My Leadership Development Plan - Term Paper Example

?My Leadership Development Plan Leadership is something I believe I have been training for all my life. I have played many leadership roles in both my personal and professional spheres. Personally, I lead my family, having two daughters to raise and guide to stay on track to be successful in the pursuit of their dreams. Professionally, I own a private trucking company with a staff of four drivers. Because I aspire to be better in my leadership roles, I am currently pursuing my MBA program at the North Park University in Chicago, Illinois. This will be my key in achieving my goal to be a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) someday. In ten years, I see myself running my own Accountancy firm. Right now, my most prominent leadership role is in my trucking company. Having four trucks, my workers and I search for clients in need of hauling their loads to various places. This entails much responsibility both to my clients and to my workers. I need to ensure that my drivers are efficient and honest in doing their jobs. That means they are physically, mentally and emotionally fit to work especially if they drive the trucks for long hauls. They should also be trustworthy because the clients entrust to our business their precious belongings. My role as a leader is to motivate my workers to deliver high quality performance in their work and to ensure customer satisfaction with our services. I would like to believe that I adhere to the Transformational leadership style. Bass (1990)1 explains that transformational leadership style is based on building engagement and participation, leading the team to perform at a better standard than before. In addition, the leader inspires a heightening of awareness about issues of consequence. This awareness keeps the team vigilant to do everything right in order to achieve positive consequences instead of negative ones. Bass (1985) describes the transformational leader as having a vision for the team, self-confidence as well as inner strength to fight for what is “right or good, not for what is popular or is acceptable according to the established wisdom of time”2. I strive to conform to the four dimensions of transformational leadership that Den Hartog et al. (1997) comprises3. Charisma is the first one, with the leader providing vision and mission while instilling pride in his followers thereby gaining respect and trust for himself. He has the ability to increase their optimism. Second come inspiration, which defines if the leader acts as a model, communicates a vision, sets high standards and uses symbols to focus efforts. Next is individual attention to each member. The leader coaches, mentors and provides feedback to each of his followers making sure they are led to the right path. Lastly, dimension of intellectual challenge gives a leader’s followers a flow of challenging new ideas aimed at rethinking old ways of doing things, challenge flawed systems and promotion of careful problem-solving behaviors. Regarding to the ethical types that influence my ethical decision-making, I learned that primarily, it is deontology and secondarily, it is conformism. This means that my tendency when making ethical decisions is to follow prescribed duties that have been imposed by virtue on a person.4 These are duties to fidelity, or keeping promises made; duties of reparation or compensating for wrong actions done to others; duties of gratitude or repaying others for past favors done; duties of justice or the distribution of goods according to one’s merits; duties of beneficence or improving the conditions of others; duties of self-improvement or making oneself better; and duties of nonmaleficence or the avoidance and prevention of injury to others. My conformism ethical type refers to my consultation with my family, friends and colleagues before I make an ethical decision. I find their opinions valuable. Considering my strengths and weaknesses is one thing I keep reflecting on in my journey as a leader. As I move forward, I am confident that I am in control of my family and am doing a great job as a parent even if I have to balance my home life with work and my studies. At work, my staff of drivers is well-trained and my paperwork is in order. My office runs smoothly for now, and I intend to keep it that way even if my business grows bigger. With regards to areas that I feel need change or improvement, it is in needing a more positive outlook and maintaining a positive disposition. I lead a stressful life being busy with several things at a time, and it is easy to be pulled down by life’s challenges, so I need to keep motivating myself that I can do it and will get through with the struggles. Another area I need to improve is in being stricter with my requests. I am a very easy person to deal with and sometimes, people may take advantage of my kindness. In realizing that, I need to enforce my requests more firmly so people will not take them for granted. In becoming a true ethical leader, I need to map out developmental plan of leadership and it should begin now. As an ethical leader, I intend to act with integrity, honesty and fairness while embodying strong work ethics. Reviewing my previous reflections and gaining more insights from research on leadership, I have come up with the following strategies: 1. Keep my promises and never make promises I cannot keep. I intend to gain people’s trust and not to disappoint them when I do not deliver on my word. 2. I should maintain a high standard of my work and expect the same from my staff. Together, we keep on finding ways to improve our services by looking for what customers really want, researching on what our competitors offer and come up with our own innovative solutions. 3. I will make punctuality of attendance and delivery a rule. This builds up reliability and confidence. 4. When faced with a dilemma, I shall look at all aspects of the situation, refer to established legal, moral and ethical rules and consult my family and friends before making an ethical decision to ensure positive consequences. 