Leadership can be defined as a role or function performed by a leader or a manager in an organisation. Act of guiding others while giving directions to certain group of people to achieve specific goal can be termed as practicing leadership (Silva, 2016). The discussions made on leadership throughout the course gave a bright notion to me about how an ordinary person can get transformed into an efficient leader through application of different leadership theories and models. With gaining practical experience along with identifying present literature related to various leadership styles and models, I have understood the importance of leadership qualities for managers and how leadership is applied and are practiced in organisations. Along with it, this course also emphasised in developing skills required for leaders to manage organisations that can prove beneficial for me in my future career. This reflective journal is based on my own experiences related to ‘leadership for managers’ that were gained by me during class hours whereby I suggest those areas required for my own development. In this journal, I will be using leadership theories and practices for analysing and evaluating the leadership concepts as discussed in different chapters in the course materials along with applying few few of them with practical and personal experience.
Interactions between a leader and sub-ordinates is one of the necessities while practicing leadership. According to Kolzow (2014), “A leader is certainly more than someone who is a widely recognized individual or who possesses organizational authority”. Before learning about transformational leadership style, I thought that leadership is only about dreary interactions with colleagues and inferiors. Nevertheless, this course lessons on transformational leadership made a great difference on my perceptions regarding the concept. I learnt that transformational leadership can be related with key factor that links both leader and its subordinates through achieving unique experiences. If the subordinates or inferiors get motivated and encouraged by their manager, that can be due to respect and admiration, chances of getting intellectual stimulation to promising individual development and team members gets increased (McCleskey, 2014). This will certainly lead to two-way beneficiary system for human resource managements and organisational objectives. Before this course, leadership according to me was about directing your subordinates and make them perform the tasks while letting hem know what they ought to do in response to fulfilling organisational goals. But, things have changed for me now and I find that leadership is more than exciting experience for leaders and managers than any other role. A leader not only directs other people but also stimulates them emotionally along with motivating them to think, act and perform in those manner which benefits themselves as well as organisations (Kolzow, 2014). In fact, my personal vison regarding leadership is also in becoming transformational leader as these kind of managers poses those skills which allows them to share their mission, gain commitment and motivate their teams to inspire enhanced performance.
I am personally very keen in motivating my subordinates by specifying them those objectives which I feel appropriate and are according to their capabilities. This will give them inspiring and varied work life along with broadening their interest to perform better. This notion has been gained by me while we were studying chapters related to importance of leadership quality required by organisation managers that made me feel how leadership theories can be carried forward in personal improvement plans. Nevertheless, there are some or more times when we face challenges for which I think can make me more like a transactional leader. The times when I feel I need to pass on those objectives that are resisted by people, ‘reward and punishment’ act will help me to force delegated work to be performed by subordinates. For example, if any team member or subordinate denies performing certain job, transactional leadership style will help me clarify their roles and responsibility so that the job is done accordingly. Although, transactional leadership style allows motivation by giving rewards for people performance, the downside of it like limitations in creativity-based work can result in decreased work performance (S & G, 2016).
The philosophy of leadership according to me is in becoming one of those leaders who poses inspirational qualities that is credible. This involves characteristics like approachable, trustworthy, supportive, hard-working and competent. If all the above-mentioned qualities are fulfilled by me, then I think being a credible manager or a leader will be feasible for me. As said by Ahmed & Bach (2014), self-confidence, integrity, honesty, cognitive ability and ambition are essential qualities that needs to be present in a person to become successful leader. These traits help managers and leaders acquire necessary techniques and skills that helps them in formulating vison for organisations along with making plans to pursue mission into reality. This theory is further supported by Hossain (2015) where the author describes about leadership qualities and traits required by 21st century leaders. According to the author, to become a successful leader in an organisation, it is important that we implant essential qualities. However, the author also mentions that self-centred or egoistic people can never become good leader or manger which according to me is quite true. Nevertheless, in some areas, people cultivate few traits to become good leader in present business environment and this is what a leader is expected to be. The reason behind this concept is because a competent and confident leader will always pose capabilities and skills that will make obvious for his/her followers to follow. Additionally, they will also be talented to share their mission and vision that will inspire others in organisations to follow their leaders’ footsteps (Osabiya, 2015).
Being a positive leader, it is necessary to self-assess and comprehend self-knowledge. This means, if a person is able to recognise strengths and areas for development in oneself, it can help in setting realistic parameters along with being able to capitalise on personal strengths, capabilities and interests (Udhayakumar & Karthikeyan, 2014). An effective leader will posses empowering traits to build an effective and productive team. With reference to Mabey (2012), he was able to relate that superior power subordinates can make the work performance more productive. This statement is believable due to the fact that subordinates tend to feel extra enthusiastic and capable for doing things under the powers delegated to them. Empowerment is necessary element that makes members feel that they are significant for the firms and what their role is in achieving organisational goals (Tsai, 2011). Among various others, one dimension of empowerment is to find out the meaning concerning what you are performing, and the same has been realised by me during the course. This realisation can bring worth to your work that can make a big difference! If the subordinates feel the positive side of their working, they tend to become more determined for doing the work more efficiently.
Another dimension of empowerment is self-determination in which the feeling and rights to choose can make people motivated for performing the work as they have the capability in utilising their personal approach for completing the work ( Bandiera, et al., 2017). Therefore, it can be said that more fulfilling and productive work can be achieved by members through provision of self-determination dimension. Even I came to realise that being a leader requires gaining faith along with respecting your subordinates. This combination of belief and trust can fulfil the work and will even consider every responsibility which is required to be incorporated in the work ( Markos & Sridevi , 2010). Precisely, empowering may not be that easy as it seems to be. For gaining effective empowerment, certain practices may be required that can promote empowerment. Among others, few are responsibility and poster initiative that links activities to the mission of the organisations by giving enough information’s and motivating self-leadership tactics. Again, self-leadership can prove to be a promising activity when related to empowerment. The overall logic of the above few statements is that work progression can be enhanced in speedy manner if everyone is their own leader under their respective area. As mentioned earlier in this journal, it can also be related to trusting and believing your subordinates.
