Theme 5 : Your vision of leadership

Vision of Leadership.

My vision of leadership is a leader who is able to bring the best out of each of his or her team member by motivating them, coaching them and inspiring them. I believe that every employee has their own skill set and talents and the best of leaders are able to adapt their leadership style according to the existing circumstances. This ensures every employee is able to contribute towards the organisation. Every worker would feel appreciated and valuable when their capabilities contribute towards the wellbeing of their organisation. It is almost important for leaders to have be ethical  and treat everyone without any prejudice.

Based on my vision of leadership, I feel that the best model of leadership would be the situational leadership model from Paul Hershey and Ken Blanchard. In situational leadership, leaders often look assess the situation and the competence level of their worker to determine which is the best approach to handle the problem (Cherry 2019). By using this model leaders can recognises that workers react differently when doing different tasks and they may react differently during different stages of the same task. One limitation of the model is that it does not take into account how demographic aspects such as education, age and gender of the workers influence the leader (Shonhiwa 2016). If I am given a choice to lead in the future I would definitely apply situational leadership approach to best utilize the unique and different capabilities that workers have in handling any given situations.

Inspirational leader

My inspirational leader would be Colin Luther Powell, an American army general and also American Secretary of State. Not only he was a well decorated Army general, Powell also found great success in political affairs as secretary of state under President George W. Bush .Powell managed in succeeding both as a general and a statesmen due to his ability to adapt and use of situational leadership to lead in both military bureaucracy political reality (Resourcefulmanager 2019). Powell also relate his success in leadership to his principle of embracing cultural difference (Mendler 2018). It allowed him to learn from the differences in perspectives that culturally different people have (Mendler 2018). I find Powell to be a truly situational leader because he was able to apply his great leadership tactics in political arena and influenced the life of many Americans.     

Feedback and Analysis

Based on the 16 personality tests, I found myself to be a Mediator which translates to someone who plays a diplomatic role based on principles in a group of people or workplace (16 Personalities 2019). The tests shows that I have an introvert mind and I think this is in line with nature of being reserved. I was also mentioned to be intuitive and this relates to my current role as a marketer which requires creative thinking to develop marketing plans. The test also mentions that I am look for constant improvement and I have to agree with this as I am always motivated to look for ways to improvise action plans and strategies at my workplace. I was also found to be turbulent and this is definitely a setback for me as I am vulnerable to stress (16 Personalities 2019). In future I would look into improvising on ways of handling stress so that my decision making process is not affected by it.

Model the way Unit 5	Inspire Unit 4	Challenge Unit 3	Enable Unit 2	Encourage Unit 1
7.91	7.47	7.80	8.49	7.88

Figure 6:  Peer’s Review Table

My peer’s review result shows that I scored highest for Unit 2: Enable. Through this I understand that, I am able to cooperate well with my team members, always open to suggestions, supportive of their decisions and treat them with respect. My lowest score is for Unit 4: Inspire and this shows that I am need to improve on speaking with more conviction about work and show other how dreams can be realised. Also I need to improvise on my knowledge of future trends and always have a forward looking view.

In conclusion, I feel that this MBA program has given me a big exposure on leadership as a whole. What I look to develop through this MBA course is the ability to lead better, be an effective communicator and have the ability to solve problems. I can work on my leadership ability by taking more leadership oriented roles in group works and be open to criticism from my group mates. To be able to communicate effectively, I would want to participate actively in open discussions in class room. In terms of ability to solve problem, I would depend on the theoretical knowledge acquired in class such as Kurt Lewin change management model which apply it practically to handle resistance to change at workplace. By acquiring the skills mentioned above, I hope to be a good and effective leader whom gives a great importance in nurturing individual talent.

753 words (excluding in text citations)

References

16 Personalities (2018) ‘INFP-Personality’ [online] available from < https://www.16personalities.com/infp-personality&gt; [21 March 2018]

Cherry, K. (2019) ‘Situational Theory of Leadership’, Verywellmind [online] available from < https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-situational-theory-of-leadership-2795321&gt; [21 March 2018]

CNN Library  (2018) ‘Colin Powell Fast Facts’, CNN [online] available from < https://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/20/us/colin-powell-fast-facts/index.html&gt; [21 March 2018]

Gonzalez, N. (2017) ‘BUILD A LEADERSHIP VISION’, SFMagazine [online] available from < https://sfmagazine.com/post-entry/november-2017-build-a-leadership-vision/&gt; [21 March 2018]

Mendler, A. (2018) ‘What Leaders Can Learn From Colin Powell’, Forbes [online] available from < https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinessdevelopmentcouncil/2018/08/13/what-leaders-can-learn-from-colin-powell/#b2f3668317ed&gt; [21 March 2019]

Shonhiwa, C. (2016) ‘An Examination of the Situational Leadership Approach: Strengths and Weaknesses’,  An International Peer-Reviewed Journal on Humanities & Social Sciences [online] 2(2), 35-40. available from <http://crosscurrentpublisher.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/CC2235-40.pdf&gt; [21 March 2019]

Resourceful Manager (2019) ‘11 Great Leaders: How They Achieved Success’,Resourcefulmanager [online] available from < https://www.resourcefulmanager.com/guides/successful-leaders/&gt; [21 March 2019]

Todorov, A. (2017) ‘4 Situational Leadership Styles to help develop your teams’, Atodorov.org available from < http://atodorov.org/blog/2017/11/11/4-situational-leadership-styles/&gt; [21 March 2019]