`Leadership Qualities-Task 2
every organisation requires good leadership and part of your training and development is to understand what that means to the public services.
You are asked to find out more about leadership qualities and how they are applied in the public services and then go on to analyse your own abilities and how they could be developed, monitored and evaluated. You should put together
- A table showing a range of qualities that are needed by leaders in the public services. Each quality should be explained by relating it to a public service situation. (at least four situations must be included.)
- A summary of your own qualities in leadership situations. It would be valuable to analyse these qualities and how you could develop them further.
- A plan showing how your development could be monitored and evaluated in achieving your identify targets during this training period.
Introduction
Every day we listen to the news or read the daily news paper we are bombarded with different leaders and all their achievements which are broadcast to everyone. Books are written about their leadership skills and its like we all want to know their secrets and what make them good leaders. People who are looking to go into the public service do well to consider these people and there leadership skills because most careers in the public service require some leadership skill.
- Leadership qualities table
- My leadership qualities
I am just like everybody else, I have strengths and weaknesses to my leadership skills. Its how much better they are than everybody else that makes a leader stand out from the rest. A good leader needs to be able to identify their strengths and weaknesses and decide what will help improve them. During one of my class discussions my peers and I carried out an exercise where every body said positive and negative aspects to my leadership qualities. I was very pleased with the results because they showed I have good leadership skills ...
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- My leadership qualities
I am just like everybody else, I have strengths and weaknesses to my leadership skills. Its how much better they are than everybody else that makes a leader stand out from the rest. A good leader needs to be able to identify their strengths and weaknesses and decide what will help improve them. During one of my class discussions my peers and I carried out an exercise where every body said positive and negative aspects to my leadership qualities. I was very pleased with the results because they showed I have good leadership skills even though I don’t think of my self as a natural leader. People often have a different idea to what you have of yourself so this exercise helped bring out some truths I was both glad and disappointed to hear.
Below are the results that came out about me in our class discussion:
Strengths
- Knowledgeable
- Good humoured
- Honest
- Genuine
- Good ideas
- Considers all the factors of a situation
- Peer group consider a good leader
- Charismatic
- Individual
Weaknesses
- Moody
- Individual
- Lack of Self motivation
- Looses confidence when criticised
Summary of my strengths
Knowledgeable
I am very pleased I am considered knowledgeable, this is a quality I am always aiming to improve because I enjoy the respect you gain from it. I can see how the saying “knowledge is power” came about, because you find it gains the confidence of your peers/followers. Thankfully I come from a knowledgeable house hold, my mother is as far as I know the most experienced person I have ever met and when it comes to advice I normally go to her. I wouldn’t say its factual knowledge she has, its more knowledge on life and how to deal with different scenarios. E.g. my cousins dad died a few months back and all I wanted to do was ring him and see what he was feeling like and I wanted him to tell me exactly what was going on with the funeral etc. but my mother stopped me and said how she felt when her friends rung her when her mom died. She said she felt they were being nosey and it was hard to communicate well with them because she felt weak at the time. So she advised me to just send a card which I can see now is a lot more effective when people are mourning. Improving this strength come with time and experience but factual knowledge depends on you spending time studying.
Good humoured
Being good humoured is a superb quality that people love. Charismatic leaders are normally good humoured because it puts others at ease around you and then they can be them self which is what people enjoy the most. There is a lot more to being good humoured than just being funny. It also means being able to see the positive side of things, being able to take a joke as well as give one. I think because I am laid back and don’t take offence to much it is easy for me to be humorous when others feel it a good time to make fun or cleaver remarks to to wind me up. Being good humoured is very good for keeping morale high. As I mentioned in the table above the NHS make the job less stressful by laughing at the gore of the job so it is easier to except.
Honest
“Honesty is the best policy” is a well known saying. This in my opinion is true because people begin to trust you more and more and know exactly what kind of person you are. This is an important quality to being a leader because people only want to follow people they can trust. I am an honest person most of the time but its still something that I need to work on because I am not always a 100% honest! An example of when being honest was the best policy was when I as the captain of my college football team was meant to take a warm up but I let the team just have a kick around. So when my coach asked had I done the warm up I said no even though my team members defended me by saying I had. This meant we then took a warm up and went into the game prepared. If I hadn’t have owned up players may have got injured because their body was not prepared for the physical activity.
