Characteristics of a selected leader and analysis of my own leadership skills.

University Degree Business and Administrative studies

Part A: characteristics of a selected leader

I am working part time at Australian Fresh Company which provides herbs such as basil, thyme, sage etc. for supermarkets in Victoria namely Coles, Safeway and ALDI. The company supplies 90% herbs in Victoria. This company has been organized into different departments however packing department, where I am working now, is one of the most important ones. Our packing team comprises 25 workers, supervised by Teresa. She has been working as a leader of the team for 4 years. Her job is organizing employees and keeping the team focused and on track to complete their task with high efficiency in terms of time and task outcome. Interestingly, she has done a good job without attending any management or business course. From my observation she possesses the quality of a good leader.

Personality traits:

Henrikson (2006) stated that “a great leader is made not born”. However, Teresa has not graduated any management or business schools but she still can become a great leader. Except for my observation, this report bases on my experiences when I was working with her and analysis of the data, gather from the interview to describe her leadership behaviour, style and motivation.

A self-confident team leader of group facing a seemingly impossible deadline might tell the group ‘we are understaffed and overworked, but I know we can get this project done on time. I’ve been through tough demands like this before. If we work like a true team, we can pull it off.” (Daft et al. 2010, p35) and Teresa is that kind of leader. In our department, teamwork plays a remarkably important role for the reason that we have to pack many kinds of herbs for different customers who have different requirements and standards. The huge workload cannot be done by individual. If we just do it and care about individual benefit we cannot complete the task well. As a result, everyone have to take responsibility on what they are doing. If we just do the job as long as we finish a working day soon, our products will be made with mistakes the buyers will reject them. Consequently, the company will ask the leader for her or his responsibility. From my observation, Teresa has strong self-confidence and she has been successful in creating its influence on us. For example, when we received boxes herbs that are not good enough in quality as what we need to provide to our high-demand customer like Coles or Safeway. That put us into difficult situation, we have to both finish it on time and spend more time on cleaning them. In these cases, Teresa always said to us that she knew our inputs are very bad but she also knew her group members have enough skills to solve this problem. She asked us to try your best to do it as well. In other words, she always keeps everything under her control and makes it understood to other members.

Moreover, she is a modest leader and honest to team members that makes us more and more respect her. Teresa is also one of owners of the company and at the same time, a leader of my team. However she always keeps close and shares her experiences with us. She used to work like us but under worse environment and equipment therefore she understood how it is hard for her employees. This is the reason why she has tried to improve the working conditions providing her employee basic needs. Now we have better working environment and equipments that makes us feel much more convenient and increase more output. Stephen G. Harrison indicated that “great leadership is manifested or articulated by people who know how to understate it. There is leader value in humility, the leader that comes from putting people in the limelight, not yourself. Great leadership comes from entirely unexpected place. It’s understatement, it’s dignity, it’s service, it’s selflessness” (Daft et al .2010, p35) .From my understanding, Teresa is the kind of leader who is describing above. I think she is a born leader but she always studies and improves her leadership skills via her working experiences.

Leadership behaviors

I have been working there for 3 months which is not long enough to understand a person. Nevertheless, what I can see and feel when I am working with my leader is that she is a very friendly and warm person. Analyzing the data I think her leadership behavior is consideration (employee orientation) — leaders are concerned about the human needs of their employees. They build teamwork, help employees with their problems, and provide psychological support (Dickie & Dickie, 2006). I still remember my first day come there to work, I were very scared of her because she is a leader. However, she knew it and helped me overcome that fear. She said “don’t worry, I know this is your first day training, I will share with you my experiences to improve your skills”. She always asked old members to help and share job with new members. That makes us more cohesiveness. I strongly believe my analysis is correct because I used a questionnaire with three questions measuring items about consideration in the text book to support my feeling. There are

Do personal favors for people in the work group. (Daft et al. 2010, p69)

In fact: she always has lunch and tea time with group members. She cares about everyone in group. There are many students like me working part time there and when we have assignment or exam she always give us enough time to study. She tries her best to find someone replace us so that we can have a day off while the production chain is still done well. Otherwise, she is very flexible when she is in charge that is other trait she has. ...

