Leadership Development Plan

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There are several leadership approaches or models; they include adaptive, transformational leadership, autocratic leadership, and moral leadership among others. These differ in some ways, for instance, some of these models are classified as the paradigm models example include charismatic leadership and charismatic leadership. For this particular paper I choose to work with transactional leadership, this type of a leadership model is characterized by its high levels of communication. Leaders using this type of a model in their leadership reward employees following their good performance, he or she set goals for the team he or she leads and offer direction and guidance that would lead to the achievement of the set goals. Leaders using the model believe that motivating employees is one way to encourage employees and this transform to the increased productivity (Bal, De Jong, Jansen & Bakker, 2012).

The Elements of Transactional Leadership Model

Communicate and Cultivate improved Relations

This element is one of the key elements of the model; it involves communicating to improve relations within an organization. In my case, I would ensure that I develop good communication skills (Kirk bride, 2006); I will avoid harassing the people I lead but rather humanely communicating to them. Good communication is what defines a good leader, in my development plan I will ensure I set aside time to learn more about good communication skills and implement them in my day to day activities. Good communication promotes good relations and understanding in an organization.

Humility within Authority and Power

Effective leaders ought to be humble in their various capacities. Leaders should lead by example; they should not be there to offer commands, this makes employees or one’s juniors think that one is arrogant an inhumane. In my development plan, I will ensure that I learn to be humble to the people I lead; this should take me a short period. Although being humble is an essential thing, one can still learn from others and through readings. I my plan, I will ensure I read the Bible to understand the perspective and the importance of being humble, I should also ensure I learn the characteristics of a humble person. From here I would be in a better position to incorporate this virtue in my leadership.

Awareness and Authenticity of Self and Others

This element defines how a progressive leader should act and behave. Living authentically is difficult, but one should first realize that he or she is an authentic leader, one as to be aware of oneself. I would ensure I deeply understand the different perspective of my life. Being aware of oneself and one’s potential is key to being an austenitic leader. I my leadership plan, I will ensure that keep attention to other people’s ideas and more so their feedback. I will ensure that I create time and reflect on and examine my experiences, this is because effective leaders in most are characterized by authenticity and self-awareness. I will ensure I work hard and ensure I remain focus to be much aware of myself.

Navigating Complex and Dynamic Challenges

Leaders in any organization are there to offer leadership and to solve problems and to offer a guide to the employees. Because of the ever-changing business environments, a leader should be ready to offer effective leadership despite the different challenges. In will ensure that I learn problem-solving skills in my plan, these skills are necessary for a leader because one will apply it whenever one is faced with a problem. Problems do occur, and hence the skills will be of much help. I will ensure in my plan I cover all the different problem-solving approaches and problem-solving tools. The skill will make me be a better leader able to navigate challenges and different situations.

Gaining and Embracing Multiple and New Perspectives

Leaders are the mirror of any organization, if leaders f any organization are not flexible in their thinking, it would be a disadvantage to the organization. Leaders ought to be flexible and embrace new ideas from colleagues from even from shows and exhibition. Leadership development is a process that needs one to be patient and courageous (Kruckeberg, Amann & Green, 2011 p.g 103); one should be open to new ideas that will at the end of it benefit him or her in his or her leadership. One should not season an issue in unidirectional instead one should see it from different dimensions or perspectives. In my case, I will ensure I am open to criticism and be keen to listen from my colleagues and also my juniors; this is important because brilliant ideas and information come from people. Individuals are gifted in different ways; I will be ready to accommodate their ideas and make good use of. For example, I will give the people I lead an opportunity where they freely express their ideas on a particular issue; this will enable me to be an effective leader by having multiple and new perspectives.

