Characteristics Of A Great Leader: Effective Communication, Confidence, Positive Attitude, Creativity, And Inspiring Capability

Effective communication

Question:

Discuss aout the Strategic Leadership Capability.

In this assignment, an investigation has been done in order to find out the strengths and weakness of my own leadership capability. With a view to conduct this research work in the appropriate manner, it is required to find out the essential characteristics that a good leader must have. After that, a person SWOT analysis has been conducted to find out pros and cons of my leadership capability. After analyzing my weaknesses, I have analyzed some leadership skills that I want to develop in me. I want to improve my ability as a speaker. For this purpose, I need to improve my language skills and selection of words while making conversations with others. Active development of time management skills and emotional intelligence will help me to become a good leader.

In future, I have the ambition to see myself as an owner of an online education company, which will provide virtual classroom learning to the peoples of India. I also want to leave a grate example for my followers so that they work for the betterment of the community. In order to fulfill my dreams, I have planned a development schedule to improve my leadership capability. I will follow the path shown by great leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, Buffet, Trump, and Branson. Observing Kolb’s learning theory will help me to develop my leadership capabilities.

1. Essential characteristics of a virtuous leader

As Northouse (2014) mentioned that, the first step to becoming a great leader is to have a great idea and the capability to influence a team to bring that idea into reality. In order to become a worthy leader, a person first needs to analyze which kind of leader he or she wants to be. As Popper and Mayseless (2013) stated that there are some common characteristics that every respectable leader must possess. They are such as delegate, honesty, effective communication, confidence, positive attitude, creativity, and inspiring capability.

Delegate

As Singh (2013) stated that, developing an active brand vision is an important part of establishing an efficient and organized business plan. However, a leader needs to trust his team with that vision. As Popper and Mayseless (2013) argued that believing all the team members with the idea is the strength not the weakness of a team leader. A delegation of tasks to appropriate groups or departments is one of the major skills that a team leader must have.

Honesty

According to Allison and Goethals (2013), a business and its employees are the reflections of the owner of the company. When an individual becomes responsible for a team, he or she needs to be more ethical while taking any decisions. In order to operate a team effectively, a leader needs to develop a set of core values and beliefs for the team. Each team member including the team leader needs to follow all those values and principles. If the leader follows all the values and principles, then it will also motivate others to do the same (Chhokar, Brodbeck & House, 2013).  However, Du et al. (2013) argued that, in some conditions a leader can make exceptions for the larger benefit of the team.

Confidence

Effective communication

A leader needs to focus on developing effective communication system within a team so that information can be transferred easily. As CerneJaklic and Škerlavaj (2013) mentioned that development of effective communication process can improve an efficiency of a business operation.

Confidence

As Mannix Wilkes and Daly (2013) stated that, there may be some condition can arise where things are not going according to the plan. It is applicable for both large and small size organizations. Most important think that leaders need to remind that, they cannot panic in critical situations. As Metcalf and Benn (2013) mentioned that, it is the responsibility of the leader always to uphold the team morale. A leader needs to make the followers understand that setback is a natural process. Leaders need to keep their confidence level up and make all the team members focus on larger goals. As Johnston and Marshall (2013) mentioned that, all the team members take cues from the behavior of their leaders. If the leader remains calm and confident, then he will help the team to feel the same.

Positive attitude

This is one of the major characteristics of a great leader. It is the responsibility of all leaders to keep their team motivated so that they can work hard to achieve the goal. For this purpose, Nelson Mandela can be a great example. He was greatly influenced by Marxism and joined the South African Communist party. He taught his followers always to remain active in all critical condition. His positive attitude and capability to motivate others helped the country, South Africa, to gain its freedom (Van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013).

