Personal Reflection

Personal Reflection

The report I received about the signature themes after the completion of my Clifton strengths assessment indicated the significant talents of my personality. The most prominent aspects of my personality were recorded to be the focus, context, competition, include and futuristic. The assessment report will be beneficial to me for directing my future orientation. The assessment result has helped me in understanding my strengths and behaviours.

The first and most prominent quality of my personality is the focus. Focus is an essential talent that is must for every individual who wants to achieve something in life. Focus enables a persona to make goals on monthly, yearly and even on a daily basis to achieve the desired goals in the designated time frame. The quality is a part of my personality as I am very motivated to achieve my goals, and when that does not happen, I often get frustrated and impatient. When I am working in groups, it is my nature to help others and keep them motivated to achieve the goals. I think this talent will be beneficial to me in becoming the person that I desire to be in the future. The instincts can be beneficial as they help in determining whether to move forward with a decision or not.

Context is the other talent of my personality. It means that i can view things out of the present and analyse the past of things that have led it to the present situation of things. This quality can result in a higher sense of confidence in the personality. After the confidence is boosted and the disorientation is gone, the person come up with significant decisions due to sense of the previous context is prevailed. The questions that need to be asked must be allowed to flow freely for the blueprints to emerge concerning the context and this process should not be stopped at any cost. If I lack the proper information, then the decisions I make will also be in haste and have less confidence by me.

The thirds point of the assessment is competition. I fully acknowledge the part of personality as I love competitions. It motivates me further to outperform others. If I win a contest, but there is no one to compete to ten the celebration and the happiness will be hollow. There is no other feeling like a comparison of your work against someone equally motivated to outshine you, and then you emerge as the winner. I love the competition, and I bring out the best in me. There is so much fun in the competition even if I lose at the end, the thrill of the competition and the will to outdo others brings out the best in me. So for me, the end result does not matter as long as the stage is equal, and the thrill to win is there.

The fourth part of my personality talent the can help me in my professional leadership is inclusion. My personality is automatically inclined towards widening the social circle wider. I want to make more people a part of the group. I am against the idea of granting access to exclusive people to the group and want more people to come and share their thoughts. I do not like watching someone staring from outside and wanting to be a part of the group as I want them to come to join the activity and share the warmth of the group. My instincts are always to accept people regardless of race, sex or any other type of discrimination. I don’t want to judge anyone based on the stereotypes of society. I purely believe that all of us are equal and share equal rights and privileges so I can practice this belief by including them in all activities.

The fifth part of my assessment is futuristic. The assessment test has very accurately depicted all of the talents and behaviours of my personality. I am very fascinated by the future. The desire to and will to see what the future hold for me is an insane feeling that can’t be expressed. The details and the strengths of products are very inspiring, but the evolution of the product to the next level in the future is the real feeling that keeps me going. What further advantages and benefits that can be incorporated into the product in truly worth witnessing for me. When the present is to frustrate and the people around are complaining a lot my vision about the future keeps me motivated and energised. I can use my intuition to motivate others. In their time of distress and give them hope to latch onto.

All of the top five talents that have been assessed by the test are very rightly indicated. I can now understand how to use them and make leadership decisions in the future. I am very excited after witnessing the results of the signature themes. These talents can be very influential in the success of my professional career. These talents can be used separately or in combination as per the situation to my personal and professional life to a higher success level.

Part B:

One the basis of my Clifton Strengths Assessment, the leadership theory that most suits my abilities, and capabilities is more tended towards Transformational Leadership. A transformational leader is the one who always keeps followers ahead to themselves, provides the motivation, and are charismatic. They are influential and inspire their followers (Bass, 1999).

I am a kind of person who is focused and will keep others self-interest first. I am futuristic and have a charismatic approach. Below, I am going to mention about three strengths, weakness about transformational leadership along with that I will also mention about three practical actions to improve my leadership which will help me to develop organisational skills which will be helpful for me in career development.

Strengths:

By doing my SWOT analysis, the three strengths highlighted according to my leadership theory are given below.

• Transformational leaders tend to inspire people to change their perceptions as they are expected to meet their psychological needs (Nielsen, et al., 2008). So, one of the strengths of this leadership style is that the transformational leader fully engages its followers by giving importance to their needs and put followers before themselves so their demands can be met. I putting myself in the shoes of transformational leader can also relate to this strength. I always take care of my group member psychological well-being when I am leading them in any group assessments, which I find as my biggest strength. This strength of mine will also help me to support my subordinates and group members by looking at their psychological needs so they can be sufficiently motivated.
• I always try hard to make my group members motivated in every possible way and help them to embrace change whenever it is required be it in a group task, or during a non-academic job which I also count as my one of the strength. Moreover, if we see this in the context of a transformational leader, then it is said that they can handle the process of change. Whenever any new vision is given, the transformational leader is always there to support followers and to encourage them by motivating change (Oreg & Berson, 2011). My listed strength will help me in attaining my organisational goals too. I will be motivating employees and will help them to achieve their targets successfully.
• Working on ethical morals and values is one of the strength which I would like to mention. However, I do not indulge in any such activity which I find morally and ethically incorrect. Moreover, being ethical is also counted as transformational leaders one of the strength. Transformational leaders are value-driven and always work on things which are ethically and morally correct (Theron, et al., 2005). However, by applying this theory on the organisational context, I will be able to understand the difference between right and wrong, and can blow the whistle whenever I suspect any unethical issues.

