The Essay On Personal Attributes' Influence On Leadership Development.

Using Self-Assessment and Diagnostic Tools

Question:

Discuss about the Personal Attributes Upon the Development of Leadership and Organizational Governance.

The personality traits are the key of developing professional skills and competencies among individuals. It is because the individual’s personality attributes has significant contribution in shaping and developing proper professional skills, thereby determining the career pathway. A lot of different personality attributes are needed to determine the career path in a professional journey Rego et al., (2012). Here in this assignment, the influence of personal attributes upon the development of leadership would be demonstrated. To understand own personality traits, self assessment is needed. For self-assessment, there are several diagnostic tools, which include some questionnaire, answering those questions, one can find out personality traits.

Analyzing and understanding the personality attributes is also important for identifying the potentiality of being a leader in professional field. Leaders are the people, who can shape other’s professional skills and leaders provide guidelines to the followers to improve their professional skills. The leadership qualities and competencies are developed on the basis of their personality attributes, i.e. the person’s own feelings and traits help in building up his or her leadership traits. Therefore, a good personality holder can become a good leader. Here, to test my own personality traits, I have selected two diagnostic tools, i.e. the big five personality test and the authentic leadership questionnaire. Both of these diagnostic tools attempt to analyze the personality traits through attempting some questions, which are based on some personality traits. Answering those questions help to find out some specific personality traits in the person attempting the test.

Factor 1- 63

Factor 2- 22

Factor 3- 62

Factor 4- 80

Factor 5- 11

ALQ test data:

Self awareness- 11

Internalized moral perspectives- 16

Balanced processing- 3

Relational transparency- 16

In the big five personality test, five factors are analyzed including “extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience”. On the other hand, in case of ALQ test, “internalized moral perspectives, self awareness, balanced processing and relational transparency” are assessed.

In case of big five personality trait, extroversion is is the personality trait of seeking execution from sources in community. High scorers are likely to be very social while low scorers favour to work alone. The next trait is agreeableness, which reflects a lot of people change their behaviour to suit others. High scorers are naturally polite people. Low scorers are likely to be ruder and disagree with others thought. The third personality trait is conscientiousness, high score indicates being honest and hardworking, follow the rules and systematic work; whereas low scores may cheat others. Next trait is neuroticism, which indicates how emotional the person is. The final trait is openness to experience, indicate seeking new experience and intellectual detection. High scores might day dream much, whereas, low scorers might be very down to earth (Rego et al., 2012).

In this test, I have scored 63, 62, 80, 22, 11 and in the above mentioned five personality factors. These results have been calculated in percentile, indicating that I have a moderately high score in extroversion, moderately high score in agreeableness, a significantly high score in conscientiousness, a low score in emotional stability or neuroticism and a very low score in imagination or openness to experience Avey et al., (2011). Therefore, from this personal trait analysis, I have identified that I am a social person, which is an important trait needed by a leader, to understand the social background. Next, I am friendly and optimistic, having the capability to agree with other’s thought, it would help me to include the right things from others opinion in an organizational decision. On the other hand, it has also been found that I am significantly careful and responsible person, leaders need to undertake responsibility of the followers in correct manner, which I can complete significantly. However, I found from the test that my emotional stability is poor, which is significantly required by a leader. For this the self-esteem and self confidence needed to be higher. Moreover, I have also poor capability of imagination. Leaders need to construct ideas for being used in business development; thus I need to improve this area of my professional and personal trait.

Analyzing Personality Traits with the Big Five Personality Test

From the ALQ test, I have scored “11 in self awareness, 16 in Internalized moral perspectives, 13 in Balanced processing and 16 in Relational transparency”. In this scale, the score between 16-20 is high and score below 15 is considered as low score. Thus, I revealed that I have significant capability of internalizing moral perspectives, that means my core values and morals are reflected through my work; whereas a low score of my self-awareness revealed that my self confidence and self-esteem are also low. I need to be more sure regarding my own capabilities to construct strong leadership. On the other hand, relational transparency score is high, indicating that I am good in relationship building and working with others, which is key characteristic of a leader. On the other hand, have also low score in balance processing, indicating that I am unable to control and work according to the external influences, which I need to strengthen.

In this context, during my own practice, 6 month before, I experienced an incident, when I faced conflicts between two of my colleagues; I attempted to mitigate their issues. They were unwilling to listen to each other’s decision regarding teamwork and I attempted to listen both of their problem and asked them to discuss about their conflict with other team members, however, while attempting to provide them guidance, I attempted to explain my personal experience to them for motivating them and I expressed my inappropriate expression, showing low emotional stability. This incident is evident through the low neuroticism score in big five personality test. Thus, I need to build on my emotional stability to be an efficient leader in future days. On the other hand, in the next experience, in my professional field, when I got influenced by one of my colleague with a wrong professional decision. Although a leader should have more self-confidence, which would not let others to manipulate to influence him towards a decision. However, I was influenced, due to lack of my self-confidence. Thus, I also need to develop on this section of my personality trait, i.e. need to be more confident regarding my values, perspectives and my own attributes; for being an efficient and potential leader in future.

