Administrative Competencies
As a leader, it is necessary for me to fulfil the cognitive competencies as these plays vital role in the personality development and for being an effective leader. It is the nature of job that higher the position, scope of responsibilities and authority increases. Person sitting on the higher position needs to manage more number of people in comparison to the person sitting on the lower position. Thus, when a person in the organization seeks for promotion, he/she needs to be ready for fulfilling the responsibilities which will come along with the promotion.
In relation to this, several competencies are required to be managed and thus, it is necessary to address those competencies through which the requirement of the particular job could be fulfilled and these competencies comes in the categories of administrative competencies, communication competencies, team building competencies, and cognitive competencies. Following are the description of these competencies:
These are directly related to running a business or keeping the business organised. These types of skills are required for almost all types of jobs and for a leader, these must be followed in the appropriate manner for the objective of setting an appropriate example in front of the teammates. Main components of administrative competencies for a leader are management of time and setting priority tasks as per their severity and requirement, setting goals and standards to fulfil the tasks, and planning and scheduling work accordingly.
- Management of time: For a leader, time management is very crucial task as it shows how an effective a leader is. In relation to this, this also shows the understanding of a leader regarding the allocated project. Along with this, a project consist of various tasks, thus, is the duty of a leader to differentiate the tasks on the basis of their severity and significance so that desired goals could be accomplished.
- Goals and standard setting: A leader is also responsible to set goals according to the assigned task so that allocated project could be accomplished. Along with this, it is the duty of a leader to follow standards set up by the management in order to get the positive outcomes and as per the expectations of the management.
- Work planning and scheduling: While working on a task, an effective leader uses brainstorming process for the objective of planning all the tasks as well as schedule them in an effective manner through which expected outcomes could be attained.
- Listening and organising: This is another significant competency required for being an effective leader. A leader should be calm enough to analyse all the related aspects before accomplishing any project. In the scenarios of disputes, it is the duty of a leader to listen all the parties involved in the disputes before reaching to a final conclusion and leader should be capable enough to find out the win-win situation for all the parties in order to maintain the workplace environment healthy and effective.
- Clarity of communication: Before using any communication tool, leader should make sure that the information transferred to the teammates or to the upper level management is clearly transferred. As there are various negative outcomes of the unclear information shared, thus, clarity of communication falls on the top in the priority list of competencies required for a leader and for the person sitting on the higher position.
- Getting objective information: This competency defines that whenever a leader works on a particular task, all the relevant information must be gathered which is necessary for the accomplishment of a particular project. Starting the project without getting appropriate and relevant information might affect the expected goals and it could directly hit the organizational performance.
These competencies are must needed for a leader as well as for the person sitting on the higher position. A leader should be capable enough to bind the teammates in a group not by the rules and regulations but also by their mind-set. This helps to generate a positive environment in a team where all teammates respects each other and walk together on the showed path by leader to reach towards the desired destination.
- Training, mentoring and delegating: It is the duty as well as responsibility of a leader to provide training to their teammates before working on a new project. Along with this, in between the project, mentoring the employees is also necessary in order to make the things favourable for the organization. Delegating is assigning the right person on the right place without practicing any sort of discriminatory practice. This helps the leader to gain respect amongst its teammates which ultimately helps in accomplishing the assigned project with positive outcomes.
- Evaluating employees and performance: In order to make sure that the team is going on a right track as per the management’s expectations, leaders are required to regularly analyse the whole team’s performance along with evaluating performance at individual level. This helps in identifying gaps between the management’s expectations and actual performance through which relevant tools could be adopted to match up with the organizational expectations.
- Advising and Discipline: Leader act as the role model for its teammates, thus, he is required to perform his duties ethically. Along with this, he should be capable enough to advice his teammates to bring changes in their performance along with describing them the significance of being disciplined in the professional environment.