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Do personal favors for people in the work group. (Daft et al. 2010, p69)

Treat all people in the work group as your equal (Daft et al. 2010, 69)

In fact: Teresa is very clear about that. When she divided job to group members, only one thing she cares about that is how we can expand our skills and feel comfortable on the job to make the job done on time. Her relationship is not what she is wondering about. Her method is old staffs have to teach and train new staffs while new staffs have to learn and improve their skills to understand the strategy of the organization. Everyone is equal in her team.

Do little things to make it pleasant to be a member of the staff (Daft et al. 2010, p69)

In fact: Teresa usually helps new staffs and talk to them, told them some stories about herself. I think that is small thing but actually makes us feel she is a friend more than a leader. Also, we always feel easy when we make communication and sharing with her about our self. I think that is the way she can understand more about her members.

Over all, Teresa has created an environment of emotional support, warmth, friendliness, and trust. That is characteristic of consideration leadership behavior.

Leadership styles:

In my department, we just pack the herbs according to order of customers. We do not have many things to discuss about decision, only leader has customer’ ordered report. Basically, Teresa’s jobs are flexible and influence to tell her group members what they have to do and how she expects on each of us to make jobs done and then we just follow that. If there is something changed, we just ask her about solution.

Accordingly, her leadership style is autocratic, this style is used when leaders tell their employees what they want done and how they want it accomplished, without getting the advice of their followers (Daft et al. 2010).

Motivational

Teresa is use intrinsic rewards and Maslow’s need to motivate her employees. She has good communication with her members by that way she has good relationship with her employees, she understands her employee’s needs so she can provide them what they needs to feeling of self fulfillment. She always makes us feel we are the part of her company thus we always want to do our best to achieve the performance goal. For example, last month she provided us a BBQ party after work, she said we were working hard to help her company achieve its goal so she want to say thanks to us. In my mind, BBQ party is just not free food, I felt proud of myself because I am a part of this successful company. Also, in this party, she gave three special gifts to three employees who are work hardest. That makes other employee challenge to their self and they will work harder to improve their skill to get the gift next time that is expectancy theory.

Briefly, Teresa knew how to motivate her employees and expand their skills in her performance. That is a key to be successful in her business.

` Her good leader:

Like Mr. Ian Shakespeare, COE of PPC worldwide said: “without communication skills you cannot be a good leader” (week 6 lecture). Teresa has good communication with her employee and managers. Everyone respects her as a leader and a friend. Also when I asked her “what do you think about leadership skills and what is the most important for u?” she said “communication is the most important. In fact, by communication she can understand and learn much from her employees that support to improve her leadership skills. On the other hand, communication is the link between her and other members in her team so she can make them feel confident to expand their skills to help her output increased. She motivated her members by intrinsic rewards to make them happy with long term performance. “Self-confident, creative, flexible are traits that a good leader should have” she said. Because doing business is taking a risk, self-confident can help her make right decision and have strong influence to her employees. Creative and flexible can help her adopt environment change.

I was base on leadership theories from the textbook “Leadership and Management for RMIT University” by Daft et al, 2010 to analyses my observation and interview data. While this exercise I found that between theories and practices they always support and conflict together that depend on every situation and how you apply these theories to your practices. For example, in this case, Teresa is a born leader but she is a great leader in my team. One thing I consider after this exercise is working environment creates leadership style or leadership style can change working environment or not? In this company Teresa’s leadership style is autocratic because that is simple organization, and she has all the information to solve the problem, and her employees are well motivated. If she is leader in other team her leadership style will change to have fit new organization.

Reflection and improvement:

According to my interview and observation, I found that business relationship is very important. Ken Blanchard explained “leadership is not something you do to people. It is something you with them” (Daft et al. 2010, p4). And communication is the key to make good relationship. Teresa said: “a friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship”. By that way, we can more understand about our group member so we can motivate them more efficiency to explore their abilities in our strategies.

Part B: assessment of my own leadership capabilities

I adopted Central Michigan University Leadership competency model to evaluate my leadership capabilities to build my leadership plan in next section. There are five dimensions of leadership competency are adopted in this model.

• Self Management

• Leading Others

• Task Management

• Innovation

• Social Responsibility

There is my survey result.

