How to be a Good Leader

I work in a Kuwait finance house bank in the anti-money laundering department. The department is under the oversight of the risk management department. My job is to assist in making sure that the finance house is in compliance with all anti-money laundering regulations. It is a very important job because failure to abide by the rules can lead to severe penalties for the institution. The bank must also work with larger regulatory bodies so as to prevent money used by terrorists from being laundered through the bank.

This job requires a lot of thinking and monitoring and it is important to pay attention to the details. As a leader in my department, I have to be in communication with various people and stakeholders because of the nature of the work. I am always in contact with different people and looking at data and making important decisions that will impact the business. In my job, I see many opportunities to implement the course concepts.

For example, leadership is defined as “the ability to influence an individual or group toward the achievement of a vision or set of goals” (What is Leadership, Team and Organizational Behavior, 2017, p. 2). I find this definition to be useful in my work. I routinely have to influence others in my department because we have teams with different tasks. I am tasked with leading teams and setting out the vision for the team.

As a manager it can become difficult to remember that there is more to managing than just delegating tasks and identifying goals. One also has to be a leader so that individuals are motivated. I am often in the position where I need to motivate people in my team to help them become better workers. If the team is not motivated to be attentive to the details and to know what the regulations are, it can cause problems for the bank and that would lead to me being censored.

I recognize that I am a figurehead in my bank. I also recognize that I have to combine management skills, human skills and technical skills in my job, as the course has pointed out (What is Leadership, Team and Organizational Behavior, 2017, p. 4). To have good human skills, I need to look at my own strengths and weaknesses in the workplace. My strengths are my ability to envision goals and motivate others. I can be creative and I can take the opportunity when it is presented.

I am always looking for opportunities that might help the bank to be better and I view a missed opportunity with great regret. For me to have good human skills is one of the leadership issues I think most about. As the course has shown, the trait leadership theory is that leaders “like being around people” (Leadership, 2017). I want to be a good leader in the bank and that means I have to be mindful of my own shortcomings.

I think an important weakness for me to address is my soft-spoken nature and lack of continued communication at times. I have learned that this weakness is perceived by others as not being fully engaged, active or not taking initiative. What becomes more concerning is that I do believe I am being fully engaged and paying attention but to others I am not.

I believe, at times, I am too focused with trying to listen and appease others in an effort to build relationships and make others feel comfortable that I do not speak up enough with my views and thoughts. I become too agreeable and too shy to speak my mind when, in fact, it is something others wish to see out of me. I over-concern myself with saying the right things and, as a result, I sometimes abstain from commenting at all out of fear of saying the incorrect thing.

I need to work on building my self-confidence so that I feel comfortable to speak my mind and not internally overanalyze everything I want to say. These situations tend to present themselves most in larger groups when my timidity to speak becomes more heightened. It is also important to consider human skills that are my strong suits. I am good at brainstorming and generating multiple options and solutions to a problem that may arise.

I can look at and understand information easily and pick up on different issues that may arise. My motivation is to be the best possible version of myself that I can be. I am motivated to help my bank and to help my employees to succeed because I realize from this course that is what leaders must do. 2 Opportunities to engage in the development of leadership skills are all around. First, they are present whenever there is a chance to engage with others in the workplace.

In my workplace, I have the chance to speak with workers daily and weekly, in informal settings and formal settings. Taking advantage of these opportunities is one way to develop as a leader. How take advantage of them is the question. As a leader, my goal is to be a better communicator, and that means I have to be open to what others have to say and must be sensitive to the challenges they are facing.

Therefore, the need to develop basic core competencies that will facilitate communication is required first. These basic core competencies include: social and emotional intelligence (SI and EI), cultural understanding, the ability to serve others, and the ability to develop and express a vision so as to inspire and motivate others. One of the keys to becoming an effective communicator is to develop social and emotional intelligence skills.

Social and emotional intelligence is about being able to observe human beings, human nature, the way people act and react, the way they respond or use body language to convey information, and to see what is being said between the lines. It is about developing an understanding of what people say when they are not saying anything and being able to predict or sympathize with the needs of others.

When one can do this, one is in a better position to offer social and emotional support, to engage with others and provide them with the kind of feedback they require in order to become self-actualized. As a leader it is important to help one’s followers reach a level of self-actualization so that they are personally motivated to succeed and do not rely on extrinsic motivation. To develop social and emotional intelligence skills, it is essential that I develop an understanding of human nature.

I can do this by setting time aside simply to observe others and to read about human nature. One of the best sources of understanding human nature can be found in the humanities—especially the great classic works of literature, which provide keen insights and understanding into what makes people tick.

By reading some of these works, at least half an hour each day, I can deepen my insight into how people think, how they express themselves and their feelings, and what kind of responses they expect back from others in order for the exchange to be viewed as a good, positive and productive one.

I also need to practice my communication skills, which I can do daily by setting aside a few minutes each day to great and speak with others, just to see how they are doing and how their lives are going. By taking an interest in others, one shows that he is interested in their lives and well-being and this makes one more likeable in return.

It will also put me in a better position to respond to any questions they may have about me, who I am or what I think about things. By practicing my communication skills, I can also gain feedback from others about what they think and this opens up a good two-way flow of information. After engaging in communication practice, I need to spend a few minutes each day reflecting on what transpired. It is important to reflect on our interactions because this is how we gain insight.

