Discussion
The main purpose of leadership in an organization is to have their goals reached and at the same time have a job-satisfied and healthy workforce. In order to survive in the highly competitive industry, organizations need to have a dynamic quality in their leadership. The main focus of development in the organizational context is to meet the predefined goal. Hence, leadership is not a position but a continuous process. However, sometimes the core characteristics of leadership are mistakenly misinterpreted (Antonakis & Day, 2017). There are some exceptional qualities which make a leader a dynamic leader. First of all, a dynamic leader always years for knowledge, experience, so that he ca improve on his skills and serve the organization in a better way.
A true leader understands that the position of a leader is never defined by the title it holds, rather it gets reflected by the daily actions of that person. It is determined the way he holds the organization, its people even in the worst condition (Bolman & Deal, 2017). It is also defined by the way he communicates with the people of the workforce and recognizes their individual qualities and keeping in terms of business policies and organizational upliftment. A dynamic leader always puts effort to grow every day, learn from everywhere and implements them in his leading activities. A dynamic leader always knows that anything is possible if it is conversed well, interacted well, designed well and applied properly.
The aim of the report is to make a dynamic leadership plan for my future by taking help of GROW model propounded by Whitmore, Alexander and Fine. The leadership plan will be helpful to structure the specific goals of my career as a leader and also evaluate the gap between my current status and the journey to my goals. The plan will further demonstrate the obstacles that might in the way to reach my goals as well as design a set of actions to evade the obstacles and succeed in actualizing my career plan.
I am in the final year of my MBA studies and hence I wish to establish my career in this field and specifically want to be a successful leader whom the world will follow and see as an example of an ideal leader. I have worked as a team lead in few group presentations/projects for our internship programs and have collected good reviews from my supervisors that I can become an effective leader in future. I have most of the qualities necessary to become a good leader within me but I need to brush up my skills. I have given myself a time span of 2 years to develop all the skills of leadership and improve the existing ones so that after passing out from the University with a bachelors’ degree I do not feel difficulty in adjusting with the organizational culture of corporate world.
I had been selected as the group team lead or the students’ representative because I have the potential of a good speaker, good listener and good learner too. I used to convey all the messages, queries and doubts of my team members to the supervisors and tried my best to resolve them as soon as possible. Hence, my classmates have all their faith in my words and managing capability. However, I have personally assessed the leadership qualities which are there within me and found that my capabilities to grow emotional intelligence with people are a little weak that needs to worked on. Since emotional intelligence is one of the most crucial characteristic of a dynamic leader, it needs to be strengthened by practical operations and more interactions with people of the team. My journey as a team lead till now has been full of learning and enjoying leadership as a self-growing process. I would further like to add that this personal development plan would support me a lot to gain deeper insight into the role of an ideal leader and go ahead step by step following a structured model (GROW model) and set my further activities too.
Goals
The GROW Model is one of the most useful modes by which one can create the personal development plan for future. GROW stands for goal, reality, options and will. In the year 1986, the model wad first created there are many reasons that make this model different from other models (Cashman, 2017). This model utilizes an extremely simple framework that helps to function as a strong tool to highlight and maximize the inner potential through a set off coaching conversations. The model itself is globally famous and accepted due to its prior success in both goal setting and problem solving which are mandatory for personal achievement and productivity. It is such a powerful leadership tool which is flexible and at the same time efficient. The four stages o GROW model are namely goal, reality, obstacles/options and will, as mentioned above help to raise an individual’s awareness and understanding of:
- Their own goals and aspirations
- Their current situation and beliefs
- The possibilities and resources available to them
- The further actions they need to take in order to achieve their personal and professional aims.
The GROW model has been suggested by my supervisor because by setting specific goals which are challenging as well as inspiring, structured in a particular time –frame, motivation can be easily promoted within an individual. This motivation is long lasting and can help in future to have personal satisfaction since the ‘will’ as the fourth stage works as a success barometer. Therefore, I found my supervisor’ advice useful and planned to take this model as my guiding model.
