My Personal Theory Of Leadership

The book selected for the assignment is, ‘Be a people person: Effective leadership through effective relationships,’ by John C. Maxwell. Mr. Maxwell is an author, speaker, leadership expert who is internationally recognized and a pastor. He wrote books on leadership (The John Maxwell Company, n.d.). He has a doctorate in ministry and started his career as a pastor. After 14 years of preaching the word of God, he devoted himself to speaking and writing. He became a religious leader (Christian Books Previews, n.d.). Maxwell has recognized the role of interpersonal relationships in making and breaking a leader. He has also realized the importance of developing personal skills from the people (Victor Books, 2002). In his book, Maxwell explains how a person who follows can turn to a leader by connecting with people and relating to them from a biblical perspective. The author places 50 percent emphasis on others, 25 percent on self and the remaining 25 percent on God in his approach to the followers (Barnes and Noble, n.d.).

The path to a personal leadership philosophy is made up of three parts. Each individual aspect is a facet of a complete whole. Much like a timeline that includes a past, present and future, my personal philosophy consists of a foundation, action, and growth. If you do not understand where your foundation of leadership came from, you will have problems acting in a leadership capacity. Also if don’t pay attention to how you are acting as a leader you cannot know in what ways you need to grow. Why should I spend the time and effort in developing myself as a leader? The Gunner’s Mate rating has a strength of just over 600 members. Maritime Force Protection Unit Kings Bay has 31 Gunner’s Mates assigned to it. I have a full five percent of the Gunner’s Mates in the Coast Guard that I lead. During my four year assignment at MFPU Kings Bay, approximately 55 Gunner’s mates (9.2 percent) will have been under my leadership. I see that as an enormous responsibility. As a young Gunner’s Mate I saw my senior leadership as people capable of effecting great change on the rating. Now today I am in the position to have that same impact.

"Where there is no community, trust, respect, ethical behavior, it is difficult for the young to learn and from the old to maintain" (Sendjaya and Sarros, 2002, p. 68). The founder of servant leadership, Robert K Greenleaf; considered that every person ought to own values that could support and guide others. Greenleaf 's philosophy was that "the servant leader is a servant first; it begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve" (Dierendonck & Patterson, 2010, p. 22). To serve, people must comprehend values, which are a person 's ethics of behavior shaping his or her vision. Moreover, values are distinctive from taking the survey created by Milton Rokeach; which consists of the most important morals and beliefs and how

Typical conceptions of leadership associate this word with authority and power. On the contrary, the role of effective leadership means quit the opposite. The virtue of leadership is not to hold power, but rather to empower others. A real leader selflessly devotes his or her efforts and time for the prosperity of the organization as a whole as well as the thriving of individuals. The epitome of this oxymoron can be found in how I strive to emulate the leadership of Christ, who had all the power and authority to rule, but instead humbled himself to eat with prostitutes and wash feet. Leadership shouldn’t be about being higher than others. It should be about encouraging and inspiring others to step up, staring first with the example of my own

“Where there is no community, trust, respect, ethical behavior is difficult for the young to learn and from the old to maintain” (Robert K Greenleaf). The founder of servant leadership, Robert K Greenleaf; believes that every person ought to own values that could support and guide others. According to Greenleaf, “The servant leader is servant first; it begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve”(…………….). In order to serve people must comprehend values; which are a person’s ethics of behavior shaping his or her vision. In addition, values could be distinct from taking the survey created by Milton Rokeach; which consist of the most important morals and beliefs and how it influences people, organizations, and society (Johnston, 1995). Furthermore, servant leaders have a purpose; which can be determined with the personal models of leadership; which are the advancement of personal growth and values. My personal model of leadership reflects and creates a purpose on my values and beliefs; which are trust, responsibility, equality and loving demonstrating how it impacts an individual, interpersonal, organizational and societal. In conclusion, once people comprehend their value and decide their personal model it will define them as a servant leader because it does not matter if it is today or tomorrow, the values will then have the same principles (Lee, Fabish & McGaw, 2005).

Out of all the different leadership theories I learned about this semester I really feel that I best relate to transformational leadership and authentic leadership theories. During the development of my personal theory I found that these theories tended to list many similar traits, and values that aligned with my own. Additionally, both authentic and transformative theories place a significant amount of emphasis on the relationship between the leader and her/his followers. The success and influence of a leader comes not from herself but from her ability to create and invoke strong relationships with their followers. Given my character strengths of sociability, integrity, assertiveness, and my drive to connect to others on a deeper level, I value both the authentic and the transformative leadership theories.

Before this class, I had a very primitive and vague definition of leadership. Not only did I define it as per my views and ideologies, but I also said that each individual has their own definition of leadership. My initial belief was that leadership does not have a clear cut definition, but there were well defined leadership traits which made an individual. I also initially believed that personal traits did not translate into leadership traits with no strong correlation. After going through the various modules this class offered, it is safe to say that I have significantly redefined leadership and underwent a strong personal assessment. This paper talks what I took back from each of the class activities, assignments and how my self-assessment compares to the perception of others.

