Self-Reflection - Leadership Development Essay

During my research a lot of leadership and management theories I have read, watched and listened to in various fields have lead me to believe most come to the same conclusion. I have taken a wide range of examples which I feel to be the most relevant to me and my role.

According to Showry and Manasa, the heart of human behavior in management is being self-aware. A manager must be aware of self, experiences and people’s impact on self. A good leader must understand his or hers own values, beliefs and interior/external motivations. Self-awareness makes a person in a leadership position look at their developmental needs realistically. An effective manager must have an internal sense of self and must be in touch with their values, characteristics, traits, strengths and weaknesses. Finally, to be a good leader one must have determination to shape their life by setting goals and building a team to accomplish these goals over time. Those who do not follow or are tentative about this process remain directionless and an ineffective manager and leader. Leaders should also have a

When looking back in one’s career, each manager in the organization leads and develops employees differently. A person can apprehend that each leader has their own leadership style with

Many leaders who start pursuing leadership development are often trying to improve upon their organisations autocratic leadership style.

I have developed my management approach to align with a servant leadership. This style is consistent with my personal values of community capacity building, inclusion, and self-determination. This style is laborious, it is not something you can just do at work, so while you are leading a group, it is a journey of constant self-assessment and improvement.

Throughout my employment history I began to make use of this information and apply it to many of my future positions. As a Supervising Project Manger I truly became aware of myself as a manager. I was responsible for the structure and the day to day outcomes within the department. When the team did not meet their goals, this was not their problem alone but mine as well. By just setting a standard is not enough, I was responsible for determining why they weren’t being met. I first needed to determine ways to help the staff meet them. This meant that I needed to separate myself from my ego in being the perfect looking manager to becoming a functioning productive manager. I would need to

Self-leadership, just as the name suggests, refers to one is able to lead himself or herself and solve the problems in a responsible and practical way (Manz, 1992). Only when the capabilities and qualifications of employees are fully improved will they have a sense of responsibility driving them to fully devote themselves into their work, in which way, they are able to predict their working effect and have appropriate evaluations of

Diverse methods of management and leadership along with the theories of management are discussed. More so, comparison of the soundness of the different type of leadership styles use in an organization are discussed. The way organizational theories explain management in practices and the way organizations applied the theory are discussed.

As a leader in our church, after attending the program in Clinical Pastoral Education, I

Throughout the last twenty odd centuries, a vast amount of company leaders have altered and reinforced their management style and ultimately this has created high levels of inspiration, leading individuals to become a better leader. (Krebs. V, 2008, para.1).

The theories that will aid me in my career as a leader are transactional and transformational leadership styles. Transactional leadership theory emphasizes the role of management and how their followers are encouraged through reward and punishment. Transformational leadership theory focuses on the leader and how they inspire his/her followers to achieve a higher level of ethical values and motivation. Prior to my present education the world around me seemed to demonstrate only an Authoritarian leadership style where what the boss said was law with no input from those who were carrying out the specified duties. During my current and previous work experience I always remember telling myself, “why stay here, nobody cares to listen to ideas that are not their own”; with that in mind, when speaking with the management team about ideas to improve daily processes rejection followed swiftly. So as time progressed, my outlook on the system began to change; it led me to contemplate what I would do different if I were giving the orders. If I am to find myself in a leadership position I would like to think that when a challenge arose I would handle it as soon as it occurred and with the perspective of all individuals involved to repair and prevent future issue.

Psychologist, Robert House, developed Path-Goal Theory in 1971, and then redefined and updated it in a 1996 article in The Leadership Quarterly.

As previously mentioned, it is important that organizational needs are met by ensuring that leaders have the right skills, while also having a foundation of a specific leadership theory to drive the daily functions of the organization. As important as these aspects are, it is even more important that leaders take the time to evaluate their leadership style and philosophy to ensure that they remain effective and efficient in their work. Fisher (2009) notes that it is important to recognize the type of leadership that is most effective with staff, so that it can be applied accordingly. By taking the time to self-evaluate, it will allow for self-reflection on one’s own philosophies and the ability to grow as a leader in their areas of weakness and enhance the areas that are the strongest.

Managers encounter difficulties in the organisational environment, Snowden & Boone (2007:1) further explain that managers rely mostly on basic leadership approaches which work well in given situations. They say that approaches that are used mostly don’t succeed because the solutions rely upon the basic thoughts in the organisation’s theory and practices in which certain level of ways of predicting and order exists within the world.

In this essay I am going to evaluate and analyse my management philosophy and my leadership style based on a number of theories, concentrating on the management typology. The main types of management that define my way of leading are people management and governance management.