Leadership is an essential aspect required for the progress and development of individuals in every field of life. A leader is an individual responsible for showing people the way and is looked upon by the team they lead. The leader guides others in completing tasks to achieve a common goal. Good leadership is a quality everyone does not possess, and every leader must portray good leadership qualities. There is a broad spectrum of qualities of a good leader.
Good leadership is based on certain components, including inspirational motivation, idealized influence, individual consideration, and intellectual stimulation. Inspirational motivation develops in the leader in the process of inspiring and motivating others through effective communication, which transmits challenge and meaning to works promoting a shared vision. A leader with the components of inspirational motivation should practice several behaviors. The leader should always be a source of motivation to the team under all circumstances. The motivation to the team works in keeping the team up to the task and ensures that all the time, they have the zeal to carry on even in the tough times (Crowell & Boynton, 2020). The team’s spirit should be positive at all times to achieve the compelling missions put in place. The leader should impart challenge and meaning to the people and ensure that the followers are eager to meet the challenges. By being motivational, the leader should ensure that they are enthusiastic and optimistic all the time and have all the commitment needed to meet the set goals and objectives. The enthusiasm from the leader encourages the team as people are mostly ready to work with a leader who is optimistic and dedicated in his work. Energetic characteristics motivate the team to follow the leader and do their best not to fail them.
The component of idealized influence enables the leader to hold qualities that enable them to be role models to the followers. The leader should always be a source of admiration and can be looked upon by the team. Leaders should ensure they do the right things to gather trust and respect from their followers. Willingness to take risks by the leader should be present, and they should hold high ethical and moral standards for the responsibility of being of positive influence to the team.
The intellectual stimulation component of a good leader is backed by the behavior of stimulation of efforts to the team. The leader encourages new approaches that allow innovations and creativity to be implemented in the quest to achieve the common goal. The leader questions assumption, but they do not perform public criticism. Anybody on the team can make contributions no matter their position and level, and they can feel free to contribute their ideas without being criticized. The leader is involved in reframing problems and looking at them critically to come up with the most effective solutions.
A good leader involves individualized consideration, which enables them to be a mentor, coach, and teacher to their followers. The leader is involved with recognition, acceptance, and realization of every person’s difference in the team (Crowell & Boynton, 2020). The leader enforces personalized attention taking into consideration of every person’s difference in the team. Through this practice, the leader supports a conducive climate for the growth of every individual. The leader delegates the follows effectively and truly listens to the needs of every team member.
Good communication is a key aspect of a good leader, and a good leader must possess it at all times. Communication is the tool the leader uses to address the team, understand the important concepts, and inform them of the goals and objectives effectively. With good communication skills, the leader can achieve teamwork without the need of occurrence of any form of misunderstanding (Kotagal & Pellegrini, 2018). The communication aims to maintain clarity of the goals to enable the team to work accordingly.
Emotional intelligence has a role in effective leadership. Qualities of emotional intelligence in leadership are an indicator of success in a leader. Emotional intelligence involves self-regulation, self-awareness, empathy, social skills, and motivation. These components are present in the model of complex leadership. Self-regulation and awareness integrate into personal awareness and being. The achiever has the motivation and enables the leader to have the desire for achievement rather than just acting to accomplish an external reward. A leader’s self-awareness helps them recognize their emotions, drives, and moods and how this aspect affects their followers. Empathy lets the leader understand other people’s emotions and treat them according to how they react emotionally. Social skills held by the leader assist them in managing relationships throughout the working network, and they find common ground with the team to build a good rapport amongst the team.
Self-reflection is taking a moment to think about yourself and your past experiences to become more self-aware, learn from them, and moves forward in your personal development. As a leader, self-reflection requires an examination of your leadership style to improve. It considers your current skill set, abilities, behavioral habits, and influence strategy. It also entails studying and figuring out your core values, goals, and aspirations. This enhances your self-awareness, alignment, and honesty. When it comes to leadership, self-reflection is a great way to improve one’s emotional intelligence and better understand others.
