Personal Plan For Leadership : Leadership Essay

At the beginning of this class, leadership was something I hoped to enhance throughout the duration of this course and in the next few years. Through the course, I have learned more about myself and the type of leader I am through the relational leadership model. Learning about the strengths I have as an individual, the leadership skills and styles, working with other people through communication and listening. I have learned relevant concepts that served as the foundation to leadership philosophy. Leadership has a lot to do with relationships. One thing that has stood out to me is that they see the definition of leadership as a relational and ethical process of people together, attempting to accomplish positive change (Anderson&Bolt, 18).

I have learned many important and relevant concepts in this course. Perhaps the most relevant concept is understanding leadership. Now that I am almost done with the course, I realized that I knew nothing about Leadership. I thought leadership is the act of being in control of people and leading them to do a certain job. I thought of a leader as a boss, manager, or an owner. Although what I knew about leadership was partially true, Leadership is much more complicated and different than what I thought it was. Leadership has been defined in multiple different ways depending on different views. Peter G. Northouse said “there are almost as many different definitions of leadership as there are people who have tried to define it” (2013, p.4-7). Despite the multiple ways leadership has been defined, a

It was Thursday, August 25, at eight in the morning when I walked into my second leadership class ever. The first class was just reviewing the syllabus so to me this was the real “first class”. We discussed The Leader’s Companion by Gardner and how there is currently a cry for leadership. I heard that there was a need for leaders at all levels and that can be achieved by studying leadership. After hearing that I understood there was a problem, I wanted to be the adequate leader the world needed and I first needed to gain a good understand the information learned in class. Throughout this semester I have learned a lot about myself, group interactions, and my leadership identity, which all come together to enhance my understanding and appreciation of leadership itself.

Leadership is about helping people, empowering people, setting clear goals and motivation, while operating to accomplish the mission and improving the organisation.

While there is no key definition of leadership, we have learned that the outcome of a good leader is to influence a group or team in achieving the organisations objective. Nevertheless, it is essential that we are first able to distinguish between leadership and management. Management is primarily concerned with the allocation and controlling of resources including people, and leadership is the ability to inspire people to achieve an outcome. General David Morrison, who has had an influenced on me as an ADF

During the last six weeks, I have learned a lot about the true meaning of a good leader. The discussions have helped me identify what my strengths are and what are the areas that I need to improve on. Although, I have been in management roles, I would not identify myself yet as a leader. I am a very result driven individual which is strength of mine, but that can also lead me to be desensitized to other’s emotions or challenges they might be facing. Throughout the course, I have also come to realize that I have limited self-awareness. On the contrary, one of my strengths is my social awareness. I have the ability to go into social or networking events and pick up on emotions, or facial expressing to understand the overall mood of that environment. To be socially aware is particularly beneficial because, I can find common ground with anyone I meet to initiate conversation. Therefore, when I see that person again, I can make those personal connections. Another one of my strengths is the ability to look at a current process and streamline it to a leaner, more effective and efficient way. During the last several years I have been hired to be the visionary of new divisions and to implement processes that would support the company’s vision and mission while still driving results. My values are what contribute to the success I have been able to achieve over the years, however. My resilience and work ethic towards my job shows through in the

First clarifying what Leadership is not, is an important part in understanding what leadership is. People think that the people in companies that have the big job titles are the leaders of the company. That really isn’t true, you don’t have to be at the top to be a leader. Even being a manager doesn’t mean you’re a leader. A manger manages a group of people and has the ability to solve issues, monitor people and the ability to fire a person. That doesn’t mean they lead that group of people, they manage that group of people. Leadership is about people that can motivate a group of people in executing ideas and then successfully accomplishing them.

My personal leadership vision is to lead a team of individuals that is never afraid to take the hill and to be that leader without compromising my values. I have two leadership goals for the immediate future to help me move forward towards my personal leadership vision. They are creating a vision statement for my division and establishing the urgency for change with my direct team. Three actions for each goal are presented and strategies for measurement of progress to each goal is discussed.