If upon reflecting I see something that I can work on, I can make a plan to address that issue the next day in my communication practice and in this manner build up my communication skills. I can measure the effectiveness of my plan by noting the following: 1) The responsiveness of my peers in our communications after I speak. Do I think they think I am paying attention and as a result react to my words more frequently and consistently.

2) Note that people do not mention my name when trying to remind people in groups of what we are doing and what our tasks and goals are. 3) Ask others if they feel I have been involved, communicative and engaged. Communication is something that requires listening to others, obtaining feedback, reflecting, and expressing or verbalizing a vision that others can buy into. For this reason, transformational leadership style is often linked to communication: it is the one style in which the communication of a vision is so vital (Leadership, 2017).

For me to develop my communication competence, I need to schedule regular formal and informal meetings with my workers so as to engage with them, discuss issues in the workplace, obtain feedback, and give myself time to reflect on what was said. This should be done weekly and over the course of a year the practice should become routine and there should be a marked change in the moral of the people in the workplace.

They should show a renewed sense of morale and motivation thanks to being included in the leader’s cogitations. Communicating the vision is the key behavior that has to be practiced. This can be done through repetition and through getting feedback from workers. I think a good way for me to see if I am improving is to give surveys of the workers.

Surveys should be given to see how well workers are buying into the vision that I communicate, what they think of it, what they think of my approach, and so on. To measure effective communication, feedback is essential. For me, servant leadership style is the major style that I want to develop to be a better leader. Serving others is the root of leadership because a leader is one who has to provide others with what they need in order to succeed. A servant leader puts his workers first.

This behavior can be practiced by getting to know the workers and their needs and then making myself available to them so that they can get the support they require. This has to be done on an individual basis to truly be effective, which means that each worker needs the opportunity to meet with me on a monthly basis. To measure effectiveness of this competency acquisition, interviews can be conducted to see whether workers are meeting their goals.

Another form of leadership that could be important for me in my work is transformational leadership. Transformational leadership focuses on motivating people to embrace change by inspiring them with a vision, explaining the purpose or need for the change in a logical manner, and providing the workers with the support they need to buy in to the change and make it a reality.

Transformational leaders have to be able to communicate well, connect with people, and—most importantly—articulate the vision required for the change in an ordered and logical way so that it appeals to rationally-minded workers. They have to communicate a vision. They have to get the workers to buy in to the vision (Leadership, 2017). It is important that for a transformational leader feedback be obtained from workers before any big changes are made.

That is why I would want to meet workers before changing the way we look at money transactions in the bank. New regulations require that we process transactions differently. That means a change is required. We have to be prepared to embrace change at the bank, otherwise the bank will not succeed well in what we are doing with customers’ money or by staying in line with regulations. By getting feedback, the leader can see where workers are having problems adjusting to change.

That way the leader knows what the workers need and the workers feel empowered and that they have a stake in the decision-making process because they have been asked for their input. 3 To be effective as a social architect and change agent, one has to have emotional intelligence (Emotional Intelligence and Leadership: Part of Trait Theory, 2017). As the course has shown, the six main reasons leaders are “derailed” in their workplace environment are: · They used a bullying style viewed as intimidating, insensitive, and abrasive.

· They were viewed as being cold, aloof, and arrogant. · They betrayed personal trust. · They were self-centered and viewed as overly ambitious and thinking of the next job. · They had specific performance problems with the business. · They overmanaged and were unable to delegate or build a team (Emotional Intelligence and Leadership: Part of Trait Theory, 2017). To prevent myself from being one of these kind of leaders, I have to develop better emotional intelligence.

In my office some workers are used to being intimidated because this is part of the normal culture in Kuwait. There is a strong respect for leadership. People in a leadership role are viewed as above those of other workers. However, because we are in a bank that operates in finance, the culture has to be more international in character. The industry is an international industry so a leader should reflect international standards. This is why I want to work on my emotional intelligence.

If I can demonstrate a more caring attitude towards workers, I will be able to show that I doing better at building up the workplace. Because I want to transform and change the culture in our bank so that workers are more confident and comfortable, I should focus more on transformational leadership too. This will help workers to feel more supported about embracing changes, especially when changes come because of regulation changes.

The strengths of this style are that it allows the leader to be himself and to use his special talents and skills to tap into what people need around him. The leader using this style can assess for himself what the workers require and then set about giving that in a manner that he is best suited for.

The transformational leadership style embraces the idea that a certain amount of character and charisma is required of the leader in order for this style to be effective—and for leaders who have both character and charisma it can be tremendously effective However, this style is not completely free of limits. This style of leadership is general in terms of how it is taught.

It does not provide a clear or strict set of guidelines on what a leader should do, as in a set of steps like what can be found in Kotter’s 8-step model of change management (Leadership, 2017). Thus, it is fairly open-ended, which can viewed as a limitation for leaders who need a bit of guidance in order to fulfill their duties. One style of leadership that is important is the style of leadership known as authentic leadership.

Authentic leadership is based on the idea that transparency and trust promote positive relationships between leaders and followers and that if a leader shows that he is acting morally and ethically in an open and honest manner, he will earn the respect of followers and they will imitate his genuine approach to honest work. When it comes time to motivate workers, the genuine example of a good and moral leader will do just that.

Authentic leaders generally present themselves as are, without trying to fake like they are anything other than what they know themselves to be. The strengths of this leadership style are that it promotes honesty, integrity, openness and transparency in the workplace. The more authentic a leader is shown to be, the more moral the workplace culture is likely to be. Thus, this leadership style is great for building a solid workplace.