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The Leadership Challenge: The Five Practices and Ten Commitments of Exemplary Leadership
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There are several ways to define leadership, but what sets effective leaders apart from commonplace managers are their extraordinary actions and the successes that result. In The Leadership Challenge, James Kouzes and Barry Posner claim leaders that employ The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership are much more effective than those who do not (2012, p. 25). This paper will be reviewing my assessment findings, exploring my strengths and weaknesses, examining my personal-best leadership story, and detailing a specific area of development.
Model and enable were two words commonly found in the Leadership Practices Inventory: LPI® (Kouzes & Posner, 2013) to describe my strengths as a leader. Follows through on commitments, develops relationships
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I feel that doing what you say you will, and treating others as you want to be treated are principles that should not only be looked at as great strengths but as internal values that convey credibility. When people trust you and know they can come to you without judgment, it offers them a sense of security and peace.
Whereas, inspire and challenge were on my least frequent. Describes a compelling image of the future, shows others how long-term interests can be realized by enlisting in a common vision, and takes risks even though there is a chance of failure scored the lowest (Kouzes & Posner, Leadership Practices Inventory: LPI®, 2013).
Again, these findings were not shocking to me as they align with my feelings of self-doubt and fear. As I stated in my personal statement when applying for the MAOL program, “I sometimes allow fear to get in the way of trying something” (Wegerer, 2015). These limitations are only bad when they stop you from moving forward. It’s about working through them and taking steps towards gaining the confidence required to shake off the feelings of incompetence and charge ahead with the
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A Scholar, as defined by the IES, are people that tend to be interested in learning more about other cultures, rather than cultivating relationships. They also seem to be resilient when confronted with challenging situations (The Kozai Group, Inc., 2009).
The results of the IES confirm my limitation of fearing the unknown (or another culture), in addition to my strength of perseverance as outlined in my personal statement. An example of my weakness is traveling abroad. Although, I thoroughly enjoy learning about other cultures, and do not pass judgment on them, I do not have any desire to travel out of the country to experience firsthand how others live. Conversely, my strength of perseverance is shown in my ability to handle stress well when interacting with people from other cultures. The outcomes of the two assessments along with my own self-awareness give me plenty to think about. How can I better use my strengths to become a more effective leader, and what can I do to ensure that I am working on my shortcomings to continue
According to Grossman and Valiga’s Leadership Characteristics and Skills Assessment, the interpretation of scores for perception of what makes a good leader gave me the following results: good perception of a good leader and the scores for perception of your own ability to lead resulted in low perceived leadership ability for myself (Grossman and Valiga, 2013). With these results, I have concluded that I have low confidence in my leadership skills and ability. This would be an area of improvement needing work on my part. Part of being a good leader is being confident in one’s abilities and skills. Who would want to follow a leader who has n...
The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner (2007) is the result of twenty years of research on the factors that influence and create great leadership. Through studies and stories from leaders with various backgrounds throughout the world, the practices and characteristics that create great leadership are delineated. Leadership is viewed not as a group of inherent characteristics, but as learned behavior that anyone can achieve. The goal of Kouzes and Posner’s book is to inspire and educate leaders through transformational leadership. As such, leadership is about mobilizing others to become and do extraordinary things.
Leadership Practice Inventory (LPI) is an assessment on leadership behaviors and activities. During the analysis, it covers five behaviors; challenging the process, inspiring a shared vision, enabling others to act, modeling the way, encouraging the heart. I first conducted the LPI assessment on myself, to analyze my own leadership strength and weakness. If on the LPI behavior I scored high then I am doing well, if I scored low then I need more practice. The outcome of the LPI for the behavior of challenging the process I scored low. Then on inspiring a shared vision, I scored high. On enabling others to act I scored high. Modeling the way I scored low and encouraging the heart, I scored high. Therefore my strengths of leadership are inspiring a shared vision and encouraging the heart. My weaknesses are challenging the process and modeling the way; however for my enabling other to act I was moderate.
For me to be an effective leader, I must first evaluate my strengths. I took the Gallup 2.0 Strength Finder report which showed my strengths in an insight and action planning guide. The results indicated the top five themes for me were input, learner, responsibility, maximizer and arranger. I believe the evaluation offered an accurate assessment of my strengths. The input theme states my mind is like a sponge, soaking up information. As a lifelong learner, the second theme is also, correct. I have a quest for knowledge about things that interest me. I am responsible, in my job and life. As a maximizer, I focus on long term goals and strive toward excellence. As a nurse, working in an environment of change, the arranger strength in my personality allows me to adapt easily and figure out the best way to accomplish tasks (Strengths, 2012).
The first assessment I completed was very eye opening for me as a leader. As expected, my score for the overall potential of my leadership was on the higher end of the scale because of my background and amount of experience I have in leadership positions. This assessment portrayed a very accurate depiction of my overall leadership potential because I have always placed emphasis on being very good at what I do while working hard to not follow a path that did not work the first time.