My view on leadership has not changed very much from the beginning of this course. However, I have been able to learn more formal theories and ideas that support my definition of leadership. I have always compared leadership to management because though the two are different when it comes down to it, they do share a few similarities. My definition of leadership that I referred to throughout this course was: a continuous process where an individual motivates changes and inspires others to achieve a common purpose. This course really confirmed for me that leadership is an ongoing process and one is never done learning how to become a leader. This course made me realize though, how management is good, but good leadership is more important to a company. We look at several studies about how a manager’s leadership can influence sales, employee motivation, and so much more. For me, this reinforces my idea that being a manager is just not enough anymore, but one also has to be an inspiring leader for their followers. Leadership is taking what management does a step further by understanding their followers, encouraging growth, and inspiring a way to get there. Finally, this course confirmed for me that there are no set personality traits that make someone a good leader. Instead, there are traits that are common amongst leaders. This does not mean that those who do not possess those traits cannot become leaders, it just mean they may have to work a bit harder than others.

Leadership is a concept that is constantly discussed yet there is seldom agreement about what it is. Even though most agree leadership is crucial to success of any people, project or venture. People define leadership differently and often times misconstrue leadership with management. Leadership provides the vision and focuses on the people while management focuses on objectives and tasks. It is however valid that a budding leader may sometimes need to act as both a leader an as a manager whenever necessary.

Leadership is a theme in my life that has been in my focus for almost a decade now. It has constantly been a developing quality for me, so naturally a lot of factors have affected and are affecting its formation. There is of course no way to recall everything that played in, but there are many significant lessons I’ve learned through a few leadership opportunities that have been major parts of my life.

After the very first class of the semester, I always looked at my classes’ syllabus to see what the final is. That, after all, is my final goal and what I am working towards to prepare for by the very end. So when I read the “Personal Leadership plan” I was intrigued by it and couldn’t wait until we got to it. And now we’re finally at the end, and I finally get to read and share what it’s all about.

Leaders are interestingly driven by their clear image of possibility and what their organization could become. They inspire a shared vision by envisioning the future and as well enlist others in a common vision. For instance, John is responsible for his team to win in a championship that the team had never won. He needed to inspire his team members with the vision he had. For this to work out, every one of the team members needed to share the same vision. He expalined how they had the ability to win and how the victory will make impact on their lives. Notably, leaders are not the people that set the goals; rather they help the people envision them as their own.

Being a leader to me is a person's who is dedicated to helping people attain their personal goals. Being a leader means exhibiting moral and ethical courage, and setting an example for everyone that they lead, and impacting a person life in a positive way. Leadership is a skill, behavior, relationship, and an influence process. This course has been very insightful for me on a personal and professional level. One of the many things that will stick with me is a quote I read from the first power-point. The quote stated, “Leaders are people who do the right thing”. Before taking this class, I didn’t see a difference between leaders and managers, but after going into detail in reading I now realize managers and leaders are different. Managers like to control their people, leaders do not.

When I decided to follow the advice of our CFO to take a leadership class, I was expecting to learn how great leaders think, how leaders manage people, and what makes a person a great leader. I was looking for an inspiration, and I was hungry for leadership knowledge. Going back to week one of the Leadership class, we were asked to define in our own words what is leadership. I described a good leader as a good follower because I believe in servant leadership. According to Robert Greenleaf (1970), servant leaders are servants first and leaders later. The servant leadership model places great emphasis on building relationship and promotes teamwork (Nayab, 2011). Kouzes and Posner (2012) mentioned that leadership is everyone’s business. Leadership is not about seniority or titles (Kruze, 2013). Leadership is not about power or authority (Kouzes & Posner, 2012). Leadership is not about how many followers you have. Leadership is not about how educated or how knowledgeable a person is because academic achievements do not guarantee that an individual is going to be a great leader. Leaders are not born, they are made. Leadership is passion and is a responsibility. To me, leadership is an opportunity to be surrounded by people and be able to create unity to achieve the team’s goal.