Personal Leadership Practices and Styles - Paper Example

My best performance regarding the seven habits profile is having the needs of others come first. For instance, I scored the most in the sixth category which addressed caring about other people's success, a corporation with others and solving conflicts in a way that benefits everyone. Given that I am more concerned about the interest of others, it goes without saying that I am more of a transformation leader than a pseudo transformational one (Lussier & Achua, 2015). As a transformational leader, I tend to mind how other people perform and progress. This leadership style involves moving followers to accomplish more than what would be expected of them.

For instance, as shown in category 6, I care about other people's success as much as I do care about mine. I, therefore, tend to want to decentralize leadership, to make others better leaders and performers than they are, currently. This leadership style is beneficial because it engages other people to create a close connection that will later lead to increase in morality and motivation in both the leader and the follower. When the follower is motivated, I will do less as a leader in keeping work rolling. That is because the workers do their best form with an incentive that comes from an inside motivation. I am extensively motivated by the growth of others from the inside, which will manifest in the outside. Timothy Gallwey was a proponent of this leadership style, which he picked from coaching tennis.

Timothy Gallwey was very instrumental in his discovery of the inner and outer game concepts. It is interesting that it was on his sabbatical from a college administration job that he made this exciting and resourceful school of thought. In our quest to attaining our dreams, we deny ourselves the inside peace that brings about an improvement of the goals. Maslow's discovery of hierarchy of needs presents fascinating evidence that human needs are insatiable. A person will start striving for psychological needs and move up to the safety needs but later discovers dissatisfaction and will proceed to crave for love and belonging. Even when people find love and belonging, he/she will have a fetish for the need of esteem, and later demand the self-actualization need. Human beings normally have that need to achieve the external goals, which could be described by Gallwey as the outer game. For most people, they go for the outer game before attending to the inner game. In the process, they are dragged behind. Gallwey advises that we should use non-judgmental observations to increase the accuracy of these observations. I have learned about the usefulness of this concept, applying them in the following areas;

Strengths of my Leadership Practice

Change of Perspective in my Leadership Role and Environment

In my leadership roles, I have learned to understand that success of my leadership breeds not for the outer game but from the inner game. That is, when I have to lead, I check myself first. Do I have an internal conviction that the external roles of leadership are necessary, important and helpful? Do I believe in them? For instance, do think the managerial and technical skills set forth as guidance for leadership are useful? (Gallwey, 2015)Also, when I experience problems in leadership, I have learned to focus on the inner game. To understand the root of the problem, I check my inner game prowess using the psychometric assessment method. In this Method, I will try and assess the ratio of my tendencies to be creative, over my tendencies to be reactive. I can say that I have learned that I can become a better leader with Gallwey's application the inner and outer game in leadership. This is because; I get to understand that the root of the problem comes from the inner game, not the environment.

My leadership Process in my Outer Game

I have learned to play not for not to lose' but to win. I have extended this concept to the group that I lead. In that case, I have learned to kill the exponential potentials of other people in the group, by letting each member of the group have a personal sense of responsibility for the group. I have also understood that outcomes are insufficient in determining the leadership my success as a leader. When a group faces some challenges, I ask myself and urge the group members to question their role in the group. Do they act as a formality or because they believe in the group. Therefore, I have learned to first own the leadership processes and policies from a belief point of view so that I do not blame the external environment. (Whitmore, 2002)

My Leadership Competencies in my Outer Games

Before, I used to think that it is the external environment that determines my performance as a leader. For instance, when I faced a challenge that was very challenging to me before, I judge the situation as hard and unconquerable. The reason for this is that I thought that since it was hard before, then it is also hard at the present moment. After understanding about Gallwey's theory, I get to understand that it is not the externals environment but the internal game or environment that determines my competency. When my internal game is right, I affect the external environment, and that leads to greater productivity.

My Leadership Consciousness in my Inner Game

I discovered that many people, including me, had a dead conscious, in as far as the inner game is concerned. Therefore, when leaders act and display their roles, they are oblivious to their inner consciousness, looking at the external environment as sources of answers. If for instance, you fail to achieve a certain perceived goal in leadership, do you go ahead and look at the faults in the subordinates and any other source other than yourself? What is your state regarding the inner game? Could you be the reason for the failure? These are the main questions that we should ask ourselves for our leadership prowess. After understanding the inner and outer game concept of Gallwey, I established that the leadership consciousness in my inner game is the greatest determinant of success. I, therefore, spend much time assessing my leadership consciousness in my inner game.

