transformational leadership personal reflection

My leadership quiz highlights my leadership style as transformational. In the quiz, it was found that I have the following strengths: self-confidence, positive attitude, emotional intelligence, compelling vision, ability to motivate people, and being a good role model. This paper will examine these traits, and my weaknesses, against the strengths and weaknesses of the prototypical transformational leader, and seek to establish ways in which I can deal with my weaknesses in order to make myself a better leader.

Y Culture is a consulting firm that has written about transformational leadership. Y Culture (2018) notes that among the characteristics of transformational leaders are self-management, ability to take risks, the ability to make difficult decisions, inspirational, adaptability, proactive nature and leadership with vision.

When we look at these strengths versus my own, there are definitely some synergies. First is vision – a transformational leader must have vision for the future, something that is different from simply maintaining the status quo. Furthermore, the transformational leader is inspirational; on my quiz it came up with motivational, but those are much the same. In other words, an effective transformational leader is someone who has vision, and the ability to motivate and inspire others to share that vision and pursue it.

There are also some differences with respect to my quiz outcomes, however. In particular, taking the right risks and making difficult decisions. These were not highlighted as among my weaknesses, but neither are they strengths, and yet they are characteristics of transformational leaders. In essence, these are attributes that I should cultivate in order to improve my
transformational leadership capabilities.

Proactiveness and adaptability are also cited. Again, these are not things that were identified as strengths of mine. It is one thing to have good vision, but these traits suggest the creation of a link between having vision and putting that vision into action. A vision is great, but only if you act on it. If you are not adaptable to new realities, you may not be proactive, and your vision will be a plant that does not bear fruit. So it is important to consider these traits also as things that I need to add to my list of strengths in order to be the most effective transformational leader possible.

Hogg (2016) provides further insight into the characteristics of the transformational leader – new ideas are setting a company standard, knowing your people and following through. The transformational leader must have the courage to leap into the unknown. But there is more to it than that. The point about "knowing your people' is related to my emotional intelligence, for example. It means that when you are motivating people to join you, you also need to know that they are the right people. Further, the point about setting a company standard closely aligns with me being a good role model. Part of inspiring people is being the sort of person that they want to be, and being a great role model is exactly how that can be accomplished.

My quiz noted a couple of key weaknesses, those being managing performance effectively, and providing support and stimulation. These are two traits that are more closely associated with transactional leadership. However, it is worth remembering that these are also things that transformational leaders need in order to actually execute that big, bold vision. If your team cannot perform the actual, grinding tasks that lead to excellence, then all the vision and motivation in the world won't help. As a leader, one does not necessarily need to excel in these areas, but they should not be areas of weakness, either.

Kokemuller (2018) notes that transformational leaders often need support from more transactional-minded people. Those people are important to the ability of the organization to transform that vision into the detailed actions that bring about the execution of the vision. The interesting thing from an organizational perspective is that a transformational leader who is not at the head of the company will often struggle to find the right place if these key elements are missing – or if they cannot find someone to help overcome these weaknesses.

The other weakness that Kokemuller (2018) identified was that transformational leadership sometimes get too inspirational, and can lack sufficient grounding in reality. Wanting to be everything and do everything, they sometimes fall into the trap of not accepting reality for what it is. On the team side, I feel that my high emotional intelligence will help with that – I won't think my team is capable of more than they really are. But on the operational side, that might be a little bit different. Still, I'm not sure I want to balance off my vision too much at this point.

There are definitely some opportunities available to overcome these weaknesses. There are many supervisory/managerial positions that can leverage some of my skills in dealing with people, but also give me the opportunity for hands-on practice at the day-to-day stuff, like ensuring performance and providing support. Knowing that these are weaknesses alone will help me to think about them more. Like a lot of people, I have a tendency to play to my strengths, and that is great, but if I am more conscious of my weaknesses then maybe I can address them more often, because I will be thinking about them more often.

There might also be formal opportunities for learning, too. Learning about task performance management things, for example, could mean studying project management. This would be a way to learn about this sort of thing without taking a low-level supervisory role. Or, alternatively, I could start to think about why this weakness exists. Sometimes it is a reflection of something. For example, let's say that my positive personality, and high emotional intelligence means that I don't want to hurt people, and that means that I can have trouble holding them to account. While I am myself a good role model, there will always be people whose performance is lacking. I might need some direct practice at being tough, and holding people accountable for their performance. Being aware that I need to develop that side of my personality is important, but so is understanding that this isn't a flaw, but rather something that will help me bring about my vision.

Another way to deal with weaknesses that one has identified is to find ways to leverage strengths to deal with the weaknesses. One idea would be to motivate a transactional person to do that part of the job, while I focus on what I'm best at. But there's other ways as well. When you've identified your strengths and weaknesses, you can think about ways that your strengths can be used to counter those weaknesses (Boyes, 2015).

A good example of this would be to have a strong vision for myself, a vision of me in the future where I do not have these weaknesses. This can serve as a starting point. Even if I do not have the ability to address these weaknesses right away – and knowing that it might actually be hard – I also realize that one of the best things I can do is to just have that vision, and use that vision to motivate me to work through these weaknesses. Engaging mindfulness is something that helps, so when you are always thinking about what you want to accomplish, and where you want to be in the future, then you can definitely find yourself in the right position to pursue that goal each and every day. One day, you'll realize that those weaknesses no longer exist, even if you didn't really do anything specific about them – you just saw yourself as conquering those weaknesses and by thinking and envision yourself that way, you eventually just changed how you think about yourself, and started doing things you thought you weren't good at.

So there are some tricks you can play to take advantage of your strengths. I feel that if you spend time analyzing your strengths and how they might be used to overcome your weaknesses, both in the short run and in the long run, that there is definitely opportunity there.

All told, being a transformational leader is a good starting point. Knowing that there are traits of transformational leaders that I do not have as strengths points me to some quick wins, things that I can probably add to my skill set fairly easily. But then the last piece is identifying my weaknesses, and starting to transform myself by dealing with those weaknesses, and gradually breaking them down. It might take a while, but I can use my visionary and positive nature to continually reinforce my commitment to improving my managerial game, and that will help me to bring my visions to fruition, which in turn will open up doors and provide me with greater opportunities than I might ever have had before.

This reflection has given me the insight that I need to start to not only leverage my leadership style, but to improve it, and to deal with some of the weaknesses so that in the future I might have fewer weaknesses, or none at all, and will be able to really flourish as a fully effective transformational leader.