Currently I am the Field Officer in my organization. My professional allocation depends heavily on human resources. In other words, the office deals most with people and who go to the field away from the organization’s offices. Managing people is not an easy task. Therefore, there are three major aspects of leadership and management that my office relies on. They include team building, planning and monitoring.
According to Raftery (2015), any organization gets to succeed only in a case where it has, at its disposal, teams which can deliver performance. The different departments within an organization need commitment and also the work that they deliver need to be well-organized. In other words, the people that management employs have to be those that are dedicated so as to enable the organization to achieve its goals and within the right time. Therefore, the key aspect of leadership in this case is to build a strong team of workers by keeping them focused. It is the managers’ responsibility to give the team members the required resources as well as the motivation. According to Raftery (2015), it is important that every time a manager is heading a team, then he becomes a leader. A leader, according to the scholar, sees such a team as not only employees and therefore subjects of the organization but also as co-workers and fellow human beings that require constant motivation.
Your leadership profile
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Question 1
a) Leadership and management aspects
Currently I am the Field Officer in my organization. My professional allocation depends heavily on human resources. In other words, the office deals most with people and who go to the field away from the organization’s offices. Managing people is not an easy task. Therefore, there are three major aspects of leadership and management that my office relies on. They include team building, planning and monitoring.
Team building
According to Raftery (2015), any organization gets to succeed only in a case where it has, at its disposal, teams which can deliver performance. The different departments within an organization need commitment and also the work that they deliver need to be well-organized. In other words, the people that management employs have to be those that are dedicated so as to enable the organization to achieve its goals and within the right time. Therefore, the key aspect of leadership in this case is to build a strong team of workers by keeping them focused. It is the managers’ responsibility to give the team members the required resources as well as the motivation. According to Raftery (2015), it is important that every time a manager is heading a team, then he becomes a leader. A leader, according to the scholar, sees such a team as not only employees and therefore subjects of the organization but also as co-workers and fellow human beings that require constant motivation.
Managers who have realized the importance of team building are dedicated to it. They constantly talk to their team members and reward them whenever they perform well.
Planning
Any manager who does not plan eventually fails. The Fields Office demands adequate planning in advance. Planning has become any management process’ prior step. According to Raftery (2015), planning comes as a leading step after decisions regarding business goals. The steps taken must not mislead because that can bring disaster. Planning is therefore significant. Good management starts with analyzing exact goals which an organization aims at achieving. It is extremely necessary that managers utilize the organization’s resources optimally. This can only be realized if there is proper planning in the organization.
Monitoring
If my Fields Office is to realize its objectives, then close monitoring must be ensured. It is routinely done in management. As a manager, I am expected to closely survey the company, every department as well as the individuals. This is important in achieving good results. Monitoring departments does not only include monitoring their progress, but also giving them praise incase they perform to the satisfaction of the organization.
b) My Leadership Experiences
Our Fields Office is new and I am its first head. The other employees had no experience in what the organization demands from our office since I am the only one who had been trained on the same. Therefore, it obviously became my role to mentor the staff in my office. This gave me a very unique experience since I realized that people do not listen to instructions because they believe in them, they listen only when they believe in the instructor. I realized ,therefore, that I had to make my employees believe in me failure to which they will not be effective. From that I learnt that even the most loyal employees have human instincts. They all require constant motivation and pushing so that they can perform.
The same office came with another experience of overseeing a budget. Since the office was new, nobody was going to prepare a budget for us. At first, I thought preparing a budget was easy, but after some time in the office, the office kept running into cost-overruns. Consequently, I was forced to abandon activities from time to time. The general manager called and asked me to always dedicate 90% of my time to planning. Since then, I realized that as a leader one needs to plan. A good plan is what makes a project feasible.
