Analyzing Leadership Development Plan Essay

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Leadership

For a business or an organisation to be successful, there is a need for well trained and effective executives / leaders. An organization without proper leadership will find it very difficult to achieve sustainable success. Leaders help in drafting and disseminating information about new visions or directions and providing staff with the right motivation to boost productivity in this age of intense competition. Therefore, it is necessary for companies to continuously train their leaders so as to ensure that their skills are up-to-date and that their organisations are being led in the right direction (Gitlow, 2004). Based on these observations, this paper seeks to explore the finer issues of leadership through insights of an interview with an acknowledged leader, who trained to be a leader through experience and diligence he gained in different occupations throughout his career.

Key Events

Throughout his life he has experienced various things that have changed his view on leadership. Basically, his view of a leader is that of someone who drafts and communicates a vision that will motivate staff and other stakeholders to align towards common good. He said that the biggest influence to his perspectives on how to lead was the degree of assent by others and his struggles to overcome challenges. He now views leadership as a shared process and responsibility among various stakeholders.

Leadership Approach

Several basic theories and principles have influenced him as a leader. For instance, he asserts that he has taken on an informal approach that is somewhat similar to grounded theory, as he gathers data about a certain issue, drafts a plan on how to deal with that issue and then test that plan and modify it through action on the ground. He added that he has found supplementary learning through books on specific challenges that havehelped him to formulate plans. Working for more than five years at a university has challenged and influenced his perspectives on leadership.

He recalls his excitement he had when he joined university. He taught at the university for quite some time. According to him, he was doing what he has always wanted to do in his life -- help students learn and grow by teaching them from what he thought was a fresh new perspective. When he noted any operational challenge at that point, he immediately went to work to formulate theories on how to tackle the challenge. However, he soon found out that teaching at this particular university was not the job for him since the management of the institution was not particularly happy about embracing his bold new ideas. He noted that although the university had grown exponentially in the few years he had worked there; it continues to suffer from the same problems he had identified earlier on.

When I asked him whether he was born a leader or made a leader, He said that he was made a leader. He claimed that before he started teaching at the university, he had never thought that he would be given the gift of leadership. He told a story of how he had come from a small traditional family where no one else had progressed to hold a leadership position in the community or society. He therefore thinks that he was given the gift of leadership by God but he worked to develop the skill set that has made him the leader he is today.Indeed, according to Sanders (1967), even though leadership is a gift from God, leadership skills can and should be developed.

According to Kadalie (2006), for one to be a successful leader, there is a need for an inner motivation that drives them. Teachers normally base their job satisfaction levels on their ability to help students and to bring about a real change in their lives. In the same way, leadership for teachers is based on their desire to provide better learning environments for their students.

Various studies have revealed that the majority of teachers do not agree with the view of a leader as a person who holds a superior position in an organizational structure. Instead, many teachers think of leadership as a collaborative effort between various stakeholders for the purpose of providing better learning environments for students (Dmock & McGree, 1995). Nowadays, leadership roles for teachers have expanded. Lecturers can now work as master teachers, advisors, mentors or research colleagues. Lecturers can also be members of institutional-based leadership programs or support teams. Teachers are also working individually to implement programs in various other capacities (Troen & Boles, 1992).

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Leadership is particularly about how to convince others to believe in your vision. Many different scholars and authors have had this school of thought. However, no one puts its better than Sun Tzu in his work, The Art of War. Sun Tzu says that leadership is all about convincing others to have the same vision as the leader does, so that they can risk everything without fear to reach that vision (Gitlow, 2004). For Sun Tzu, being a leader requires strategy and a unity of vision so that in the end all actors share the risks and benefits of achieving their objective. This was his belief. He said that Sun Tzu was one of the influencing factors on his views on leadership. And that he believed that shared vision could help an organization to attain its goals faster. He further pointed out that the idea of leadership as a shared vision and responsibility was consistent to other concepts on leadership that he believed. For instance, he pointed out that this was consistent to the idea of personal mastery as proposed by Senge (1990) in his work on learning organization theory. He also got to familiarise with concepts such as systems thinking by Senge's works. His studies on Neuro-semantics and NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) also provided him with a better approach of understanding communications and to induce others to have the same visions as he did.

One of the other influences on his leadership styles was the idea that the person who has the most self-discipline (can control their attitudes and beliefs) possesses the capability to have the greatest influence on others. This idea is supported by the likes of Quinn (2000) who notes that the biggest change occurs when we achieve control over our own selves. He promised himself that he would do all in his power to be a better leader and to develop self-control within any organization in whichhe would work.

He told me that he found this promise to be freeing but challenging. It was freeing because it removed the need for him to wait to have a title to bring about change. He no longer derives value from titles and things like that. However, he found the promise to be challenging because it meant that he had to explore being a leader outside the confines of formalpower structures within the organization in which he working. He could not act in the ways the organization expected because he didn't have any positional authority, so he had to find ways of getting wanted he wanted through working those in authority. He found that working independent of any post freed him in many ways and showed him that he could exert influence fromany position.

Shared leadership could actually be a great thing. For it to work, the involved people ought to have achieved structural clarity or respect for each other based on trust. Structural clarity is developed through clear communication regarding negotiable and non-negotiable components of every party by the leader to the stakeholders. The leader is aware of the talents of each of his team members. The leader has discovered that leadership actually works best when every party involved is able to openly share their concerns as well as hold themselves mutually answerable. The lecturer concurs with the statement that a focused unified structure is the basis for any high performing team. Even the mostcompetent individuals pursuing a common mission passionately, will weaken and fail if the group structure continuously generates aggravation and confusion.

After thinking about his achievements and pursuits in leadership in art education in his portfolio, his description of leadership is simply the creation of conditions that makes a group of individuals to get done what they ought to get done. Below is a short description of what he regards as the most important aspects of a good leader:

Engage everybody in the group and assist them in feeling ownership of the set goals. Frequently reinforce the good efforts of the group members.

Aim to be courteous, supportive, and positive.

Assume some of the group's jobs and set a good example through proper completion of a task at hand.

Be properly organized and clear, achievable goals. Be on top of every detail all through the process.

He has learnt that he is capable of much more than he believed he was, following his involvement in leadership roles.. When he started presiding over an important convention, he thought that he might be overwhelmed......

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