Personal Reflection Of Personal Leadership : Personal Strengths And Habits

Throughout this course, I have learned several things about myself as a leader and about a leader in general. I feel like I now have the ability to point out many strengths and weaknesses I did not notice before. Strengths such as being able to find better ways of doing certain things, spot things that may or may not be really working, motivating team members, and working great under pressure. Some of my weaknesses include resisting change, constantly working within a group, because I always tend to feel like I'm doing either all or most of the work, and sometimes micro managing in an attempt to help/coach closely. Sometimes the micro-managing is unattended but at the same some things don't get right in time unless you keep a close eye on it.

After completing the seven habits profile, my lowest categories were emotional bank account, life balance, be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, seek first to understand, and sharpen the saw.

According to dictionary.com leadership is defined as, the position or function of a leader, a person who guides or directs a group: Its synonyms include guidance, influence, control, direction and supervision. These are all qualifications that are needed to be an effective leader. All characteristics are not necessarily needed at the same time and do no need to be used for each subordinate. This paper will identify my personal leadership philosophy along with theories to support my leadership style.

Phase 1 of the Personal Leadership Philosophy Paper presented the opinion and supporting information establishing that; leaders are products of opportunity, birth and environment, but of these; opportunity influences great leadership the most. Furthermore, it was discussed that assigned leadership is a cancer to corporate America and this point is illustrated in the following example. While employed at Deloitte and Touché Consulting Group (DNT) we engaged ARCO, a major oil and gas company, to develop and implement an email migration strategy that consisted of 1200 Arco users at their subsidiary company, Vaster Resources Inc. In the initial meeting we were introduced to a gentleman, we will call John Smith for the purposes of this paper,

The Seven Habits Profile provided me with an overview of my leadership skillset and the measure of my ability to be an effective leader. My scores were balanced but it did give me a view of areas that I can improve. I am the type of leader that cares about the employees and but at the same time I am focus on the mission, objectives and goals of the department, customers we serve and the institution that employs me. Having the blue print and understanding of the Seven Habit Profile will make me an effective leader.

The Seven Habits Profile is a tool created by Dr. Stephen Covey, bestselling author of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. In his book, Dr. Covey describes important characteristics of people who are not only great citizens of this world, but “highly effective” leaders and role models. It is imperative to understand that these characteristics or traits can be developed or acquired by everyone who wishes to obtain them. Covey (2004) Leaders should strive to attain each of the following character traits; by using this tool, I gained useful information that will evaluate my leadership skills. The areas measured by the Seven Habits Profile are the following:

I have always thought of myself as a strong, motivated leader, and based on the results of my seven habits profile I can confirm that there will always be room to grow. There are areas of the seven habits profile in which I thought I excelled, but in reality those are the areas that I need to develop the most. I have always seemed to complete whatever task I may have had in mind, and was always successful in the path that I had taken to get there. When I take time to reflect on the results of my seven habits profile, I notice that I don’t tend to begin with the end in mind. I usually jump in headfirst and worry about the end when I get close to the finish. I feel like I am able to accomplish the most when I am working in total crisis mode, and fail to utilize any time to plan my week with a clear idea of what I desire to accomplish. Failing to have a plan seems to cause me to overthink things, and I stress on minor details that could have been avoided with even the simplest of plans. Even though I am able to complete the tasks in which I need to accomplish, I am more thankful that I have finished and to exhausted to feel accomplished. As a leader, I tent to neglect the feelings of others around me, and instead focus on what it is I think is best for the organization in which I am leading. It is hard for me to sympathize as a leader with those who allow their emotions to cloud their judgment. Everyone has

"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; believes that every person ought to own values that could support and guide others. Greenleaf 's theory "the servant leader is a servant first; it begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve" (Dierendonck & Patterson, 2010). 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 consists of the most important morals and beliefs and how it influences people, organizations, and society (Johnston, 1995). Furthermore, servant leaders have 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 belief, 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).

My father once told me that, “everything we do— be it in academia, at work, social or family life—we are guided by principles, beliefs and values that collectively form our ideology of life.” I believe that every leader, to a certain extent, is shaped through her individual personal experience. Although in some cases, we may not realize to what extent our personal assumptions and beliefs shape our ability to lead or be led.

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, path-goal styles 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.

I scored an eighty-seven (87) on the How Good Are Your Leadership Skills? Self-assessment quiz, which rated my skills as excellent. This score was not surprising to me because I’ve worked hard to become the best leader possible, and leading people is something I enjoy. Motivating people to achieve or surpass a particular goal is rewarding to me.

During my relatively short time with my present company compared to that of many of my colleagues I have seen numerous changes in the senior management structure that has resulted in differing styles of leadership over the years from Autocratic to

In this review, my own organization’s leadership capabilities and performance will be assessed. This review will be based on Computime Ltd organizational structure and I will be showing my own understanding of the leadership styles within the organisation, reviewing the effectiveness of my own leadership skills but also discuss the adoption of an effective leadership style to motivate staff to finally meet the organizational values and goals.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect and make an analysis of the general strengths and weaknesses of a leader, provide recommendations, thoughts of overall performance to improve on this person’s leadership style in which practices and theories were utilized most effectively. Upon such, draw conclusions and provide an integration of this leadership practice into my own leadership practice. The accomplishment of this will be achieved by identifying several key practices from published documents surrounding and encompassing the leader, and comparing them to known relative concepts for a holistic view of the approach.

There are many individual questions on this were scored lower than I would like, but they are areas that I felt I excelled in on the other questions, It looks like I scored higher in the Seek First to Understand and Synergize sections than in the other areas, I feel this is because of constant thought of how ones actions can and do affect others, Because of that I am sensitive to the feelings of others and seek to not only understand them, but make sure they are not caused discomfort by me, I feel this makes me a good leader because I can also lead others to being accountable for their actions and natural consequences of those actions while keeping their feelings and needs at hand, This is something that I have learned over the years and am sure I still need to work on,