Question 2
Strengths and Rules in Leadership
According to Welch & Byrne (2003), one of the key strengths of leadership that have worked for our organization is that a leader must be capable of getting right people to perform the right tasks because that is important more than building a strategy. The second strength is that with a good leader, business also has to be fun and enjoyable. A good leader must celebrate success and energize the organization. These strengths should be considered alongside essential Jack Welch’s eight rules of leadership (Welch & Byrne (2003). The rules state that:
1. Leaders should upgrade relentlessly their team and use each encounter as opportunity of evaluating, coaching and building self-confidence.
2. Leaders should ensure that employees do not only see vision, they should also live as well as breathe it.
3. Leaders should get into employee’s skin and exude positive energy as well as optimism.
4. Leaders should create trust with candor and transparency as well as credit.
5. Leaders should have courage of taking unpopular decisions as well as gut calls.
6. Leaders should probe as well as push having curiosity which borders on skepticism. They should ensure their questions get replied with action.
7. Leaders should inspire the habit of risk taking as well as learn through setting examples.
8. Leaders need to celebrate.
Question 3
The strengths and experiences are useful in building emotional intelligence not only for the manager but also for the employees. Emotional intelligence can be described as the mental ability to judge emotions and actions of others so that one may guide his actions and thoughts (Mihelič, Lipičnik & Tekavčič, 2010). These leadership experiences and strengths have helped especially in reducing the number of mistakes and in dealing with other employees. The Fields Office has become the best department in prioritization and time management. The organization has realized that to be an effective leader, one has to know how to build a good team. All the above have become possible because over time I have studied other employees and taken responsibility for my mistakes. There is nothing that builds emotional intelligence more than that.
Question 4
a) Skills that Require Improving
Leadership styles are mastered on four major traits of the DiSC Profile. They include dominance, inducement and submission as well as compliance.
Dominance
The first step is for a leader to check whether other employees or people in general depend on him for solutions to the problems affecting them. In other words, the leader should confirm if the people look up to him. This helps a leader in sharpening his problem solving skills knowing so many people depend on such skills.
Inducement
Inducing is the same as inspiring or enticing. Before one aspires to be a leader they need to inspire. Therefore, as a leader, it is good to try motivating others and getting them to perform. Motivating others is a skill and every leader must learn how to master it.
Submission
Effective leaders must first of all master how to recognize and appreciate not just others in authority but also the people that they lead. The only way a leader can to get into the followers heart and win their respect is by recognizing, praising and telling them that they also matter in that organization. Once any leader masters this, all will be well.
Compliance
One cannot be a better leader by ruling outside the law. Many managers do not realize that compliance is a behavior that must be mastered. Most people are always caught on the wrong side of the law. Once the employees realize a leader is not compliant, they lose faith in him. This is like honesty and no one can underestimate the value of honesty. Therefore, once a leader masters how to be honest, he becomes a better leader.
One of the skills that I still need to develop is inspiring and motivating others. The plan of developing this skill involves attending more leadership workshops and trainings. It requires learning more communications skills and the art of planning. I will measure it by taking account of the number of employees I convince to undertake my projects and how happy they appear. The other skill is planning. It can be learnt by attending workshops and trainings. One can also learn it through talking to more experienced leaders. I will measure it by taking record of how many of my projects get completed in time and yield the expected results. Honesty and integrity is also a skill of leadership that requires improvement all the time. I cannot confirm that I am even 90% honest. Therefore, it is something I hope to build on and improve everyday. This can be measured by self-evaluating oneself and determining the number of occasions they have been truthful with others against those they have not.
References
Mihelič, K. K., Lipičnik, B., & Tekavčič, M. (January 01, 2010). Ethical leadership.
International Journal of Management & Information Systems, 14, 5, 31-41.
Raftery, C. (March 01, 2015). Leadership. The Journal for Nurse Practitioners, 11, 3, 366.
Welch, J., & Byrne, J. A. (2003). Jack: Straight from the Gut. Boston: Grand Central Publishing.
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- Citation du texte
- Boniface Okoth (Auteur), 2019, Your leadership profile, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/509061