Well,in this eassy,I have shared what's my understanding of leadership. I think a lot when i write this passage. I hope who sees it can share their opinions~ Wow, I love discussion!
My Leadership Journey
Leadership is important.
This is true no matter in our history or in our daily life. In the long run aspect, Leadership helps us make important processes and revolutions. And, in our daily, leadership makes many tasks done much more smoothly. Because of the special role of leadership towards human society, it’s necessary for those who want to be successful to learn leadership skills. Of course, I am the one of those people.
What’s the leadership all about?
In my opinion, leadership accompanies with goals and aims. I comprehend leadership from two aspect: Long run and short run. Seeing from the big picture and the long run, leadership is to improve the world we are living, is for a better world. Like the things have mention above, leaders helps to accomplish many goals and lead the revolutions in order to push the world towards a positive future and in the right track. But let’s see leadership in the narrow view, in the short run; however, in my opinion, it’s totally different. In the short run, leadership is mostly about management. Leadership helps to run organizations and organize activities. It not only helps to sharpen the vision of the organization but also motivates the team members. It’s the great power to boost the performance of the organization and complete the goal. This is my understanding of leadership which make me believes that a leader should be good at management and also should be able to considerate blueprint and problems from long run aspect.
Qualities of an excellent leader
The charming of leaders is that leaders can have a great influence on others. Where the charming comes from? I think is from the qualities of the leader. Leaned from the psychology class, the Big 5 factors, the most important qualities of an excellent are extraversion; open to experience, and conscientiousness.
The leaders who are extravert will engage themselves more in organization. Especially their positive emotions and energy will have a positive effect on the organization.
The leader who is open to experience is much more likely to try new things and accept others’ advices. It relates to the company’s development and the job satisfaction of employees.
Conscientiousness is also important to a leader. The extent of successful of a company can be seen from the leader of the company. A leader who is conscientiousness, in other words, showing self-discipline, acting dutifully, and aiming for achievement, will lead the organization to a bright future.
These are the three factors that I think are the most important to a leader in big 5 theory. However, there are still several qualities that I think is important to an excellent leader such as integrity which means the integration of outward actions and inner values, creativity which means the ability of thinking differently and get the solution that beyond constrains, fairness which means to treat others consistently and justly, and final one, sense of humor which can be use to energize followers.
Behavior of an excellent leader
Leader can be an example of the company. What they do and how they work will have an effect on their subordinates. To be an excellent leader, you should be excellent on your behavior, too.
Challenging the process, inspiring a shared vision, enabling others to act, modeling the way, encouraging the heart are the road to great leadership that is common to successful leaders, and it’s also what I think a leader should meet.
Challenging the process is to find a process that you think needs improvement and use your creation to improve the process. The behavior seems to be unnecessary but it’s a really behavior that can lead a organization to a leading position. Failure is not important, trying is important.
Inspiring a shared vision is to share a vision in words that can be understood by followers. A vision is the soul of the organization. It’s necessary to have a common and clear vision throughout the organization in order to fulfill a common goal. To make the vision clear and known by the organization is what a leader should do---to inspire a shared vision.
Enabling others to act is to provide opportunity to followers to practice and solve problems. Relying on this behavior, leader can enrich the experience of followers and strengthen the power of the organization. Moreover, it’s the behavior that expressing trust to followers.
Modeling the way is to deal with problems by leader when the problem is really tough. It’s the way to set example, to show how the problem is done.
Encouraging the heart is to share the glory with the followers to encourage and inspire them to devote themselves into the common goal of the organization.
In addition, I think leader should have preparation all the time. Life is not easy and sometimes it’s tough. So does goals and tasks. To ensure to complete the goal, I think leader should have several backup plans.
An experience where I worked
I am now working in student’s union of university of Macau. The most joyful and painful experience I had is the election of student’s union. At that time, there are two cabinets competing with each other. I am new in my group and I only know two people of twenty-three. With the help of the leader whose name is Bunbun, I fitted in the cabinet very fast and became friends with all of them. Bunbun explained why we were here and also the vision of our cabinet. And then we prepared and began the election. In this period, we worked together almost every day from morning into the late night. It was a very hard time for me, actually. I had to take care of my study and I was new in honor college and I was in the election! But soon Bunbun found out this situation and encouraged me. Of course, 23 of us supported each other and at last we won the election. And now , our cabinet “spotlight” in charge of the student’s union and cooperate with each other for our common vision---serve the UM students.
Painful, well, it’s the pressure the student’s union gives to me. But the joyful is even more because of the cooperation and Bunbun’s sense of humor.
In this experience, what impressed me most is Bunbun’s sense of humor. His humor can motivate and let us feel better even the situation is bad or the work load is heavy. And through this lesson, many of us learn from Bunbun. We see things in a positive way and use our sense of humor to motivate ourselves and our teammates.
My experience as a leader
The most often experience I can demonstrate my leadership skill are the course projects. I have been being a leader of course project many times. The most impressive one is the EELC215 project. The mission of our group was to develop a poster and presented it to the whole class. I organized a meeting first to set the schedule and find out the advantage of each member in order to distribute the work properly. And after the meeting, we worked following the schedule and I would check if their work had done. I also organized them to have a discussion online and shared the outcome after a period. Like I have said, leadership accompany with goals. Though we have a schedule, but I also left several days in blank for emergency. As a leader in this project, I did not only organize them to work but also provide emotion support to them. When we were designing the poster, we came across some problems. And I was not familiar with that aspect. Though I cannot helped, I stayed with them until the problem was solved. After the project was done, our group members had fun together and we all proud of our outcomes.
What I have learned from this experience is that, leader is not omnipotent. In most of time, leaders have the job done assisted by professionals. When we cannot help, what we should do is to organize them and provide mental or physical support.
My own strengths as a leader
I have several as a leader. Firstly, I am integrity. I am the same on the outside and on the inside. What other can see is the whole me. So I am easily to get trusted. Secondly, I focus on fairness. Fairness is the important principle in my mind. Because I think fairness is beyond fairness. Fairness is related to trust and respect. Thirdly, I am conscientious. I have a great sense of dutiful, self-discipline, and high level of need for achievement. Goals are important in my life. Fourthly, I am open to experience. I like to try new things, new ways, new ideas. Because I believe that there is always a room for improvement. And we deserve to have a try.
My areas of improvement
What I need to improve is my communication ability and the behavior that I always try to do most of the job.
Communication ability is important for a great leader. A leader without good communication ability will weaken their influence. And also, their followers will misunderstand the vision or goal of the organization which may lead to a failure outcome. I am not fluent in oral English. And this is what I can improve.
My next disadvantage is that I always try to do the most of the job when I am a leader. A great leader should enable others to act through giving the method to the followers. It’s good for leader and followers both. Leader can save energy to other job and the followers can have more experience.
Concrete resolutions to be a better leader
Having mention about my weakness, I have several resolutions to be a better leader.
For my oral English, I will practice more to make progress. And I should take more chance in the class to try to ask or answer question. I will talk to my friend with English sometime. And I will also take chance of practicing oral English when I am preparing test.
For the problem that I am not enabling others to act, I will allocate the duties through discussion. And I will provide more chance to others to have a try.