Self confidence is individual’s personal judgement, ability or power, which is strengthens with experiences of having mastered particular activities (Tierney & Farmer, 2011). In other words, self confidence defines whether one can be able to complete a task, what he wishes to do or not. Self confidence is a key professional attribute for leaders, as leaders are responsible for shaping their followers’ professional attributes and strong self confidence makes a leader more efficient in achieving the targets, which he wants to accomplish by his team. Self confidence includes self esteem and self assurance along with the perception that one can make a difference, which is important for leaders to undertake actions at risky situation and accomplish high goals. Self-confidence is the primary basis from which leadership develops. Dinh and Lord (2012) attributed that “trying to teach leadership without first building confidence is like building a house on a foundation of sand”. Leadership is demonstrated as consisting the confidence for making decisions. Once a leader is afraid or shaky to make and execute a decision, all the communication, empowerment, motivation will not prove the required quality of a leader. It allows the leader to lead meetings with authority, to accept and open communication. Schafer (2013) attributed that greater employees observe a leader’s force of will; the more faith is build up towards the company and its mission. When a leader shows high self confidence, it becomes simpler to trust that leader and people want to work with leaders they trust. However, self confidence is crucial asset in comparison to skill, knowledge ad experience.

Assessing Leadership Trait with the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire

Building leadership visibility, influence and trust for the employees are crucial for successful leadership. In traditional way, leaders who had voice and point of view attracted b people were the successful leaders. Thus, visibility is the key way to influence followers, through which they becomes motivated towards their job roles. Crafting the plan, being intentional and consistent increases visibility, this leads to more than simple recognition and acts as fuel in the whole career. Spisak et al., (2014) claimed that exceptional leaders are seen, not just heard. One of the reasons behind leader’s failure nowadays is their busy schedule to be visible to their employees. Impressive and effective leaders always identify that the people in the organization makes the organization successful. One of the key ways to influence the followers is to be with them. In many cases, employees are faithful to the company due to their loyalty towards their leaders, who attempts to be one of them, by being visible to them at every step towards their organizational goal and success. Being seen doesn’t need to have an agenda - a friendly hello is sometimes all that is needed to represent the attribute of a successful leader.

On the other hand, credibility is another trait for leaders, which promote leaders to respect others, avoid manipulating or humiliating anyone publicly. These leaders know that respect is the key factor for acquiring loyalty and respect from the fellow employees. Credibility also makes people transparent with their performance and has no hidden agendas. Credible leaders are consistantly learning for expanding their knowledge and expertise. Credibility also improve their potency an understanding their field of expertise. Moreover, credibility improves the communication skills of the leader, which improves the interpersonal communication within the employees and the leader. Credible leaders are entirely responsible for their actions and decisions (Kouzes & Posner, 2011). Additionally, credible leaders accept their mistakes positively and attempt to amend accordingly for improving the weaknesses or mistakes in future. Credible leaders are fully responsible for their performance and decisions. They are supportive and care about people, which help to gain their reciprocal loyalty. Credible leaders admit that people are more engaged and committed when they are trusted by their leaders. Therefore, credibility is a significant attribute to make their followers loyal to them.

Regarding the personality traits of a leader, the trait theory of leadership can be demonstrated. It shows an early assumption, which depicts that why some people are good leaders and others are not. This theory often identifies behavioural characteristics that are common in leaders. This theory has been established upon the characteristics of both successful and unsuccessful leaders, which helps to predict the effectiveness of leadership. The list of traits identified by the theorist is compared to those of potential leaders for assessing their likelihood of success or failure. The common leadership traits identified in the theory are “Initiative, Tenacity, Flexibility, Energy, Creativity, Emotional intelligence, Confidence, Drive and motivation to succeed, Good cognitive skills and capable of using good judgement and decisions and Honesty and integrity” (Northouse, 2012). In this context, the above discussed leadership traits i.e. power/ confidence, influence/visibility and credibility have already been identified as the key leadership traits of a competent leader. For instance, the energy indicates the role of power, self confidence indicate the role of self esteem and assurance in leadership. On the other hand the role of credibility and visibility are also demonstrated as driving motivation, decision making and judgement skills.

From both the literatures and the theoretical background of leadership traits, it has been revealed that to be a successful and potential leader the self confidence and emotional stability are required as a crucial manner. Thus, I need to improve my emotional stability s well as self confidence for becoming an efficient leader in my near future career. It would help to build up credibility and flexibility towards the fellow employees, thereby providing the opportunity to build on loyal employees (Gardner & Laskin, 2011). However, several steps are needed to be undertaken for improving these leadership traits, which would specifically improve the professional career path.

Conclusion and Action plan

References

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