Defining Your Personal Model of Leadership

Leadership is both a research area and practical skill encompassing the ability of an individual or an organization to guide, lead, transform, motivate and encourage the team and the organization to achieve its mission. Globalization and tech revolution has transformed the business ecosystem, which calls for the leadership to be highly flexible to deal with any contingent or unfavourable situation. An individual becomes a leader on the basis of his personal attributes and the resilience, determination, perseverance and commitment he shows towards the organization. A leader in true sense is an individual who by virtue of his words, his leadership style, and relationship building, bonding skills and vision takes the organization towards the goal of sustainability (Northouse, 2018).

A personal model of leadership has to be developed with reference to at least 3 major areas of leadership. The report will further entail the main idea or issues in one’s own leadership style and also describe the most important traits, skills and tasks to become an effective leader. Leadership is based on core values, the report will provide an overview of the core values and assumptions to arrive at the PML. Towards the end, the report will also discuss on how to personally apply the leadership model in present scenario.

Becoming self-aware is one of the pre-requisite to become a good and effective leader. Every individual is raised in a different culture, which culminates different value in the individual, eventually leading to differencing leadership styles. Thus, it is most important to first introspect oneself and then instruct, inspire and lead other people. My top 3 personal values which create a foundation for my leadership are ethics, teamwork and psychology. All these values help me in defining my leadership in true essence, and I base all my judgement, decision, behaviour and attitude on these values.

Ethics can be understood as the fundamental principles of decent and cordial human conduct. In simple words it is a system of moral principles for a human being. Ethics primarily define how people take their decision and lead their life. Ethics of a person can be both self-created or based on one’s cultural influence, values and beliefs. My ethics are a reflection of my upbringing and the values my family sowed in me. My ethics are guided by the ethical theory of utilitarianism. The theory of utilitarianism says that one should always take decision based on the concept of “Doing Greatest Good for Greatest number of People”. I base all my decision around this theory, and with this reasoning I often make decision which is beneficial for the entire team, or the organization. Besides this, I also practice ethics in my workplace, and refrain from making decision which would be morally wrong on the compass or highly unethical in realization (Gorton, Alston & Snowden, 2018).

The Main Organizing Idea or Issue in Your Leadership Model

I am a big promoter and believer of the concept of team work; I strongly believe that an individual cannot achieve the feat working alone as can be achieved by a team working together. I started valuing teamwork, right from my early school days. I always used to think that I am really good at soccer, and can alone make my team win. But, after a few failed attempts I realized that I am nothing without my team and so are my contributions. Ever since, I made teamwork as an important pillar of my life and started valuing the contribution and importance of people in teamwork. This value I took forward and started implementing in all my personal and professional endeavours. Thus, teamwork for me is another value which defines my leadership style (Huda et. al., 2018).

Psychology is another arrow in my quiver of leadership values. My psychology is always future looking; I always tend to look at the horizon to come up with something which is radical and innovative in nature. This is exactly the same thing I intent to apply in my workplace, treat my team as innovative and creative team. I tend to engage them in unconventional ways of working which positively impacts their productivity in the organization.

My main idea of my leadership is based on translating my vision into the culture of the organization. I believe that if the entire organization is working towards a clear vision which will lead them to achieve their mission, nothing like it. This entire thinking becomes the focal point of my leadership, based on which I tend to create my own leadership style. In a way my leadership is influenced by transformational style of leadership, which implies transforming the organization by leading the change in business organization. I am of the opinion that change is inevitable, more so in the present changing times, thus the leader has to always keep looking for changes in the processes or techniques which would increase the effectiveness of the employees, in turn increasing the productivity of the organization (Ford & Hrding, 2018).

Skills

Effective communication

 A leader has to effectively communicate with the internal and external stakeholders of the organization, and to ensure that openness in communication becomes the culture of the entire organization. Effective communication helps in building a strong connect with the followers, who then abide by the instruction of leader to work towards the goal of sustainability.

Important Traits, Skills, and Tasks of an Effective Leader

Followers of a leader are developed when they feel a strong connect with the leader, believe in his values and resonate with his personal attributes. It is important for a leader to build strong relationship with the employees or the followers, this relationship building exercise will make the followers walk the path alongside the leader. This strong relationship also acts as a platform for enhanced support and cooperation.

