Leadership

What is Leadership?
In the most layman's words, a leader is the one who can lead others. But it is important to
understand what makes one person a leader and the other a follower. The possession of
leadership by a person can be best described as an exegesis of certain strengths and skills in a
person with his/her capabilities to use these traits in times of crisis. To be a leader in true sense,
one needs to have a vision in life, a passionate drive and a commitment to achieve that vision.
He/she needs to acquire some skills to achieve the vision. Leaders have an art to see the
problems as a goal that needs to be fixed or an issue that requires a fix. A lot of people have that
much needed vision and also carry the know-how what needs to be done to achieve the vision
but leaders become different from others by actually acting towards it.
Business leaders are supposed to exhibit a high level of confidence, competence and
omniscience. But the harsh fact is that this leads to only two possible outcomes. People fake it;
pretend that they are right and know everything as a leader because the admission of uncertainty
or any form of weakness can prove to a career killer. Or even worse happens when they believe
their own hype that they know everything and they are absolutely right. This stops their growth
as a leader and consequently also as a person. This paper discusses how leaders need to evaluate
themselves, the skills they have, the skills they need to improve upon and what can they do at
such tipping points.
My topmost strengths
I am a man of action. I set my goals in clear terms and work harder and smarter to
achieve them. I draw detailed minded plans to fulfill my goals and streamline all my work
activities against these goals. I make sure that I do not give up come what may and that's what
makes life easier for me. Another virtue that helps me achieve success is that I truly believe in
myself. If I carry the confidence to do something, I know that I am really going to do that. Years
ago, I erased the word "Impossible" from my dictionary and started accepting whatever came in
my life. This enriched me both as a person and as a professional and build some hard and soft
skills in me to tackle good and bad times intelligently. I ascertain milestones while I work and
that helps me monitor the pace at which I am working, the progress with which I am achieving
the results. I never leave things incomplete and put great determination and devotion into
smallest of the projects I take up.
I believe that in today's times, right communication is the ladder to success and hence I
move myself and people around towards the chosen goal. I walk the talk and simultaneously talk
the walk. After so much in me, I am still a human being and make mistakes like others. But I
gain from my mistakes by accepting them, making new strategies, creating new work ethos from
the learned lessons. Lastly, I strongly believe that any organization can stand tall if its people are
standing tall. I am a people's person and work on building a good team atmosphere to make the
group dynamics work in a positive direction. I give the required to my people so that they can
complete their tasks overcoming all kinds of hindrances.
If I start seeing the similar in every meeting, I shake things up. I pull together people
from diverse groups for my projects as I believe that varied experience can be fruitful when it
comes together as a force. That's the kind of open invitation to new ideas. For me, it's not about
who is the boss, it's about who has got the best idea. I respect people and their being in our
teams. Each and every employee of our organization whether a manager or a clerk gets due
respect from me. Consequently, I am loved back by everyone. The love and faith from people
gives me inner strength to better myself in a continuous manner in all the above mentioned traits.
Strengths I need to cultivate
A good leader is a person who is able to inculcate good moral and work ideals in his/her
followers. A good leader works towards not just his own growth but elevates all members of his
team both professionally and personally.
Our organization follows the processes of 360 feedback where some surveys were
conducted from my immediate managers, peers, people who work under me and few direct
clients. I used the feedback received from this feedback survey as the building block and a
development tool for myself to help myself recognize strengths and weaknesses and become
more effective and productive. I found that people agree that I am good at building great teams
and maintaining a healthy team dynamics. But many commented that I become disorganized at
times. When I analyzed this trait, I found that it was happening because my work demanded not
just deliverables, but some creativity too and that made me peep into some experimental modes
where I picked up something, worked on it, discovered something new and jumped to that and so
on. This process could give me the much needed innovative results but build confusion for my
subordinates. I plan to leverage my strengths to organize myself more when I am at work. I shall
look to my colleagues and peers to fill the gaps where I am still weak.
Another trait pin-pointed by the feedback system was that I act weak in certain situations.
