Personal Leadership Platform
Henry Fayol, Mary Parker among other scholars in the field of management have described leadership as the act of getting thing done through others, this definition is consistent with the definition given by Carter et al. (2008, 3-4) who described leadership as the process of attaining organizational goals, of which these organizational goals are attained effectively and efficiently through the performance of certain tasks that includes planning, organizing staffing, directing and controlling. From a functional perspective leadership can be defined as the process of planning, organizing, staffing, directing and controlling organizational resources and activities so that goals can be accomplished effectively and efficiently.
This research paper is based on leadership development from a personal perspective i.e. It aims at enlisting my strengths and weaknesses as a leader and the corrective measures I plan to undertake in order to become the future leader that I would admire.- Besides the positive qualities of a leader that were documented by Robbins et al. (2009,8-9) that comprise of the willingness to decide and capacity to do so, persuasiveness, responsibility, intellectual capacity and vitality and endurance; I would also like to develop other qualities to address my current organizational needs and objectives.
Leadership theory
There are two leadership theories that are consistent with my development plan, and they can best demonstrate my future plans as a leader, one among them is the functional leadership theory. This theory is particularly significant when a leader wants to address on some of his or her behavior that are perceived to contribute to organizational or team effectiveness. This theory supports my plan since it argues that I should do whatever is necessary for my subordinates in order to ensure that the organizational goal is attained and this in a way I will be contributing to the team's effectiveness and cohesion (Cromwell and Kolb, 2004, 449-471).
Secondly the transformational leadership theory is also consistent with my plan since it argues that a leader is one who is mandated to perform certain duties and he will in his capacity either punish or reward a team for their performance. This theory gives me the opportunity to lead a team and if it does so according to my plans, the organization will have attained it goals and the team will be reward for its efforts (Baldwin and Ford, 1988, -105).
Strength and weakness
This course has exposed me to assignments and activities that have informed me of my leadership strength and weaknesses all together. However for this research I entirely relied on two tools that I used to identify different aspects in my leadership that makes it more effective and also those that hinder it from attaining absolute perfection. The tools consist of the transformational leadership questionnaire (TLQ) and the assessments that are in leadership theory and practice (LTP). This assessment is made up of eighteen different questions and these questions vary in nature with the leadership competencies they aim at measuring for example the human skill, technical skill or conceptual skill (Lawrence and Lorsch (1967,89-94).
Thou I have never pictured myself as a "people person," the transformational leadership questionnaire showed that my major strengths as a leader are the ability to imagine and share in other people's feelings and experience, strong follow through, ambitious, compulsive and articulate. Basically these strengths to me mean that I appreciate others and I care for their needs, same as in the functional leadership theory or in the transformational leadership theory. These strengths also portray me as an effective leader in offering constructive responses to the efforts of my subordinates and that I also boost the confidence of other people, while still conveying enthusiasm. With respect to leadership competence my strongest skill is the technical skill, followed by the conceptual skill and then lastly the human skill.
The transformational leadership questionnaire show that my weakness lies in empowerment, performance, motivation, impatient, time pressure causes me to have stress...
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