Name
Institutional Affiliation
Abstract
Effective leadership is enhanced through setting of goals that motivate one to achieve their strategic goals. Among these goals include seeing the bigger picture and building resilience. Resilience building entails having to cope up with the changes that occur within an organization and still manage to strive towards the strategic goals. In my struggle to improve my leadership, I will employ these two goals. Building resilience will enable me not dwell on the failure but rather acknowledge the mistake, learn from them, and move forward. Further, seeing the bigger picture will enable me to act proactively rather than acting reactively. Consequently, this will assist me in avoiding unnecessary misunderstandings at work and provide me with emotional resilience, thus improving my performance.
Leadership in Global Context
Different leadership goals enhance effective leadership. These goals include building resilience and always seeing the bigger picture. In my struggle to improve my leadership, I will employ these two goals. Building resilience will enable me not dwell on the failure but rather acknowledge the mistake, learn from them, and move forward. Resilience will also give me a firm and a clear sense of oneself which will enable me to navigate choices and progress towards my goals; therefore enabling me to improve my leadership. Further, seeing the bigger picture will enable me to act proactively rather than acting reactively. Consequently, this will assist me in avoiding unnecessary misunderstandings at work and provide me with emotional resilience. Besides, seeing the bigger picture will enable me to appropriately manage my time which in turn will result to improved performance.
Leadership Goals and a Rationale for Pursuing Each Goal
Goal 1: Building Resilience
Rationale
Different leadership goals, including building resilience, enhance effective leadership. Leaders play a key role in transforming organizations from being good to great (Jim, 2001, p.138). Resilience involves having to cope up with the changes that occur within an organization and still manage to thrive towards the strategic goals. As a resilient person, I will not dwell on the failure but rather acknowledge the mistake, learn from them, and move forward. Building resilience will also give me a firm and a clear sense of oneself which will enable me to navigate choices and progress towards my goals; thus enabling me to improve my leadership.
Step One: Focusing on yourself
Focusing on oneself is a critical step towards building resilience to aid in enhancing leadership effectiveness (“building influence in the workplace: it has to be personal”, 2019, n.p). According to Ibarra (2015, p.55), a firm and clear sense of oneself is a feature that assists individuals in navigating choices and progress towards an individual’s strategic goals. Heeding to one’s inner voice assists leaders in drawing on more resources to make better decisions and connect with their authentic selves (Goleman, 2013, p.52). According to the author, hearing one’s inner voice entails paying careful attention to the internal physiological signals. Notably, influence is a personal choice (Team, 2019, n.p). This implies that I must focus on themselves rather than others to improve my leadership. The central leadership task entails directing attention. To complete it, I must be in a position to focus on my individual attention. Supporting the idea of focusing on oneself to build resilience which in turn enhances effective leadership, the leader should be able to focus on what they believe on and sway opinions and be able to convince other individuals to change their stand on a particular issue completely. Having such a convincing power, leaders are, therefore, in a position to convince individuals to adapt to the changes within an organization and strive towards the set strategic goals (“Council Post: How to Influence Others in the Workplace, Regardless Of Your Position,” 2019, n.p).
Step Two: Setting vision and Priorities
Another way through which I will build resilience is through striving to understand all the situations and then setting personal vision and priorities that I can sustain through any adversity that may arise on the way to achieving my goals. In the press of daily activities, leaders tend to ineffectively communicate their vision and priorities to their subordinates (Kaplan, 2007, p.90). As a result, the workers do not know where to focus their efforts which result in an organization’s poor performance, reflecting poor leadership. According to Kaplan (2007, p.89), it is critical for leaders to set their priorities and vision and determine whether they are in a position to articulate the set vision and priorities. Setting priorities and vision will assist me in understanding what I am supposed to be doing in order to drive the success of the business. Understanding where the business is heading to and what is expected of me will assist me in adapting in the face of multiple changes and striving to achieve my strategic goals.
Furthermore, failure to communicate one’s priorities and vision has a direct cost to the leader regarding time and business effectiveness. It is difficult to carry out duties if I do not have a good sense of the big picture which is created through setting vision and priorities of an individual. With regard to benefit of setting priorities and vision, Senge, Hamilton, and Kania (2015, p.29) give an example of Hanover Insurance Companies (HIC) whereby William O’Brien, the CEO, was in a position to lead the company effectively due to espousing ideas like vision and purposefulness of the organization which enabled the workers to persevere with changes that frequently took place within the organization.
Step Three: Being Open to Feedback, Ideas and Inter-Cultural Nuances
Another way through which I will achieve my goal of building resilience is through being open to feedback, ideas, and inter-cultural nuances that will help me to get more prepared. Being open to feedback will assist me into making better decisions. The information provided will offer me credible amount of insight based on what I have done and what I have failed to do. As a result, I will adequately prepare myself to face the future changes by focusing to improve my weak points. Notably, feedback will give me insights on how other people view me. Therefore, hearing their perspectives will challenge me as leader to learn, grow, and overcome a short-coming, which in turn will assist dealing with future changes and thrive towards achieving my strategic goal.
Being open to feedback and ideas will also promote me as a leader. Remarkably, effective feedback provides optimal feedback. Through the feedback, I will gain a complete understanding of my strengths and weaknesses that will enable me to grow and prepare adequately for the future changes.
Measurement Criterion
Successful achievement of the building resilience goal will be evaluated based on whether I am in a position to effectively deal with challenges that will arise without consulting other individuals. By so doing, I will declare the goal of building resilience achieved. This is because building resilience implies that one has been in a position to persevere with changes and attained the set goal.
