I Am a Strategic Leader
Communication
I Am a Strategic Leader
Introduction
The best favor that a person can make for oneself in the XXI century is to learn how to become a leader. There is no space for unconfident and covered people in the modern society. Success demands to be achieved through persistence and control. In this paper we would like to analyze a common state of affairs, to define what the leader’s basic features of character are, and to emphasize their importance either in everyday life or at your workplace.
There are different edges from which you can define leadership. But, we believe that there should be only one edge and this edge is a person. The leader isn’t a group of people it is one human being capable of securing his or her object. It is important to realize that everything is based upon oneself. A success of a person depends on that person. Considering this, a person should be aware of some general things that a leader should have (Jay, J., 2009).
The main thing that every true leader possesses is a purpose. Your purpose is something that will awake everything that you will need during your journey to success. It is a thing that will show right direction. At the beginning of the way, a person should ask a question: What is my goal? And it will be the first step of the seven general steps that every leader should walk through.
1. Clarity. It is important to incline yourself to something. It is impossible to succeed in something without a clear goal. You may not be sure in the ways which will help you achieve you goal but there should be a goal. If there is no destination point there won’t be any journey.
2. Focus. It is a second step in the becoming a leader. This means that a leader should have a plan to focus on. Some steps to take in order to accomplish a step 1. A leader should be organized that is why a plan is important. You cannot achieve everything at once. It is better to divide your actions into sections.
3. Criticism. A leader should be true with oneself. It means that it is good to differentiate what are his/her strong sides. It is important to reevaluate your attitude towards yourself. You should be tuned on the growth and self-development (Hernez-Broome, Richard L. Hughes, 2004).
4. Fulfillment. A leader should know what is important to him. In order to achieve the success, you should clearly differentiate what can make you happy and what is valuable for you.
5. Time. You should know that time managing isn’t the most important thing. It is something you certainly have to begin with. Organizing yourself will certainly make a great difference but you have to learn how to make a great progress in a little time.
6. Team. We were talking that everything should be regarded from the self-point. It is true but you’re not a superhero you need help. A true leader is a person who can lead a group of people to a mutual success. Find those who can help and support you and create a team. Find out all their strengths and provide them with suitable tasks.
7. Knowledge. Never ever stop learning! You should be your own project. And here you’ll have no destination. You should grow and develop permanently.
Personally, I cannot tell that I follow all of the steps mentioned above. It is hard for me to set a clear goal. Because one day I can be passionate about one thing and in a week it won’t bother me at all. The other problem is communication with others. It is hard for me to rely on people as well as to open myself in front of others. Still, I can say that I’m pretty good at finding my weak and strong points. I like to find a drawback and to get rid of it. Also, I find out how to manage my time during a day or a week. It was a great surprise for me but it is easier to plan your day when you have a really great amount of work. I see that in order to accomplish everything I have to try really hard. And when I have a task or two, I can find myself doing nothing untill the end of the day.
Emotional intelligence (leadership capabilities)
The emotional intelligence of a leader consists of four main capabilities which help to manage a person. Every capability consists of a particular set of traits of character important in formation a leader.
As it was already mentioned the main thing is the ability to differentiate your own emotions. That is why the first capability is self-awareness as the actual analysis of your emotions and realization of their impact. The important component of this capability is self-confidence. It is believed to be the most important trait of character of a leader. You have to develop your confidence. You should know what you worth. This will help you to stand against those who won’t believe in your capability to achieve success (Daniel Goleman, 2000).
Self-management is a capability to control oneself. Here we will have such qualities as self-control, adaptability, conscientiousness. All of these qualities will help you to overcome unexpected obstacles. The next capability is Social awareness. It deals with the members of your team and customers. You should be able to meet their expectations. And the last but not least is your Social abilities. A true leader is a great communicator. A leader is fluent in creating team spirit, relationships between team members (Daniel Goleman, 2000). Also, you have to be able to create a sense of confidence. You have to create a sense of confidence to your team members, even in the situations where you see no point. You can create a vision of a great purpose (Charles W. L. Hill, Gareth R. Jones, 2012). Maybe, one of your team members will find out the path that will lead you to that purpose, you never know.
