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Self reflective personal leadership development
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Personal leadership development plan
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My personal leadership journey began at the age of eleven, and is still continuing to this day. Thus far it has hit many roadblocks, and I certainly have a long way to go before I will truly consider myself a successful leader. I have struggled with self-confidence and have failed to speak up many times, and no doubt will continue to do so for some time. My current obstacle in my leadership journey is learning to believe in myself. Once I conquer that task, I am looking forward to improving my leadership skills in several areas using both the authentic leadership style and the situational leadership style.
Leadership Assumptions & Beliefs
My personal leadership journey began at the age of eleven. It was during that time that my best friend
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The book I read for my book review, “Learning Leadership: The Five Fundamentals of Becoming an Exemplary Leader,” convinced me otherwise. A common myth about leadership is that “leaders are born and not made,” as if some human beings are magically endowed with all the necessary traits and skills to become an exemplary leader. To this, the authors sarcastically comment that they “have never met a leader who wasn’t born” (Kouzes and Posner, 2016, p.3). Throughout the book they consistently reiterate the fact that anyone can become a leader. One of the exercises in the book was to think of your best leadership experience and note all the ways that you excelled as a leader. Thinking through that experience showed me that I am truly capable of leadership, I just need to learn to believe in myself. Furthermore, I learned through reading “Learning Leadership” is that the best leaders are continual learners, and they can’t achieve mastery until they decide there is a person inside them who can make a difference and learn to be a better leader. Thus, I am capable and I will continue to learn how to be
The vision of leadership that leaders are born made, and not learn to be leaders is still considered but not popular among researchers (Avolio et al, 2013).
I first encountered the significance of leadership in the tenth grade. Berry College the largest campus in the U.S. was in search of school ambassadors to serve part in a seminar known as HOBY. To get chosen you had to write an essay describing your leadership roles, and at that moment I thought that I did not have any. I literally did not know what it meant to be a leader. I had to brainstorm till I remembered going through one of the most difficult times of my life. The lack of understanding the English language became one of my biggest obstacles, and even caused me to repeat a chapter of my life. However, I did not cease; I continued to fight and strove to help others who were susceptible of following my steps. I used my story as an example, and hoped that it would make a difference in someone else’s life.
I believe that leadership is not something that you are born with, but that has to be learned over time. You learn to become a leader from watching other leaders, and also from personal experience. People should become leaders; so that they can help others do their best. They should not become leaders for the title and power that may come with leadership. Being a leader does not mean you get to boss people around by telling them what to do. The purpose of a leader is to guide others by encouraging, showing them the way, and by challenging them to do the best that they can do. I learned leadership through personal experience. In high school I played sports and had many class projects to do. My senior year was the first time my school had a soccer program, and I along with two other girls was captains. As we all know, when a group of girls come together, the drama comes too. All three of the captains had to work together and show the girls that if we wanted this program to be a success and grow, they had to work together as well. It was hard at first, but when we encouraged everyone, it worked out better than expected in the end. Also, in my business class, we had a lot of projects that were mostly group projects. During the end of the year, we had a project where we had to make up a new product. My partner and I were both seniors and it was a stressful time with finals, SAT scores, graduation, and trying to become honor graduates. We were tired and just did not want to do another project, but our teacher, Mr. Brace, did not give up on us. He showed us what to do, and encouraged us constantly every day. He would tell us many positive things and would check up on us. He was a great teacher and a great leader. Leadership may be one wo...
Using the above definition, in my humble opinion leaders are made not born. If one has the desire and willpower, they can become a leader. As stated by Warren Bennis in his book on becoming a leader, leaders develop through a never-ending process of self-study, education, training, and experience. It is therefore impossible to be born with all the leadership abilities. A leader can only become a good leader if he or she has the humility and the will power to understand he/her-self and transform to be able to have followers.
Introduction Through identification and ongoing assessment of her leadership style and ability, this leader is able to develop and understand her own strengths and limitations in order to grow and develop into a more effective leader. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of servant leadership, contingency, and path-goal styles of leadership to gain an understanding of current leadership models, identify this author’s style of leadership, and explore why leadership is important to organizations, society, and this author. A Personal Model of Leadership Servant leadership was a term that was first used by Keifner Greenleaf (1970) in his first essay, The Servant as Leader (as cited by Crippen, C., 2005). Greenleaf based his essay on his belief that a servant leader is a servant first, and explained that it would begin with the natural urge to serve and then the leader would make a conscious choice to become a leader, in doing so he makes the choice to ensure that others needs are met first (2005 ). As a servant leader develops he should always keep aware of those who he serves and strive to ensure that they are becoming healthier, wiser, freer, have an increase in autonomy, and become more like servants themselves (2005).
