Leadership Characteristics
Leadership is not something that people can just grasp and gain during their lives – real leaders are born that way, they are created to be “number one” in different circles of fellowship or societies. These people are always engaging to follow and to support their ideas. “Conscious leadership is perhaps the most important element in conscious capitalism. Without conscious leadership, little else matters” (Mackey, & Sisodia, 2014). The greatest and the first leaders of all times were militaries, and nowadays, taking these noble people as an example, modern business strategies have also evolved into a kind of warfare. As a result, today’s business experts act like militaries and warriors – they “attack” their competitors, consider different strategies’ and tactics’ terminations, and bravery is their prevalent quality.
The statement that was mentioned above does not contradict resembling researches. For instance, Northouse (2016) claims that conscious leader has to be demanding, determined, and steadfast to his or her principles. As we can see, it is almost impossible to govern a company or an organization without being a forceful and confident person. Although, Tourish (2014) said that “more” or “better” leadership remains a popular panacea for business failure, climate change, educational underachievement and myriad other world problems. Men are more likely to have such traits, but women can become consummate leaders as well – it all depends on their volitions and values in life.
Importance of Self-Awareness and Self-Concept
Analyzing oneself is a crucial thing in a conscious leadership because that way person can see what one’s lapses, and prevent similar mistakes in the future. Self-awareness lets one estimate his or her strong and weak sides, so that person has an imagination about one’s capabilities, and knows what is proper to use or not to use in a particular contingence. Such important quality as a self-concept lets leader conceive what he or she looks like from the side. Moreover, self-concept can provide not only the understanding of one’s appearance, but of his or her actions, speech, and charisma as well.
There was no leader in a history without emotional intelligence. This is an ability that makes a person capable of defining others’ emotions and their intentions. Individuals with such traits can easily appraise, what is on their opponent’s mind. Besides, they have competence to control one’s emotions and emotions of other people with the purpose of encompassing a particular practical task. The main goal of a leader is to be an example and convince other people to follow him or her. Due to that, a perfect leader is always a professional of one’s occupation and is always willing to reach new horizons.
Results of the Test
The results of the completed tests indicated that I possess characteristics of both roughness and mildness, which is decent because I never want to be too tough and aggressive or too smooth and pliant. Besides, the results show that my kinaesthetic system of perception works better that aural, visual, and reading/writing ones, which means that I learn better practicing different things. My prevalent values are social values, realistic values, and theoretical values. Traditional and political values influence me or my opinion the most of any others, and my minor values are aesthetic.
The premise results made me feel idiosyncratic and self-confident. Although, I do not think that such tests are always accurate, indeed, they make people face their capabilities and show their strong and weak qualities, which is an effective motivation. This test made me understand, what I should elaborate on in order to become a better leader, and showed me the better methods of learning new information. From now on, I will be practicing more than learning theory because I know that this is the best way for me to obtain knowledge.
Insights after the Assessments
After taking the assessments, I understood that I love my culture too much that I did not pay attention to other cultures outside of my country. I admit that I have to spend more time travelling, learning variable cultures, and make friends with people of omnifarious ethnic backgrounds. All these experiences will help me to compare my values and goals with another people’s. “Even the best development processes – those based on exploring the five discoveries – will not help to change the organization if they focus only on the person and do not take into the account the power of the emotional reality and culture” (Goleman, Boyatzis, & McKee, 2013). I consider that knowing other cultures will definitely help me in my future occupation because a leader has to know a nature of the people that he or she is cooperating with. This will teach me to be more attentive to my future colleagues, family, and friends.
Individual Behavior
As it was mentioned above, it is essential for a leader to analyze oneself day after day, And a lot of things that I did not notice in my behavior before, have become clear for me after this test. From now on, I will try not to be as rough as the test showed I am because in cases of different conflicts I do not want to submit myself. This is not right – every person might be wrong, and we have to admit our mistakes instead of arguing a wrong viewpoint. This tells me that I have to be less rough with such groups of people as my friends and family, but it is still a good quality of a leader, which will definitely help me with my work in different organizations.
The test let me know that I am fond of negotiating with people and that I have a great ability of persuasion. For instance, it is much easier for people to get along with unfavourable conditions, instead of defending their mutual interests or viewpoints. This means that I also have a great ability to managing others within their workplace.
I have learned that it takes a lot of work and patience to manage oneself because it requires a lot of planning and analyzing. Planning is a very important thing in management and leadership, which every person has to do in order to complete his or her job properly and efficiently. Unfortunately, I do not plan out every day of my life, but I understand how important this is. If one has planned out his or her day, month, and year, this person will accomplish even more than he or she thinks.
Some people are very hard to control sometimes, and I am one of them because I do not like the feeling of being commanded by someone. It is better for me to accomplish any task on my own and gain some experience rather than listen to someone’s pieces of advice and follow them. I do not like the feeling of being under control because I do not feel free in my decisions then, which makes me upset and makes my work less efficient.
References
Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R. E., & McKee, A. (2013). Primal leadership: unleashing the power of emotional intelligence. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.
Mackey, J., & Sisodia, R. (2014). Conscious capitalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: theory and practice. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Tourish, D. (2014). Leadership, more or less? A processual, communication perspective on the role of agency in leadership theory. Leadership,10(1), 79-98.