Regarding empowerment and designation, earlier I used to think that they are one and same thing. However, this course has made me realise differences between them. Delegation or assigning of tasks are essential for a capable empowerment in which delegated tasks becomes mainstream in the empowerment process (Kolzow, 2014). To let other people, feel the power and responsibility along with essence what lies in their hands make a vast difference. However, delegation can prove different concept from empowerment. Delegation can be considered as a narrower concept in responsibility for covering a specific task whereas empowerment covers a wider approach of responsibility in relation to goal achievement for organisations (Ritson, 2011). While developing leadership styles for an organisation, other sides of leadership quality were also discussed during the class hours. In organisations, politics and misunderstandings along with cultural issues promotes unwanted results that even hinders organisational goals. Leaders or managers who are engaged in political organisations can have both positive as well as negative sides. In the year 2011, at Wells Fargo, due to improper management resulted in charging its customers for those fees also which they believed were unethical. In spite Wells Fargo refunded those fees later, it impacted organisation’s reputation severely. According to Forbes, the chairman and CEO of the company were alleged for this inconvenience and fraudulent activities that resulted miserable drop in company share prices also (Loftus, 2016). In case when bad politics and ill management is envisaged in organisations, leaders must take control over management and wherever necessary must make himself sound logically to initiate governance against organisational politics
Another interesting topic which I came through was related to leadership practice applied in teams in organisations. I believe that working in teams is key to peaceful functioning of organisational activities. Through balancing individual interests, leaders or managers promotes necessary functioning of teamwork in organisations (S & G, 2016). As I have learnt, teamwork is never possible without an effective leader who leads the team members. The toughest part in team building is that the team requires continuous direction and motivation from their leaders or managers so that the work is performed to fulfil the goal behind formation of teams. Team motivation further promotes trust and confidence among team members who pursue for common goal and therefore, this common goal becomes the foundation for coordinative activities in teamwork (Mabey, 2012). A motivated team has capability to remove obstacles and surely are able to surpass every challenge with combined effort of members pointing towards one common goal (Mabey, 2012).
During one of the chapters, I can still recall the readings related to effectiveness as a leader and I believe that due to environmental concerns and depending upon various situations, the leadership quality inside me remains changing. In my view, the course related to leadership for mangers must be conducted at regular intervals to have a quick glance regarding leadership effectiveness role during different phases of life. In regards to the course, I could access my beliefs in effective leader under which I believe that I need to develop lot of things. In fact, I believe that effectiveness as a manager in me will soon be stimulated if go on studying this course. The interactions, suggestions and feedback made with class mates further made me realise the importance of trust and confidence that requires to be present while working in teams. After numerous days of learning leadership for mangers, I always find myself anticipating those things that I could have performed in better ways but have never did. To conclude, it can be made obvious that my action plans are always linked to each other. Since I aspire to become an efficient and effective manager, my peers and subordinates will have lesser reasons to pressurise me to act on those issues that can trouble them or have reasons to resent my leadership or managing style. This will even help in lessening confrontations and conflicts along with getting effective and stimulated work environment. After attending all my class hours, I feel more confident which earlier was affected due to poor self-management capabilities and habit of leaving tasks remain undone or incomplete.
References
Bandiera, O., Hansen, S., Prat, A. & Sadun, R., 2017. CEO Behavior and Firm Performance. [Online]
Available at: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/17-083_b62a7d71-a579-49b7-81bd-d9a1f6b46524.pdf
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Hossain, K. A., 2015. Leadership qualities for 21st century leaders. Pearl Journal of Management, Social Science and Humanities, 01(01), pp. 18-29.
Kolzow, D. R., 2014. Leading from within: Building Organisational Leadership Capacity. [Online]
Available at: https://www.iedconline.org/clientuploads/Downloads/edrp/Leading_from_Within.pdf
[Accessed 18 09 2018].
Loftus, G., 2016. The Bad Leadership All Stars Of 2016. [Online]
Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffloftus/2016/10/27/bad-leadership-all-stars/#590933a363f8
[Accessed 18 09 2018].
Mabey, C., 2012. Leadership Development in Organizations: Multiple Discourses and Diverse Practice. International Journal of Management Reviews, 15(04), pp. 359-380.
McCleskey, J. A., 2014. Situational, Transformational, and Transactional Leadership and Leadership Development. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 05(04), pp. 117-130.
Markos , S. & Sridevi , M. S., 2010. Employee Engagement: The Key to Improving Performance. International Journal of Business and Management, 05(12), pp. 89-96.
Osabiya, B. J., 2015. The effect of employees’ motivation on organizational performance. Journal of Public Administration and Policy Research, 07(04), pp. 62-75.
Ritson, N., 2011. Strategic Management. s.l.:Ventus Publishing.
Silva, A., 2016. What is Leadership?. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, pp. 1-5.
S, R. B. & G, S., 2016. Study on Theory of Group Development; Groups and Teams. IOSR Journal of Business and Management, 18(02), pp. 58-61.
Tsai, Y., 2011. Relationship between Organizational Culture, Leadership Behavior and Job Satisfaction. Health Services Research.
Udhayakumar, R. & Karthikeyan, . P., 2014. Expected Leadership Qualities for a Project Manager to Manage Construction Projects. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INInternational Journal of Innovative Research and Development, pp. 57-61.
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