Honestly, I was quite aware of this as I knew that in some places, one needs to hold back and
keep a low profile for the tough times to pass. There are tough situations which we know that can
neither be managed to the best nor can be avoided, so I always choose to remain quite or respond
aggressively to project myself as a humble person. I understand that no word from a leader can
harm his/her image in the eyes of his followers; can make him weak and unsuitable. When I do
something deliberately, I must accompany words to explain that too so that I do not become
annoying for people.
Lastly, I work in fastest progressing industry and need to keep myself updated with
what's happening new. I shall need to invest my time, energy and money in acquiring new
technical skills to upgrade myself to become more competent and have a decisive front foot for
future.
Impactful Strategies at Work
The skills registry is a good resources for understanding what is needed to become a good
leader. I believe holistic leadership can only take place when a person acquires all the skills
listed in the leadership grid to some extent, if not in full. I already rated myself for all the skills
in the leadership grid and found that I have many skills to be claimed as a good leader. But quite
visibly, I lack in some areas and need to work hard to acquire the respective skills to become
more effective at my work place. Though I carry a vision while I kick off with a project but I
clearly lack in drilling that vision to all aspects of my work. Like a good movie needs a good
cast, I too need to better understand my people and their skills and delegate the appropriate work
profiles to them to get the most out of them. I must make sure that I align people's professional
objectives to match with organizational level goals and company's culture too. I must hire more
intelligently and become more accountable for the success and failure of my teams. As I am into
business development for my company, I need to build links to useful organizations and people
and be well connected with right relationship network. I need to have a more active social life for
the same. This summates my strategies to become more effective in my work life.
Good team building
A good leader is not the only ingredient for sure shot success, a good blend of people in a
team is yet another one. Therefore, it is important to build a balanced and well chosen team.
Usually, team members get selected on the basis of trust, compassion, stability and hope. This is
the most generic pattern across organizations and applicable to most of the team's composition
practices. But the tough part arises here as the mentioned qualities cannot be evaluated in
quantitative manner, therefore identification of exterior qualities stands highly important. I shall
go by Rath and Conchie's categorization of team composition.
The team members must be able to interact with each other in an effective manner. There
should be an open communication channel across the organizational levels and that is one way of
measuring internal intellect of a team. The qualities of a good leader when spread over the four
paradigm functional qualities, can lead the team members to follow him in a more appreciable
manner. No life is a smooth drive and the same hold true for the projects our organization
undertakes. Real man are those who are able to come through tough times. Similarly, a good
team must be able to handle tense situation and glue together even in times of failure. If
technicians devise solutions, leaders must be the people who create and execute strategies to
implement the solutions in the most efficient ways. Leaders must be able to influence teams,
managers, clients, customers etc. to make it acceptable and likable by the most. People must be
cared for and strong organizational ethics and culture can bind people together for long to
produce concrete results. Skills of people should also be spread across the four categories so as
to understand both strengths and weaknesses of team members. Weaknesses must be traded off
for stronger strengths.
Good leaders must be able to define achievable goals for everyone in the team. As they
say everyone is thirsty for praise, leadership must recognize and celebrate each success and offer
sincere thanks to employees. Employee teams are extremely powerful and important and the sole
resource for getting the most of what is wanted. But effective teams do not just happen by
themselves, they need to created with love and expertise.
Conclusion
I work as a Project In-charge in a software development company where each task is
technology extensive. It is my duty to build effective teams in order to deliver high quality
software in desired timelines and entertain the world where requirements are dynamic and
change before the day does. I need to use my strengths and weaknesses to motivate employees
and my peers so that all phases of software development are carried out well. Defects and delays
are not liked by clients and therefore, my teams should work in a friendly environment where the
software under production is their main focus for all times. I assure that my style of leadership is
workable for everyone around. I keep an open eye and an open mind to improve my traits to
achieve success.

References
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and Comparative Logic, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 16, No.3, pp. 620-627
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D'Costa, Anthony P.
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