In order to become an effective leader, I have to increase my skills which must be there in a good leader. Sharpening my personal development skills can help me to achieve success within a span of 2 years. Since a successful leader should always be adaptive to change and willing to improve both as an authority and as an individual too. My first goal is to improve my interpersonal skills. It is suggested that an effective leader needs to have good people skills. The employees and the colleagues must feel comfortable approaching the leader regarding some query. When a leader takes time to listen to their queries and ask for their opinions, the employees get motivated feeling that their leader respects them and takes their opinion into considerations. There are other factors too that motivate the employees up to greater extent. When a leader shows some signs of appreciation and pays compliment to an employee or remembers few employees individually, the employees develop fondness for the leader and willingly follow his directions.
The next goal is assessing my own skills at regular intervals. A periodic assessment of my skills will help to ensure my competencies are at a place where they should be. Assessing my own skills once a year is sufficient if there is less requirement to keep up with the changing industry or organizational culture. The assessment or evaluation must be done at every four months if there are frequent changes in the technology or work culture. This is another important characteristic of a true leader that is to continue the self-assessment even after the position has been achieved.
The third goal is to increase the level of knowledge. Since a true leader never leaves gaining knowledge, and improving on the skills, a list has to be made in order to get an outline of areas to be worked on such as enhancing the communication skills, time management skills or decision making skills. Keeping a checklist would help me to become more well-rounded and valuable leader. Having completed the identification of areas of improvement, the ways to obtain knowledge in those fields needs to be sought for.
GROW Model
The most important factor that makes a leader, a true leader is the inspiration and motivation he becomes able to deliver to the people working under his leadership. A good leader helps the employees to attain their own personal goals and the team goals as a whole. I will learn how to inspire others and leave mark on their psychology so that they become motivated and feel agility towards the accomplishment of works they are assigned to. An inspired workforce always takes up new challenges and heighten the team name.
The time management, decision making and managing the workload are few other important characteristic of an ideal leader (Friedrich, Griffith & Mumford, 2016). My goal will be to learn how to manage the work load, workforce and also manage time even at the worst situation. The decision making capacity of a leader defines his quality. I will also have to focus on how to avoid distraction and say no to irrelevant requests.
I am pursuing the final year of my MBA studies and in the position of learning the fundamentals of leadership. My knowledge of the role of leadership is limited to books and lectures of the professors. Apart from the books and lectures I have only worked as a team lead in few group projects and directed my team mates as to how to accomplish the project properly within a particular time. My strengths are wisdom and knowledge. I am much creative and can think various ways of doing a particular task. I never get content with doing something in aa conventional way. I am much curious and have the will to know about everything by asking questions regarding topic which I find interesting. I love to learn at every stage of my life and from everywhere. I am judgmental, critical thinker and at the same time an open minded person.
My friends and family also believe that I am a wise person and ask for my advice wherever needed. I have my own individual perspective that is supported by people around me. I have humanity as one of the strongest interpersonal skills that involves befriending others. The capacity to love and be loved as well as social intelligence which is the intelligence to be aware of other people’s feeling and motives are also within me. However, this is limited within the sphere of university course and lacks practical knowledge regarding the role and responsibilities of a leader. Since, my knowledge has been limited by so many aspects, and the group projects were also small tasks, I have no idea about the graveness of responsibilities a leader is supposed to complete. I want to gain more insight so that I can become a future leader with a proper shape in all my skills. I believe that there is a huge gap between only studying about leadership in course materials and operating practically as a real leader. There is a long way to go acquire those characteristics and become an ideal leader. The feedbacks from my supervisor suggest that I need to:
- Improve on my decision making skills
- Increase level of emotional intelligence
- Enlarge my sphere of knowledge
- Develop my personality as a future leader
Reflection
It is always difficult to choose a career path. The career one chooses inevitably influences the lifestyle of the person. Income might be a part of the entire framework but ultimately career determines where a person ends up while living, the surroundings of the person is occupied by what type of people and lastly what kind of activities the person ends up having time for. Hence, it is challenging to choose a career. That career field can be any, and in my case I am choosing leadership as my career.