As defined earlier, a leader is a person who motivates and encourages his team to perform with enhanced productivity towards the goals of the organization. It is the duty of the leader or the innate quality or attribute which makes him a great leader. I believe that it is important to ascertain the need for motivation in the human being, on the basis of which different motivation theories can be applied for the maximum advantage of the employees. I personally try to understand the root cause behind the demotivation of my employees and accordingly work upward to motivate them (Oc, 2018).

These traits define the leadership, on the basis of which a leadership develops his skills to become an effective leader. Some of the most important traits of a leader are:

A leader in no situation should lose hope, feel demotivated and stop believing in his dreams and vision, in the absence of which the followers lose faith in leadership and the entire organization collapses. Thus, leader must and should always have a positive attitude towards any kind of challenge or a business situation he faces. The positive attitude of a leader helps in creating a positive work environment in the workplace.

I believe that one of the very important traits of an effective leader is to always look towards the future and use innovation as the means to create solutions for the future. It is this trait which helps the leaders to explore the avenues of business, for instance, Jeff Bezos is an innovative leader. He by the virtue of innovation creates products and services which are beneficial for the company as well the community.

Confidence is a physical attribute as well as trait of a leader which defines his success in his leadership journey. By exuberating confidence in one’s speech, action, conduct and behaviour a leader can easily infuse confidence in the rest of the team. It is this confidence of the leader, which gets infused within the entire organization (Burnes & Hughes, 2018).

• A leader has plenty of important tasks to perform in a business organization, one of which is to give direction to the followers or the organization to achieve the mission.
• Another important task of a leader is to empower the employees by the virtue of giving them the power of decision making and hold them accountable for their actions.
• A leader has to ensure that there are no dull moments in the team, and he can do this by engaging with the workforce, encourage and motivate them to work tirelessly for the business organization.
• Another important task of a leader is to effectively communication with the internal stakeholders, who then can work on the instruction to reach the end goals (Alvesson & Jonsson, 2018).

Core Values That Underpin Your Leadership Model

Besides this, there is other important function which leader performs. His tasks can be seen as his efforts to take the organization to achieve the goals of sustainability.

The core values which are important part of my leadership as defined in the earlier section are:

• Ethics
• Psychology
• Team work.

Some of the assumptions which I took before deciding on the leadership style are:

• The employees are looking for a change, and they too believe that Change is inevitable in business, and always projects towards something positive.
• Another assumption I took was that employees in the organization are well aware of the goals they have to reach, and are working in accordance to the vision of the leader.
• Another very important assumption here is that, a culture of openness in communication prevails in the business organization.

I am working in an e-commerce industry in the capacity of a social media manager. My industry is the one which has evolved the most in the last decade, primarily due to workforce diversity, globalization and technological revolution which has disrupted many of the existing business models. My leadership style which is based on the values of Ethics, Psychology and Team work is a right fit for my industry. For instance, ethics play an important role in managing the customer relations and also while working with a young team. It is thus extremely important to seed the values of ethical behaviour in the young organizations. Psychology, as I mentioned is to look towards the future, this would help in brining innovation and creativity at the workplace. Another value which fits well with the highly innovative and fast paced industry. Last, but not the least value of teamwork fits into any industry, because a lot of people are working towards common goals, hence it is better to leverage these positive synergies in form of increased productivity in the organization. Thus my Personal model of leadership is a definite help for me in the e-commerce industry, as both my values, skills and traits are contingent and can be moulded in changing circumstances (Crevani, 2018).

My relationship with my peers, colleagues, subordinates or the top management is extremely cordial and based on mutual respect, trust and admiration for each other. It makes me a very likable person in the organization; people really find it easier to speak with me in isolation. They values me belief, my value system and other personal attributes which define my personality. Thus, this strength in relationship will help me to easily implement my leadership style in the organization, and the employees can easily connect with my personal values, which can then be used to set a culture in the organization (Randel et. al., 2018).

The three aspects of the culture which will be reflected using my leadership model are:

Ethical Behaviour and Conduct towards All-As mentioned earlier, my approach in life or my decision in life are based on the utilitarianism theory of ethics. Hence, I always try to serve the greatest number of people and do greatest good for all. This value as a culture will be translated in the organization and the employees will follow and imbibe ethics in both their personal and professional life.

