Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Leadership Abilities and Assessment
As an art of influencing people, leadership is dynamic and its styles change from person to person. The diversity is because personal leadership abilities are unique to each and every individual in an organization. Therefore, leadership in an organizational context creates a platform for exploring personal potential opportunities. As people develop leadership skills, they facilitate the development of an organization through appreciation and leading of change towards better human relations. To understand how personal leadership abilities influence the organizational context, this paper seeks to understand strengths and weaknesses in personal leadership positions. With this understanding, this paper will explore how I can alter my leadership style as a way of becoming a better leader.
One of the most valuable abilities in leadership is transformational skills that propels an individual to turn transform an organization for the better. The strength of a person’s leadership abilities is exhibited by the results or changes that he or she leads in an organization. This is because the organization depends on the personal abilities that a leader has to transform or change its fortunes. According to Collins (2001), Darwin Smith was able to transform Kimberly-Clark from a lowly performing paper company into a leading multinational that surpassed all the expectations of many business analysts. This presents me with a perfect example to follow and embrace skills that develops my leadership skills into those of a transformational leader.
Adoption of transformational leadership is a potential opportunity that I have in regard to the organizational context of introducing and leading change. However, it is one of the weaknesses that I have to tackle in order to achieve the standards of a better leader who can transform an organization. This weakness exhibited in the organizational setting through the reluctance of accepting and appreciating change in the organization. Through the acknowledgement and the understanding of this personal weakness, I will be able to learn advanced leadership skills that form a transformational leader. Such learning is possible through the use of my strength in learning and appreciating new knowledge and skills.
As a transformational leader, I will be able to make significant changes in the organization that transforms it to better performance. This is possible through the use of leadership and managerial skills to understand the status of the organization and determine the necessary changes in its capital and human resources structures. Smith, for instance, understood the status of Kimberly-Clark and decided to change its resources by selling some of its mills and focus on the consumer business (Collins, 2001). Through such decisions and changes, Smith was able to turn around Kimberly-Clark and create a twenty year leadership legacy of the twentieth century. Adoption of organizational changes is a skill that is important for my transformational influence and leadership in an organizational context.
With strength in planning and setting of goals, I believe I can develop the skills needed to lead transformation and change in my organizational context. To be a transformational leader and lead change in my organizational setting, I will need to utilize my strength in setting goals and develop it by learning how to set strategic goals. According to Rooke and Torbert (2005), a transformational leader should be an achiever and have certain extent of expertise to the organization. According to his seven transformations of leadership, George asserts that an achiever like Smith above makes strategic goals and promotes teamwork towards achievement of the pre-determined goals (Rooke & Torbert, 2005). This teaches me that I should have excellent planning skills that are necessary for an organization.
To be an effective leader in the changing organization management environments, it is necessary that I should possess excellent planning skills. Through learning, which is my strength, I will be able to learn strategic planning skills to add into my goal setting expertise. According to Rooke and Torbert (2005), an achiever leader should be not only possess the planning skills, but also be able to combine the managerial duties and plan to achieve the goals by responding to market demands. This way, a leader will be able to understand the dynamics of the market and strategically align the goals of the organization with the needs in the market. To achieve this level of leadership expertise, I will have to learn more by incorporating the skills that have been tried and tested by the best leaders in the past.
Another of my strengths is conflict resolution and management within groups, teams and individuals in an organization. This is evident in the groups that I have led in the organizational setting. Through the use of leadership skills, it would be important to managing the conflicts that come along in an organization, especially with employees (Bennis & Thomas, 2002). In an organization, changes that are associated with transformational leadership are resisted by individuals who may be tempted to maintain the status quo. Therefore, the adoption of transformational leadership like those experienced by Kimberly-Clark above causes minor or major conflicts that require the leader to be good at solving them.
By solving such conflicts, I would set a stable and a peaceful organizational environment that promotes the processes of change to take place. According to Nahavandi (2014), dealing with change, whether planned or unplanned is a process that is faced with internal and external forces that requires managerial competence to suppress the conflicts. For instance, change presents new processes and functionalities that interfere with the current organizational culture (Nahavandi, 2014). With culture being an element of an organization that is challenging to transform, conflicts may arise and requires personal abilities of a transformational leader to lead the change. This calls for use of creativity and improvisation that presents new ways that an organization faces and manages change. Therefore, I will embrace such changes by using the personal abilities of dealing with conflicts in case of such eventualities in the transformation process.
However, one of the weaknesses that may inhibit my development into a transformational leader is lack of experience in management and top leadership positions. As a new leader in management, I may not have personal experience in dealing with people, among them experts and professionals in the organization who tend to think they are right. This is because most individuals and groups in an organization expect to be led by a manager with higher credentials and experience that them. To solve this weakness, I will use my learning to acquire advanced knowledge in transformational leadership. In addition, I will apply my strength in team leadership to appropriately delegate some of the duties that require experience to appropriate experts.
To become a better leader, I will have to alter my conservative leadership style to embrace transformational styles by embracing change and transformation in an organization. To deliver excellent results like Smith at Kimberly-Clark, I will alter my style to accommodate change by embracing the benefits and processes that come along with change in an organization. I will need to use my learning skills to understand the need for change in transformational leadership. In addition, I will use my conflict management knowledge to gain the skills needed in handling with such conflicts.
Moreover, becoming a better leader will require me to alter my leadership style of managing issues at a personal level and embrace teamwork in all the stages of management. This will help to solve the weakness of having lesser experience in management by allowing me to engage more experienced individuals into management and team leadership positions. According to Bennis and Thomas (2002), this will promote participative management as a way of shaping the workplace cohesion. Therefore, I will be certain of establishing teams that are self-sustaining and that combine experience with expertise. I can a make this possible by making teams liberal through appropriate delegation of duties.
Improvement of personal leadership abilities is necessary to develop an individual into a better leader in an organizational context. Due to the importance of personal skills and abilities in leading organizations, I will use my strengths in management and leadership to alter the weaknesses and improve on my leadership style. Therefore, through appropriate alterations, I will become a better leader by adopting transformational leadership. Additionally, I will use my strength in learning to gain advanced skills in change management and application of strategic planning and setting of the goals for the organization. To be a better leader, I will incorporate the skills of team leadership and conflict management to manage change and promote transformation. This will allow me to lead an organization towards achieving its goals and align them with the needs of the market environment.
References
Bennis, W. G., & Thomas, J. R. (2002). Crucibles of Leadership. Harvard Business Review Press. Boston, Massachusetts, 978 (1) 4221-5797-8
Collins, J. (2001). Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve. Harvard Business Review Press. Boston, Massachusetts, 978 (1) 4221-5797-8
Nahavandi, A. (2014). The Art and Science of Leadership, Seventh Edition. Upper Saddle River, New York: Pearson Prentice Hall
Rooke, D., & Torbert, W. R. (2005). Crucibles of Leadership. Harvard Business Review Press. Boston, Massachusetts, 978 (1) 4221-5797-8