Leadership has been an emerging topic, where over the last twenty to thirty years research has shown it to be of critical value. According to DeRue (2014), the depth and richness of existing literature has produced an array of important insights about leadership in organizations. While the development of leadership is not just about developing knowledge and skills, it is also about it is also about developing people’s motivation to lead, their awareness concerning the risks and rewards coupled with leadership, as well as their identity as leaders, and thought processes on what it means to participate in the a leadership process. With that being said, the servant leader approach places focus on leadership from the leaders point of view, emphasizing their attentiveness on the followers concerns, empowering them, all the while helping them to grow and develop through encouragement (Northouse, 2013).

I believe that of any person with leadership skills has the potential in becoming a good leader. I also believe a person can lead if he or she has good core values views of the world. One core value from each level, including individual, between-people, organizational, and social, showing how individuals are acting towards the values others. These values help to complete my personal model of leadership, and how I conducted myself as a leader when I was in a leadership role (Smith, 2005).

Before reading this book by Mark Sasscer titled Accounting Now, I was only knowledgeable a certain amount of leadership skills by gaining these elements through my professional experience. I knew that to be a great leader, one must be confident, communicate effectively and be able to solve problems. However after reading this book, I learned that it was not just these elements, but also other elements and approach that can improve my leadership skills now and in the future. According to Mark Sasscer, there are “Ten principles of Personal Leadership” that a leader can abide by to be a successful leader. I will describe the ten principles including with my thoughts and the elements that had the most impact on my perception of

A leader’s ability in effectively communicating change represents the manner in which their followers will respond, and whether they will decide to accept the changes proceeding forward in his fulfillment of implementing the necessary changes. Furthermore, leadership observed as a significant factor in the innovation process of leading, and believed that innovation revolves around the ambidexterity theory of leadership defined as the approving variables relative to a leaders behavior and the manner in which they employ equal variables of appropriate leadership behavior involving both the beginning and ending of a leaders behavior deflecting the employing the analysis and wrongdoing in both the individuals and the teams which involve both the beginning and the end of the leaders behavior alternating between the leaders and their followers in handling the continual specifications involving the process of innovation.

My personal understanding of leadership in this class began first when we were assigned to read Grunig’s discussion of the Theory of Excellence. This discussion was a detailed paper outlining Grunig’s personal opinion on how to achieve excellence through individual and group participation. According to Grunig, he mentions five areas that public relations is developing which includes public relations becoming a management function, public relations involving more strategic counseling, public relations being backed by more scholarly knowledge, public relations becoming more global and more diverse in gender and race. In addition to Grunig’s five trends, a current trend that is gaining a lot more traction as the years go by and technology

Leadership is the process of motivating others toward completion of a common goal and/or task. Luthans & Avolio (2003) also introduced the concept of authentic leadership development, which is one of the many psychological perspectives of leadership. Authentic leadership is often defined as a pattern of transparent and ethical leadership behaviors’ that encourage openness in sharing information needed to make decisions while accepting followers’ input (Bass, 1999). I truly believe deep in my heart that I have a unique leadership style; I believe that I am a combination of an authentic and transformational leader. Transformational leaders are prone to instigate followers to amend expectations, perceptions with the ability to motivate workers toward a common goal.

Leadership is a process whereby individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal (Northouse, 2013, p. 5). So, to better understand the fundamental principles preceding leadership philosophy, we have to understand the theory of leadership development and its essential characteristics. The leadership theories that are greatest associated with my personal developmental plan are the theory of relationship and transformational leadership. The transformational leadership theory is allied with my personal development plan because it is also known as the transformational leadership model, which emphases on the influences that inspires both the leader and the followers. According to this theory, the main elements or fundamental base is created on vision, trust, power, authenticity, motivation, and communication.

Leadership is a crucial part of life. Without leaders the world would probably fall apart. People need leaders to follow and to set an example for them. Leaders step up and stand up for what they believe in. They can be men or women and even children. Leaders can be found in every country, state, and city. They are located around the world, but not all leaders are good, effective leaders. There are leaders that abuse their power. However, there are also selfless leaders who truly make an impact on lives. A huge example of a selfless leader is Mahatma Gandhi. He was born in 1869 on October 2nd in North West India. After college, he took a job in South Africa but later moved back to India. Upon his return, the most influential period of his life started. He started non-violent civil disobedience and began to encourage the locals to improve their circumstances. Gandhi did a lot of awesome things during his lifetime. The things he did can still be used as lessons today. He encouraged people to fight for their freedom. (Mahatma Gandhi 2013) I use fight very lightly though, because he was a non-violent person. He was a role model for many other famous leaders including Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. One of the biggest reasons why I admire him is because he was so humble. He did not think of himself as a good leader. He was just doing him job as a decent human being.