Weakness:

Along with strengths, there are specific weaknesses attached. Likewise, person attaining transformational leadership qualities also have some of the gaps which are stated below along with analysis of my weakness.

• I think my biggest weakness is that I try to grab every opportunity just to check whether it will give me an advantage or not, but sometimes these opportunities backfire and turn into a horrible nightmare. However, transformational leaders are charismatic they try to avail all best possible opportunities but sometime, due to lack of communication with followers these opportunities may result in negative results, which is one of the weaknesses of the transformational leader (H.Andersona & Y.T.Sun, 2015) which is same in my case. Moreover, in an organisational context, I may make some problematic situations for my team, too. As I am habitual of grabbing opportunities, I may end up disrupting things which will cause the organisation and my group a loss.
• I have noticed another weakness by doing my SWOT analysis which is that I sometimes become dominant and want my fellow members to agree with me all the time. Furthermore, when I researched in this domain, I got to know that one of the weaknesses of a transformational leader is that they want their followers to agree with them all the time, and this demand of them cause serious issues sometimes. However, dominancy is something which is not good. In the context of the organisation, I may fail some projects by being stubborn about my decision.
• I love to take risks as I believe by taking certain risks, a person can open specific gateways for own self. For this reason, I have faced many troubles and have caused pain for my related ones. This weakness is also related to a deficiency of transformational leaders as they are most likely intended towards taking a risk, so innovative ideas and solutions can be generated, and these risks sometimes led towards disruption of followers and objective of a transformational leader. Relating my this weakness in an organisational context, I may, without analysing the consequences of risks which I am going to take for myself and team may deteriorate the relations between organisational external, and internal stakeholders.

So, these are three of my weaknesses which also matches with my leadership style.

Recommendation for actionable items to improve the effectiveness of transformational leadership:

As stated above are a few of the weaknesses in my leadership style. I would now want to recommend a few of the actionable items which may help me to improve effectiveness and efficiency in my leadership style.

• The first actionable item I would like to add in myself is that I would take some time before grabbing any opportunity. It would research on its pros and cons so I may not put myself or my fellow people in some severe consequences. As this is quality of transformational leader that they work beyond their self-interest and try to influence followers by their actions. This action will help me to improve in professional life, too. For example, whenever I will see an opportunity, I will evaluate its benefits, and negative consequences and then will approve the project if it deems suitable.
• Another actionable item which I would recommend to overcome my weakness and to increase the effectiveness of my leadership is to consider my fellowmen ideas and share my thoughts with them, so after brainstorming, we all may come to one point. This actionable item all relates to the quality of a transformational leader; they try to resolve issues of followers by listening and considering them. This way, I will be able to handle my organisational issues, too in future. As the whole team will make a decision, and we all know productivity increases if the unit is fully involved.
• A third actionable item which I would like to recommend is about me taking risks all the time. I am often grasped in a situation which are outcomes of my very own decisions of taking certain risks which is also counted is the weakness of transformational leader. To overcome it, I would suggest that to make my leadership style more productive, I may communicate my decision with all people involved so we may come to a better choice. By adopting this habit, I would be able to work more effectively in the organisation as it would enable me to inform the change, by applying change management theories which will be a go-ahead for my career development.

So, the above-listed strengths, weakness, and recommendations will not only allow me to get success in my personal life, but will help me to work more effectively in professional life, so I may open opportunities for my organisation to compete globally as this era of globalisation.

Part C:

I would like to improve my leadership skills by setting short term SMART goals for myself and my team to evaluate my skills. The two of the short term SMART (Sustainable, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound) goals which I will adhere to improve my leadership skills are stated below:

1: Short term SMART goal related to motivating group members:

• Sustainable:

I would inspire by leading my followers with an example related to group projects, so they feel highly motivated by at least 15%.

• Measureable:

This goal will be measured by calculating average time based on previous group assessments that how motivated group members became after motivating them, is it by 15% or not?

• Attainable:

This goal is attainable if I would keep a check on them and will gather follow-ups on a daily basis or as per time required for completion of the project. Also, if proper training is provided to them, then this goal is surely attainable.

• Relevant:

This goal is undoubtedly relevant, as transformational leader inspire its followers. However, it will increase the focus of group members on work and will help everyone in future development.

• Time-bond:

To improve effectiveness in my leadership, this goal may be attained in around four months which is the given period of course.

2. Another SMART short-term goal which I would like to set to make my transformational leadership more effective is related to communicate with the team.

• Specific:

My goal is to create an extra effort to deliver with my group by presenting my idea and then to consider their insights by around 10% currently, as change requires time.

• Measurable:

This goal is measurable, as I will evaluate and will need feedback from group members to check how much difference in my habit has, which will be around 10%.

• Attainable:

This goal is attainable, as I will attend different online lectures, and will take some assessments to nurture this quality in me.

• Relevant:

This short term goal is relevant to my leadership skill requirements. If a leader is unable to communicate, how will it lead?

• Time-bond:

The end of this semester will attain this 10% off making communication better.

Part C (1)

The two specific actions which I may take two reach my desired short term SMART goals discussed above are:

• I will try my level best to nurture skills of communicating with my team members by attending relevant seminars, online lectures, and getting training. So, I may become able to communicate effectively and consider my group members criticism is a positive way. By doing this, I will be able to not only achieve my targets in short-term but will also be able to generate results more effectively in an organisation.
• Another action which I will for surly take be asked for constant feedback from my group members so they can assess my progress in a more better way, and I may reach my goal in the desired time.