I feel that I have developed strong communications skills and healthy leadership traits in terms of being rational but also being able to deal with the emotional elements of the job. I perhaps struggle a little at listening, but I also can be short-sighted with my decision-making, such that months or years later I find my decisions have set an undesirable tone that must be corrected. These are the most significant deficiencies between the leader I am and the leader I wish to become. Long-term strategy can also be considered somewhat of a weakness. There is certainly a gap between the specificity of long-term strategies that the organization has at present and the degree of specificity that we should ideally have. Today's actions are not always guided by any long-term goal, because our goal-setting has lacked sufficient detail to support that.

4. The first part of the action plan is to improve my listening skills. This will require being more patient with respect to gathering information and taking the time to understand what each subordinate or stakeholder is saying. I feel that the expected outcome will be that the amount of resistance to change or new initiatives will decrease as a result of better listening. Blake and Moulton suggest that the ideal leader will have balance between concern for task and concern for people (Thomas, 2001); I feel oriented more towards task. Improving my listening will give me better balance and I will be able to streamline the organization's daily performance around long-term goals if I can better understand the human components of my organization.

The second part of the action plan will be to build a better model for understanding the longer-term impacts of decisions made today, on both operations and culture. This can be measured by the production of such models, wherein potential outcomes are recorded and evaluated. The outcome will be better...

At present, decisions can be made based on short-term problems but without consideration for long-term impacts. If our organizational objectives are set further into the future, then we can work backwards to determine the best steps to achieve those outcomes. The measurable goal will be the presence of longer-term measurable goals for the organization -- improved efficiency, improved market share, profit -- and a high level of congruence between these goals and our ability to achieve them. With this part of the action plan in place, the second part will be easier to achieve as well. With these three components in place, I believe I will shift my transactional style towards better long-term orientation, improve the organization's cultural readiness for crisis and improve day-to-day performance as well.
Works Cited:

Schermerhorn, John. (2001). Situational Leadership: Conversations with Paul Hersey. Ohio University. Retrieved August 1, 2009 from http://www.situational.com/PdfViewer.aspx?pdfPath=~/Pdf/Conversations_With_Paul_Hersey.pdf

Fielder, Fred. (1964). A Contingency Model of Leadership Effectiveness. Academic Press, Burlington, MA.

Vroom, VH & Yetton, PW. (1973). Leadership and Decision-Making. Yale University. Retrieved August 1, 2009 from http://www.lederne.dk/NR/rdonlyres/E8715858-DCEE-4355-88BB-B3E82FE7DA9B/0/18VictorVroom2.pdf

Enos, Darryl D. (2007). Performance Improvement. CRC Press, p. 153

Thomas, Greg L. (2001). What you need to know about Situational Leadersip. WeLEAD Online Magazine. Retrieved August 1, 2009 from http://www.leadingtoday.org/Onmag/2001%20Archives/august01/gt-august01.html