Business Report: Defining Yourself as a Leader

Introduction

Leadership is all about maximizing other people’s efforts using social influence to achieve certain goals. People possess different skills and talents that can enable them to excel in different areas of life. A good leader should be able to leverage these skills and talents to reach certain objectives. However, the people should not just accomplish the objectives because they are required to, or commanded to do so. A good leader should be able to inspire his or her people to achieve such objectives. Leadership also means leading people to become the best version of themselves. That is, growing their talents, skills, personality, and mode of thinking so that they become good at whatever it is that they want to achieve. However, leadership is also about leading oneself in as much as you lead others. You get to grow your self-worth to ensure that you achieve your goals and dreams by acquiring and growing your current skills. A leader is defined by how he or she handles conflict and chaos, rather than their handling of peaceful times. Chaotic times tend to bring the best and worst out of people, and being a leader means balancing out these attributes to survive and even thrive during difficult times. Therefore, this paper is about a review and reflection of my strengths from the Better Up-Self Assessment, the leadership statement, and the explanation of how the BetterUp Coaching experience can help me use my leadership strengths to achieve my professional goals.

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Leadership Strength

The Better-Up Assessment revealed that my leadership strengths are coaching, growth mindset, and relationship building.

Coaching

Coaching is the process of helping someone improve their performance or skill level. Coaching is one of the most potent leadership processes as it fosters collective information processes that get team members to engage in problem identification, diagnosis, solution generation, and solution selection (Zaccaro, Ritman, & Marks, 2001). Based on my colleagues and friends, I am one of the best people to approach for professional and personal development. Being a good coach is an important part of leadership because then I get to help develop the skills and knowledge of my subordinates. Coaching focuses on the present skills and knowledge rather than the past or future.

The people that I interviewed said that I guide and support other people’s development through coaching. For example, I trained one of my cousins on how to file tax returns, something that would be very useful in his future. As a good leader, the focus was not just on the practical skills and knowledge; it was on his motivation. I wanted to know how he felt about taxes. I wanted to get his thoughts on whether people should be paying taxes. It is easier to perform coaching when the other party is motivated to undertake such an endeavor. After finding his thoughts on the issue, I educated him on the areas where I thought he is wrong. That is, he should not just view paying tax and an obligation; he should perceive it as an opportunity to contribute to building the nation. I combined the knowledge and the skills to inspire him always to file his tax returns.

Growth Mindset

A growth mindset is a mentality of always seeking for better opportunities and ways of gaining more knowledge. Those that I asked responded by saying, I invest time and effort into learning and continual growth. Part of having a growth mindset is the prioritization of learning not just for myself but for those whom I lead. People need to constantly learn in order to become a better version of themselves. Nevertheless, the growth mindset is not just about seeking better opportunities. It is also about looking for weaknesses within oneself and those that I seek to lead to self-improvement. That applies to me and those that I lead.

I currently use my growth mindset to pursue this course so that I can become a better leader. Learning allows me to improve some leadership traits, such as public speaking and communication. Taking part in this course helps me perfect such traits and get me into becoming a better leader. A true leader would understand that there is no such thing as a perfect leader. Leadership should be viewed as a process rather than a destination. Based on that logic, leadership is a process of constant self-improvement to tackle a wide range of problems. Having a growth mindset is part of leadership, and the two are inseparable.

Relationship Building

According to my work colleagues, I develop strong relationships at work and actively build my network. Relationship building can also be described as social skills. As one of my strengths, relationship building is the skill that enables me to socialize with others, superiors and juniors alike, to enable me to learn and teach the same skills. Gupta and Krishnan (2004) identify socialization as one of the important parts of transformational leadership. Relationship building skills make the subordinates feel comfortable, and that enhances the experience for both parties involved.

For example, I am currently expanding my network by building relationships with my classmates and lecturers. I see networks as a form of investment. Although not all connections will pay off, some can be a good learning opportunity. However, some go beyond learning, such that I can rely on these people for a few favors. Nevertheless, as a leader, some of these people perceive me as a mentor. I am always happy to share any skill or knowledge I might have because that is part of leadership.