Goal 2: Always Seeing the Bigger Picture
Rationale
Another goal through which I will enhance my leadership effectiveness is through always seeing the bigger picture. Remarkably, seeing the bigger picture enables leaders to act proactively rather than acting reactively. As a result, this assists in avoiding unnecessary misunderstandings at work and provides emotional resilience. Besides, seeing the bigger picture can aid in managing time and people with grace, thus turning challenges into opportunities. According to Senge, Hamilton, and Kania (2015, p.28), the ability to see the more extensive system is one of the core capabilities that are developed by system leaders so as to foster collective leadership. In complicated settings, individuals typically focus their attention on the parts of the system that are most visible from their vantage point. Consequently, this leads to arguments regarding who has the right perspective on the issue. Assisting people to see the larger system is critical in building a common understanding of the complex issues and developing solutions to these problems (Senge, Hamilton, & Kania, 2015, p.28).
Step One: Encouraging Management Team Members to Argue without Destroying their Ability to Work Collaboratively
Encouraging the management team members to argue without destroying their ability to work as a group is one of the steps through which I will practice seeing the bigger picture (Eisenhardt, Kahwajy, & LJ III, 1997, p.78). As a leader, I will major on the main objective of the business rather than the challenges that might be experienced during the struggle to achieve myset goal. More often, top managers are faced with difficulties in managing conflicts. Conflicts within an organization are natural and even necessary especially where reasonable people are involved in decision making under uncertainty conditions. These individuals are most likely to experience honest disagreements over the most suitable path for the future of their company. My main challenge here will be to keep constructive conflict over issues from turning into dysfunctional interpersonal conflict and to encourage the team members to argue without destroying their ability to work collaboratively (Eisenhardt, Kahwajy, & LJ III, 1997, p.78). If the team members are asked to argue responsibly, this assists in avoiding unnecessary misunderstandings at work and provides emotional resilience. As a result, effective leadership is enhanced. Tjosvold (2008, p.19) urges that appropriate management of conflicts result in effective teamwork within a business organization.
Step Two: Focusing on others
Another step through which I will achieve seeing a bigger picture is through focusing on others. According to Goleman (2013, p.55), leaders who can efficiently focus on other people emerge as natural leaders regardless of the social or organizational rank. Executives who can efficiently focus on other individuals are easy to identify and strive to seek common grounds, whose opinions carry the most weight, as well as grounds within which other individuals want to work. Focusing on others will show some form of empathy including cognitive and emotional empathy. Cognitive empathy entails the ability to understand the perspective of other individuals. On the other hand, emotional sympathy is the ability to feel what other people feel (Goleman, 2013, p.55). This will enable me to act proactively as I focus on what is important and what makes other people comfortable; thus resulting in effective leadership. According to Kim and Mauborgne (2014, p.63), focusing on others may involve distributing leadership across all the levels of management.
Step Three: Managing Time
Time management is another step that I will implement towards seeing the bigger picture. In order to be successful in leadership and achieve strategic goals, leaders must know how they spend their time (Kaplan, 2007, p.90). Additionally, they are required to make sure that their time allocation matches their primary priorities. It is essential to ascertain whether time, the most valuable asset, is used in the best way possible to achieve the set priorities. If I manage my time appropriately, I will not only achieve the set goals but will also hinder misunderstanding among employees as no one will be blamed for the unmet objective.
Measurement Criterion
Successful achievement of always seeing the bigger picture will be evaluated based on the relationship between the team members as building a bigger picture is aimed at reducing misunderstanding among the members. Successful solving of misunderstanding among my employees will be the basis for the evaluation of a successful seeing of the bigger picture as seeing bigger picture acting proactively rather than acting reactively, thus enabling me to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings at work and provides emotional resilience.
Conclusion
Conclusively, resilience building and always seeing the bigger picture will contribute significantly towards enhancing my leadership effectiveness. As a resilient person, I will not dwell on the failure but rather acknowledge the mistake, learn from them, and move forward. Besides, building resilience will give me a firm and a clear sense of oneself which will enable me to navigate choices and progress towards my goals; thus enabling me to improve my leadership.
. Further, always seeing the bigger picture will promote effective leadership through effectively managing my time and other employees. Notably, assisting people in seeing the larger system is critical in building a shared understanding of the complex issues and developing solutions to these problems.
References
Building influence in the workplace: it has to be personal. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/building-influence-in-the-workplace-it-has-to-be-personal-2011-1?IR=T
Council Post: How to influence others in the workplace, regardless of your position. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2018/04/25/how-to-influence-others-in-the-workplace-regardless-of-your-position/#516a6dc874cd
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Jim, C. (2001). Level 5 Leadership: The triumph of humility and fierce resolve. Harvard Business Review, 1.
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Kim, W. C., & Mauborgne, R. A. (2014). Blue Ocean Leadership (Harvard Business Review Classics). Harvard Business Review Press.
Senge, P., Hamilton, H., & Kania, J. (2015). The dawn of system leadership. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 13(1), 27-33.
Team, R. (2019). Influence Redefined with Stacey Hanke – #62 | The Remarkable Leadership Podcast. Retrieved from https://remarkablepodcast.com/influence-redefined-stacey-hanke/?utm_source=Leadercast+Master+Distribution+List&utm_campaign=243f5c4121-DAILY-DOSE-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_09_16&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c403472bd5-243f5c4121-102971825
Tjosvold, D. (2008). The conflict‐positive organization: It depends upon us. Journal of Organizational Behavior: The International Journal of Industrial, Occupational and Organizational Psychology and Behavior, 29(1), 19-28.