Genuine
Genuine is something that is true, legitimate, real, means something. And to be told by my peers I was genuine was a bit of a surprise. To me someone who is genuine is a sophisticated way of saying someone who cares. People who take an interest and want to help are genuine. I feel this quality can be improved by being more interested in peoples feelings and being less greedy.
Good ideas
Good ideas comes with a combination of intelligence and creativity and problem solving skills. So to improve my ideas I need to improve my intelligence and my creativity by studying and trying to fix things around the house would help.
Considers all the factors of a situation
I always try to understand something well before I start to give my opinion or start on something, this is because its easier to help then and you have reason for all your actions. I can improve this by controlling my emotion a bit better and get out of the habit of trying to be the first one to sort out a problem.
Peer group consider a good leader
When I was told by the group they like it when I am leader, and that im a good leader it proved the point that people always see you from a different point of view. I thought of myself as more of a supportive follower than an actual leader but my peers agreed that I was good at leading, this probably because of my character as discussed below
charismatic
To be charismatic the thesaurus states is magnetic(draws people) fascinating, charming etc. this is how some leaders work and their bold personality gains the respect and admiration of their followers. I wouldn’t say im the most charismatic person in my group of peers and this is a quality that comes with confidence. So to improve my charisma it involves improving your confidence which comes with ego and success.
Weaknesses
Moody
This doesn’t always mean being grumpy as my peers pointed out when they said I was moody. They said it meant I was temperamental and that I sometimes shut them off and stopped caring. My lecturer said I was distant and sometimes didn’t motivate my self as I discuss under the sub heading lack of self motivation. I don’t become distant on purpose normally though, I think its my brain decides to go into sleep mode for a bit and I become less conscious of my surroundings. To stop this happening I have got to try and snap out it when it happens and remember to care for peoples feelings around me.
Individual
My lecturer said I was individual and then all my class agreed. This was said when we were on my weaknesses so I put it under the weakness heading. I feel the group said this because it may mean im difficult to control because I don’t conform, I often do as I want rather than what everybody else is doing. But in the public services this could be turned into a strength as individual people often become leaders but if I was in a team where I wasn’t the the leader it could be a weakness because I don’t always conform.
Lack of Self motivation
Sometimes I struggle to get going on a topic and I just would rather do something that requires less effort. I feel this is a major problem in my leadership ability and this is something I need to work on. I can improve this by spending time working on things e.g. course work when all I want to do is relax. This would get me in the habit of working. Being a leader means motivating others to work for you so how can I do that when I cant even motivate myself?
Looses confidence when criticised
I am childish in this regard, when I am criticised, even if it is a 100% true, I tend to get disheartened and my head drops in shame. This is something I need to work on and aim to improve. I may get better as I mature but I need to start working on it now and remember next time when I am criticised to improve on what I have been criticised, this is all part of learning.
- personal action plan
Areas for development
- moody
- individual
- lack of self motivation
- loses confidence when criticised
Targets to achieve
- Try and show concern for people all the time not being moody/temperamental as my peer group say I am.
- This isn’t a huge weakness but because I am individual I am not good at conforming so I should learn a bit more self discipline and do as I am told in the right circumstances.
- Motivate myself and improve my drive to get things done
- Keep focused on my goals when I am criticised and learn to improve upon my mistakes.
Actions required by me
- Show more concern for others.
- Be more willing to conform.
- Improve my self motivation and put more feeling into what I do.
- Take criticism with a view to making my self better.
Actions required by others
- My friends need to let me know when I start drifting off or start being distant as one of my lectures said.
- Acknowledge that I am my own person and when I don’t conform I don’t mean to be offensive I just want to make myself happy rather than others
- Push me and challenge my pride would help motivate me as well.
- To criticise me positively and with words that are caring rather than bitter.
Resources
- Regular tutorials with tutor
- Friends are always good at giving you honest opinions so always ask them what they think.
Dates for review/completion
- I will review the weaknesses every Friday and see what areas I am improving on.
- Look to improve the action plan every time I feel its not working
- By the end of the programme hopefully achieve my goals and get rid of the weaknesses
- Then when I feel I have done all that ask my friends again and start the programme all over again
