Leadership Development For Personal Skills And Achievements

Attributes critical to becoming a servant leader

Discuss about the Leadership Development for Personal Skills and Achievements

A leadership portfolio represents a consistent reflection of the personal skills, achievements, programs, activities and other relevant experiences which contribute to an individual’s leadership development. The leadership portfolio presented in the present report is segregated into three sections. The 1^st part covers my understanding of necessary leadership attributes and traits. This includes the traits of a leader which I feel are vital. The second section incorporates my reflections on how my leadership skills in my present work environment mirror the philosophy and traits defined in section 1. This segment basically undertakes a self-assessment of my performance against the identified leadership traits. The last section entails an action/improvement plan organised as a table to implement the necessary actions for attaining the level I wish to reach.

A leader who serves is one who justly obtains influence by providing service to others. His/her strength is an outcome of the sustenance and strength of people around him/her. A savant leader is first a servant. It starts with the inherent feeling of wanting to serve. Then the conscious choice makes one desirous of leading (Day, 2014). A servant leader needs to possess more valour and a sense of self than any archetypal order and control leader. It is very easy to become a traditional top-down type of a leader. Leadership is not about sticking to a territory; it is about surrendering the ego, putting in one’s spirit to work, and being the most genuine and best self (O’Brien, 2010). Leaders who follow servant leadership are usually not those who could be found glorified in business magazines, but they belong to all walks of life and from all societies.

The conversation gives the base for blending servant leadership with leading in a living system, one which is sustainable, completely networked, chaotic and dynamic. Many capabilities are critical for leaders interested in strengthening living human systems; frameworks typified by a system of conversational relations and collaboration. Such capabilities entail the aptitude of framing questions that matter, summon learning conversations, enable shared meaning, promote appreciative inquiry, cultivate communities of practice, and make use of concerted technologies. These are the main skills, believed to be important for a servant leader having a living systems viewpoint. As per Wallace (2011), leaders prepare their organisations to cope change and help them struggle through the process. This is done by enabling people to move in dynamic and new directions through conversation. As the leader assists people through the constant change process, he/she has the courage of serving them by extending love, power and authorship of work to tap into the potential of his team members.

Attributes critical to becoming a servant leader

The traits identified are collected from a range of sources, and all add to the model of an effective organisational leader.

Four principles have been selected which are critical for an efficient leader working within the organisational framework.

• Living system standpoint – Viewing the world and all its systems from the standpoint of living systems develops the context for leaders’ work and is the base for releasing the strength of the people within the organisation. As the company lets go of the machine system of the workplace, and employees as substitutable cogs in the mechanism of production, the leaders will view themselves in a much deeper dimension, to design companies that respect and honour the workers (Spears and Lawrence, 2016). Keeping a living system standpoint also ensures that when attempting to comprehend problems within the company, observations are taken not out of context but always seen as a component of the whole organisation. This is essential to thwart the frequent action of correcting locally but hampering globally.
• Transparency – This is crucial to ensure complete participation in the organisation. Accountability and transparency are the basis of sound governance. Healthy organisations do not succeed in the role of secrecy, and an efficient leader creates transparency actively (Dierendonck and Patterson, 2010).
• Vision – If the leader is not able to envisage a picture of the goal, it becomes very difficult for the employees to reach there.
• Integrity – It is important for the leader to live the company’s vision and values and such keystone of integrity give the freedom of living one’s dreams (Agard, 2011).

These skills have been selected based on the abilities in developing replicable processes supporting leadership. Effective leaders should be capable of asking questions that shake the system and produce conversations. Conversations around important matters are important for employees to sense authorship of the opinions and the work to be performed and is critical for them to feel that the work done by them is of importance (Baron, 2010).

• Creating conversations – Intricately related to question asking is the requirement to ensure that the conversations are created organization-wide, and this should not occur by chance.
• Building feedback loops – in the absence of feedbacks, the leader does not have any way of knowing what is taking place or if what is happening is leading to positive changes. Leaders must be linked through the real-time framework to keep in constant touch with their employees (Sendjaya, 2015).
• Tapping into team’s potential – A reverent leader taps into its team’s potential by providing power, authorship and love to the team members.

Behaviour is the reflection of what is done by a leader.

• Curiosity – This results in innovation. In the absence of curiosity, there exists no reason to determine whether there is an improved way. The desire to learn is driven by curiosity, and no can lead in the absence of this desire (Barter, 2015).
• Passion – An effective leader needs to have a passion for pursuing important issues. Passion keeps them moving toward an objective even when everything else is going wrong.
• Courage – Leading means forging trails which others have not followed and to do this, a leader needs courage. Effective leaders do not surrender when encountered with adversity. They just become more determined (Olowosoyo, 2014).

As far as the principles are concerned, I have huge integrity which is reflected through my work. Irrespective of the personal pain or difficulty my leadership may bring for me, I always conform to what is right and focus on doing the right thing. As far as vision is concerned, I am very good at storytelling which is critical for painting pictures through stories to capture the spirits of my team members. My leadership style also entails the attribute of transparency. I try to ensure that I open up conversations with all team members on all aspects of their work. The below-presented evaluation is for my process and behavioural skills where there are some loopholes.