Leadership Statement

My leadership purpose is to help the disadvantaged groups in society. I aspire to be that visionary leader who will be remembered for the way I changed people’s lives. I seek to inspire people to move towards creating a better society. I believe in transformational leadership as opposed to other forms of leadership because transformational leadership gets to change the person’s thinking. Commanding someone to do something might do the trick, but the way to leave a lasting impression is to inspire them to do it not because they are forced, but because they have been transformed. Transformational leadership is also efficient because I would not have to supervise them all the time. It also carries a ripple effect, because the subordinates can teach other people the same principles and values. I value freedom and transparency when it comes to leading others. I do not think people should be coerced into doing something, but rather they should reach such a decision by themselves. I do not find authoritarianism to very efficient because it does not make the maximum use of all the parties involved. In authoritarianism, the people will be inspired to do the bare minimum. Transformational leaders give people the self-drive to do the best they can to get the best results. Also, transparency works to earn their trust. A leader has to earn the trust of his or her followers, and I apply the same principles in my leadership journey. The followers need to feel like they are part of the process, and that gives the leader an advantage because the followers can contribute to some issues.

Some of my strengths include positivity and analytical thinking. Positively enables me to push through some of the most difficult situations. I tend to try and make the best out of every situation. In those cases where I have lost or failed, I look at the lessons learned as the positives hence enabling me to pick myself up and tackle the next challenge. As for my analytical thinking, I believe and follow the logic. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Therefore, I make sure to analyze the probable consequences of the actions that I take or intend to take.

The goal is to help at least ten thousand families from marginalized and disadvantaged sections of the population. Poverty continues to be a problem despite the progress that human society has made over the past three centuries. The free-market was created to help everyone experience social mobility, but there are still those who lack the knowledge and motivation for lifting themselves out of poverty. I want to lobby support for those groups of people so that they can get access to the same opportunities and resources as the rest of the population. Things such as quality education and healthcare are basic needs, but not everyone has access to such things. People need to be educated on the importance of such needs and how it can alleviate their living standards. That is why I want transformational leadership because this is something that requires individual initiative and self-drive.

The Better-Up Coaching experience that I had during this course turned out to be an enjoyable experience that I will always recall as the important steps in my leadership journey. The coaching experience provided new challenges such as self-analysis and criticism. From experience, I got to take a third-person view of myself and my actions. I realized that a leader needs to perform self-criticism from time to time so that they can identify their shortcomings. Therefore, the Better-Up Coaching experience helped me become a better leader by highlighting my weaknesses and strengths. As an aspiring leader, I should constantly seek to improve myself, and that means rectifying my weakness areas. Despite being good at relationship building, I realized that public speaking is still a challenge as I am yet to develop good confidence in my communication skills and leadership abilities.

Most of the leadership weaknesses can be corrected through practice. As for the strengths, they also need to be maintained and even improved. Knowing my strengths enables me to leverage on them. I would use them to my advantage in situations that require my leadership skills. For example, the program has identified my social skills and coaching as among my two strengths. I am now more confident in my coaching and social skills. I can perform leadership activities such as teaching or training, knowing very well that I have certain tools to facilitate the process. Also, the coaching program has enabled me to realize how I want to come out as a leader during a crisis. I have realized that crisis management defines most leaders, and I want to come out as dependable so that I can enable my team to overcome the crisis.

Conclusion

A good leader is one who can bring out the best of other people. The Better-Up Self-Assessment and Coaching has indicated that I have a growth mindset, good at coaching, and possess good relationship building skills. As a result, I seek to improve these skills and leverage them as much as possible to become a better leader. The program turned out to be a good learning experience because it has enabled me to understand that leadership and management are not the same things. I am looking forward to my future coaching sessions so that I can learn new skills and ways of inspiring people to become the best versions of themselves. My future coaching sessions will focus on change management, team selection, and competitiveness. Change is inevitable in human society, and as an aspiring leader, I need to prepare myself for such. The future Better Up coaching not only prepares me for such changes, but it also trains me to prepare my team for such changes. That includes making them flexible and resilient to the changing environment. As for the team selection, the program will show me how to judge and analyze people’s skills and characters so that I can be able to select people who are compatible with each other and my values.

References

Gupta, V., & Krishnan, V. R. (2004). Impact of Socialization on Transformational Leadership: Role of Leader-Member Exchange. South Asian Journal of Management, 11(3), 7–20. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1967087