Empower Strength and Action in Self and Others

Teamwork is what defines the success of an organization; it is through it that individuals in an organization would know more about each other and even exchange ideas. It is the responsibility of any leader to ensure that its people are one and understand each other, this is one way to reduce conflict in an organization. When people come together and share ideas, problems and challenges facing an organization or even individual are easily solved. In my plan, I will ensure I give myself time for interaction and time to attend and seminars. This is important because it will give me an opportunity to integration with different individuals and to listen to what they have, this type of an exposure is right for a leader because one will be able to learn from others. Understanding his way of life of different individuals will enable me as a young leader to tolerate other people and thus managing conflict and misunderstandings.

Participative Leadership Style

This is one of the four types of leadership styles (Kapena, 2000 p.g 25), the style of leadership have more strengths that its weaknesses and threats. This type of leadership involves everyone in the decision-making process, for this reason, everyone will be abided by the decision hence minimizing misunderstanding and a possible eruption of conflicts. In the type of leadership, no one is taken for granted every idea or information from anyone is taken seriously and hence enhancing the sense of ownership among the employees or workers. Most of the work here is done by workers or employees, the work of a leader in the type of leadership is to set a goal for his or her team and gives his or her members that freedom and independence to work towards achieving the set objective(s).Below is the analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) of my current leadership style.

Strengths

This type of leadership encourages team building (Northouse, 2014 p.g 324); it is this that has made most leaders using the style to realize success and less friction among colleagues and employees. Team building makes it possible for workers to support each other and as a result leads to the improvement of the general performance. With team work, conflicts will be minimized, and therefore there will be no time wasted in resolving these conflicts.

The type of leadership encourages workers to express their views and their ideas without any fear freely. Individuals are gifted in different ways, given this opportunity; the organization will benefit a lot from skills such as creativity, and even ideas. If used well, these ideas and thoughts can lead to the success of the organization. This type of leadership has enabled me to learn and realize different talents from the people I work with. It is the only way management can tap skills and ideas from it human resource. With this type of leadership, employees or workers in an organization have a total freedom of expression. An organization benefits from this kind of leadership in the long run.

The other strength of this kind of leadership style is that it is much easy to establish the talents and unique skills employees have. Unlike other leadership styles, participative style offers an opportunity for its workers to express their skills and even talents. It is much difficult to determine one’s talent if such an individual feels he or she is under pressure to perform, the pressure should originate from the employee. An employee feels recognized and motivated in the type of leadership hence making them be committed to whatever they do. With this leadership style, my work will not be that much.

Weaknesses

Just like any other leadership style (Northouse, 2014 p.g 301), participative leadership also have some weaknesses. Time management is a real problem as far as this leadership style is a concern. Because every one’s ideas or thought are taken seriously, it takes too long for these ideas to be disseminated and leads the late implementation of these ideas. This could be dangerous to a firm or even an organization and could lead to general failure in an organization since some projects work with schedules.

Since workers in this style of leadership work together, there is a possibility of conflict arising. Every time two or more individuals come together, there is a chance of misunderstanding and possible conflict erupting. It is more frequent where most workers are opinionated, and everyone wants his or her idea to be adopted or be used. If one’s idea is dropped for one reason or the other, one tends to think that he or she is not wanted in the organization and this leads to an employee or a worker becoming demoralized hence adversely affected his or her performance. Alternatively, with this style of leadership members could develop personal gifts among each other, this is common when other members think their opinions and ideas are combated and disregarded. Some may take it so personal that they end up avoiding any interaction with their colleagues which is not healthy for any organization. This will not only be a problem to the organization but also to the leaders in the organization.

Opportunities

Some opportunities are associated with this type of leadership. First, there are chances of the organization using this type of leadership grow and expand its operation. The other opportunity is that an organization using such this leadership style may reduce its operating expenses due to the high level of commitment among the organization’s workers.

Threat

Since in this type of leadership each is trained to be a leader in future, it might reach a point where no one wants to occupy a job with a lower rank hence leading to the conflict of interest. This is a big risk to an organization and even to the leaders themselves.