Creativity

In real life, leaders have to face such situations where taking clear-cut decisions is not always possible. As Johnson (2013) stated that, every great leader has to face such situations where they have to deviate from their course and have to take on spot decisions. In this section, the creativity of leader has a great role to play. According to the former owner of company Apple Steve Jobs, a leader needs to think outside the box. According to Bryman (2013), leaders must have the capability select one between two wrong choices. As Tannenbaum Weschler and Massarik (2013) argued that taking quick decisions is not the sign of creativity. Before taking any decision, a leader needs to think about all the consequences. In order to take the right decision, leaders might take the advice from the leaders.

Inspiring capability

According to Levin (2012), establishing a successful business is always related to forecasting. It is crucial for a leader to inspire all the team members to see the vision of success. As Honts et al. (2012) mentioned that, it is the major responsibility of a team leader to make followers feel that they are investing their hard works for a great purpose.

Bass’s transformational theory helps to analyze the various traits of a transformational leader. As Galegher Kraut and Egido (2014) stated that, in transformational leadership style it has been mentioned that, increasing awareness about the task can motivate people to conduct it in an appropriate manner. There are three methods have been identified in which a leader can transform, his followers. Leaders should increase awareness about the task. They need to motivate employees to keep their focus on organizational goals rather than personal interests. In addition, a great leader needs to take care of the particular requirements of his followers in accordance to the Maslow’s need of Hierarchy (Dyer, Dyer & Dyer, 2013). In order to become a great leader, it is required to follow those paths shown by different virtuous leaders of history. Depending on their characteristics, an individual should select the appropriate path of leadership to be followed. There is a table given below in order to find out the leadership traits of great leaders.

Name of the leaders	Characteristics of the leaders
Mandela	Humble, positive attitude, resilience, forgiving
Mahatma Gandhi	Trustworthy, courage, tolerance, influence, Humble
Churchill	Resilience, courage, communication, and perseverance
Buffet	Passionate, decisive, humble  and dedicated

Table 1: Characteristics of great leaders

Positive attitude

(Source: Tannenbaum, Weschler & Massarik, 2013)

Personal SWOT analysis

With the help of personal SWOT analysis, I can evaluate strength and weakness of my leadership skills (Belbin, 2012). I consider myself as a transformational leader

Strengths

I have analyzed that I have two major strengths that define by leadership styles. They are positive attitude and risk taking capability. As Johnson (2013) stated that, only leaders having a positive attitude can show the direction to the followers. Presently, I am working as the operating manager in a Telecommunication company named as Optus Pty Ltd. I have to conduct different critical IT projects. For this purpose, I often need to handle different teams. I mainly focus on developing positive attitude within my team. It motivates them to conduct their task efficiently and appropriately. I always try to develop effective communication system within my team and share the victory with them. Strategic planning and decision making capability are the factors behind my success as a leader.

Weaknesses

In order conduct different critical tasks, I have to face different critical conditions. Working under enormous time pressure helps me to analyze my weakness as a leader. After analyzing the causes of my failure, I found that sometimes I miss the fine details given in the project description.  In order to conduct a project within time, I have to work overtime, and I also insist my followers do the same. It creates a huge imbalance between our work life and private life (Daft, 2014). As there are employees from different cultures and departments, take part in my team. It gives rise to conflicts within the team (Dyer, Dyer & Dyer, 2013). I have found that I have a lack of capability to mitigate conflicts within my team. It is one of the major reason behind the failure of different tasks taken by me.

Opportunities

In future, I have the opportunity to develop various aspects of my leadership skills. They are such improvement of my speaking capability, effective time management, and increasing emotional intelligence. In order to deal with employees from different cultures and different regions, I need to increase my grasp in different languages. While giving a speech to employees, I need to improve my choice of words so that I become more effective to motivate them to work collaboratively towards organizational goals. Time management is another aspect of my leadership that I want to improve in future. As Allison and Goethals (2013) stated that, in telecommunication industry it has become utterly important to conduct tasks within time. Conducting tasks within given time can improve customer satisfaction. Hence, I need to develop my skill of time management.  As Du et al. (2013) stated that, in a team it is required for every leader to make an emotional bonding with followers.  Hence, I always have the opportunity to improve my emotional intelligence as a leader.

