Leadership development portfolio: a personal reveiw

Author: Iloka Benneth Chiemelie
Published: 28-September-2014

0.      EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Right from the onset, the overall purpose of this research was described as to gain an insight into the researcher’s present leadership style and present a detailed analysis of such leadership style as it exist in the literature. Additionally, existing gaps are meant to be highlighted and addressed with planned approaches. This was the case as the researcher discovered personal leadership to be based on charisma and empathy. However, the researcher noted that sometimes, such leadership style meant that preferential treatments are given to underperforming staffs will well-performing staffs are denied the opportunity to grow bigger. As such, the researcher has decided to change by becoming an “authentic leader”, who provides equal opportunity for growth irrespective of performance level. Thus, the more you perform, the better you are rewarded.

1.      INTRODUCTION

A number of leadership style guide the modern business and leadership environment. In line with existing literatures, this researcher is aimed at providing an insight into the researcher’s leadership style, aligning such leadership style with existing literatures, identifying gaps from that leadership style and creating the right change approach.

2.      LEADERSHIP INSIGHT: ANALYSIS OF FINDINGS FROM EXERCISE

2.1. Thinking style

The thinking style analysis shows a high dominance with interpersonal relations and this has a strong influence on the researcher’s emotional and intuitive thought process. The author is very sensitive to the feelings of others as well as enjoys interacting with and teaching others. Typically, the author is very emotional and empathic. Additionally, high dominance was also measured in quadrant B as compared with other quadrants. This shows a high level of planning, organizing and detail oriented facets. In essence, these two quadrants suggests that the researcher is very organized and takes extra time to consider actions before undertaking them. In the process of undertaking any given action, the researcher

2.2. Networking

Findings from the networking analysis shows that the researcher is well networked. The analysis shows that the researcher believes that networking as positive value. Further details shows a high level of inter-personal relationship networks, desire to meet and associate with more people, high level of fascination with people and what they do, and high level of association with people from other organizations. In essence, this is necessary because it will create an opportunity for continued learning process, association, socialization, and overall sustainability of the researcher’s potentials. By association with people, the researcher can also become more innovative and creative due to high flow of ideas.

2.3. Leadership orientation

As a leader, the author’s strongest skills include analytical and interpersonal skills as such, the researcher can be described as a good listener and inspirational leader. In essence, the author has achieved a high level of success with the ability of building strong alliance and power base, as well as the ability to inspire and excite others. People easily notice concerns for people and charisma when they interact with the author, and the most important leadership traits of the leaders are care and support for others, as well as toughness and aggressiveness. The researcher is best described as a humanist and politician.

2.4. Spirituality

The researcher is highly spiritual and has the potential of building value based life that will have positive impacts on other people around. In the analysis, the researcher declared high interest for humanity and peace, as well as extra time taken to consider the feelings of others. The researcher is very spiritual and meditation when alone as such opportunity provides the researcher with extra time to consider past actions and decisions as well as the impact of such actions on people around.

2.5. Moral courage

The researcher is very authentic because when it comes to decision making especially in cases where such decisions impact on other people, the researcher takes extra measure to ensure that equality in outcome is the primary onus of such decision. As such, extra measures are taken to ensure that decisions don’t impact on people negatively and the researcher is not afraid to voice out opinions when other people are being preferentially treated or others having their rights denied. Overall, the researcher has the potential of risking a lot for in order to defend set beliefs and values. 

2.6. Summary

The overall summary of this analysis is that the author has a high drive for goodwill and positivism in the lives of other and the environment in general.

3.      INTEGRATION AND EXTENSION: PERSONAL LEADERSHIP APPROACH AND DEVELOPMENT

3.1. Personal model of leadership

Figure 1: personal model of leadership 

0.1. Major elements in the framework

The above framework call to mind a number of facets in leadership and they will be discussed in this section. For long, transactional and transformational leadership has remained the order of the day (Beyer, 1999, p. 308) but a number of criticism has emerged to this form of leadership (Bass & Avolio, 1994) majority of such criticism arguing that they lack the ability to link leadership process with the emotional aspects of the followers.

As a result of this criticism, a number of new understandings have emerged in the leadership setting and the focus and they include spiritual leadership (Fry, 2003), leadership through complexity (Knowles, 2001, 2002; Marion & Uhl-Bien, 2001; Regine & Lewin, 2000), contextual leadership (Osborn, Hunt, & Jauch, 2002), paradoxical leadership (Kark, Shamir, Chen, 2003; Klenke, 2003), the servant leaders (e.g., Greenleaf, 1977), stewardship (e.g., Block, 1993), connective leadership (e.g., Lipman-Blumen, 1996), self-sacrificial leadership (e.g. Choi & Mai-Dalton, 1999), shared leadership (e.g., Pearce & Conger, 2003), and authentic leadership (Avolio, Gardner, Walumba,  Luthans, & May, 2004; Gardner & Avolio, 2005; Gardner, Avolio, Luthans, May, & Walumba, 2005).

