Self-Identity, Project Leadership, Career Path, Strengths And Development Needs Are Crucial For Personal Growth.

Self-identity

i) What is your self-identity? Introduce yourself in a few paragraphs – your strengths, passions, formative influences (eg family, school, previous work or volunteer work…), life goals etc.
ii) What is project leadership to you? What theories of leadership (eg transactional, situational, transformative, authentic, servant etc) guide your personal concept of it? What are the important skills? Are there any role models (in family, work or public life) that guide/inspire you? 
iii) Where do you see your career path heading in the near future (say 5 years). What sort of work, in what sort of firm(s)? How does this fit your life goals?
iv) What skills are required in your current job? Which do you most need to develop? (If not working, what do you think you will need for the next job?)
v) What is your leadership mission? An aspirational statement that you can identify with - why does leadership matter to you, why would you want to lead others?
vi) What will be your key work relationships? Do you need to develop important relationships with certain staff, managers, peers, clients etc? What sort of relationships should they be (“we meet regularly over coffee”)? No names!
vii) Review of strengths and development needs. What capabilities do you have now and what do you aspire to have as a leader in, say, 5 years? You can use Assignment 1, but also consider areas we have covered since then. The review could be a table. Consider four levels: 
Character: “I am an extrovert but would like to develop my reflective side..” “I am at good at control but would like to learn to be more dependent on others..” 
Experience: “ I have 5 years experience at this level / in this industry / in this unit / in Australia / in middle management / as section leader and in five years I would like to have more experience at ….”
Mindsets: “I am good at operational planning / working with people / marketing / crime analysis but would like to develop my mental framework for working people of other cultures / finance / working at executive level …”
Skills or capabilities: “I have good skills in … but would like to develop …”
Where possible, use and reference the textbook’s concepts of skills.
viii) Plan: What formal (eg., training programs) and informal opportunities (eg., mentoring, observing others, work experience, reflection) do you propose for your future development. This is the heart of the assignment.
As a guide, the Review and Plan should be approximately two-thirds of the essay.

Experts believe that leadership plays a crucial in the success of a business. Effective leadership also transforms potential into reality. The role of a leader not only witnessed by management of business process but it can also be evaluated through building good morale among the working personnel. Tourish (2013) describes that an organization needs effective leader for initiate action, motivate their subordinates, provide them guidance, building their morale, formulating an effective work environment and develop coordination among different team members and different department.

The prime objective of this assessment is to represent my self-identity to represent my strength and weakness. Furthermore, the concept of project leadership and leadership mission will also be discussed. All these factors help to utilise my skill in guiding my subordinates and developing interpersonal relationship with them. Moreover, I will also discuss my career path and key work relationship along with reviewing strengths and development needs in future so that my skill and competencies will improve.   In this way, I can come up as an effective leaders in my professional life.

Jost (2013) depicts that evaluating self-identity allows a person to estimate the general nature and characteristics of themselves along with their background details. These evaluations also help a person to identify the strength and weakness of their nature. In this context, I can say that I believe in hard work, loyalty and treating everyone with equality. This is because of my good and ethical upbringing by my parents in my initial days. I have joined boarding schools for completing my primary education and joined hostel for higher education. I have learned how to complete work and by maintaining discipline and motivation in the strict decorum of my boarding school and hostel. Moreover, after completing the higher secondary education, I opted for chemical engineering due to my interest towards Chemistry and Mathematics. Being a good and responsible student in my class, I always stood first in my class and got placement in Alchem International Ltd.

Since my school days, I have developed strong ethics of living that help me to enhance my leadership skills. Thus, as a part of my strength, I have the ability to communicate with diversified people and guide them properly in case they feel any difficulty. I represented my school house as a head and encourage my mates to take participation in different competition. Even in the professional field, I have joined the company as a team leader and I am also liable for developing business and resolving production and management issues. I can also witness my strengths in handling multiple job roles and responsibilities. As a professional, I handled production department of Alchem International Ltd., evaluated occupational and health issues and train my subordinates regarding work and safety policies. However, my future goal is to overcome my weakness so that I can come up as an effective person both in personal and professional stages. Throughout my life I came to learn that even though I am good in communicating with other people, but I can develop this skill further by learning new methods of communication in order to communicate with diverse people. Moreover, I should also learn to outperform under difficult situations. Another weakness is that in some situation I cannot stand up for my values and this makes me inefficient in terms of being a good leader. I can also say that I values for task-oriented and people-oriented aspect that I feel may confuse other regarding my leadership style. Thus, in future I desire to overcome all these negative aspects.