Reflecting on my leadership assessment involved filling out the self-reflection assessment questions. In my leadership class, I acquired concepts and the know-how needed to help me thrive and obtain the best leadership qualities. The reflection is effective in helping me know how effective I am at analyzing situations, critiquing, and decision-making in the course of my leadership ventures. According to my results, I realized that I possess a solid foundation in leadership strength. The complexity leadership assessment profile entailed three parts that dealt with my knowledge of complexity and perspectives, leadership styles and actions, and personal awareness and being. In the execution of the particular tasks relevant to the reflection process, I was able to come up with my capabilities to come up with areas for further improvement. From the assessment, I learned that I have great clarity in values that are significant in quality leadership and self-awareness. My knowledge of complex leadership is high, and I use this knowledge to develop myself and achieve good qualities. Although my performance is not the best, I have to learn more about complex leadership to implement it.
During the assessment, I realized I must work on several leadership qualities such as self-care, nutrition, safety, and exercise. I also need to develop myself in seeking and handling feedback. On the self-care aspect, I realized that I had minimal time for exercise, my eating habits were average, and I performed a less physical examination of my health. On the aspect of handling and seeking feedback, I realized I have challenges in partnering with the team to obtain feedback needed to achieve the goals of the tasks at hand.
The plan for leadership development needs to begin with my current strength and areas I need to improve myself after the self-reflection. Analyzing what I am good at and what I need to work on gives me feedback on my leadership strengths and the developmental needs to gain insight into the practices I need to implement. One of the skills learned to help me develop in leadership is the identification of my diminishing tendencies and desire to become more of a multiplier in leadership. By being a multiplier, I would achieve insight and resolution to sustain myself as a good leader (Wiseman & Covey 2017). Being a multiplier will aid in dropping a set of behavior that are unfavorable and adopting a multiplier mindset. With the assumption of a multiplier, I manage to identify talent within my team and identify that they are smart and can figure things out without my help and motivate them to achieve goals and maximize growth and performance. Being a multiplier gives me a sense of more self-awareness to act in line with organizational values and cultures. Developing higher levels of emotional intelligence will help me create a better environment to use tools such as 360-degree feedback and recognize instances when I fall into the trap of becoming a diminishing leader. As a multiplier, I can navigate complexity and see the big picture in creating a line of sight, inspiring and fostering others to stay agile.
The other skill I learned is setting an attainable goal, which is an essential component of the developmental plan. The goal-setting procedure is significant in making attainable objectives which are essential in allowing me to work on my areas of improvement. The skill necessitates me to identify my areas of weakness as proposed by the assessment and prioritize them towards boosting my professional effectiveness. The goals to enhance my leadership skills should specifically target the developmental areas (Aldulaimi, 2018). The goals should be measurable to assist me in assessing my progress in improving myself. I should set an attainable goal that is not too high and can frustrate me in case I cannot attain it. I should consider setting a specific timeline to assess my progress in improving my leadership competence.
In conclusion, not everyone is born with leadership skills and qualities, but some are learned and acquired. A leader is a person to show people the way to follow and is supposed to possess good leadership qualities. Good leadership is based on many concepts that a good leader should incorporate to achieve effective leadership. After knowing the qualities of a good leader, one should be involved in assessing personal leadership skills. The assessment is significant in helping leaders analyze and locate the strength and weaknesses they need to work on to thrive in leadership. A plan for leadership development I have come up with will help me achieve the objective of effective leadership and develop ways to implement practices to help with aspects I should work on myself.
References
Aldulaimi, S. H. (2018). Leadership development program and leaders performance for mid-level managers in Saudi Petroleum Company, ARAMCO. Arab Economic and Business Journal, 13(1), 15-24. Web.
Crowell, D. M., & Boynton, B. (2020). Complexity Leadership: Nursing’s role in health-care delivery. F.A. Davis Company.
Kotagal, M., & Pellegrini, C. A. (2018). Qualities of a Good Leader. In Surgical Mentorship and Leadership (pp. 151-157). Springer, Cham. Web.
Wiseman, L., & Covey, S. R. (2017). Multipliers: How the best leaders make everyone smarter. Harper Business.