Authentic leadership has been defined as the form of leadership in which the leader is always genuine, doing what is best for the people even if it puts personal gains at risk. An authentic leader provides equal opportunity for everybody (Avolio, Gardner, Walumba, Luthans, & May, 2004). This form of leadership is based on charisma (the zeal to do the right thing) and empathy (caring about how other people feel).

From the above framework, the leadership model is based on understanding the issues from the view point of people that are suffering it (charisma) and providing solutions that meet the demands of the people (empathy) even if such leadership will deny the leader personal gains (authentic). This is a good form of leadership and the author wishes to continue in such line into the future as it will eliminate discrimination and other negative factors the traditional transformational and transactional leadership models.

0.2. Personal leadership theories

Figure 2: personal leadership theories 

The New Zealand Ministry of Education (2013) presented an analysis of the above two models. In their review, it was made known that exposed theories represents who people want to do when they face some situation, while theory-in-use is actually what they end up doing when such situation becomes a reality. In the daily lives of human, decision making is inevitable because it is part of the human living. When people wake up, they make the decision of what to do and how to do it. However, certain factors or changes in plan can affect what they actually do. For instance, a student might plan to attend class by 10am and then study in the library by 12pm after the class (espoused theory), but the lecturer might decide to continue the class after 10am in order to finish up necessary class works, and the student’s friends might offer a breakaway plan such as going to lobby to watch movies etc. This will definitely affect the general plan of doing to study in the library after class and then causing the student to do another thing outside of the main plan (theory-in-use).

0.1. Existing gap in personal leadership theories

One thing is common from the above theories, and that is the fast rate at which the author switches from being authentic to emphatic with resulting negative effects. The concept of authenticity has been discussed extensively in numerous disciplines which include the psychology of humans (Maslow, 1971; Rogers, 1959), psychology of development (Erickson, 1995), and philosophy of existence (Heidegger, 1963/2002; Sartre, 1994). It has been touched in both history and religious studies. As asserted by Terry (1993), authenticity is very ambiguous, and it deal with a leader being his or her self and true to the world, being real to oneself and to the world. When a leader acknowledges authenticity, such leader admits to personal foibles mistakes and protected secrets, personal and societal parts that are feared and hidden within one’s shadows of existence.

The theory of authentic leadership is based on the theories of identification (e.g., Pratt, 1998), emotions (e.g., Ashforth & Humphrey, 1995; Dasborough & Ashkanasy, 2002), social identity and self-categorization (e.g., Ashforth & Mael, 1989; A. Hogg & Terry, 2000), transformational/ charismatic leadership (e.g., Bass & Avolio, 1994), and positive psychology and positive organizational behavior (e.g., Cameron, Dutton, & Quinn, 2003). If a leader decides to be authentic, public gains are allowed to overrule personal gains. The focus is on making the public happy.

So when empathy does contradicts with authenticity? Empathy deals more with caring for the neediest (which can bring about disparities and discriminations) while authenticity deals more with providing equal opportunity for everybody. Thus, empathy creates a gap in this leadership theory because it forces the author to change from desired plan of caring for everybody into caring for the most needy, which can effectively result to inequality in the way care are rendered and who actually gets the care. This gap needs to be filled in order to ensure that the leader doesn’t discriminate some people as such can results to numerous negative outcomes like organizational politics, low motivation, lack of citizenship behavior and overall increase in employee turnover. On the other hand, addressing this issue will help create the right atmosphere for effective leadership and enhanced overall 

0.2. Personal leadership plan

Figure 3: personal leadership plan

As noted earlier, the existing gaps above creates a huge barrier for authenticity in the leadership process and it is necessary to fill these gaps in order to ensure effective leadership. As such, the author has developed personal leadership plan that is based on the framework illustrated below

0.1.1.      Self-identity

Avolio and Gardner (2005) identified one of the major characteristics of an authentic leader to be that such leader anchors their own deep sense of themselves. The self-concept can be seen as what people know about themselves. As a knowledge, the self helps people to organize and give meaning to their behavior (Kihlstrom, Beer, & Klein, 2003). Additionally, it is widely acknowledged that al the self is content dependent variable. As such, quite a number of authors (e.g., Markus & Wurf, 1987; Showers & Zeigler Hill, 2003) have come up with the assertion that an individual’s overall self is normally represented as categorical sets, with each of the sets representing a distinct self or identity.