In developing this idea of what leadership is, I examined what was most important to me in being a leader. Since leadership is such a broad term, this could not be a process whereby I could generalize leadership for everyone. Rather, the task is to determine who I am as a leader. I asked myself, what is it that shapes the vision? What are the factors that comprise a leader, and what makes these things add up to create something larger than ourselves as leaders? Thoughtful reflections on these things lead me to generate the following definition of leadership: Leadership is about more than simply having followers; it is not a title, and it is not achieved by just following a few principles. Leadership is complex, though at its core, it is having the courage to make the right choices – not just the popular ones, engaging others in a vision, and empowering followers to pursue a shared purpose of achieving a positive, lasting impact.
Some leaders have to develop major skills like “time management, prioritization, strategic thinking, decision-making, and getting up to speed with the job—to be more effective at work” (Mitchell). For many leaders developing this skill is very hard and will face many obstacles. A leader has to also have the skill and talent to be able to inspire others which is never an easy thing to do especially when the have to inspire others and guarantee they are happy with what they are doing and in the process motivated them to work smarter. In team leadership a leader has to be able to take the task of helping other and give them guidance around the
I honestly thought I would do better in this area of leadership natures. Even though I scored above average, it is helpful to identify some areas needing improvement. First, it is sometimes difficult for me to not get credit for some of the good things I do. Even though I succeed at this some, I also have to admit that I enjoy the “pat on the back” for a job well done. Secondly, I struggle at times with being available to others. I am a very structured person so I general have my calendar thoroughly planned out. When there are disruptions in what I have planned, it is sometimes hard for me to drop what I am doing to help someone. I have always loved helping people, but I like to plan it. I know there are things in life that people need help with that just cannot be planned. I must be flexible. Another opportunity for growth is taking myself “too seriously.” Although I am not sure I understand exactly what this means, I am usually always serious. I stay focused and try to cherish every moment of time. In order to serve people, I have to force myself to not be so serious all the time and just be more relational with
In addition, an effective leader is always confident and creates shared sense of purpose. Basically, leadership is an attempt that influences and motivates constituents; however, how can an individual assess whether they influence others in a positive way? To help individuals in assessing their leadership competencies, several methods/tools have been developed by scholars; I used Leadership Competences Scorecard Inventory (LCSI) to discover my leadership capabilities.
Leaders is an effective tool for summarizing and inspiring leadership, not in that it teaches tough strategies and manipulations, but that when looking at an overview of its content, Bennis and Nanus are essentially teaching human relations and human decency. All in all, this book highlights strategies for us all to be better in our lives and our everyday interactions.
Leaders will no matter what have an influence on our world. They have missions, dreams and ambition, and with these things they are bound to go far. For leaders, what makes these dreams come true is having strong qualities such as leadership practices, values and strengths. If developed and learned how to use correctly, these are what take leaders to the next level and accomplish great things. In the following paper I will talk about leadership in our ever-changing world, explore my leadership practices, values and strengths as well as elaborate on the goals I have made to challenge myself as a leader.
This paper describes about my leadership strengths and areas for growth/future study. It also included how these qualities are used in my daily work routine, self-assessment results and a brief explanation on Individual style in leadership.
Not surprisingly, the areas I excelled in were related to setting examples and following through with the directions I have given. The results were not shocking by any means, I knew that I was an average leader all around coming in, and knew that I had a lot of room for improvement in many areas. The reason that I feel I am an average leader right now, is because my leadership experience is not very diverse. I have a lot of experience in leading athletic teams from being captain of both my soccer and basketball team, but I lack experience in the area of leading classroom groups and work groups. Even though athletics have taught me a great deal of leading in the correct manner and how to manage people, I want to widen my experience in leading classroom groups and work groups to benefit me in the future for my career. After reviewing the result from the Leadership Practice Inventory, I am extremely excited to build off of the areas I excel in and to improve in the areas I am inadequate
Being a leader can be a very challenging task. It is important that one remain mindful that being an exemplary leader requires great determination and devotion despite certain barriers that can form such as staff resilience and noncompliance. These can grow to be discouraging factors to an individual that is in a leadership role. After I passed my nursing licensure exam, and was a per diem staff nursing supervisor at a local nursing home in the area. The fellow staff members that I worked with watched me flourish from a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA), to a Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN), and finally to a Registered Nurse (RN). Many of them have a personal relationship with me that started since the time that I was a CNA. We worked side by
One artifact that should be introduced to freshman in FBI is the book “The Leadership Challenge”. Within this book, the authors James Kouzes and Barry Posner explore “The 5 Practices of Exemplary Leadership” which derived from their extensive research. Among these five challenges, the one that should be emphasized to freshman is “Challenge the Process”. I believe that this topic could be really beneficial because of the way it can influence your everyday activities as well as your future in business. The necessity of challenging that which does not work within our business/lives, and enabling our power as knowledgeable creators to design the reality we wish to see. Challenging the Process is the practice of growing a business, and growth is