The Leadership Demonstrated by an effective leader within the organization I work

For this particular section, I will describe the leadership style demonstrated by John, one of the supervisors in the organization I work; he is an excellent and good looking man. Despite this, he is a leader to be emulated. Following successive evaluation, I realized that the kind of leadership style he is using transformational leadership. This type of leadership highly relies on communication from the management to achieve the set objectives. With the type of leadership style, a leader motivates his or her workers and by doing, so productivity and efficiency in the workplace are highly improved. The motivation can be a verbal one or even through rewards, this actually encourages employees hence increasing their productivity leading to the general increase in the organization’s productivity which can be translated into an increased profit margin. This style involves all its workers in all its operations to achieve its objectives; this is important because it inculcates the sense of ownership among workers. Involving employees motivates them and make them work without even close supervision, this is a dream of every organization in most cases does not come to pass.

This type of leadership is right for a developing organization because protest and demonstrations among employees are significantly minimized because employees are involved in every operation the organization undertakes. Motivation is another important aspect that makes employees remains dedicated to their work and hence benefiting the organization in the long run. Apart from transformation leadership portrayed by the leaders, the leader also displays various leadership styles. The leader does not directly supervise his employees, but rather he trusts employees would deliver. This leadership style demonstrated by the leader is known as Laissez-Faire (Adeniyi, 2007 p.g 41), this is important because employees need to trust for them to develop the sense of ownership which will be kind them towards delivering their best. Although employees work with supervision, it should not be a direct one, for the case of well-experienced workers; this kind of supervision might not work out. The best thing to do is to set targets for workers and ensure they finish within the stipulated time; one should not be there every minute to see what the workers will be doing.

The other leadership style demonstrated by the leader is participative style. The leader is keen to listen to opinions and ideas from his juniors and even colleagues; this is crucial because it broadens one’s knowledge enabling one to make firm decision (Gujral, 2013 p.g 179-195).Some leaders don’t give their juniors an opportunity to express their opinion towards a particular matter freely; this is not the right way, these group of individuals has different abilities and skills that could be helpful in the different situations faced by an organization. The leader understands the key role played by the employees in an organization and thus acknowledges the need for the involvement of these individuals in the decision-making process and helping these employees to come to terms with the changes that occur in an organization.

The leader also demonstrates transactional leadership style. Several instances show that the leader demonstrates this leadership style, firstly the leader believes in motivating employees for their outstanding performance(Kirkpatrick, 2006 p.g 175).According to the leader, rewarding employees is not bribing employees, to him rewarding employees play a major role in motivating employees and as a result increasing their productivity. A motivated employee works better than unmotivated. The leader also punishes employees whenever they go wrong; he is fair in disciplining his employees. Fairness in promoting, rewarding and even punishing employees ensures that employees trust their leaders.

According to Philippians 2:5, we are urged to have the same attitude Christ had. The leader embraces an attitude that glorifies Christ other than the one that an attitude that reflects on Christs.The leader is so concern and listen to his employees, this kind of attention shows that he as a good attitude towards the people he leads just like the Christ himself. The leader easily forgives and forgets; this is rear among many leaders who forgive but keep records in case of anything. They use such records to determine one’s promotion and even rewards; this is not a Christ-like attitude(Good News Bible, 2004).Just like Christ, the leader shows unconditional love to the people he leads. Love is one of the largest commandments given to us by God; we much love our neighbors as we love ourselves. The bible says how we pretend to love God whom we don’t see and fail to love our immediate neighbor. This leader is selfless; he considers the people he leads before himself. Putting the first the interest of others is what characterize Christ-like attitude, we should not put our interest first, but we should put the interest others before ours.

The leader is humble to the people he leads; this is just like the way Christ was to his followers and disciples. Christ demonstrated it when he washed his disciple’s feet. Leaders should be humble to the people they lead. Our bad attitudes can make the people we lead be against us and even fail to respect us as leaders. The leader has a positive attitude and sees everything and even the individuals he leads in a positive perspective; this encourages workers even to work extra harder to achieve the set goals.