What is important at the point with emotions is that you should understand that your emotions influence the others. Your team will be aware and affected by your bad mood or uncertainty, anything (J.T. McMahon, 2010). That is why emotional intelligence plays such an important role.
Taking into consideration information mentioned above I can announce that I’m at the very beginning of emotional intelligence. Yes, as I’ve already mentioned I’m good with self-awareness. But everything that concerns other people is my weakness, as well as self-confidence. I can eradicate some qualities of myself that I do not approve but I’m really unconfident. And even what I am you need only to doubt in my intentions to make me nervous and uncertain.
The next problem is talking to people and creating an influence on them. Still, I believe that there are a lot of different ways to improve myself here. One of them is an attendance of different meeting where you have the opportunity to share your ideas with unknown people and to listen to theirs. It will help to overcome that barrier between me and the unknown person.
Strategic decision making
Strategic decision making is a plan that consists of basic point that will ensure your success. What are the first steps in the strategy? Those are setting a goal, making strategy, focusing, creating a team, etc. All of them were already mentioned. What we want to add is SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis is a tool which can help any leader to manage their plans and influence some points. The way you use this way of analysis is the following. You create a list which consists of such components as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (Gregory Hamel, 2016).
Decisions that a person makes are strongly connected with the person’s way of thinking. Here we should recollect the case of emotional intelligence and particularly the self-awareness. You should not overestimate yourself. It can cause errors like cognitive biases when an error depends on the person’s way of working up the information. Also, it is important to take the ideas of others into consideration. Do not stick to one belief or idea. You should allow your team-mates to prove you wrong. It is the other way of learning new things and this is a step in your strategy. Be ready to accept pieces of advice.
What is also important is to be attentive to your collective. Let all your co-worker to share their ideas, even inspire them to share. Show that their thoughts are valuable. It will create better conditions inside the collective and you’ll be able to get to know some different perspectives. Also, you should be interested in the ‘private’ life of your company. But do not believe the gossips of security or secretaries they are often too brighten up.
Action Plan
I will try to provide you with my action plan due to the SWOT analysis. Let’s imagine that I work as a director of a well-known supermarket. At first, I will write down our strengths. Of course, the first one is our well-known name. The next is a work experience (eg. we are presented on the field of grocery for 15 years). Then we have well-establish partnerships with providers who supply goods on favorable terms for the company. Also, we have a wide range of products, the convenient location of stores, and bonus programs.
Next step is to write down our weaknesses:
Tough competition.
Lack of experienced managers.
Staff turnover.
Then we have to define the opportunities. Those are:
Attraction of new clients.
Expansion of services.
The possibility to hire qualified and experienced stuff.
And the last will be possible threats:
Preference of many people the "neighborhood stores".
The minimum barriers to entry the market for new firms.
Strengthening the position of competing companies.
In a nutshell, in order to become a good leader a person should know the inner self. You should set a goal. Then you should develop or eradicate some traits of character in order to succeed or avoid problems. Only then you should build-up your strategy. For accomplishing your goal you’ll definitely need a team. On this stage, you’ll have to become aware of the principle of work in and with the collective. And it won’t be hard if you set a desirable purpose.
References
Anderson, S. (2007). Collins dictionary. Glasgow: HarperCollins.
Goleman Daniel (2000). Leadership That Gets Results. Harvard Business Review. March – April 2000.
Hamel, G. (2016). What Is Strategic Decision Making?. Smallbusiness.chron.com. Retrieved 3 May 2016, from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/strategic-decision-making-23782.html
Hernez-Broome, Gina, and Hughes, Richard L. (2004). Leadership Development: Past, Present, and Future. Human Resource Planning, 21 ( 1 ), 24-32.
Hill, C. & Jones, G. (2012). Essentials of strategic management. Australia: South-Western/Cengage Learning.
Jay, J. (2009). The inner edge. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger.
McMahon, J. T. (2010). Leadership classics. Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press.
Prive, T. (2012). Top 10 Qualities That Make A Great Leader. Forbes.com. Retrieved 3 May 2016, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyaprive/2012/12/19/top-10-qualities-that-make-a-great-leader/#6a63a8b35648
