My leadership journey
My leadership journey has been a gradual transition from a person with a firm resolve in acting based on my perceptions of right or wrong regardless of other people’s insight to a person who considers other people’s understanding and input to arrive at a prudent decision. I have gone through the phase of sovereign foundation, which was a path of self-awareness for me. In many instances, my experiences and reactions shed more light on my character, which immensely helped define how I perceive myself and my sense of identity. I have developed my personal goals and explained the attributes that I would like other people to reflect on from this perception.
I have also gone through inner life growth where various people have mentored me and set the path I have followed. During this stage, I have reflected on the accepted way of doing things my ability to measure up to the set standards, and I have combined these two factors to help shape my leadership strategy and tactics. In this transition, I have acquired some essential traits such as good listening habits that entail critical paying attention to what the other person is saying as opposed to focusing on who is saying it and the humility to make a compromise or even a trade-off. This has dramatically helped me in my approach to conflict resolution, whereby I can resolve conflicts amicably and still ensure a win-win situation for all.
My approach to facing challenges and crises has also greatly improved. I now employ a proactive approach that calls for identifying possible concerns and making the necessary changes to prevent their occurrence rather than using a reactive process involving control measures. For those situations that cannot be deterred, I have learned to maintain a sober mind through it all, own up, and take responsibility where the situation demands I do so.
I am in the early stages of the ministry maturity stage. I am handling various responsibilities and using them as a platform to practice the different skills I have learned and ensure that I don’t lose my sense of identity. Over time, I have realized that leadership is not a one-person show but rather the team’s concerted efforts. This has helped acknowledge that other people are also autonomous beings capable of making prudent decisions if given a chance to. This has dramatically helped me embrace a collaborative approach to tackling tasks, giving credit where it is deserved, encouraging my colleagues and embracing collective learning while on the job, and ensuring proper communication. Many factors have propelled me to seek other people’s input as opposed to mine only; these factors include the strained relations and the consequences that arise from basing a decision on a limited scope of knowledge.
Phase of leadership
My leadership is in the mentored phase. Even though I am in the ministry maturity stage of the leadership life cycle, I have over time gained experience or somewhat tacit knowledge in my scope of work and a general understanding of other critical areas that, although are not specific to my profession they, are also important which when compounded on to my professional expertise immensely helped me embrace new dimensions of approaching my work. From these skills and knowledge and my ability to motivate, I stand in the position of mentorship.
Values assessment
A critical assessment of my values reveals that I am an ethical person who upholds honesty, justice, fairness, and respect for everyone. However, I must admit that there are instances where I feel the need to use my position of power to manipulate the decision-making to produce an outcome that I deem to be based on the rightful principles. I am also an accountable leader who believes in taking responsibility for any repercussions that arise from my decisions, and the fact that I am the one to bear complete responsibility at times makes it challenging to have utmost faith in the decision-making ability of the people under me where I make the most critical decisions.
Strengths
My greatest strengths lie in the fact that I am a decisive person, visionary and performance oriented. Being decisive has enabled me to become an assertive leader who is not afraid to take risks where necessary and at the same time exercise restraint and caution despite the circumstances. This trait has also helped me set goals for myself, embrace change where it is necessary and earn the trust of the people whom I lead. Being visionary allows me to positively embrace change and innovation and improve. My conduct is guided by these three attributes mainly because they go hand in hand, and any action based on any of these strengths is not in conflict with another.
Leadership transparency model
Based on the leadership transparency model, my three circles do not align perfectly. I am perceived to be a confident leader with the ability to lead. This is true, but to some extent, the leader I am is at times obscured by my lack of emotional intelligence, which results in impaired decision-making and my lack of an open mind to new ventures. I want to be a leader who keeps an open mind to new ventures ideas and is bold enough to accept that other equally better alternatives to solving problems and handling issues (YukI,2012 & Tonkin,2013).
Bibliography
Tonkin,H.T(2013).Authentic versus transformational leadership: Assessing their effectiveness on organizational Citizenship behavior of followers International Journal of Business and Public Administration, Volume 10, Number 1, Winter 2013