One of the main aspects that I am planning to change is the ability to be influential as a leader. As we learned from the course materials, effective leadership cannot flourish in the absence of influence. In other words, leadership and influence go hand in hand. Leaders require influence to drive change or convince those who are being led. Although I am not a leader at my current workplace station (Standard Chartered Bank), I acknowledge the fact that I lack adequate influence that can compel a group or team of employees to believe my position. For a long time, I thought that management and leadership are congruent to each other. It is critical to mention that management is just a mere fraction of leadership required to lead groups and organizations well.
I also understand that effective leadership through influence usually leads to the ability to mobilize people to believe and follow a particular course of action or vision. If I am to be a leader in my workplace, I need to acquire articulate skills to inspire people who are under my care. Inspiration brings in hope and additional energy required to accomplish a particular task. I sometimes lack the inspiration to perform certain duties at my workplace. If I can personally miss the much-needed inspiration, then it can be pretty difficult to inspire other people. People who are being led should be able to visualize the future and see and every possibility of fulfilling their dreams. In the case of people working in an organization, seeing the reality of the future can be swiftly brought about by a leader who is already inspired at a personal level.
Besides, I suppose I need to be a role model, mentor, and teacher to be an effective leader. Although I have some of these leadership aspects, I have realized a lot of inadequacies when applying them in the past. For example, effective leaders should be able to teach or guide people whom they are leading. I have noted that I sometimes lack the patience to repeat certain aspects to people several times. As a teacher, I ought to be patient enough. This implies that patience and leadership are part and parcel of each other. Second, I do not have much problem with mentoring people whom I lead. However, I have realized that mentorship cannot be best achieved through personal efforts. It is instrumental to collaborate with other departments within an organization to come up with a comprehensive mentorship program that can benefit all employees. When it comes to collaboration, I often experience some difficulties. I naturally prefer accomplishing tasks as an individual. Nonetheless, the individual approach to crucial organizational leadership aspects is not beneficial at all. Collaboration at the departmental level brings about different ways of modeling the thinking capacities of employees.
As already hinted out, leadership and management are not the same when it comes to the application at the workplace. It is possible to be a manager without being a leader. However, leaders should fit managerial positions without a lot of hustle. In my past leadership positions, I have observed that I can hardly manage a large group of employees from multicultural backgrounds. Overseeing the performance of teams and various tasks to be accomplished is easier in small groups compared to large groups of people. I suppose I need to gradually develop courage in leadership so that I can able to guide large teams without seeing the possibility of being overwhelmed.
Improving the above shortcomings in my leadership aspects requires much more than just theoretical thinking. Hence, I need to put tangible steps in place to improve the leadership inadequacies analyzed in the above section. To begin with, I need to cultivate a culture of collaboration with my fellow workmates in my current workplace station. Unless a particular task requires individual input, I should always aim at working closely and collaboratively with my colleagues so that I can gradually and exponentially improve my ability to work with large teams. I need to seek counsel and the input of my colleagues whenever performing particular tasks.
Second, persuasion is a powerful tool in leadership that I lack as mentioned above. Although being persuasive can be a cumbersome task for a leader, there are still some possible strategies that can be employed to improve the same. Persuasiveness goes along with influence. First, I should learn the skills of persuasive speaking. Individuals within my environment can be best connected and convinced through persuasive speaking. Being aloud does not imply that someone is an effective leader. It is possible to be loud without being a leader. People look for content and logic of speech finally agreeing with the issue at hand. For my colleagues to buy the ideas I share with them, I have to persuasively communicate with them. Leadership language is embedded in the art of communication.
Since I am still lagging in the art of persuasion, I need to take several pragmatic steps in this area to improve this aspect of my leadership. For instance, understanding the needs, tastes, and preferences of the target audience is of great importance when developing a persuasive language. I should begin understanding my colleagues at a personal level especially when we are working on group projects to accomplish particular goals and objectives. In any case, various communication styles appeal to different groups of people. Once I fully understand my target audience, it cannot be a difficult task to persuade them. Understanding the audience also goes along with using the right tone, gesture, and words during communication.
Moreover, I need to streamline my communication style according to the nature of the audience being addressed. In the past, I have noted that communication styles are uniquely applicable to different situations. The profile of the audience is a key factor to consider when tailoring the communication style to be adopted. Needles to say, I am fully convinced that when the audience notices a similarity between them and the leader, they tend to respond positively. The latter happens when dealing with either a single audience or 1000 people.
The fact that I sometimes do not take time to listen to communications is a major setback in my leadership ability. How can you be of influence to a group of people without being a keen listener? Great listeners make wonderful communicators at any given time. I should decease from interjecting people’s conversations so that I can be respected and dignified as a leader.
I will take the above steps because they are practical measures that have been used in the past for effective leadership. Also, organizational behavior scholars do concur that the above steps can yield positive results when leading teams and groups in organizations.
Finally, I will individually test these steps as I perform my duties at the workplace daily. For the proposed measures that are not working as expected, I will replace them with other functional alternative steps to improve my leadership.