Leadership can be defined as an act to lead followers that need assistance to complete and accomplish a task. Leaders have some qualities, and every person does not qualify to become a leader. However, leaders are not born but nurtured in the real world. People can learn under the tutelage of a good leader and inspire to become like him or her in the future (Grant, 2012). It is not an easy task, and one has to be very vigilant and be able to learn from different aspects of life and relationships and situations. I have worked as a specialist in the area of children with special needs, and I assumed various leadership and management responsibilities. However, to reach a level where I could assume the role of leader I went through a learning process that involved various learning experiences.
Leadership skills are developed over a period when one goes through different phases of life. In this process, one needs to have an inquisitive approach and learn different elements of dealing with situations to propose and implement the best solution for himself and others as well. I believe that I had a similar case that involved me to learn from different people and different situations. I had to go on a long learning and self-effort process to develop skills that were not inborn, and I had to improve them over a period by practicing them and adding to them through engagement and hard work. When I had joined the grad school to study Industrial Organizational Psychology, I had no leadership qualities. I could not lead a team and give them directions. In some courses, I was assigned to work in teams of three to four individuals. I was always a follower and wanted someone to assign me a task.
As I took up other courses, I preferred to make teams with the same individuals I had been making before. I noticed the individual who normally took up the task of leading our team. His name was Mark, and I first realized his importance when we studied the WICS model in one of our business courses. The WICS model describes a leader as wise, intelligent and creative, and these were all the kind of attributes that the leader showed when instructing us. Mark was wise and fair with everyone. He was intelligent and knew the strengths and weaknesses of everyone plus he used to solve a problem in the most creative of ways (Sternberg, 2001).
In the first year of grad school, I had tried to run away from the responsibility of managing people. However, looking at the influence Mark had on people I also longed to lead a group. In one of the courses, I got the opportunity to do so, and I grabbed it. I had three other members working with me whom I knew from courses before. I respected Mark’s judgment, and so I also wanted to apply the WICS model to have the same kind of impact ton people.
I tried to be wise by fairly distributing work. I did not thrust the entire burden on a single individual and only gave them work that they could successfully complete. I always used to see that Mark kept the toughest job for himself whether it was for getting the copies printed, doing all the referencing work on the assignment or taking up a section with which others felt uncomfortable. I also tried to follow in his footsteps.
As I led more and more teams in different courses, my confidence level also increased, and I started mastering the art of leadership. The main aspect of my majors in Industrial Organization Psychology was to develop an understanding of human behavior in the workplace and understand factors that affect individuals and how they respond to them. It helped me a lot to learn about different approaches to deal with situations involving humans. However, there was one incident that tested my leadership qualities. In one of the courses, one of the group members suddenly became ill just a week before submission of the final project. There were four of us and as one of the members became ill his work had to be shared by the three of us.
With just a week left, none of the members was willing to take the extra load as they already had a lot of work on their head. I had to call a group meeting the next day so that a solution can be derived. It was not easy to convince team members to do extra work to cover up for the project.
However, one of the most interesting theories that I had learned in one of the business course was about emotional intelligence leadership. An emotional intelligent leader tries to understand the emotions of his followers before taking any measures. I had read that this type of leadership is effective when followers are depressed, dissatisfied, discontent and demotivated (Yukl, 2012).
In either case, the leader looks to uplift the mood of the employees so that they could once again work efficiently. I knew I had to apply a strategy to make my team work efficiently. I carefully studied all the strengths and weaknesses of my team members again so that I could allocate them the extra work accordingly.
The problem arose with the financial part of the project as none of the members, other than who was ill, was good with forecasting and budgeting. As an emotional leader taken the responsibility for all his followers, I thought I would take up the challenge and produce the budgeting and forecasting for the final project. It was a very lengthy week, but I managed to sit down with other teams in the course to learn the forecasting and budgeting process.
I could immediately see my team members taking more interest towards the project. They knew that I was sincere with the project, and they volunteered to help in the best way possible. They wanted to do more and asked for more work as the day to present the project was getting closer. I learned how the emotional intelligence leadership style worked. I learned because I had experienced it myself.
I had taken up a challenge no one in the team was willing to accept and because I led from the front like a true leader I earned respect from my team members. My team was ready two days before the day of submission arrives. One member had volunteered to make the PowerPoint, and one had volunteered to get the copies of the project printed out. At that moment, we realized how a team works and if willing then nothing is unachievable in working together as a team.
It was one of the biggest leadership assessments that I had successfully completed. I can well say that the transformation from a follower to a leader started from a very influential person, Mark, my first team leader in the grad school. I had always avoided taking responsibility to manage work and people (Drucker, 1999).