Leaders can have a powerful impact on the futures of many, and the way in which one approaches leadership is paramount to the type of impact one will have. Continual growth in the areas of knowledge I have and seek to acquire, as well as recognizing my leadership style and utilizing my personal strengths to the fullest, is vital to the successful implementation of my personal philosophy of leadership.
Great leadership is not achieved over night, and it is not something that one achieves and stops. Great leaders spend entire lives building and growing their leadership skills. It is not likely that a leader will one day wake up with all of the vision, influence, knowledge, respect, and momentum necessary to be great; these take time to develop. “It is the capacity to develop and improve their skills that distinguishes leaders from their followers.”
When reflecting on my leadership styles, strengths and weaknesses I am rushed with thoughts, memories, regrets and actions of personal ways that I have handled past situations in the work place and ways that I plan to handle new situations at my new work place. I have had many successes with the way I handle my leadership role but there are also things that I wish that I could go back in time and change. The way some situations are handled, I think to myself, well this could have been done differently or I could have done this instead of what I did to enhance the outcome of the situation. There is always room for improvement in whatever job or task someone takes on and this is just one of those things. During the development of my PLAP, I have had the chance to weigh out my strengths and weaknesses of my leadership and it has been very effective to seeing where improving needs to be met. The plan has also let me evaluate the direction I hope to head in to achieve my leadership goals.
My biggest personal leadership failure occurred earlier this year when I worked at Einstein Bros Bagels at Coffman Union. I stayed there from January until April making and serving bagels to customers. However, I had the morning shift, the busiest period of the day. Long lines would form every time I was there, and sometimes I couldn’t catch up. One day in April, my co-worker, a veteran making bagels, was absent, and someone who didn’t have as much experience replaced her. What followed was a mess. My team chemistry with the replacement was dreadful, and a ton of people had to wait a while for their orders. My manager saw the incident, and after my shift was over, he gave me the option of leaving my job. I accepted, but my self-confidence was in a state that was beyond repair. It was one of the first times that I felt I let others down with my work performance. I learned that I shouldn’t expect to be great at everything and that I should analyze my weaknesses before taking on something challenging.
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.
The personal leadership development plan is to capture the self-awareness of an individual. People in general have a difficult time trying to figure out who they are and how they view themselves plus how others may see them. This plan will touch on my personal strengths, areas of improvement, and also identify me as a person more in-depth. The Personal Profile System and the Team Dimensions Profile will be used to provide an understanding.
The subject of personal leadership is widely recognised nowadays as it is often believed that successful leaders not only have the ability to lead other, but also know well and able to control oneself. In order to understand more about myself as a leader, I registered for this course. Around two months of this course, I have gained considerable knowledge which will be clearly documented in this Reflective Learning Diary. In addition, a separate section will be dedicated to my reflections after completing some personality tests.
For many years, I have been told by teachers, family, and friends that I am a good leader. Until fairly recently, I had never truly thought about what it means to be a good leader and just took it as a compliment. Leadership is an intangible concept which cannot be properly outlined in a dictionary, but one which must be formed and explained only through one’s own philosophies and experiences.
Throughout my life I have encountered the chance to experience position of being a leader. Being part of groups in university for class presentations, being the organizing secretary of my campus fellowship, being a youth leader in my church and the church admin, also being part of a family. Leaders are charismatic, inspirational and trust worthy. I have gained some important qualities of being a good leader through these experiences. Most of the valuable leadership’s characteristics that I obtained and strengthened are: learn to become a better leader every day, how to be a team player, to be a better listener, to be an effective communicator, to have more patience, not afraid of constructive criticism, to be outspoken, and to be a problem solver. Even though I have gained a lot, I still have more things to learn to become a better leader such as being more assertive, being more disciplined, becoming a better public speaker, and learn how to be realistic and not too optimistic. You are a leader if someone else choses to follow you.
Some people were born to be great leaders and some were born to be great learners. I ask myself this question, “How was I created?” Was I born a leader or was I molded to lead. As I explain my philosophy on how I want to lead, I will first dive into my past to recognize and pin point my creator. October 27th 2004 I raise my right hand in order to serve and protect the United State against all enemies, foreign and domestic. At this moment in my young personal leadership journey, I get my first glimpse of a leadership style, “shut up and listen.”