CSCE101 Leadership Development

Introduction to leadership

Leadership is a critical aspect that has an important role to play towards the success of any organization. It is the organizational leaders that can make or break the organization. Every individual has certain leaders that impact them in their personal or professional lives. Leadership has always been very important to me personally. Since school days, I have been actively seeking leadership roles and they have largely helped me in shaping my career today. I was the captain of my school’s football team for a span of two years. At present, I lead a team of four people in my workplace. My leadership roles have helped me gain a deeper insight about my leadership abilities. Throughout this course, there have been several leaders who have guided me and been a mentor.

Importance of leadership

Leaders of any business are bestowed upon with the responsibility to guide team members, ensure they are motivated to work hard and offer clarity of goals as and when required. A team’s leader is that go to person that individuals can reach out to in case of any issues or grievances. Leaders are also responsible for ensuring a positive work culture and long term employee retention within the organization. On a personal level too, leaders motivate, inspire and guide their followers towards the correct path. At the end of it all, the accountability of accomplishment of organizational goals remains with the team’s leader.

Stage 1: Observation and research

The chosen leader for this task is my role model, guide, friend and mentor. He is heading the business development department at Amazon Inc. I had the opportunity to be associated with him while I was interning with the firm as a part of my college curriculum. He has been working with Amazon since the last fourteen years which goes to show his dedication and loyalty towards the organization. Every leader has a different style of working (Fairhurst & Connaughton, 2014).

Being a head of the business development team, he has excellent communication skills. Through my various conversations with him, I have understood the importance of being good at communications. This skill helps him put his point of view in a calm, composed and accurate manner. As a leader, these communication skills help in motivating his team member.

In this course, we learnt about charismatic leadership. This refers to the leadership that is attained by the virtue of one’s individual personality and charisma (Barnes et. al., 2016). He is the perfect example of such a leadership. His personality is extremely strong and yet comfortably calm. He makes people feel comfortable around his presence. Yet, his demeanour and aura deserves respect. The second essential attribute of his personality is his effective relationship building skills. There are a lot of clients who have been associated with our firm solely because of him. He continues to establish and maintain excellent relationships with all his clients and prospects. He goes an extra step and puts additional efforts in getting to know his clients better. He encourages us also to wish clients on their birthdays and try to establish a personal connect with them. He has taught be the importance of relationship building by making me understand that clients do not associate with brands, they associate with people. Therefore it becomes the responsibility of the client manager to ensure complete satisfaction of the client by delivering excellence.

His leadership style is democratic and participative in nature. He encourages all team members including new interns to actively participate in team discussions and share their opinions. This has made us confident enough to present our views. Most importantly, he is trusted, not only by his team members but also the senior management of the organization. His team consistently over-achieves the given target and even the employee retention rate for his team is very high. This is solely because he creates a positive working culture and atmosphere around him which motivates employees to give their best.

As a leader, he is very flexible about his working style. He allows people to work as per their convenience. As a leader of the sales team, he leaves complete discretion to his team members regarding the clients they approach or how they wish to target them. This allows people the freedom to work and hence derives their best performance.

He has personally been the leader that I look up to in the entire organization. He is a source of motivation and inspiration. I have learnt a lot from him. He was the first leader who asked me cultivate a habit of reading books. He explained the impact that reading has on one’s life. It widens horizons and allows people to look at things from various different perspectives.

Last but not the least, his decision making ability adds the cherry on the cake. There are various times when his sales team’s members are stuck in awkward situations with clients specifically during negotiations. His team can reach out to him and simply trust his decision. He takes quick decisions and finds a way to tackle different kinds of clients. Even during team discussions, he has demonstrated his ability to take strong and clever decisions that have eventually led to better performance of the team. He is not just a head of the sales team but rather he is the backbone of that team. His active involvement, complete awareness and sense of taking responsibility makes him an excellent leader for his team members.

