Exploring Leadership Opportunities
Being a leader is a challenging yet attainable goal. Although it used to be believed that being a leader requires a set of intrinsic abilities that are inherent and, therefore, cannot be trained, recent studies prove that the ability to lead, in fact, can be taught and developed. Thus, while I have certain qualities that will help me build a successful leadership approach, there are certain areas such as negotiation and conflict management that I will need to explore further.
Strengths in Leadership Situations
When considering the advantages that will help me become a leader, I must mention motivation as my major strength. I am not only highly motivated by the mission I pursue but also capable of inspiring others. In addition, I have the ability to set the priorities straight and assign specific goals and roles to people based on their abilities and skills. While seemingly simple, the specified task requires a significant amount of flexibility, as well as a proper understanding of the advantages and limitations of the participants involved in a project. As a result, the scheduling issues are addressed, the deadlines are met, and each of the team members remains engaged, being provided with the assignments that they not only can carry out but also enjoy doing.
Weaknesses and Their Effects
I must admit, though, that there are certain limitations to my leadership abilities currently. While the problem areas can be improved, they require a significant effort from me. For instance, I need to work on my ability to address conflicts successfully. There is no need to stress the fact that the ability to handle conflicts is a crucial skill that a leader must develop in order to manage relationships between the members of a team. While it would be wrong to claim that I cannot resolve conflicts, I still need to learn the ability to use them as the foundation for the team to learn essential information. For instance, when facing the need to address cross-cultural conflicts, I must use them as the starting point to help the participants to become culturally sensitive and develop the ability to engage in a multicultural dialogue successfully. Similarly, I may need to improve my negotiation skills so that a heavy emphasis could be placed on collaboration and compromise as opposed to avoidance of difficult topics.
Developing Leadership Capability
To confront my weaknesses and become a better leader, I will have to focus on training the capabilities that will allow me to manage workplace conflicts successfully and encourage people to develop the propensity toward the consistent learning. For this purpose, the enhancement of the capability of knowledge management will have to be considered a necessity. It is essential to gain the skills that will help teach staff members and promote the concept of lifelong learning as the foundation for their successful professional growth and the further multicultural communication with people from different backgrounds. The specified goal can be accomplished by using practice-based evidence as the foundation for the training process. By creating a system based on which the process of knowledge acquisition will occur in the team, I will be able to lead the team successfully.
Furthermore, as a leader, I will have to learn to solve complex problems. As stressed above, conflict management and negotiation are not by greatest assets. The specified problem occurs primarily because of my inability to address the issue of relationships and promote the necessity to meet the set objectives. Therefore, complex problem-solving skills will have to be acquired.
Getting the Priorities Straight
Specific Goal: Promoting Active Growth
As stressed above, it is essential for me as a leader to learn to encourage team members to focus on the active acquisition of new knowledge and skills, as well as their further use for handling conflicts in the workplace. Particularly, multicultural issues and the misconceptions that typically occur in the process of cross-cultural communication will have to be handled successfully. Therefore, the development of the leadership strategy that will compel the target demographics to engage in the active personal and professional growth, as well as recognize the significance of the lifelong learning process as the basis for gaining the required culture-related skills, will have to be regarded as a necessity.
Achieving the specified goal will require the reconsideration of leadership priorities and the design of a coherent action plan that will allow motivating the staff members. Particularly, it will be crucial to design the value system in which the needs of all stakeholders will be valued equally, including the ones of the employees. It will be essential to create the environment of mutual trust and the active promotion of reciprocal communication so that the needs of team members could be easily identified and met respectively.
Furthermore, the environment in which employees will feel inclined to develop the suggested learning skills must be provided. Training courses aimed at helping team members to gain the necessary competencies will have to be viewed as a necessity. Moreover, the employees will have to be provided with a chance to acquire metacognitive skills, i.e., the ability to deconstruct their learning process to enhance and improve it accordingly. As a result, a rapid increase in the performance of the team members is expected.
Intended Approach: Transformational Leadership
Seeing that the active promotion of lifelong learning will require a shift in the team members’ perception of their roles and responsibilities in the workplace, as well as a change in their idea of learning, it will be crucial to adopt the Transformational Leadership (TL) strategy. The framework implies improving the results delivered by the team by creating the environment in which they will be motivated to excel in their performance. Furthermore, the approach suggests that a set of ethical standards and values must be established to make the decision-making process more coherent and successful.
The application of TL will also help manage some of the obstacles that are likely to emerge once the new demands are set in the workplace. Particularly, the problem of reluctance among employees will have to be listed among the crucial challenges that will have to be addressed. With the application of the TL framework, I will be able to provide the staff members with a role model that they will follow to meet the set expectations and deliver the results of the required quality.
It is essential that the use of the TL strategy will also contribute to my personal and professional development. Since the tool implies providing employees with a role model whose example they will follow, TL will motivate me to acquire the necessary skills and improve my performance. Thus, a gradual improvement of project outcomes, communication processes, management issues, and other aspects of an organization’s functioning in any business setting will become a possibility.