Insights from this Analysis

I gather that the inner state of affecting the external environment but not the other way round. If as a leader I am disoriented from the inside, I will lead poorly creating a spiral of failures. In that case, when I fail in one way or another, I check my inner game first, before looking at the external factors. That is what I plant in the followers to make them better people.

i) Spend more time in developing my inner state of mind than working on the external factors of leadership performance

ii) Induce the notion of developing the inner game in my subordinates.

We have been learning a lot about leadership, and especially the factors that will increase the productivity of the same. In as much as we improve ourselves with knowledge, it is also good to sometimes meditate on our inner self, without the judgments and predispositions of the outside or external world.

Weaknesses

Conflicting Interests

Since the followers are empowered to become better and self-motivated people, most of them tend to develop their path that leads to conflicting interests to what the main vision is. For instance, if the vision of the main leadership is to increase innovation that leads to improvement in the quality of products produced, some will be persuaded to compromise on the quality for the benefit of high demand for products. In addition to that, many will have their way of doing things according to their inner motivations. This leads to lack of harmony and main focus on the main vision

Reduced Charisma and Power of Leader

Since I would have groomed everybody to be better leaders, my influence on them would be greatly watered down. It will, therefore, be quite hard swaying the followers in the direction that I want them to take. Because they would have known a lot regarding the leadership and have become better performers, they will tend to question a lot. That will later lead to strained leadership on my part which will consequently lead to watered down motivation. Having a considerable amount of influence is good especially in crisis situations where a prompt decision has to be made.

Increase in Complacency among the Followers

Given that the subordinates will have less supervision, it leads to an increase in complacency among the followers. That is because not all people will buy into the concept of inner motivation. Some will need some level of supervision for them to work better. Therefore handling such a group will require more than the inner and outer game. Since the rest of the subordinates will be self-motivated, other people's complacency will be negative energy derailing the motivation of the self-motivated and lessening the overall performance.

Some of the changes I will affect in closing the gap of the weaknesses above include;

Creating an Image of a Strong Leader

I will strive to create an image of a strong leader to eliminate the issue of charisma and power of the main leader. In that case, the Great man theory will be of great use. This idea is of 19th-century which explains history through the impact of heroes, great men and highly influential individuals who, owing to their intelligence, personal charisma, political skill, and wisdom utilized their power in a manner that brought about a decisive impact historically. Utilizing this theory to some extent, will boost more respect to the leader and reduce the familiarity that might have risen.

Encouraging Responsibility through Transactional Leadership

To boost responsibility and eliminate complacency among some subordinates, I will have to employ transactional leadership practice. Also known as managerial leadership, this kind of leadership focuses on the following; performance, supervision and organization leadership style where the leader promotes compliance through punishments and rewards. This way, those who develop complacency will be forced to work hard to avoid punishment and attract rewards.

Application of Behavioral Theories to Curb Conflicting Interests

In the behavioral theory, I will be the best predictor of my leadership influence and consequently the best determinant of my leadership success. Therefore, I will strive to handle the issue of the problem of conflicting interests. Understanding that a house divided cannot stand, I will harmonize all the vision of individual followers to point to one main vision. Having coached my followers that anyone can be a leader and that they can all become leaders of influence, I will then focus on teaching them how to base their motivation, mission, and vision to the main goal and mission that has been set.

SMART goals

I want to be more influential as a leader

Specific: I have been very friendly to employees that they have become quite familiar. That is a good thing, but sometimes employees take time to implement what I want. I will be stricter to realize that.

Measurable: After two months I should get to balance self-motivation and respect to the leader. I will form specific milestones that need to be achieved in specific time periods. That is when I will measure the strategy I employed.

Achievable: Over a long period, I have created an environment where there are no boundaries between the employees and the leader. Therefore, I will not break the spirit of employees by being too strict suddenly. Rather, I will draw the boundaries slowly over a period.

Relevant

Developing influence among the employees will be trivial in the implementation of certain major tasks within the company. However, I should be careful to keep maintaining the requisite level of motivation among the subordinates.

Time-bound: In as much as I would like to...