1. Baseline Self-Assessment
In order to develop my own sense of leadership, I have to determine exactly what kind of leader I am now. This will allow me to learn exactly what needs to change, and what needs to be maintained as I continue to grow and evolve as a leader. In terms of my leadership style, I would say that I am authentic and adaptive; these are the two primary concepts I would use to identify the way in which I lead. My authenticity comes from my ability to be honest and fair with my teammates and peers; I always made sure to place myself as transparent and open with my feelings. I do not want people to be sugarcoated or coddled, but I also do not want to be overly harsh to people if I do not have to. I just want to make sure that people know what I think if asked (George, 2003).
My adaptability is also a great strength of mine; I tend to go with the flow and make changes as the need arises. While I have a loose plan in place, I leave room for improvisation if something unexpected comes along. If something does not go as planned, I have little anxiety or problem with changing it. This makes me incredibly flexible and willing to go with what works, leaving little room for an ego to disrupt my thought processes (Heifetz et al, 2009).
Other strengths of my leadership style include my impulsivity - I will often run with the ball when I need to, carrying with my a great momentum throughout many of my projects. I am creative; I always am willing to look outside the box for solutions, and add a fresh perspective to things. I am very action oriented and proactive; I want to try to get things done, and I am very passionate in that pursuit. I have good communication skills as well - I do my best to keep everyone in the loop, and convey effectively what I need to get done.
While I can recognize my strengths, I also have to confess my weaknesses. I can tend to be disorganized; often I will run through a project fairly scattershot, which leaves little room to make sure that everything is set up. There are times in which I lose focus of the big picture, thus compromising my level of responsibility. This leaves jobs half-done, as I move on to the next one; this can spell doom for my endeavors. I also carry an inability to plan ahead; I do not think about the future as often as I'd like, and that can result in shortsightedness and negative consequences from running through a project too quickly.
These leadership aspects have come from my long history with groups and situations, where I am very good at taking charge and getting things done. However, it can be difficult for me to look beyond what is immediately in front of me, and my enthusiasm gets the better of me. These things are all aspects that I wish to change for the better.
2. Leadership Development Vision
Developing my leadership capabilities involves a great deal of forethought and consideration; I have several things I wish to improve about my leadership. In terms of my authentic leadership, I wish to improve my level of insight and impact. I want to be able to make a difference, all while demonstrating superior decision making skills. With adaptive leadership, I wish to become cognizant of new challenges, improve my improvisational ability, and still keep a firm grasp of essential values and capacities.
Actionable changes I wish to make in my leadership ability include: becoming a better long-term thinker, increasing my level of organization, and gaining a greater amount of patience. If I am able to improve these aspects of my leadership, I believe I will have achieved a net positive result from this exercise. In the end, I want to be a leader that can accomplish tasks quickly, in an organized fashion, with a great deal of forethought. I wish my projects to work out fantastically on a long-term basis; not only should my accomplishments work now, they should be helpful far down the road and not cause problems. I wish to improve the command and respect of my peers that I have worked hard to gain so far, and ensure that I can lead with greater authenticity and adaptability.
3. Concrete Action Plan
My goals for leadership development have been divided into three distinct action points: improving my patience, improving my ability to think long-term, and improving my level of organization. Over the next five weeks, I will be making concrete, measurable steps toward these goals, and will ensure my ability to improve as a leader.
In order to improve my long-term thinking skills, I will look at my current projects and determine their consequences five years down the road. For each of my projects, I will envision a five-year goal for them and determine the consequences of each action for the foreseeable future. Considering all of the factors relating to the project, I will write down a journal for each project, detailing how each will develop over the next five years. This will help to develop my long-term thinking. Five weeks after starting, I will have complete five-year plans for at least five major projects.
Next, I will improve my level of organization. In order to do this, each week I will set up meetings with each of my colleagues in order to refresh myself on the status of our current projects. Following those meetings, I will make sure to collect and organize all paperwork and documents relating to my projects in project-specific folders (whether hard copy or electronic). By the end of the five weeks, I will have complete portfolios for at least five different projects. These will include the five-year plans for them.
Lastly, I will attempt to improve my patience; by this, I mean I will temper my enthusiasm for a project to a reasonable degree. Some of these activities will tie in closely with the first goal's actions; in creating the five-year plan, I will also be working to create action points along a reasonable schedule. Instead of having 80% of the action items on a list performed in the first week of project starting, I will set up a schedule wherein I space out the actions, and I will perform them on time. By the end of the five weeks, I will also have a set, even schedule with evenly-distributed action points for five different projects.
The net result of these action goals will be to have five major projects of mine completely organized and set down, as well as spaced out in reasonable, patient action items, over a five-year period. In practicing these aspects of my leadership, I will learn to adapt these habits into a broader scale within my own practice.
4. Final Report
At the end of the five weeks, I have gone through a tremendous amount of change and growth. Participating in these action plans has helped me to learn an incredible amount of patience, organization, and long-term thinking.
For the first point, I managed to successfully draw up five-year plans for four of my major projects. The fifth project included many variables that I was simply unsure of; in the time that it took to do the research needed to make a decision, the five weeks were up. However, these four projects also have complete portfolios, containing every bit of relevant information on them. This has proven absolutely invaluable, and has saved a tremendous amount of time in desperately searching for lost documents. Furthermore, all of the action items are spread out in an even-handed fashion, so as to allow me the freedom to not rush my projects.
This project, overall, has helped me immensely in my leadership development. It has led to the creation of a personal organization and scheduling system that keeps my own impulsivity in check. From now on, I am able to think ahead, plan ahead, and remain organized while doing so. While the actual long-term thinking and action item schedule was incredibly difficult, I managed to give myself the willpower to do it, and do so effectively.
Works Cited
George, William. Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value.
John Wiley & Sons, 2003.
Heifetz, Ronald, Grash, Alexander, & Lindsky, Martin. (2009). The Practice of Adaptive
Leadership. Harvard Business Press, 2009.