Positioning Your PML within Your Workplace or Industry

Future Looking Culture-My leadership style will build a culture of visionary and future looking approach in the organization. This will lead to numerous innovation and creativity in my business organization, which in turn will bring us closer to the ultimate goal of sustainability.

Hyper loop of Positive Synergies-As mentioned earlier that I strongly value Teamwork and consider

As mentioned earlier that I strongly value Teamwork, Psychology and ethics in my leadership style, and I would like to put in the same values in the entire organization. The idea here is to create a corporate entity which uses ethics in taking any decisions, and always thinks of the possible consequences become taking any decisions. Another aim of mine is to create importance of team work and explain to the employees why team work can help in achieving or reaching the organisational goals effectively. Another goal of mine is to create a future looking vision in the organization, where every person is looking for creating innovative and creative solutions in the future (Hoch et. al., 2018).

I am a kind of leader who does not get involved too much in the working of the teams, I gave them enough of freedom, responsibility and accountability towards their work. This model of Laissez Faire works only in cases where the leader relies and trusts the employees and the executives too much. However, in reality this does not happen, one really has to keep a hawk eye on the proceedings of the employees and always work towards making the process and productivity better. It has to be ensured that the productivity of the organization increases by the virtue of effective leadership which is based on the pillars of teamwork, psychology and motivation. These three values over which my leadership style is based which help in achieving the goal of sustainability, whilst creating a positive working environment in the workplace where everyone is working in harmony towards the accomplishment of the shared goals (Tu et. al., 2018). I will personally apply this new PML by giving an explanation to the working force on the inherent values in my leadership and how the organization and the employees will benefit from it.

Recommendation and Conclusion

Focus on Being Employee Centric

Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic says that a leader’s role and job is to take good care of the employees, it is then these employees automatically take care of the organizations customers. Thus, my leadership style has to be employee centric in nature, with all policies and procedures centred on making the lives of employees easy with more engagement and enhanced productivity.

As a leader, it is extremely important to understand the fact that businesses are at the mercy of changing business scenarios and circumstances. Thus, there is no possibility of status quo and organization has to bring many changes to stay competitive and move towards its ultimate goal of sustainability. Thus, in order to bring change into my leadership style, I will have to focus on reducing the resistance of the employees towards the change by virtue of employee empowerment. Only then, the organization can accept and implement the change in most effective manner.

In order to bring the report to a logical conclusion it can be said that there is no best leadership style, and a leader has to toggle between different leadership styles or create one of his own to achieve the objectives of the organization. My personal value which defines my leadership are Psychology, Ethics and Teamwork, it is these values which guide my leadership style and forms an essence of my behaviour and conduct in the organization.

References

Alvesson, M., & Jonsson, A. (2018). The bumpy road to exercising leadership: Fragmentations in meaning and practice. Leadership, 14(1), 40-57.

Burnes, B., Hughes, M., & By, R. T. (2018). Reimagining organisational change leadership. Leadership, 14(2), 141-158.

Crevani, L. (2018). Is there leadership in a fluid world? Exploring the ongoing production of direction in organizing. Leadership, 14(1), 83-109.

Ford, J., & Harding, N. (2018). Followers in leadership theory: Fiction, fantasy and illusion. Leadership, 14(1), 3-24.

Gorton, R. A., Alston, J. A., & Snowden, P. (2018). School leadership & administration: Important concepts, case studies, & simulations. McGraw-Hill Education.

Hoch, J. E., Bommer, W. H., Dulebohn, J. H., & Wu, D. (2018). Do ethical, authentic, and servant leadership explain variance above and beyond transformational leadership? A meta-analysis. Journal of Management, 44(2), 501-529.

Huda, M., Mat Teh, K. S., Nor Muhamad, N. H., & Mohd Nasir, B. (2018). Transmitting leadership based civic responsibility: insights from service learning. International Journal of Ethics and Systems, 34(1), 20-31.

Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.

Oc, B. (2018). Contextual leadership: a systematic review of how contextual factors shape leadership and its outcomes. The Leadership Quarterly, 29(1), 218-235.

Randel, A. E., Galvin, B. M., Shore, L. M., Ehrhart, K. H., Chung, B. G., Dean, M.