Self Management - 3.13

Work Habits: 2.8

Work Attitudes: 3.4

Stress Management: 2

Self Insight: 3.2

Learning: 4.25

Leading Others - 4.62

Communicating: 4.5

Interpersonal Awareness: 4.6

Motivating Others: 4.6

Developing Others: 4.75

Influencing: 4.67

Task Management - 4.71

Executing Tasks: 4.5

Solving Problems: 4.8

Managing Information and Material Resources: 5.75

Managing Human Resources: 3.75

Enhancing Performance: 4.75

Innovation - 3.23

Creativity: 3.75

Enterprising: 3.4

Integrating Perspectives: 2.75

Forecasting: 3.5

Managing Change: 2.75

Social Responsibility - 4.5

Civic Responsibility: 4.33

Social Knowledge: 3.5

Ethical Processes: 5.25

Leading Others Ethically: 4.8

Acting with Inegrity: 4.6

The Central Michigan University Leadership competency model is US bases and grounded in the discipline of psychology hence via this result, I can see that I have to learn more from the practice to improve myself. I have not good self management that is basic factor to become a good leader. Also, innovation is other my weakness, my managing change is not good enough. I think that it comes from my personal traits. I am not born leader but I will learn to be a good leader. This model helps me have clearer look at my abilities to know where I am so I can improve and develop my own leadership model more efficiency.

Part C: development of a personal leadership plan

My leadership plan is base on my leadership skills where I want to improve in the future.

Personality traits:

Andrew Dudgeon said: “every young leader needs to identify their own positive traits and the negative traits in life and if they want to be a leader and they want to lead an organization they need to modify their behavior to be successful”. Also he said that “now everyone has a different opinion, it’s all about identifying your own strengths and abilities and weaknesses and working on those as well.” That is very clearly here, the first thing I should do that is identifies my positives and negatives personal traits so I can expand my abilities and minimize my mistakes.

Communication skills:

Mr. Ian Shakespeare, COE of PPC worldwide said: “without communication skills you cannot be a good leader”. And Andrew Dudgeon said :“a successful leader is one who can communicate the team’s goal succinctly, clearly so the team is able to not only understand it but then empower and grab a hold of that mission or that team goal, make it their own and deliver the successful outcome”. That makes me strongly believe that communication is very important in leadership skill that is a key to be a successful leader. However, English is my second language therefore it is a barrier in my communication approach. Improving my English is the way to have better communication skills. That is the most important thing I have to do now.

Leadership styles:

I took the quiz what’s your leadership style? On the blackboard, my leadership style is Participative Leadership. Participative leaders accept input from one or more group members when making decisions and solving problems, but the leader retains the final say when choices are made. Group members tend to be encouraged and motivated by this style of leadership (Daft et al. 2010). This leadership style needs to have good analyses thinking to have the best decision. That is the reason why I have to improve my knowledge to have good analyses thinking.

Motivation:

In addition, I gained better understanding about the ways we use to lead a good leader. That is motivation which we use intrinsic rewards to build long term relationship with employees, besides that Maslow’s needs theory is basically needs we have to provides to employees. There are five general levels of motivating needs: physiological needs, safety belongingness, esteem and self-actualization. Base on their need, we will design the reward system to encourage employee’s behaviors. Without motivation, employees will do their job unenthusiastically. This will affect the efficiency of company. Moreover, when we motivate our employees or outsiders, it means we are building a relationship and this relationship will help our organization runs well (Wren & Bedeian, 2009). So understanding employee to give them high motivation is other point I have to learn to become a good leader.

Conclusion:

Overall, understanding theories and practices of leadership, I can identify my abilities about leadership skills in order to develop my own leadership plan to explore myself in the future. In addition, Teresa is my effective leader. Thanks to her, I understand more about leadership theories and practice. Theories are passive and practical always changes, we have to be flexible and depend on the situation to use correct theory to support it. Additionally, Teresa helps me understand what a born leader is and set up my own leadership. My leadership style is participate leadership style but I also have to be flexible to change my leadership style if necessary such as autocratic leadership. Moreover, my leadership style has to depend on human resource frame which means people are the organization’s most valuable resource. It defines problem and issues in interpersonal term and looks for ways to adjust the organization to meet human needs (Daft et al. 2010). It means I will not always rely solely on my power to influence employees. Finally, I will use rewards power in five types of leader power which come from the authority to bestow rewards on other people (Daft et al. 2010) to influence my employee’s behaviors. I believe that if I give them the rewards in the right time, it will help me encourage my employees to work hard and also they will work for me enthusiastically. This will lead to the business go well.

Reference list:

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