Leadership and Management

According to the self insight quiz, I have got the result of Seeker (Eurich, 2018). Seeker is an individual who have not developed a complete understanding of themselves. They have no idea about themselves or do not know how they are seen by the other people. However, there are some seekers who are not completely lacks the self-awareness. They have the possibility to grow in both of their external and internal self-awareness. Oftentimes, this is because self-awareness just hasn’t been on Seekers’ radar—whether it’s because they’ve never really thought about it, they don’t recognize its importance, or they’re simply too overwhelmed to focus on it. The good news is, as a Seeker, you’ve just taken the first leap in your journey to insight.

I have the chance of improving my internal and external self awareness- Being a seeker I might be making such choices that are getting in the path of my well being. This can be proved by the way I stay band refused from a situation where I am not happy or bored. This can be due to several reasons one of the reason is that I feel paralysed. I also have enough space to develop the external self awareness because I do not know how other see myself.

Leadership is the process of motivating a group of individuals for achieving a particular goal (Yukl, 2013). Leadership means having a vision for the organization and setting a path for the employee to achieve the goals. Leadership is the art of how well an individual can manage the employee and how effectively can they achieve the goals. To be an effective leader an individual should have a great management skill. After self assessment I have discovered some of the key aspect of my leadership. The self assessment will help me to find the strengths and weaknesses of my leadership. In this way I can improve my weaknesses into my strengths and this will provide me many opportunities to become better in leading an organization.

From the self insight and personal experience the following strengths and weakness have been found:

My strengths are:

• Convincing power: A great quality of a seeker is convincing power. It is necessary to have a great convincing power to convince the stakeholders of the company like the suppliers and the shareholders (Drenkard, 2012).
• Innovation: Innovation is an important leadership quality in today’s market. If a leader does not have innovative ideas then the organization will find it hard to sustain in the industry. My innovative quality will help me to lead an organization effectively (Aarons & Sommerfield, 2012).
• Commitment: I am committed in my workplace which has helped me in my academic carrier. My level of commitment will help me to focus on the progress of the work. A leader is an inspiration to the other members of the organization. If the leader is not committed towards the workplace then the employee will also not be committed enough towards the organization.  
• Decision making capability: Quick and right decision is the key for leading an organization (Li et al., 2013). A leader needs to have taken quick decisions in many scenarios for example in a team meeting. Taking quick decisions can help the leader in taking many opportunities. The leader also needs to take right decision along with that.

My weaknesses are:

• Communication: I am poor in effective communication with others. Being a leader, communication is an important aspect for me in order to provide appropriate assistance to the smooth flow of the operation. It is observed that the organizations face significant amount challenges in the business conduction without the implementation of the effective communication and at times it is instrumental in creating conflicts among the employees of the organizations.
• Working in a team: Due to poor communication skill it makes tough for me to work in a team, which is a major issue for me. An effective leader should be able to work and motivate others in a team. Self assessment is a great way to understand the strength and the weaknesses of an individual but apart from self assessment the most effective way of understanding about my behaviour is by gathering information from the colleagues. Honest feedback from them will help to understand how they perceive me from their viewpoint. This will help to understand how the employees of an organization will perceive me in the organization. Understanding others opinion about me will help to rectify the mistakes I do and will also help me to understand what I can do to improve my leadership quality. Casual conservation with a colleague can explain many things about me and will give me the opportunity to understand where I was doing wrong. Self assessment can be biased at times and it will also not be effective to understand everything about by leadership quality and personality. Colleagues can express their views about me and will provide additional information that I have never think of. Performance evaluation is one of the most effective ways of finding out about my performance.

1. I want to be a participative style of leader who will work with the team to motivate them and guide them to achieve the team and personal goals by following g the proper ethics of the organization (Miao et al., 2013).
2. After assessing my leadership effectiveness I have came to a conclusion that I lack the capability of working as a team member in the organization. Working in a team needs good understanding of the other individuals, their opinion. Working effectively in a team the leader needs to have a great communication skill so that they can understand and express views, without proper communication skill there will be gap which will have negative impact in the workplace.  I am poor in communicating effectively with others which will be a huge issue for me to manage a group of individuals. To effectively communicate with others I need to develop good communication skills. I also need to have a good listening skill which will help me to understand the opinions and views of the employee. Developing communication skill will make me a better team player. Another thing that I want to develop in myself is the emotional intelligence. EI can be an effective way of understanding the feelings of other members.  
3. SMART goal setting technique helps to set goals that an individual wants to achieve. SMART is the acronym for Specific, measurable, achievable, and relevant and time bound.  It helps to set the goals and they execute actions to achieve those goal. Specific defines the goals for which the individual will works. It is important for the individual to keep measurable goals to track the progress of the goal achievement. Achievable explains the goals that the individual wants to achieve should be realistic and attainable. Relevant and time bound explains that the goals should matter to him and how much time it will take to attain the goals.

Specific:

• The goal that I want to achieve is to develop better communication skills, which will increase my effectiveness in leadership. Good communication skill will help me in becoming a better team player and will also enhance the listening skills.
• Another thing that I want to develop in myself is the emotional intelligence. EI has proved to be very productive in understanding the mindset of others and then taking necessary actions. These are the two goals that I want to achieve.

Measurable:

• After developing these skills I will be able effective enough to communicate effectively with the employee of the organization.
• I will be able to understand the mindset and this will help me to form effective teams. Forming effective teams will increase the production of the organization.
• Developing emotional intelligence will help to reduce the conflict within the workplace and will build a strong relationship between the employees.