Leaders use power and influence in order to create a following. Every leader might have a different power or a different sense of influencing others (Genovese, 2015). Yukl emphasized on eleven different influence tactics. My leader influences through collaboration and consultation. He encourages people to suggest ideas and recommend proposals and is always willing to provide assistance. He is leading the sales department by the virtue of his official designation in the organization. His senior designation embodies him with responsibilities as well as authority over his team members. In order to influence and motivate team members, his strong personality and flamboyance does the trick. His ability to inspire people through his actions is one of his most efficient leadership traits.

Stage 2: Leadership development plan

Self-reflection

Through this course I also had the opportunity to reflect upon my own leadership abilities. Leadership has always been an important part of my life. I have been the class leader in my school several times. I was also the captain of the school’s football team for a span of two years. Currently, I am leading a team of four people at Amazon. Each of my leadership experiences have taught me something and each new experience has been a source of learning for me.

After a close encounter with my role model, I have also been able to clearly identify certain aspects of my personality that I need to change. The first one on the list is my communication skills. Though my communication skills are not poor but I believe that there is a lot of room for improvement. That needs to be improved through reading and practicing. I somehow do not feel very confident while approaching a new client. I find myself very nervous. Being a part of the sales team, I surely need to work upon this attribute because as a leader, there would be my team mates who would look up to me for effective sales performance. After seeking guidance from my leader, I realized that I need to focus on enhancing my product knowledge. This in turn would give me the confidence to present our products to new people as well. Product knowledge is one of the most important aspects of effective sales management (Ingram et. al., 2015).

The second thing that I need to improve upon is the level of patience and persistence that it takes to be a good leader. I often find myself losing patience and it adversely impacts my decision making ability as well. It is imperative that a the demeanour of a leader is calm and composed rather than panicking. Decision making still continues to be an essential aspect of leadership (Shapiro & Stefkovich, 2016). Therefore in order to be an efficient leader I need to work upon my decision making skills.

I also identified my strengths and I would surely utilize them better in order to ensure the efficacy of my leadership. As a leader, my team mates trust me and they believe they can rely on me. This stems from my honesty and my ability to accept my flaws and work upon them. This attitude also makes my team members feel that they can accept their weaknesses and receive the support of the entire team in order to overcome the same. Secondly, I believe in openness and transparency of communication. This creates a positive working culture in the team and people work with mutual trust and coordination.

As guided by my leader, I have started reading books and have even included the same in my leadership development plan. I try to seek feedback from my team members, colleagues and seniors so that I can gain a deeper insight about my leadership abilities. While captaining the football team, I had an experience wherein the entire team was underperforming and the players were not even fit enough to play. Upon some reflection, I identified that I was not able to lead by example. I reached to practice late and this lack of discipline instilled the same in other team members as well. Through that experience, I learnt that no matter which organization I work in, I need to lead by example. Therefore as a leader, I continue to perform ground work, go on meetings, do cold calls and fix meetings with clients. This is because I find it essential that team members must understand the sales process by example and do the same.

Diagnostic tools

In order to reflect upon my leadership further, I took help from three diagnostic tools that were able to judge me on the basis of confidence, team work and emotional intelligence. The confidence test depicted that I slightly under-confident. My score was 45. Through the test, I realized that I tend to be more confident once I am acquainted with people but I often get nervous around people that I don’t know. Being in a sales and business development job, it is essential for me to overcome this fear and raise my level of confidence.

The second test was that for team development and I scored a perfect 15 on 15 in that. This was also one of the most positive feedbacks I have ever received that I always put the team first. I believe a lot of this attitude comes from my inclination towards sports. However, this attitude helps me manage my team effectively and I try to instil the same in the rest of my team members as well. Team management and ensuring effective team coordination are essential attributes of being a successful leader (Storey, 2016).

The last tool helped me understand the level of my emotional intelligence. This reflects to how intelligently and efficiently can people handle their emotions (Sherry, 2018). The test judges on the basis of self awareness, self management, relationship building and social awareness. I scored a high score in relationship building and self awareness. However, I can work upon my score of self management. This goes on to depict that my emotions are not always under control and can often take a toll on my decisions. This is something I would surely work upon. All the three tests have helped me understand my leadership abilities better. I also tried to identify my strengths and weaknesses through self reflection. Based on the analysis from the same, a leadership development plan has been formulated. I hope to effectively apply this plan and improve my leadership abilities.