An Effective leader should demonstrate stewardship behavior such as that of being responsible. The leader is very responsible to the people he leads, the organization’s assets and even the organization’s financial assets. According to the leader, he should lead by example, to him, leaders should not be around to order and command employees around, but they should be there to demonstrate to the workers that it is possible. The leader also demonstrates stewardship behavior by recognizing the efforts put by the employees in ensuring that the organization’s goals are attained. He recognizes these efforts through giving rewards and even promoting employees with outstanding performance (Kirkpatrick, 2006 p.g 172).This will go a long way to improve the organization’s general productivity and even improve the organization’s image.

I have learned a lot from this leader; I am known where I when wrong when developing my leadership style. As such it is never too late, I can still modify my leadership style in a way that it demonstrates and depicts good leadership. In developing my leadership style, I will ensure I put into practice every new skill I learned from the leader I choose. Practicing is the only way to ensure that I retain all the skills necessary for my leadership style. I will also ensure that I improve my communications skills since it forms an important aspect of my leadership style. With communication skills, I will be able to interact with anyone in the organization freely and freely express the ideas I have with no fear (Barker, 2006 p.g 100).I will ensure that I learned and embraced the act of recognizing and rewarding employees for their good performance, this is vital because it acts as a motivational tool to the employees. Once employees are motivated, they would be able to work freely without much supervision, and this means my work as a leader will be minimal. I will ensure that I incorporate what I learned from my selected leader in my leadership style, this will ensure that I become an effective leader. Below is my action plan to guide me towards the achieving my development goals.

My Plan of Action

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Bal, P. M., De Jong, S. B., Jansen, P. G., & Bakker, A. B. (2012). Motivating employees to work beyond retirement: A multi‐level study of the role of I‐deals and unit climate. Journal of Management Studies, 49(2), 306-331.Retrived from:https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=Importance+of+motivating+employees+&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=

Barker, A. (Feb 17, 2006). Improve your communication skills. London: Kogan Page.99-105.Retreived from: http://www.worldcat.org/title/improve-your-communication-skills/oclc/159935085

Good news Bible. (2004).Retrieved from: https://books.google.co.ke/books?id=w1gWc3WMsb8C&dq=The+Good+News+Bible&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQ2qj519PUAhVqD8AKHSvfCdEQ6AEITTAJ

Gujral, G. S. (Jan, 1, 2013). Leadership qualities for effective leaders.177-200.Retrieved from

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Kapena, S. (Sep, 22, 2000). How to be a wise leader: Principles that work. Nairobi, Kenya: Paulines Publications Africa.25-29.Retrived from: http://www.worldcat.org/title/how-to-be-a-wise-leader-principles-that-work/oclc/70655769

Kirkbride, P. (May,4, 2006). Developing transformational leaders: the full range leadership model in action. Industrial and commercial training, 38(1), 23-32.Retreived from: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=transformational+leadership+model&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&oq=Transformational+leadership+mo

Kirkpatrick, D. L. (Jun, 19, 2006). Improving employee performance through appraisal and coaching. New York: American Management Association.170-175.Retrieved from: https://books.google.co.ke/books?id=ufl6Sh0JfAUC&pg=PA172&dq=Ways+of+improving+employees%27+performance&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Ways%20of%20improving%20employees’%20performance&f=falsehttps://books.google.co.ke/books?id=ufl6Sh0JfAUC&pg=PA172&dq=Ways+of+improving+employees%27+performance&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Ways%20of%20improving%20employees’%20performance&f=false

Kruckeberg, K., Amann, W., & Green, M. (Dec, 18, 2011). Leadership and personal development: A toolbox for the 21st century professional. Charlotte, N.C: IAP, Information Age Pub.102-105.Retrieved from: http://www.worldcat.org/title/leadership-and-personal-development-a-toolbox-for-the-21st-century-professional/oclc/741273667

Northouse, P. G. (Nov, 1, 2014). Introduction to Leadership: Concepts and Practice.300-324.Retrieved from: Bottom of Formhttp://www.worldcat.org/title/introduction-to-leadership-concepts-and-practice/oclc/918558175 Bottom of Form

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