Attributes	Assessment scale 1-5	Current level
Asking questions that are important	3	I rate myself 3 in this attribute. When I enquired others to rate me on this, they rated me a 4-5. Their rating was underpinned by the attitude reflected by me and not based on the definitions of capabilities mentioned in Section 1. I think that my performance in this front is not very strong and only sufficient. There is a huge room for improvement and further grow my capabilities.
Building conversations	2	Like during the last capability, my peers again rated me as 4-5 for this skill. Nonetheless, this is underpinned by the fact that I am developing conversation circles and asking everyone to talk actively with each other. I, on the contrary, comprehend that I am very novice in this area and just learning to fathom the intricacies entailed in this skill. There is still a long way to go.
Developing feedback loops	2	My personal evaluation and that of my peers in this area are the same. I usually bury myself in my work and do not hang out with the team too often. I do get involved in meetings but not all. My ideal feedback emerges from being out with the team, observing, listening and asking questions. I need to improve a lot in this
Tapping into the team’s potential	4	When asked, my peers said that I earn a 4-5 for my initiative to transform the culture from authoritative to coaching. I would also rate myself 4 on this as I believe I have really worked hard in this area. I am the driver of this transition in the way we connect with our team. However, I am still learning and developing and will likely be a 4 in this skill for some time.
Curiosity	5	I obtained a 5 in this area. I do have a strong passion for learning and possessing a never-ending curiosity which triggers my desire to learn. I always search ways of improving and actively assist others follow suit.
Passion	5	I attained a 5 on this as well. I am extremely passionate about my vision, mission, values and I live by my beliefs. I work passionately to implement my definition of self-organization, leadership and my learning concepts.
Courage	3	This was evaluated consistently at a 4-5. But I rate myself a 3 on this skill. I do have the courage but not always at the correct time. There is a great deal I ought to learn about this ability and how to cultivate it. I do get apprehensive at times, and this leads to poor decision making which others might not understand or see. If composed under pressure was on this scale, I would give myself a 5. However, calm does not signify courage.

Attributes to be improved	1 Year Plan	3-5 Year Plan
Asking questions that are critical	During meetings, training, conversations and coaching of all types, I will be asking questions and measuring whether they produce consistent conversations. Those that do, I will note, and those that fail too, I will note them as well to determine if I can identify which questions have a life. I will maintain a journal for data collection.	I will continue the same activities for informing my practice, and I would involve myself in training and workshops where such aptitude is modelled which will enable me to improve my abilities in this zone.
Building conversations	I will facilitate and participate in conversation groups that I am in the process of developing at my workplace, and this is the driver for me to learn to get engaged in conversations. I will also read and study everything I could get my hands on to further help me develop this skill	I will continue practising the activities to inform my practice and would take part in training and workshops where I could model this skill.
Developing feedback loops	I will schedule more time outs with my team so that I could augment my sense of what is happening. I will continue implementing strategies that enhance the manner team members converse together, which is likely to better the information flow in the team	Besides continuing the strategies, I will also explore different learning prospects to augment my skill to formalise feedback channels. I am not detailed centric, and hence this is going to be a stretch for me.
Tapping into team’s potential	I am testing ideas on how to tap into the potential of my team. I am asking the members to get involved in decision making, and I am watching their willingness and ability to participate. I will also track absences and call outs as the main indicators to determine if the programs being implemented are enhancing the way the employees feel about the work	Continue learning from previous activities and research this domain to augment my performance and understanding.
Courage	Of all the skills that characterise an effective leader, this is the most challenging capability for me and where my limits have always held me back. I will continue to develop my confidence level so that I could develop courage. I will recognise my fears and what causes them. I would then script situations that cause my fears. I will use the technique of framing to shape how I think about particular fearsome situations by making them look banal. I would take calculated risks and become more acceptable toward my failures.

References

Agard, K., 2011. Leadership in Nonprofit Organisations: A Reference Handbook. SAGE.

Baron, T., 2010. The Art of Servant Leadership: Designing Your Organization for the Sake of Others. Wheatmark Inc.

Barter, A., 2015. Farmer Able: A fable about servant leadership transforming organisations and people from the inside out. Wheatmark Inc.

Day, D., 2014. The Oxford Handbook of Leadership and Organisations. OUP.

Dierendonck, D. and Patterson, K., 2010. Servant Leadership: Developments in Theory and Research. Springer.

O’Brien, M., 2010. Servant Leadership in Nursing: Spirituality and Practice in Contemporary Health Care. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

Olowosoyo, O., 2014. Servant Leadership. Lulu Press.

Sendjaya, S., 2015. Personal and Organisational Excellence through Servant Leadership: Learning to Serve, Serving to Lead, Leading to Transform. Springer.

Spears, L. and Lawrence, M., 2016. Practising Servant-Leadership: Succeeding Through Trust, Bravery, and Forgiveness. John Wiley & Sons.

Wallace, R., 2011. Servant Leadership: Leaving a legacy. R&L Education.