Leadership Development And Self Assessment

Leadership Development And Self Assessment

To build a personal leadership plan requires not only self assessment, but the knowledge of what makes a good leader. Leaders should inspire and motivate and should encourage others to contribute, to develop and learn, to be innovative, and to be creative. Leaders should serve as role models through their ethical behavior and their personal involvement in planning, communications, coaching, development of future leaders, and staff recognition. As role models, they can reinforce ethics, values, and expectations while building leadership, commitment, and initiative throughout any organization.

Trust in the workplace is essential in considering moral and ethical consequences of decisions, championing new possibilities and outcomes, and generating alignment about share purposes. In past work environments, trust and privacy were essential parts of the job. Patient information is handled very carefully and you have to have a great respect for privacy in order to handle people’s most intimate information. You also have to have good judgment when working with patients on what you can disclose and what needs to remain undisclosed. In order to have this level of responsibility with patient information, my supervisors had to trust me implicitly. I gained that trust by proving myself ethical and trustworthy time and again. I also excel at being able to do a job or complete a project that is assigned to me, without much management or supervision. My past supervisors have always trusted me to get the job done and within the limits set for the project.

I tie these two competencies together, because I think that they are both so closely related for me. I am not skilled at persuasion and I have a fear of conflict. I give advice when asked, but I rarely stand my ground to persuade my audience of my stand when I’m being opposed. Excellent influencing skills require a healthy combination of interpersonal, communication, presentation and assertiveness techniques. Where I fall down the most in these skills for influence is in assertiveness, which ties into my lack of conflict management skills. I tend to avoid conflict as much as I can (as most people do), but when it is unavoidable, I generally do not stand up for myself, I get tongue tied, and think of all the right things to say AFTER the conflict is over. I handle difficult people based on their hierarchy in the company. For instance, a difficult boss I would just say yes sir/ma’am and keep my opinions to myself. A difficult coworker, I would approach as nicely as I could and ask how we might be able to work a difference out. However, if that coworker is very difficult or a bully (and I have run across many bullies), I just leave what ever issue is alone and move on, ultimately, not influencing anyone. I think there are a great many things I can do to resolve these to issues for myself.

Though I have managed people, I have not had the opportunity to directly develop others abilities other than when there is a problem. I do not think I lack the ability, or even have a problem with developing others; it has just been a lack of opportunity that has left me without this skill. However, developing people requires the influence of those people, and that is an area I must develop as well in conjunction with learning the skills to develop others, so consequently, some of the strategies for “Influencing others” is necessary. Developing people, whether by training, coaching, teaching or mentoring them is a trait of a good leader; no one can achieve organizational goals alone. Leaders develop people in order to build a stronger team which in turn creates organizational is effectiveness. In order for me to do this.

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