Project leadership

According to me project leadership is not only to have competence on project control but also to guide others regarding effective skills and approach so that the organization’s set goals and objectives can be fulfilled effectively. Swanson and Frederick (2016) also depicts that an effective project leader is liable to ensure motivation among the team members, emphasizes on team-building, takes risk and set attainable vision and goals. When it comes to me, I follow delegating leadership style but also admire transformational leadership style. My major concern is to make my team members competent enough so that they can utilize their exceptional talent in order to attain organizational objective and goals. In future, I want to incorporate transformational leadership skills in my nature so that I can motivate every team members in my group. After reviewing literature on leadership styles, I have come to learn that employees who have the confidence to implement decisions and skills to analyze situations, they can thrive to a better position under delegating leadership style. On the other hand, it is also true that some employees are uncomfortable with having leadership responsibility and in such situation, considering the transformational leadership style allow me to develop an effective interpersonal relationship with them also.

Explaining through my personal life experience, from school days to professional verve, I have proved my leadership skills in form of house leaders and team leader. Not only I can communicate with them well but also motivate them by understanding their needs and preferences. I can also say that my team enjoyed my company. Being a good leader, I am kind of a intimate, subjective and caring person and this is the reason my team members can share their personal matters with me.  I believe in giving respect to every other person and managing a good relationship with him or her. I further believe that this nature help me to motivate my subordinates intrinsically in order to attain desired roles and responsibility. Thus, it can be said that I prefer to adapt task-oriented style through valuing people and their preferences.  

I have proved myself and my leadership quality since my school days and now I desire to prosper more both in terms of leadership skills and in my designation in the organization. During the school and office, I intend to make everyone complete their work collaboratively without any hassle and conflict and this can be witnessed through Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument. I am presently serving the role of a project manager and can clearly articulate the responsibility to each team member. I am also very good in communication and develop strong interpersonal relationship with my subordinate. In the coming five years I desire to be a member of the administrative group where I can take some effective steps for the betterment of my present company. I desire to be in that position since I know every personnel of the organization very closely and it will be easier for me to suggest take business decision on which everyone can agree. Moreover, in the future I also want to represent my organization in different business occasions and ceremonies. In this way, I want to contribute my skills and competencies in attaining competitive advantage and effective workforce for my organization.

Career path

Attaining a position in administrative department allows me to become an inspiring, empowering, visionary, and emotionally intelligent person that I have identifies previously. Representing my company in front of others also help me to improve my competing nature. In this way, I can stand up for my rights and arguments that can bring success in my business decision power.

I am currently serving as a project manager and my responsibility is to plan and define scope of the project that my team is performing. I have to take the responsibility of planning and sequencing the available resources and develop schedule on utilizing those resource for effective outcome of the desired business plan. I also utilize my communication skills in communicating with my subordinates and this allows me to guesstimate the time and cost estimation for the project. Being a project manager, I am also liable for analyzing the risk related to the project and suggesting appropriate solution so that the adversity can be overcome. Apart from the risk analysis, I am also liable for performing scalability, interoperability and portability analysis so that the project can be accomplished effectively.  Lastly, being a leader and project manager, my role and responsibility also extend to quality checking process and benefits realization. In addition to that, I have to communicate with vendor and assess the most ethical vendor, whose working procedure aligns with the goals and objectives of my company.  

Some project needs much attention and needs to get processed in lesser time. Since, I cannot perform proactively in difficult situation, I sometimes face problem in taking the most effective yet optimized solution for the business. Moreover, even though I can communicate well with my subordinates, I face difficulty in communicating with other external stakeholders initially.  I intend to understand their basic nature first prior to establishing an effective interpersonal relationship but at the same time, I also realize that this process consumes much time. Therefore, I have to adapt other strategies like involves them in decision making process so that I can gain an overview of their competencies. In this way, I can fulfill my basic nature that is not to make any assumption as I can judge their ability more through decision making processes.