The first challenge is to deal with the bulk of responsibility that comes along with the position of a leader. The huge responsibility and pressure of work that a leader is supposed to handle will affect the easy life I am leading now. The life of a leader will definitely be different from that of a student. There is also competition in the market that can be a hurdle in the way of becoming an ideal and exceptional leader (Daft, 2014). Another factor is gaining experience that would enhance my skills. An experienced leader is accepted and preferred in every well-designed organization but the process of gathering experience is not that easy and demands a long time period. One cannot be a leader suddenly in a week or month. It has to be started from a lower position to understand the operations in a corporate world and the business policies too.
After doing away with the challenges of choosing leadership as a career plan I will be able to develop a strong workforce wherever I go. I will work on my communication skills more and put high efforts to be approachable to the employees in order to increase the productivity of the organization where I will be hired.
There are four interpersonal skills that build an effective leader. It is an essential soft skill that is the foundation of building emotional intelligence. the lack of self –awareness can harm nit only an individual but also the entire organization as well. It can be developed by the help of feedback and self –reflection. In order to strengthen my abilities of emotional intelligence, I will join a 21 –day crash course in Emotional intelligence to learn practical tips and exercises to increase the level of self-insight. Since empathy is the next key interpersonal skill it can be learned by reading the speeches and opinions of world leaders. I will follow their suggestions and guidelines on how to manage a workforce and develop them for future. In order to enhance my verbal and non-verbal communication skills I will follow online videos where there is a lot of videos found related to my concerned topic. I will also explore online libraries to read about communication development and language efficiency enhancement techniques. I will also work on my personality development because personality and confidence level are also important factors in leadership.
Since there are four main types of leaderships, I will have to choose my own leadership style based on what type of leader I want to be. The Authentic leadership is the way of leading an organization which is genuine. This leadership style involves the CEO’s of different organizations in order to maintain the authenticity without attempting a role play. The leader maintains this quality by not acting in a manipulative way.
The Autocratic leadership type allows the leader to take the complete hold of the decisions of the organization without taking the consult of others. This type of leader poses strong level of power and authority and imposes own opinions and decisions on the subordinate employees. This type of leadership is useful when close level of supervision is required. The creativity and motivation of the employees falls down and their performance level also deteriorates. Unable to take part in the decision making, the outcome is loss of job satisfaction and employee turnover.
The Laissez-Faire Leadership is another type of leadership that does not control the employees directly since the employees are highly experienced and need less direction and supervision. This type of leadership is again associated with those leaders who fail to supervise their team members and also fail to provide constant feedback that results in high cost, bas service and failure to fulfil the tasks within the deadline, lack of poor production and control. However, there are also other types of leaderships such as the transnational leadership, bureaucratic leadership, participative leadership, directive leadership, supportive leadership and any others. My own leadership style will be determined by the type of person I am. Hence, my task would be to identify my inner will and abilities and the way I want to treat my subordinates in future.
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded that the personal development plan will be of great help to me. It is a long journey from starting from the position I am in that is as a final year student of MBA, to becoming a leader possessing all the essential qualities within me. A leader can be of many types and the role of a leader has often been misinterpreted. However, after going through the process of this personal development plan, I have become able to understand the specific qualities a leader is supposed to hold and the way he can implement the leadership qualities and strategies in the workforce.
After applying my future leadership career plan in the GROW model, I have been able to assess my own abilities and positive points which can serve me to become a good leader in future. I have also been able to analyze my lacking spheres which needs to be worked on. I have found as a result that wisdom and knowledge are my strengths. I am creative, curious, a learner, open minded person. I have grown kindness and have the ability to love and be loved. Authenticity, bravery, persistence and zest are my other qualities. Team work, fairness of judgment are my other skills. As a whole, I have known that my biggest strengths are humanity, courage and transcendence. I have also known that I have to work on to Improve on my decision making skills increase level of emotional intelligence, enlarge my sphere of knowledge, develop my personality as a future leader.
Reference
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