Introduction
Examining personal strengths and weaknesses is crucial for an effective leader. In order to properly plan professional growth and assess the areas that require additional development, the leader must ensure to conduct an appropriate self-assessment, thus determining the next step for their improvement. Although there is a specific set of qualities that are always present in a successful leader, various types of environments and teams demand the demonstration of different traits for establishing a productive and supporting environment. In the long term, adhering to the needs of the personnel and properly enhancing one’s professional leadership competencies can yield significant results for the team’s efficiency and the company’s overall outputs. In the current report, I will perform an assessment of personal strengths and weaknesses as a leader, presenting a leadership development plan to enhance my capabilities and effectively implement the necessary initiatives in various environments.
Assessment of Leadership Strengths and Weaknesses
Personal Strengths
To properly analyze my current competencies as a potential leader, I have completed a leadership questionnaire that measured several work engagements factors, resulting in the achievement of personal scores. In order to improve my understanding of the traits quality, I was provided with a comparison of received scores to the mean scores of my peers, as well as a percentile rank amongst my peers. The major areas assessed were overall work engagement, goals, roles and rewards, autonomy and impact, a sense of purpose, mastery, and growth. In addition, the main leadership styles present in my current skill sets were also examined, and the obtained personal scores were contrasted with the mean scores of my peers, with the percentile rank amongst my peers identified. According to these results, I have excellent skills in creating a sense of purpose for my employees, having received 4.67 out of 5 and gaining a is 0.88 percentile rank. Furthermore, I received a significantly higher score than my peers in the task-oriented leadership style. In this regard, establishing a sense of purpose and forming a task-oriented environment are my most exceptional qualities as a leader.
Given the gained scores, it is possible to suggest that a team that requires a good understanding of a sense of purpose and a task-oriented leadership approach will be especially easy for me to lead. Considering that sense of purpose greatly correlates with motivation, allowing the employees to comprehend the future outcomes of their involvement better, I am able to maintain a high overall work engagement. For instance, I recently initiated an activity that focuses on the creation of stronger relationships between all the employees involved in the working processes, namely the workers and the executive managers. After some time, the results of the motivation and work engagement questionnaire distributed showed that the majority of the personnel were empowered to participate in their professional endeavors, with the overall sense of purpose spiking.
It is evident that by supplying the workers with a formulated vision of their connections to the group, I could set a particular direction, thus creating a strong foundation for subsequent company endeavors. However, it is also essential to note that purpose is closely linked with the second level of motivation and is required to perform empowering, relational, and transformational leadership styles successfully. Therefore, an excellent score in the sense of purpose measure could substantially improve the possibility of establishing a successful cycle of engagement.
In addition to the strong understanding of the sense of purpose, I possess good knowledge of performing the task-oriented style of leadership. This leadership style is imperative for effectively organizing the team’s tasks and developing strong structures. Thus, I will be able to assist my teammates in creating a direction for the development, effectively utilizing the members’ abilities, and creating the norms necessary for team cohesion and productivity. Furthermore, it will be easier for me to define a structure that will allow the team to make relevant decisions, securing a beneficial approach to team learning and reflection. An example from my recent work situations proves these assumptions. When attempting to construct a framework for distributing working assignments, I was able to present a viable plan that was later implemented. The scheme took into account the current skill sets of each employee and their capability to complete the task in the given amount of time. From this perspective, when I employ the task-oriented leadership style knowledge, I can create clear expectations and a high level of team efficiency.
Personal Weaknesses
Nevertheless, it is necessary to discuss the personal limitations uncovered by the work engagement scores and leadership styles measures. The gained results suggest that my autonomy and impact competency is significantly lower than that of my teammates, as I have scored 3.5 out of 5 and achieved a 0.18 percentile rank amongst my peers. Another weakness revealed is the understanding of the directive leadership style, as my score was 3.2 out of 5, and my percentile rank was 0.32.
In light of these outcomes, there’s a high possibility that I will be unable to successfully instill a sense of autonomy and impact my teammates in a working environment. Autonomy is crucial for establishing the cycle of engagement and institutionalizing a motivation system, meaning that the majority of employees might not be engaged in the company processes, leading to decreased performance. Moreover, autonomy usually precedes purpose in the cycle of engagement model, which can suggest that I might be unable to successfully demonstrate my knowledge of creating a strong sense of purpose for the employees. As a result, it will be especially challenging to promote the sense of autonomy and impact made in employees, leading to the demonstration of negative feelings and frustration.
Another limitation in my current capabilities, the directive leadership style, could detrimentally affect my authority as a leader and the ability to make decisions. Establishing team and individual goals, clarifying the employees’ roles and tasks and offering the explanations for the outlined instructions our crucial activities performed when using the directive leadership style. These endeavors are especially significant for sustaining a strong sense of predictability, organizing the working environment, and effectively influencing the work course for a short time. Given the lack of expertise in this area, I was unable to ensure the fulfillment of these criteria during my last team meeting. After some time, I learned that employees were complaining about the absence of balance and did not properly understand the new system of goals and rewards, leading to disruptions in their work performance and motivation.
Leadership Development Plan
In order to efficiently develop my capabilities as a team leader, it is essential for me to formulate a professional development plan that will enhance my skills in the outlined areas. First of all, my knowledge of creating strong feelings of autonomy and impact among the employees must be improved, and I am aiming to participate in additional learning courses and masterclasses. As such, it is especially demanding for me to understand how I could help the employees to be involved in co-determining their everyday tasks. Also, I would learn how to assist them in gaining extra assurance that their work is strongly influencing the organizational processes.
After that, the directive leadership style requires more research and additional practice for me to complete in order to obtain a higher level of competency. Although theoretical knowledge is critical for getting a better grasp of this approach, I intend to become involved in some practical exercises that could assist me in developing extra confidence when using this method. I believe that lectures and readings of scholarly literature could be highly beneficial for obtaining theoretical mastery, while lessons with activities and interactions with other participants could be especially advantageous for enhancing my empirical knowledge.
Conclusion
To conclude, I have presented an assessment of my strong and weak leadership skills in the current report, describing a professional development plan that will help me achieve mastery in the discussed areas of underperformance. It appears that I am especially skilled in establishing a sense of purpose for my employees, and I can be extremely effective when employing the task-oriented leadership style. Nevertheless, my competencies as a directive leader are lacking strength, and it remains challenging for me to instill the necessary senses of economy and impact in my teammates. To account for these weaknesses, I plan to undertake several theoretical and classical activities that will broaden my knowledge of these areas and enhance my performance as a leader in the future.