Personal Leadership Skills
In addition to formulating policies and mobilizing resources, leaders are tasked with ensuring that the organizations remain within the pre-defined goals. Owing to their significance, it is undeniable that any organization’s success depends on the leadership skills possessed by the leaders. Personal leadership philosophy considers leadership as the process of influencing other people to achieve extraordinary goals. Leaders go beyond giving instructions and supervising juniors. One needs to understand each junior’s strengths and weaknesses, conduct a comprehensive survey to find out market trends, and ensure all the involved parties are fully satisfied (Fleeson &Jayawickreme, 2015). To achieve this task, leaders have to sacrifice personal interest and work towards achieving organizational objectives. Sacrificing personal interests eliminates the possibilities of corruption and any other action that may divert the organizational resources to other activities as opposed to the designated activities. Some of the traits on which one’s philosophy can be founded include integrity, inspiration, perseverance, and flexibility. Inspiration is used in motivating junior employees to set and achieve extraordinary goals. Equally, flexibility and perseverance enable leaders to withstand leadership storms, which inevitable such as technological disruptions.
Leadership Mission
To create employee value and improve organizational performance at the same time.
Leadership theory
The trait theory of leadership influences my leadership philosophy. The trait theory expounds on the character traits that leaders should possess. The leadership skills proposed by the trait theory include confidence, ambitions, integrity, career-related knowledge, and strong desire to achieve.
The theory trait appears to be more appealing compared to other leadership theories, including managerial grid theory. By clearly outlining the traits, the trait theory provides a benchmarking tool that I can assess by leadership strength (Fleeson &Jayawickreme, 2015). Lastly, the tool reveals areas of weakness that are worth improving.
Leadership, Management and Coaching
Leadership is the process of influencing human resources towards achieving pre-defined objectives. Based on the organizational mission and vision, the executive formulates objectives to be achieved either in a short time or long time. After the formulation of the objectives, specific leaders are tasked with implementing the policies (Wajdi, 2017). Primary, the leader evaluates their team’s weaknesses and strengths and coordinates their efforts towards achieving the objectives. On the other hand, management goes beyond human resources to include financial and physical resources. Management involves the coordination of all the production resources to ensure the sustainability of the business enterprise. According to Wajdi (2017), management involves using the available resources to achieve the organization’s mission and vision. Besides, management allocates resources to all the pre-defined activities based on their significance towards sustainability. Coaching involves inspiring juniors to become future leaders. The Coaching begins by addressing the production objectives and tailoring the efforts of employees towards achieving the objectives. It involves the conduction of needs assessment to identify the weaknesses worth strengthening. After conducting a needs assessment, the coaches develop training programs that impart the right skills, including working as a team. In addition to formal training, coaches act as role models to mentor their juniors.
Being the firstborn in our family, my father has a higher expectation of me. He believes in confidence and integrity. It is the firstborn duty to act in a way that can be emulated by the young siblings (Spears, 2016). Equally, the father delegates duties to the firstborn based on their ages and abilities. Acting in a way that influences young siblings can be considered as a form of leadership. Equally, acting as a role model is a form of Coaching that trains the desired skills. Lastly, coordinating all the assigned duties is an excellent illustration of management.
Leadership theory versus Coaching Theory
Compared to the leadership approach, the coaching approach is more persuading. First, the coaching approach is future-oriented. By acting as a role model and training the desired skills, the coach succeeds in creating of pool of skills capable of working under minimal supervision. According to Grant (2017), employees capable of working under minimal supervision are intrinsically motivated. Unlike the extrusive motivation evident in the leadership approach, intrinsically motivated employees have a higher sense of belonging.
The contemporary society is characterized by disruptive innovations that introduce completely new products in the market. The introduction of new products in the market compelled the existing firms to re-consider their production plan and came with a strategic plan that can counter the new product’s effects (Spears, 2016). Interestingly, the success of the plans largely depends on the employee level of innovative expertise. Coaching approach emphasis on transferring the desired knowledge, attitude, and skills, including innovation skills. Therefore, the coaching approach creates a competent workforce capable of countering disruptive technologies.
Additionally, the coaching approach prepares employees for working in the capacity of leaders. Working in the capacity of leaders creates confidence and autonomy among the involved parties. While the leadership theory focuses on the production perspective, the coaching approach focuses on the employee value and the production scale. Creating employee value equips them with autonomous skills useful in enhancing career development and achieving personal goals (Grant, 2017). It is also worth noting that business organizations require future leaders to occupy the vacant offices by attritions. Coaching approach purposes to prepare future leaders and consequently avoid scarcity of leaders in the future. By merely influencing people to achieve the pre-identified objectives, leaders do not contribute to creating future leaders.
Leadership Characteristics
Successful leaders have several characteristics that they rely on to influence their teams towards the pre-defined objectives. According to priority, these characteristics include integrity, fluent communication skills, excellent-career related knowledge, confidence, compassion, ability to solve skills, innovation, appreciable cultural competence, good time management, and goal-oriented. Confidence, communication skills, and cultural competence are useful in building and maintaining good teams capable of achieving the pre-defined objectives. Contemporary societies are characterized by increased rates of labor mobility (Spears, 2016). Labor mobility has created multicultural societies with people from diverse cultures. Since Leaders work with these diverse populations, they need to have cultural competence and communicate fluently. Equally, the possession of confidence earns leaders authority as opposed to power. Career-related knowledge enables leaders to use their expertise to set and guide and implement policies to achieve organizational goals. Being a good time manager and future oriented enables leaders to make long-term goals that contribute towards sustainability.
The top three character traits, integrity, effective communication skills, and excellent-career related knowledge, are worth supporting. To achieve integrity, leaders are encouraged to remain open to all job activities. One of the ways to remain open involves using a participatory approach to decision making. By valuing employees’ opinions through decision-making, leaders express openness and succeed in earning employees’ trust. Communication skills can be developed by listening to ted talks and other forms of successful people’s speeches. Equally, communication skills can be achieved through learning from previous mistakes arising from poor communication skills. By strengthening the identified communication weaknesses, a leader can perfect their communication skills and consequently succeed in building and maintaining health teams. Lastly, career-related knowledge can be improved through continuous learning. According to Spears (2016), career related knowledge should be updated regularly to enable leaders to operate in the highly dynamic field. Therefore, participating in training programs is healthy for leaders.
Reference
Fleeson, W., & Jayawickreme, E. (2015). While trait theory. Journal of research in personality, 56, 82-92.
Spears, L. C. (2016). Character and servant leadership: Ten characteristics of effective, caring leaders. The Journal of Virtues & Leadership, 1(1), 25-30.
Grant, A. M. (2017). The third ‘generation of workplace coaching: Creating a culture of quality conversations. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research, and Practice, 10(1), 37-53.
Wajdi, B. N. (2017). The differences between management and leadership. Sinergi: Jurnal Ilmiah Ilmu Manajemen, 7(1).