- Problem identification and solution: Whenever team’s performance is not up to the mark, leader should take initiate to find out the issues faced by the teammates which are acting as the obstacles for attaining the desired goals. In relevance to this, appropriate solutions should also be evaluated by the process of brainstorming in order to reach towards the expected results.
- Assessing risks and decision-making: Every project or task comes up with certain sort of obstacles and risk factors. Thus, leader should use his knowledge, experience and his skills for identifying the appropriate measure to deal with the risk in terms of accomplishing the project with the positive outcomes.
- Thinking clearly and analytically: A leader never stops thinking because business environment is considered as dynamic in nature and to deal with different sort of business environment, leader needs to be ready with the appropriate solutions. Thus, leader never stops thinking for generating innovative ways to deal with the future challenges along with enhancing the team’s performance.
- Leader has a significant role in the organization as he not only guides a group of employees, but he also binds them together and forms a team which ultimately boost up the team’s as well as whole organization’s productivity. In my life, I have considered leadership on the top in my priorities’ list and due to this; I have always been offered varieties of leadership roles which have helped me to diversify my skills and capabilities. This has helped me to describe my own leadership experience and the journey throughout my professional career which has made me to build an effective and unique leadership style or model. In order to reflect on my leadership style to analyse the effectiveness, I have used various online tools to gather feedback from my friends, family members and all those people whom I interact regularly. This helped me to gather relevant information about my leadership style. Leadership has always been an imperative aspect of my life and as I have been gone through various leadership roles throughout career, I have been able to gather unique experience which taught me to shape my leadership skills as well as personality.
Currently, I am studying in the University of Management and I have been associated with this university since last 2 years. During this tenure, I earned leadership role and at present I am leading a team of 7 people group and we are studying on different aspects of sales and marketing department. The whole journey with the university as a leader as well as a non-leader has taught me certain new things which have ultimately helped me to gain an immense leadership experience. The foremost and most crucial things I have analysed in my leadership journey are patience, understanding, listening to teammates, and way to deal with different types of people. A leader should be capable enough to deal with all sorts of situations along with coordinating with the teammates in order to ensure an amicable environment. The first leadership experience I gained when I was chosen as the prefect in the school and at that time, I happened at young age. At that time, I felt so much responsibility on my shoulders and though, I fulfilled all the responsibilities but I do not think that whether I was able to make any significant difference.
After that, I was assigned the role captain of my school cricket team and there I used to engage with every teammate to analyse their efficiency so that during matches, appropriate player could be given relevant responsibilities. After so much, I realised that my team was continuously losing matches and after certain failures, my coach asked me to determine the gap which is leading the team towards negative outcomes. Then, I realised that inappropriate culture has been followed by the whole team including me and that too as a leader. We were not practicing before matches and as practice is very necessary to face the real challenges, we were failing continuously. At that time, I realised the importance of being a consistent performer and I also obliged my coach who taught me and my teammates to bring effective differences in the culture of the whole team to accomplish positive outcomes. My coach has been a great inspiration for me and as a guide, he helped me to analyse my qualities and the significance of other factors for attaining the desired goals as a team and this ultimately helped me to shape my own leadership style which quite matches with the transformational leadership approach.
It is worth saying that higher positions also comes up with huge responsibilities. Thus, it is necessary for a person sitting on the higher position to use his/her all experience to guide the team in the right direction along with fulfilling the managerial roles including management of time, priority setting, goals and standards setting, planning and designing the tasks for the objective of reaching towards the desired destination. With regards to this, I have also realised that communication competencies also plays vital role as it includes listening, organising, clarity of communication, and getting objective information to assign appropriate role and responsibility to the teammates as per their capabilities and skills. For a building an effective team, I have observed that fulfilling team competencies are crucial which includes training and mentoring employees, evaluating their performance and advising them the significance of discipline with the objective of enhancing their performance as well as to enhance the whole team’s performance.
Churchill, W., Determining your Own Leadership Style. Leadership and Personality Assessments. PP. 24-35.