5. I should treat all people with respect, fairness and honesty. 6. I should exemplify moral character and moral conduct and this should begin from the home. I want my children to look up to me as a worthy model of morality. 7. I should value the trust I earn from the people around me and the community by maintaining a good character, avoiding shady deals and being transparent in my motives to serve. 8. As a work in progress, I shall continue to make myself better through my studies and independent research. Even if my strategic plan looks good on paper and seems doable in my personal and professional life, I can see some obstacles that I might encounter in implementing it. One is language issues. English is my second language, so I need to keep on improving on it. I may now be good in verbal and written English, however, there may be instances when I may fail to convey the right message across because what I say may be what my first language dictates in my mind and the message gets lost in translation. Being in America, I need to be vigilant in thinking and speaking in English and gain more knowledge in how the language is used appropriately in various settings. Another obstacle may be my weakness in making an ethical decision with the fear of hurting someone in the process. For example, it is inevitable that when I make a final decision on a matter that has two opposing views, one view will be chosen over another meaning the endorsers of the opposite view will be offended at not being selected. Since I hate disappointing people, I am not looking forward to make such a decision. However as an ethical leader, I need to make a firm stand and do what is right no matter who gets hurt. I just need to learn the approach in delivering my decision in such a way that the pain is not severe and that the offended party will have options. Still another obstacle is my many priorities in life. I am the type of person who wants to optimize my skills and time, so I try to balance everything together such as my family, my work and my studies. I need to be more organized in doing so if I want to maintain my integrity in all spheres. Keeping a specific datebook for each sphere as well as a general calendar for all my undertakings is one way to organize my life. Of course these should not be ticked off as “done” when I have accomplished an activity, but ensure that I give my all in each activity for each sphere in my busy schedule. Finally, I need to be more proactive, and ignore my tendency to be drained and think of negative thoughts. This is one great obstacle that can ruin my plans if I give in to the negativity. Hence, I should nurture and maintain a more positive disposition and a more proactive lifestyle. As a leader, I would like to establish a work environment that is “authentizotic”. This is a concept from Kets de Vries5 that comes from the Greek words “authentekos” and “zoteekos”, meaning that an organization is trustful and reliant, and vital to life, respectively. The idea underpinning the authentizotic theory is that organizations can be a source of meaning and growth for people, instead of leading to psychological suffering and feelings of alienation6. This means that the workers are motivated to contribute to the productivity of the company. As Rego & Cunha7 suggested, there are six factors that contribute to the well-adjustment of members of authentizotic organizations. These are: the spirit of camaraderie, trust/credibility of the leader, open and frank communication with the leader, opportunities for learning and personal development, fairness and work-family conciliation. Such factors predict employee turnover, their intentions and commitment to the company and the results of their self-reported individual performance. Being happy at work leads to psychological well-being (PWB), a three dimensional construct which includes the life satisfaction, presence of positive emotional experiences and absence of negative emotional experiences components.8 Happier employees turn out to be more creative, resilient, socially connected, physically and mentally healthy, and more productive. That is the kind of organization I want to lead. Finally, my commitment to being an ethical leader may be summed up with this statement: “Nobody can change without big desire to do so.” Due to my strong desire to becoming a leader that is truly worthy of his position because of his integrity, sense of fairness of what is right and wrong and the passion to deliver only the best service to others, I know I can do it. I believe everything starts with a desired thought which is translated into a plan of action and eventually, an implementation of such action. Indeed, I shall go through that process with the will and vision to succeed. Bibliography Bass, Bernard.M. Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations, New York, The Free Press,1985 Bass, Bernard M. From transactional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision. Organizational Dynamics 18 (1990) 19-31. Den Hartog, Deanne. Jaap J. VanMuijen & Paul K. Koopman.Transactional Versus Transformational Leadership: An Analysis of the MLQ., Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. 70 (1997) 19. De Vries, Manfred F.R. Kets. Creating authentizotic organizations: Well-functioning individuals in vibrant companies. Human Relations 54(1): (2001), 101-111. Frost, Peter.J. Toxic emotions at work. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2003 Haller, Max. & Hadler, Markus, How social relations and structures can produce happiness and unhappiness: An international comparative analysis. Social Indicators Research 75, .(2006) 169-216. Rego, Armenio & Cunha, Miguel Pina e, Perceptions Of Authentizotic Climates And Employee Happiness: Pathways To Individual Performance, Journal of Business Research 61, 7 (July 2008) 739-752 Ross, William David. W.D. Ross’ Moral Theory, http://www.hu.mtu.edu/~tlockha/hu329ov8.htm Read More