Learning about leadership theories in class only encouraged me take more responsibility with people I was involved in teams. For example, learning the WICS model in class made me more practically aware of the theory as I used to see Mark following the model while leading people. Similarly, learning about emotional intelligence leadership style proved to be of great benefit to me as I applied it to understand my followers and cope up with challenging situations.
The experience has taught me to deal with people at my entourage. I am glad that I had the benefit of taking responsibility for the projects I was involved in as it taught me how to deal with people and get out of difficult situation. Had I not volunteered to take responsibility in the grad school I would still be a follower taking instructions from other people. Running from responsibilities of managing things can limit a person powers and creativity, and I learned that fast in the grad school. Now I am confident that any organization that I join I would be able to lead a team and lead it well. I have an abundance of experience in handling other people.
The way I handled the problem was a storytelling that many leaders in the past have done. I handled a group of people by not scaring but by convincing them by taking responsibility and leading from the front. I did not tell them that they would end up failing the course, but I kept a positive tone. I had learned from my experience that keeping a negative tone and scaring people discourages them to go ahead with a task (Ready, 2002).
I still the words that I told my teammates at the meeting that we conducted. I gathered them together and said that we can do this and manage to get good grades or because just sitting and waiting for the team member to recover would not do us any good. However, I saw some dissatisfaction on their face, so I did not waste much time to just talking and started preparing for the work that had to be done by the ill team member.
My storytelling was action based. I told them what we had to do and led from the front. It encouraged them to volunteer as well as they knew I was not just taking advantage of them by ordering them tasks but was also working with them. I realized that had I wasted time in dedicating the teammate’s part to others it would have not resulted in anything. I would not have been able to accomplish anything.
Leadership is an important part of a student's life; leadership itself is very hard to define as different people think of it in different perspectives. According to me leadership is a skill and ability of a person to do the right thing at the right time and help others to follow the path set by that person. I have learned a lot of important things in my life; the core leadership skills I possess are the wisdom, creativity, intelligence and the ability to synthesize.
I am an average student and always concentrated on my studies to gain knowledge, I had some great teachers who helped me in building the concepts and their practical implications. These concepts contributed in developing the wisdom; I worked on learning more and more to gain additional knowledge. I help my fellow students in their studies, and this developed the ability to deliver myself in front of others.
I am a creative person and always find the best outcomes of my efforts. The creativity is considered to be an inborn ability, but I do not accept it. One can become creative if he/she can concentrate on their work, the person will understand the work and can add innovations and can develop new ways of doing the same task. The creativity helped me to build intelligence, as it provided the ways to improve my mental abilities. I was able to grasp the things quickly and easily; the understanding was developed, and I started to analyze the things more keenly.
After the completion of my graduation, I am going to use my leadership skills and abilities at the workplace. The leadership skills like intelligence, creativity, and others would help me to work effectively for the betterment of the organization. I had the opportunity to work for a prestigious company for helping children with special needs. As I have already worked in this field and have a good educational and work experience in this area, I intend to set up my organization. I will connect the experience that I have gained from my education here with my local experience, back home, to promote and develop means of helping kids with special needs. I will link small children institutions domestically for greater production of healthy kids to enrich researches, studies and diversification of leaderships and bringing children with excellent integrity into the community.
I can lead in the organization as I am good in my interpersonal skills. I am also good in managing a group of people. I can communicate well, can motivate others in working on a particular task and I also encourage others when they perform well. All the skills were developed through different sports I participated in my life. I have never assumed a position of a manager, but I am looking forwarding to preparing myself for it now as I am planning to have my institution. I intend to discharge my responsibilities effectively as I will depend on my colleagues and co-workers to get an excellent result and feedback. When I was working as a psychologist for an organization in my country and as it is an educational organization, I used to be under the management of my supervisor who taught me a lot to build my characteristics of a manager, which I appreciate a lot. I was always present when my managers and supervisor making their decision about different issues in the institution and often time I know the philosophy behind the jobs and orders I used execute, which added a lot to my awareness of management and leadership. Moreover, I got the experience of leading small teams in my organization in the absence of my supervisors, or during organization meeting.
The interpersonal skill is one of the major strength; I have the ability to talk to different people on interested topics. I established these interpersonal skills after I came to know that people with high interpersonal skills could achieve better places within their personal and professional life. The managers and employers of different organizations prefer those candidates that have higher interpersonal skills. I have a lot of friends, and they all appreciate my skills, they usually ask me the ways to gain these skills as they know that the organizations require such employees.
