. I did undergo two tests like 123test and psychometric test or more specifically the situational judgment test. In this section, I will first share the performance with screenshots of respective tests and then will analyse about how I performed in these tests. Moreover, the intention is to identify the weaknesses in me and prepare and follow a development plan to get rid of these weaknesses (Sherman 2018). Needless to say, this analysis of my leadership skills will help me plan strategies and implement these in practice to become a successful leader of the future.

Analysis of Leadership Skills

The above screenshot indicates my scores in the test. Scorings are distributed along five different areas like openness to experience, extraversion, natural reactions, conscientiousness and agreeableness. I have scored poor in openness to experience and below average in rest other fields. It indicates that these are my weak areas. However, I need to check whether all of these weaknesses are essential to leadership approach in organisations. With the help of the result of “123test”, I could find three vital areas where I am poorly weak. These are communication skills, self-confidence and interpersonal skills. Now, I will refer to academic journals to identify how important these skills are for a leader.

“Communication skills” as opined by LaBelle and Belknap (2016) is an essential characteristic of a leader. Until and unless a leader is not a good communicator people will not adore his or her leadership skills. A leader without effective communication skills will not be able to communicate his or her concern to stakeholders. In addition, such leaders will lack the convincing skill that helps them to reduce the resistance from employees during an ongoing change process.

“Self-confidence” is a must have skills for leaders. As observed by Göker (2016), a leader without being confident about what he or she does, will most certainly lose its potential supporters in the company. Such leaders will not be able to make others understand and realise the importance of decision being taken by the management. Indeed, a highly confident leader will most certainly be able to manipulate his or her words and create supporters at the organisational level. Self-confidence in leaders is required mostly at times when they are on a verge to take risks or are addressing to a group of people in the company who are resisting the change to happen.  

“Interpersonal Skills” is another very important characteristic skills of leaders. As observed by Ferris et al. (2018), interpersonal skills are essential characteristic skills of leaders that help them integrate their style of work with the stakeholders and so on. ‘Interpersonal skills’ is most appropriate with the participative leadership style. It is because participative leaders tend to encourage involvement of employees in decision-making and strategy-making processes. In addition, participative leadership is now mostly found in companies across the globe with just a few exceptions like in China. The country is known for having autocratic leaders. Employee engagement, which is an increasingly growing practice across global organisation require an assistance in the form of a participative leadership. A participative leader is good at identifying talents and average professionals and accordingly providing opportunities to learn and explore their capabilities (Göker 2016).

Participation in Class Activities

Screenshot 1: Situational Judgment Test

The above screenshot shows that I am pretty good with making situational judgments. However, I am still needed to work on this to be more accurate with making the situational judgments. ‘Situational judgments’ is one of the most essential characteristics of leaders. It helps them dealing with a range of distinguished circumstances. Circumstances could be of varied kinds depending on a various factors like the external business environment. Leaders nowadays are tend to face the distinguished circumstances. For example, there may be a legal dispute with the state government or that the performance is declining. These are just a few examples of situations, it actually can extend up to a limitless number of situations. In all such situations, a leadership approach is required to make and implement the appropriate decisions.  

In this section of this essay, the class activities will be discussed. Though I was the part of various activities held in class over a number of weeks but still I have chosen “Week 5” and “Week 8”. “Week 5” provided me an opportunity to learn and understand insights of talent management and the leadership development. On the other hand, I got to know a more about traits and characteristics of leaders in “Week 8”. In this section, I will discuss activities I participated into in these two different weeks.

This was one of the activities being conducted in “Week 5”. The activity communicated three common reasons why people leave organisations. These are uncompetitive salary package, work pressure and growth opportunities (Ferris et al. 2018). This also helped me realise how I left a job in the past. Hence, I left the job because I did find salary to be uncompetitive as compared to other employers in the same industry.

Promotion debate was another activity being conducted in class in week 5. This helped me to learn about a promotion debate. I could learn that the selection of the best eligible person for the top position would depend a lot on surrounding circumstances. Definitely, experienced professionals from within the firm should be given the preference. This will actually motivate others and aspire them to strive for best. However, in case when innovation has become an urgency and the concerned company lacks an entrepreneur leader, it is best to go with someone from outside. That person should be highly experienced and successful in doing challenging tasks.

The above figure is one of the activities being performed in “Week 8”. In this activity, I got an opportunity to learn about what motives act behind leaders making the decisions. Based on my understanding of motives, I rank drive and achievement on top of all other motives. It is followed by power, tenacity and resilience and work ethic. Drive and achievement is something that drives leaders to take risks and work hard to achieve the organisational objectives. Power motivates them to keep constantly expanding to new markets. Leaders use resilience in them to overcome barriers to success. They follow business ethics to attain a sustained business practice (Henley et al. 2017).

Based on learning from various resources discussed in this activity I could find a list of strengths and weaknesses in me.

The list of my strengths include ability to understand the real world situation, creativity and innovation, desire to learn, motivation to learn and work etc.

My weaknesses include lack of effective communication skills, lack of self-confidence and ineffective interpersonal skills.

Therefore, I need to follow the improvement strategies. Improvement strategies will be implemented with the help of personal and professional development plans. The development plans will feature short-term and long-term goals. Short-term goals will include working on to improve the weak areas. I will get an opportunity to commence this while working in a private company as a startup. It is because I can nourish these skills by participating into various practical activities. My long-term goal is to become a successful leader. This could be achieved by working in major organisations.

Conclusion

Therefore, this can be said that reflective journal writing is a good way to reflect back on what have been learnt. It helps to understand the personal strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, these data can be used to prepare a personal and professional development plan to become a successful leader of the future.

References 

Bennion, J., Duerden, M. and Whitehouse, A., 2016. Global Explorers Journaling and Reflection Initiative. Journal of Youth Development, 11(2).

Ferris, F.D., Moore, S.Y., Callaway, M.V. and Foley, K.M., 2018. Leadership development initiative: growing global leaders… Advancing palliative care. Journal of pain and symptom management, 55(2), pp.S146-S156.

Gallardo-Gallardo, E., Nijs, S., Dries, N. and Gallo, P., 2015. Towards an understanding of talent management as a phenomenon-driven field using bibliometric and content analysis. Human Resource Management Review, 25(3), pp.264-279.

Göker, S.D., 2016. Use of Reflective Journals in Development of Teachers’ Leadership and Teaching Skills. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 4(n12A), pp.63-70.

Henley, A., Contreras, F., Espinosa, J.C. and Barbosa, D., 2017. Entrepreneurial intentions of Colombian business students: Planned behaviour, leadership skills and social capital. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, 23(6), pp.1017-1032.

LaBelle, J.T. and Belknap, G., 2016. Reflective journaling: fostering dispositional development in preservice teachers. Reflective Practice, 17(2), pp.125-142.

Lievens, F., Lang, J.W., De Fruyt, F., Corstjens, J., Van de Vijver, M. and Bledow, R., 2018. The predictive power of people’s intraindividual variability across situations: Implementing whole trait theory in assessment. Journal of Applied Psychology.

Matthews, G., 2018. Cognitive?adaptive trait theory: A shift in perspective on personality. Journal of personality, 86(1), pp.69-82.

Sherman, R.O., 2018. Reflecting on Your Leadership Practice. Nurse Leader, 16(5), pp.278-279.