My Personal Leadership Profile and Development Plan

The Personal Leadership Profile and the Development Plan
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The Personal Leadership Profile And The Development Plan
Introduction
In order to understand the leadership skills, capabilities, strengths and weaknesses, it is important to prepare a personal leadership profile. This is attainable through the first two steps of filling the questionnaires one on authentic leadership and the other one on multifactor leadership. The second step before embarking on a personal leadership profile is the personal assessment and examination based on how one perceives himself or herself, how other people see them and what they need to do in order to improve on their leadership skills (Tierney, 2008). In the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, I examined the self form where I perceived on self-perception of leadership behaviors and the rater form that helps to generally measure leadership (Tierney, 2008). On performing this assessment I realized that more often I go beyond self-interest for betterment of the group, consider ethical and moral implications of decisions, I make clear what one should expect, and wait for things to go wrong before taking action. On the other hand is the Authentic Leadership Self-Assessment Questionnaire.
Here, I was able to examine three components of my leadership namely: balanced processing, self-awareness internalized moral perspective and relational transparency (Northouse, 2010). In the questionnaire, there was a range between 0-20 on average in each component. Scoring below indicates that that’s my weaker area and scoring above 15 indicates that that’s my strong area. In this test, I managed to get two components below 15 and 2 above 15. This paper is designed to formulate my personal leadership profile in my career and come up with a development plan to improve on my position at my work place and a continued growth as a leader.
Leadership attributes
Leadership refers to as the process by which an individual would influence a group or groups of people in order to achieve a common goal. Therefore, my leadership profile is based on the attributes of an effective leader in multicultural work environments; examples of characters portraying these attributes support the ideas and personal reference to my results from the questionnaires (Tierney, 2008). This is in efforts to bring out my weak points as well as the strong points. Later on a development plan is built from these points. It is therefore important to understand the term multicultural working environment. A multicultural work environment refers to a work place where the workforce or colleagues are from different cultural backgrounds. Therefore, as a leader it is important to develop attributes that would help one cope with the situation in order to have the followers motivated and inspired to work and contribute as per the expectations.
Integrity
Integrity is one of the significant attributes of a leader in a multicultural work environment (Tierney, 2008). Integrity refers to as the quality and aspect of trustworthiness and honesty. For example, individuals who adhere to a tough set of standards taking responsibility of their decisions and actions exhibit integrity. Integrity in leaders triggers confidence in followers because they take the word of the leader on doing what he or she says they will do. Leaders of integrity are dependable, loyal and are not deceptive. In other words, integrity makes people trust the leader and believable. Therefore, the leadership becomes easy especially in the multicultural environment where people across all the cultures can trust their leaders. It becomes easy for the followers to open up and express their feelings and opinions. This way it is easier to know the faulty areas and seek improvement to avoid problems later on.
One of the leaders in the world who have portrayed integrity is Obama. During his campaigns, he promised that he was to hunt for Osama bin Laden in the first hundred days upon his inauguration. He kept his promise, and he managed to kill Osama. This made him win the trust of the American people which led to his second term in office as president of America.
On my questionnaire, I got a fair score on the issue of integrity. This calls for improvement. Hence in my development plan I will seek to improve on my integrity. It happens that at work place when individuals approach you with a problem, one intends to promise them that you will get on their case soonest possible. However, it takes some time mostly because you forgot about it. However, I have been able to work with my promises to colleagues and followers.
Sociability
Sociability is another attributer of an effective leader in a multicultural environment. This refers to as the inclination of the leader in efforts to seek pleasant social relationships. Leaders with sociability characteristics are friendly, diplomatic courteous, outgoing and tactful (Northouse, 2010). Such leaders tend to care for the needs of others. Further, they are concerned on the well being of colleagues and followers. This character is vital in a multicultural work environment. People from every culture want to feel that their needs are catered for and important to the organization. Failure to this will make people from some cultures feel ignored and unimportant. This is likely to affect their performance. Therefore, for leaders to be effective in a multicultural environment, it is vital for them to possess and or develop this attribute.
For example, some lecturers go to extent of going into students dorm for lunch, play grounds and shaking hands. Such things make the lecturers and the students friendly and social. Students can easily access such lecturers for questions and queries as well as personal expressions. Another example is Obama, the American president. He being a president elected by people as the first African American president, went ahead to lower himself to travel with train across American. This was in efforts to relate and socialize with people (Tierney, 2008). through this people felt that their president identified with them hence garnering more support from American people of all races and backgrounds leading to his success for the second term in the white house.
In reflection of my results, my sociability had a strong score. In most cases, I have been in a position to relate with my colleagues as well as the followers. In cases there are misunderstandin...