Another strength is that I do not talk a lot. I only talk on interested topics (I have the nature that I think before I talk). People like my attitude as this help me to avoid many unwanted situations, and I help them in understanding the things I know better. I manage my time in the most effective manner; I do not spend a lot of time using the Internet and other social sites. I prefer reading books and have many books at my home. I use to read about current scenarios and leadership and other management related issues.
I have the ability to listen carefully and understand the instructions. I am a good listener and adjust in any environment. I would be able to work well with any employer (if not given a leadership role). My supervisor or manager would not have any issues with me as I will deliver according to his/ her instructions. I would help others in my office as I used to do in my life. I love to work in a collaborative environment. Many organizations have achieved exceptional growth by adopting collaborative organizational structure (Snow, Fjeldstad, Lettl, & Miles, 2011; Baecker, 1993). The strengths would help me to achieve growth and recognition in my professional career and would make others realize that these skills are important in personal and professional development.
One should be committed towards certain things to attain their goals in life. As discussed above the leadership skills that I have but still there are certain factors because of which I lack behind. I think that I am not very good at managing my time. To be an effective leader, I think that everything should be perfect and must be done on time. I do suffer from time management issues and am motivated to overcome this issue of mine. I think if I can manage the time then this factor will have the greatest impact on my effectiveness as a leader.
Currently, I am not very good at managing time therefore me, and my team is not able to complete certain tasks at the time which depicts a bad image. It is one of the biggest barriers that come in between me and the effectiveness of my leadership. The real deal for becoming a good leader is to manage and time the different tasks that are given to you. I am not able to start my work until the deadline is very close. I rush to things at the end that has a big impact on my work.
Many leaders in the past and present have provided us with inspirational quotes for time management, and I also consider it an important factor. If the tasks are timely completed, then the rewards for such completion is very useful, and it adds to the experience. Not managing things on time has a negative impact on the personality of a person and may also deprive a person of all the leadership qualities he has. A time limit is given to ensure people that the task needs to be done if not well before time then at least on time. Time is one of the greatest essences of life and people who value time are one of the most successful people to live on this planet.
I need to be committed to managing my time effectively and for this purpose. I am striving hard to develop a habit of completing tasks well before time so that I do not have to face difficulties with my work. I try to decrease the deadline of any given task by 1- 2 hours so that even if I get late while doing a task I will still have time on it.
I am trying to give priority giving the work ahead of the given time so that it can make my time management skills more effective. The main specifications that can help me get through this issue are focusing on work, completing tasks on time, working hard, starting the work on time and being efficient. The specific, significant goals are working in time, completing tasks before time and focusing on the work.
For the time horizon of 6-12 months, my main aim is to focus on completing the work before time and focusing solely on the work. To develop the habit of completing the work on time is a difficult task for me. As I have a habit of delaying work, I am not able to complete the given task at work. I need to set the pace for my work to complete it on time.
I am developing a habit of dividing the work according to time so that I can complete it in the given time. If I divide the tasks in small bits and allocate time for different little tasks then at the end, I will be able to complete my work on time. By doing this continuously, I will be able to complete my work before the given time and will improve my leadership qualities. To develop this habit, I need to focus completely on my work.
If I am focused towards my work, then I will be able to complete the work on time. To develop these habits it will take me around 6 – 2 months. For a longer time horizon of 18–36 months, I need to focus on working on time. Working on time will take a longer time for me because of my delaying habits. By trying to continuously working on time within a period of 18 -36 months, I will be able to work on time and will be able to overcome the problem of time management.
References
Baecker, R. M. (1993). Readings in Groupware and Computer-supported Cooperative Work: Assisting Human-human Collaboration. Burlington: Morgan Kaufmann.
Drucker, P. R. (1999). Managing Oneself. Harvard Business Review, 77(2), 64-74.
Grant, A. M. (2012). Leading with meaning: beneficiary contact, prosocial impact, and the performance effects of transformational leadership. Academy of Management Journal, 55(2), 458–476.
Ready, D. A. (2002). How Story Telling Builds: Next Generation Leaders. MIT. Sloan Management Review, Summer, 61-70.
Snow, C. C., Fjeldstad, Ø. D., Lettl, C., & Miles, R. E. (2011). Organizing Continuous Product Development and Commercialization: The Collaborative Community of Firms Model. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 28 (1), 3–16.
Sternberg, R. J. (2001). WICS: A Model of Leadership in Organizations. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 2(4), 386–401.
Yukl, G. (2012). Effective Leadership Behavior: What We Know and What Questions Need More Attention. Academy of Management Perspectives, 2(4), 66-85.