Threats

After analyzing my one performance, I have realized that working extra hours and excessive pressure of work creates enormous stress for my team members and me. In order conduct our projects within the time we have to work overtime at the office. Staying log time away from home create anxiety within my followers. It decreases my effectiveness as a leader, which is considered as the major threat to my leadership skill.  There are various other factors such as work-life imbalance and market downturn.

Creativity

My learning skills as leader

In order to increase my capability as a leader, I need to focus on improving my leadership capability. In order to develop my leadership style, I follow the path shown by CEO of Apple Tim Cook, national leaders such as Nelson Mandela. I gather information from different biographies and journals. Every time came up with new ideas related to leadership skills.  I also learn different perspectives about leadership from my followers.  Taking their advice helps me to improve my leadership skills. My classmates and co-workers are other surprising sources of knowledge. They have made different presentations on leaders such as Ratan Tata and Martin Luther King also motives me to improve my leadership quality.

Brief discussion about my life

In this section, I have given a brief overview of my life. I have given a table to describe what I think about my future. Depending on the table, I have compared my thoughts and goals about my leadership capability.

Time span	2005-2010	2010-2015	Onwards 2015
5	Looking forward to getting a more enjoyable job	Improving my role to take part in every aspect of my organization	Improving my capability to become an exceptional leader
10	Increase earning to improve financial condition	Using my learning skills from MBA to become a leader and to successfully  conduct a business	Completing Ph.D. and executing the plan to develop my own online education company that will provide virtual classroom education to the people of India.
15	Looking forward to running my own company	Completing my Ph.D. so that I can move into the field of lecturing	Developing myself as a hi-tech farmer and inspire my followers to work for the community.

Table 2: Brief plan of my life

(Source: Created by author)

Analysis of my leadership style

I am working in a managerial position for more than ten years. With the help of SAPA personality report, I have developed an analysis of my leadership style. From the SAPA analysis, it has been found that I am a transformational leader.  There are two other positive characteristics, which I have found in my leadership styles. I always focus on maintaining positive attitude. In all critical conditions, I try to remain calm in all critical conditions and advice my fellow team members to remain focused. It helps me to gain a positive outcome from a critical condition. I always ask my fellow team members for their advice.  I focus on developing effective communication within my team so that everyone can share their point of view with each other including myself. I always try to provide empowerment to my followers so that they can take a decision in critical conditions. While conducting a huge project, it is not always possible for me to take care of every aspect. Hence, I recommend one or two of my followers to take care of every aspect. It makes my work easier. It also makes my followers feel their worth in the team and make them more responsible. I never become afraid of taking risks while doing a task. I believe in the quote “No pain, no gain.”

Future vision of my leadership

In future, I want to see myself as the owner of online education company that provides virtual classroom education to the people in India. In order to achieve this, I need to improve my IT skills. I also need to improve my financial condition so that I can become economically independent to peruse my dream. I also want to leave a great example for my followers so that they become motivated to work for the community. In my opinion, there is nothing satisfactory then providing education to people. For this purpose, I need to improve my language proficiency, time management capability and emotional intelligence.

Conclusion

In this assignment, analysis has been done so that I can improve my leadership capability. At first, I need to analyze the characteristics that a moral leader must have. They are like a delegate, honesty, effective communication, confidence, positive attitude, creativity, and inspiring capability. There were various great leaders in history had shown the path of leadership that every individual needs to follow. Every leader needs to take care of the needs of employees in accordance to the Maslow’s Need of Hierarchy. The Kolb’s learning style also helps to improve leadership skills. In the next section, a personal SWOT analysis has been conducted to find out my strengths and weaknesses of leaderships. Depending on the analysis, a forward plan has been developed to indicate my plan about leadership. In future, I want to see myself running an online teaching company. In order to do that, I need to improve my language proficiency and time management skills.

Reference list

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