My leadership mission is to obtain consistency and encourage people to work collaboratively is the way results can be achieved more effectively. Moreover, I also desire to motivate others through my action so that people can value my suggestion. I also want to be an optimistic leader so that my subordinate can inspire to fulfill their desired job roles and responsibility. Moreover, my leadership mission is also to work with integrity and to treat everyone fair. I desire to be a good example informant of my team members and this is the reason I adapt delegation leadership style. I believe that every individual is capable fop something positive and if their competencies can be utilized properly, my team production and effectiveness can be enhanced to a significant level. Moreover, I aim for being as good decision maker under any circumstance so that I can direct my subordinate in case of any adverse or critical situation. I know that my subordinate will dependent on me in such situation and thus I have to over my fear of being decisive and make tough calls quickly when circumstances require.

Strengths and development needs

Nahavandi (2016) mentioned that positive relationship proves to be valuable in every aspect of life and through research, it is also found that people having good friends in workplace are likely to work more with their work. In my present job designation as a project manager, my key work relationships are with my senior managers, my entire team and project managers of other projects.

My relationship with my senior managers is very friendly and I keep them updated regarding my project and my team’s performance. However, another aspect of this relationship is that I also considered them as my mentor because they are the one who are capable to analyse our progress more meritoriously. The prime reason behind involving my seniors in my project’s progress as they are one who will analyse whether or not our efforts is valuable for the advancement of the organization. I also believe that regular contact and discussion regarding the project help me to make them understand that we are working hard and with our competency in order to fulfill the desired goal.  

In addition to that, I believe that effective relationship with the team members is the most crucial aspect of key work relationships. Throughout these years from my school to workplace, I have learned that every individual is different in terms of knowledge and preferences. Thus, I try to learn every single member of my team and organization so that I can provide them best possible ideas that can suitable for them and they can accomplish them effectively. I never pressurized anyone but try to give regular feedback so that my team members can assess themselves whether or not they are proceed in a correct direction. Being their leaders I also believe that accepting failure is also importance like celebrating accomplishments or achievements. Thus, if any employee underperforms or faces any difficulty I personally come forward to help them or discuss their adversity. I know that, if I adapted to be people centric leaders, my set organizational goals and objectives can be easily attained as happy employees intends to engage more with their work and workplace.

Lastly, in context of my relationship with other project managers signifies my desire to learn more about effective leadership skills that other leaders are following. Sometimes I planned some formal or informal outings with other project managers so that we can learn more about each other. These outings can be Friday movie, dinner party or a one-day trip so that we can share our working styles and assess each other’s contribution towards the organization collaboratively. One such incident that I remember is that due to my experience in workplace health and safety in my profession I have much knowledge concerning the safety measures. I was surprised to know that the rest of the managers are unaware of the fact and they consider that this knowledge in WHS should not be their concern. I then make them realize that we all have responsibility towards our team’s safety so that health adversity can be avoided and the progress of the project cannot be hampered. I have had communicated with them politely and suggest them some effective measures through which they can assure the safety of their subordinates. Moreover, I also want to say that I am very much concerned towards the conflict avoidance and thus, I always behave with generosity with any other person inside or outside the workplace.  

The leadership plan that I have developed will enhance my personal as well professional skills that will help me to develop in my future. I have assessed all of my experiences throughout from my school life to professional life. I have come to know that people and subordinates are influenced by me and share all their concern without any hesitation. Since my school life, I have developed my communication skills with diverse people; represent myself as a leader as a schoolhouse captain, team leader in office effectively. The leadership style that I usually follow is delegating leadership style but I also desire to adapt transformational leadership style. The plan that I developed also allow me to progress and prosper in my future. I have assessed my strengths but there is scope of progress in every aspect that will not only help me to guide my subordinates but also help them to enhance their knowledge and skills for better business outcome.

Reference List

Jost, P-J. (2013). An economic theory of leadership styles. Review of Managerial Science, 7, 365-391. doi: 10.1007/sl1846-012-0081-1

Nahavandi, A. (2016). The Art and Science of Leadership -Global Edition. Pearson.

Swanson, D. L., & Frederick, W. C. (2016). Denial and leadership in business ethics education. Business ethics: New challenges for business schools and corporate leaders, 222-240.

Tourish, D. (2013). The dark side of transformational leadership: A critical perspective. Development and Learning in Organizations, 28(1).