Leadership development plan

After immense self-reflection, I have identified two key areas wherein I need to improve. The first one being my level of confidence specifically towards strangers and the second one being the inability to control my emotions and ensure effective decision making. The development plan to improve upon the same is as below:

GOAL	Strengths/Weaknesses	ACTIVITY	TIMEFRAME	MEASUREMENT
Goal # 1	Improve self-management and control over emotions	Attend workshops for self management. Read books on self management   Resort to Yoga or meditation   Seek therapy	6 months   one book in two weeks   Four times a week.   After three months	Indicator#1: Improved control over emotions.   Indicator#2: Ability to take decisions in the face of conflicts or strong emotions.
Goal # 2	Improve communication and confidence	Consciously make efforts to communicate with new people.   Read books on communication   Participate in communication workshops.   Prepare well for every meeting.	2 months         One book in one week   Once in three months.   Every meeting.	Indicator#1: Increased sales and number of client visits   Indicator#2: Increased sense of confidence and no feeling of nervousness. Indicator#3: Improved client relationships.

Stage 3: Feedback

This course helped me seek feedback from my role model as well as other colleagues and team members. The leadership development plan above was a draft which was changed after considerable feedback from my leader. I was told that the time lines are really short and they need to be more realistic so I did the same. Secondly, I was told to add reading books and I did the same.

Through these feedbacks I have been able to understand my leadership style better. I am a participative leader. A participative and democratic leader believes in team work rather than delegating orders to team members (Iqbal et. al., 2015). I wish to take cues from all the feedback that I have received and improve upon my leadership style. The checklist from the leader is attached in the appendices. A critical feedback plays a significant role in the life of any individual (Hodge, 2015). I am grateful to my leader for being open and transparent regarding the same.

Conclusion

Leadership is a critical part of individuals, organizations and societies at large. Effective leadership plays an important role towards accomplishment of organizational goals. A leader is bestowed upon with several responsibilities. This includes guiding the team, mentoring them and ensuring a positive team culture. Motivation of team members is also the responsibility of the team leader (Brassfeild, 2015).

This course has enabled me a gauge my strengths and weakness as well as truly understand the meaning of effective leadership by observing my role model and gaining their feedback. I need to work upon my level of confidence and ability to control my emotions while taking critical decisions. I lead a team of four people currently. I have long term plans in the organization and I hope that my efforts to improve my leadership will take me to the next rung in the ladder of success.

References

Barnes, C.M., Guarana, C.L., Nauman, S. and Kong, D.T., 2016. Too tired to inspire or be inspired: Sleep deprivation and charismatic leadership. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101(8), p.1191.

Brasfield, D.A., 2015. The effects of leadership traits in change management on operational excellence (Doctoral dissertation, Capella University). United States.

Fairhurst, G.T. and Connaughton, S.L., 2014. Leadership: A communicative perspective. Leadership, 10(1), pp.7-35.

Genovese, M.A., 2015. The Future of Leadership: Leveraging Influence in an Age of Hyper-Change. Routledge. United Kingdom.

Hodge, M.E., 2015. Performance feedback in organizations (Doctoral dissertation, uga). Pp.85-86. United States.

Ingram, T.N., LaForge, R.W., Williams, M.R. and Schwepker Jr, C.H., 2015. Sales management: Analysis and decision making. Routledge. United Kingdom

Iqbal, N., Anwar, S. and Haider, N., 2015. Effect of leadership style on employee performance. Arabian Journal of Business and Management Review, 5(5), pp.1-6.

Shapiro, J.P. and Stefkovich, J.A., 2016. Ethical leadership and decision making in education: Applying theoretical perspectives to complex dilemmas. Routledge. United Kingdom.

Sherry, M., 2018. Effect of Emotional Intelligence on Job Performance. Journal for Studies in Management and Planning, 4(4), pp.105-113.

Storey, J., 2016. Changing theories of leadership and leadership development. In Leadership in Organizations (pp. 33-58). Routledge. United Kingdom