Achievable:

The goals will help me to manage the organization in a better way. The goals are achievable and once achieved will give fruitful results. The communication can be improved by learning the basics of non-verbal communication, engaging the audience in discussion, communicate more with the employees. The PIP approach will be very helpful in the conducting presentation. Developing emotional intelligence needs time and patience.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Relevant:

• After achieving the following goals I will be able to effectively communicate with the employee of the organization.
• It will increase the productivity by decreasing the miscommunication which causes faulty operations.
• It will help me to learn how I can lead the employee in a better way by understanding their opinion.

Time bound:

Developing good communication will take around 1 year of time but developing the emotional intelligence will take more time as it needs understanding and patience. Developing EI will take 2-3 years of time.

As mentioned earlier that I have significant issues in the proper and effective communication with the other individuals, the first step in order to implement the developmental plan will be to undertake the online communication tests. This will significantly enable me to know my condition or status where I belong at this moment in terms of producing effective communication. The result will significantly portray my drawbacks in the mentioned fields and will enable me to take an account of the developments that I need in order to become a quality leader. After the tests I need a training on the communication or more specifically it needs to be a training on the language of the people that I will be leading. The effective communication among the leaders and the followers is a significant need at any situation or context. In case of business, it becomes more visible with the account of the loss that gets generated for the improper communication among the employees and the management. Hence in order to reduce the communication gap between me and my followers, the language training will be significant.

I am a person who have bit ignorance towards the facts and figures or the evidences in delivering a summary of an event. It poses a significant issues at times when the variation from the approximate consideration of mine is considerably large. Hence the message that I want to communicate incorporates significant amount of impurity during the transfer. This is one important aspect that I need to work on as I feel that I must put strong emphasis on the fact that the communication or an exchange of message will only have strong evidences as the base of it.

Apart from this I do feel that I must improve my listening skills as that will enable me to evaluate the cases with proper assessment of the occurrence of the events. In order to become a quality leader, the listening skills is one important aspect in which I need to improve.

Along with this I will be undertake a training on emotional intelligences. Being a leader I will be subjected to significant amount of emotions or cases that will relate to the emotions. As an individual I am bit emotional and at times emotion tends to get better of me and that is significantly unhealthy for me in case of taking important decisions. Being a leader I will be subjected to take crucial decisions and in order to reduce the detrimental impact of the emotion in my decision, the training on emotional intelligence is much needed.   

Development Plan

A self-analysis of my performance in taking crucial decision will be the only path of reviewing my improvement. It will be significant for me to look for any existing scope of my decision making ability getting influenced by the emotion. Apart from this I will implement a survey on the employees or the followers of mine in order to test whether the transfer of my messages are effective enough for them or not. For the listening training, the report of my trainer will be base of assessment for me as it will enable me to observe whether I have improved or not.

From the review I understood the point that I need to add some additional trainings to the existing plan in order to operate more efficiently as a leader. In order to do so, I consulted with my trainers and I came to the conclusion that the cultural training and the training on the ethical conduction are much needed for me in order to increase my level as a leader. Being a leader I am in need to assess the cultural backgrounds of my followers and as all of my followers will not be from the same culture, tradition and society, they will face significant amount of cultural differences among them which I need to nullify as my main motive being a leader is to unite them and drive them towards better productivity and profitability. The cultural assimilation and the participation in the social and cultural activities of other culture will be significantly helpful for me in this case. Apart from this I need to undertake the training on the ethical conduction. In organizational context the management has significant role in making sure that the employees follow the prescribed code of ethics of the organization as the ethical business conduction is one of the most valued aspect for any business organization. Hence being a leader I need to incorporate the values of ethical operation into my followers so that they be able to conduct any sort of action, may that be in the business context or in general operations, following the ethical approach.

The modification in the developmental plan was submitted to the supervisor for a discussion where I was recommended three general steps in order to accomplish the cultural training. They were:

• Selection of the social activity in the destination culture.
• Selection of the cultural activity in the destination culture.
• Repetitive participation in those activities.

Along with this I was recommended to obtain the benefits of following a prescribed code of ethics which I was asked to transfer to my followers so that they be able to understand the need of following the code of ethics. The legal concerns that relate to an unethical misconduct was also communicated to me so that I be able to transfer the need of following the ethical approach in a better manner.

On a concluding note it can be stated that the additions in the developmental plan will be significantly helpful for me as the assessment of the cultural background of the followers or the employees will be in my reach. Apart from that another missing part in my developmental plan which was the training on the ethical approaches will also help me in improving my leadership qualities.

References:

Eurich, D. (2018). Insight | Dr. Tasha Eurich. [online] The INSIGHT Quiz. Available at: https://www.insight-quiz.com/selfquiz.aspx?z=0 [Accessed 13 Oct. 2018].

Yukl, G. A. (2013). Leadership in organizations. Pearson Education India.

Drenkard, K. (2012). The transformative power of personal and organizational leadership. Nursing administration quarterly, 36(2), 147-154.

Aarons, G. A., & Sommerfeld, D. H. (2012). Leadership, innovation climate, and attitudes toward evidence-based practice during a statewide implementation. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 51(4), 423-431.

Li, Y., Baldassi, M., Johnson, E. J., & Weber, E. U. (2013). Complementary cognitive capabilities, economic decision making, and aging. Psychology and aging, 28(3), 595.

Miao, Q., Newman, A., Schwarz, G., & Xu, L. (2013). Participative Leadership and the Organizational Commitment of Civil Servants in C hina: The Mediating Effects of Trust in Supervisor. British Journal of Management, 24, S76-S92.