As used in the psychological literatures, self-identity can be viewed as reflex concepts, which implies that they are used to reference an individual’s image or how they view themselves (D. Hall, 2004). Consequently, what people believe they are is what they end up doing. When someone has a constructed self-identity of an artist, it will be difficult to convince the person that artists doesn’t exist within his or her self. This is because in most cases, self-identity are normally translated into action with respect to how people handle issues around them, what they love to do, and how they are viewed by other based on what they do.

On that accord, developing self-identity is essential because it will help to one to develop personal principles for undertaking day-to-day activities in one’s life. For instance, when a leader has a self-indemnity of equality and authenticity, such leader will stick with this identity irrespective of disparities of needs and demands of followers. As such, the author will begin the change process by developing a self-identity of authenticity and equality, ensuring that the leadership process is based on understanding what the public needs and providing the public with equal opportunity to meet their individual needs. Thus, this will eliminate the potential of the author changing from the espoused-theory of action to the theory-of-use as such an identity fills up existing gaps as discussed above.

0.1.2.      Leader identity

The leader development process involves the creation of new aspects of self, which are specifically related to the new roles that the leader will have to perform. The construct of leader identity is used as the bridge between existing gaps in personal and collective identity because it brings together individual features of self-identity with group-oriented aspects of collective identity. The idea here is that there is coexistence between the individual self with both the relational self (the aspects of self-constructs which are shared with other people) and collective self (the aspect of self-construct used to differentiate a given group member from people outside the group) (Sedikides & Brewer, 2001). From the individual level, leader identity is obtained from the leader’s self-identity and the level of human capital that the leader brings to the leadership role undertaken. From the collective level, leader’s identity is developed as a function of the shared experiences obtained from shared identities of the leader and emerged followers. Authentic leaders have a great sense of how they wish to undertake their roles as leader and carry out their responsibilities in amoral ways for the best interest of other people (May et al., 2003).

In the view of the growing understanding form leader identity from a personal construct and collective construct calls on the need to always be thyself as a leader irrespective of the obstacles and challenges faced in the course of the leadership process. As such, the author will seek to develop a clear leadership identity built upon share respect and authenticity. Such identity will also be communicated to the followers, thus enlightening them on what to expect when dealing with the author as the author will not be willing to bulge from clarified stands. This new trait will ensue that even when the leader is approached by numerous less-privileged followers, the leader will not create any unfavorable condition for the well-performing followers, but will instead focus on delivery a competitive and equitable working environment.

0.1.3.      Spiritual identity

One of the few doubts in people’s belief is the omnipresence and omniscience of a higher being (God). People tend to develop a sense of spiritual sense that is in line with the higher power of God by recognizing the sacredness and divinity within this higher sense.

The influential role of spiritual in the workplace and leadership has flooded the academic scene with attentions in both popular press and research literatures, which are reflected in the recent proliferation of books and articles in the field of management (e.g., Ashmos & Duchon, 2000; Gunther, 2001; Mitroff & Denton, 1999; Thompson, 2000). Such literatures speak on the growing interest in spirituality within the corporate world. Additionally, researches have shown that the core benefits of organizational transformation might not necessary be mere economic transformation. Instead it can also be nonmaterial, spiritual aspects of transformation that can be the most profound for individual, society, and the organization at large (Milliman, Czaplewski, & Ferguson, 2003; Neal, Lichtenstein, & Banner, 1999). In the general sense, applying spirituality in the business and leadership context calls for self-awareness of what is good and bad, and the consciousness to do the good while avoiding the bad.

Just like the other systems discovered above, the  researcher will also seek to develop a high level of spiritual awareness, which will aid in identifying the good and bad, guide towards doing the good and avoiding the bad, and ensure that everybody in the system are provided with equal opportunity for personal and tem growth.

1.      CONCLUSION

From the above discussions, a number of discoveries have been made in the sense that the research is a very charismatic, transformational, and caring leader. However, person will to help does becomes an issue as a leader because the researcher seem to focus more on those who are worse and as such create an imbalanced atmosphere in which more people work more than others, but actually end up earning lesser in terms of value earned per work. Take for instance a case where two people worked for 20 hours, A spent the whole 20 hours working for the company, but B spent some time for personal gains. At the end of the day, A returned higher value for the company but the leader decides to shift some gains of A to B as a result of pity. There is no sure or guaranteed parity as the leader’s espoused theory is influenced by external factors, resulting to a different in-use-theory. In order to great parity in the leadership system and ensure fairness by providing everybody with equal opportunity, the author has decided to change into an “authentic leader,” who does look at crying faces but focuses more on equality for everybody. This will motivate the whole system because people will know that they will earn more by doing more, thus be pushed to do more.

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