Prepare a 2-3-page business report (single spaced) in which you analyze your leadership strengths and develop a statement of who you are as a leader.
Introduction
This portfolio work project helps you define who you are as a leader. It is something that would be useful to you in annual performance reviews or to use as a reminder of your strengths and best qualities.
Scenario
Your leader is interested in your development as a leader in your organization. You have recently taken a variety of self-assessments designed to better understand your strengths, areas of improvement, communication ability, and values. Your leader would like you to spend some time reflecting on the results of your assessments and gathering some additional information from those who know you best.
Your Role
Your role is to prepare a report in which you review and reflect on your strengths; collect additional information from 3–5 colleagues, friends, or others who know you well; and create a portrait of yourself as a leader.
Preparation
This assessment requires you to collect feedback from 3–5 people who know you best and to complete at least three self-assessments.
Collecting Feedback From People:
Because not everyone is likely to respond, you should identify at least 6–10 people to ask. Choose a variety of people who have had extended contact with you, such as:
Colleagues (former or current), such as vendors, customers, or board members.
Friends (old or recent), neighbors, or fellow volunteers.
Family members.
Others who know you well. Be creative in your choices.
Try to give your respondents sufficient time to respond. You can create a feedback form or keep it simpler.
The questions you should ask are:
Who am I when I am at my best?
Can you provide a specific example of a time when I was at my best?
You can reach out by phone, e-mail, text, or in person. Analyze your leadership strengths.
Self-Assessments
Take at least three of the six self-assessments listed in the Assessment 2 Resources: Leadership Self-Assessments.
Requirements
For this paper:
Discuss the strengths, skills, and other positives that were revealed in the three assessments that you took. Do these strengths surprise you or reinforce what you already thought? How do you use these strengths currently? Be sure to clearly explain which assessment gave you the information and cite the assessments in APA format.
Discuss your strengths further by summarizing the responses you received and relating how what you learned from the people you talked to and the assessments fits in with what you already knew about yourself, and with the work you currently do or hope to do in the future.
Bring together all data points—your own feelings about your skills, what the assessments revealed, what your contacts said about you—in a cohesive discussion of your strengths.
Develop a statement of who you are as a leader, based on your analysis. This statement should include your values, strengths, goals, and more. You should include in your statement who you want to be as a leader—what you aspire to become. This way, your statement becomes your own vision of who you want to be and an affirmation to help you grow.
Describe some of the areas that you learned are growth opportunities (where you did not perform so strongly). How did you feel about this? What areas do you feel are most important to strengthen? What specific and actionable steps might you take to strengthen these areas?
Deliverable Format
Your deliverable is a 2–3-page business report (single spaced). Business reports are formatted differently from academic, APA formatting. For information about the differences, refer to the MBA Program Resources on the left side of the courseroom navigation panel. Once you click this tab, several options will appear in the middle of your screen. Click the Writing option. You will want to review the MBA Academic and Professional Document Guidelines. Note that this business report MUST be single-spaced, professionally formatted, and organized with ample headings. Because this is a personal reflection, you may write it in first person.
Related Company Standards
The Defining Yourself As a Leader business report is a professional document and should therefore follow the corresponding MBA Academic and Professional Document Guidelines, including single-spaced paragraphs. In addition to the report, include:
Title page or a heading at the top of the first page with title, date, and your name.
Introduction.
Various sections (see recommended outline below).
Conclusion.
References page.
APA-formatted references (if applicable).
You might consider using the following outline:
Introduction (tell the reader what this paper is about. Do not assume that the reader knows what the assignment is).
My Strengths (detail which assessments you took and what strengths and values were revealed).
Leadership Statement (create a statement of who you want to be as a leader—make it aspiring, like an affirmation).
Growth Opportunities (detail the areas where you have yet to grow and discuss some plans for achieving that growth).
Conclusion (wrap up the paper effectively).
References (in APA format. Be sure to cite the assessments that you took, and any readings that are applicable).
Evaluation
By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies through corresponding scoring guide criteria:
Competency 1: Analyze the strengths and behaviors of successful leaders.
Analyze personal leadership strengths.
Develop a personal leadership statement that includes purpose and values as a leader.
Competency 2: Apply leadership strengths and behaviors to workplace situations.
Describe how you use your strengths in the workplace or plan to in the future and how you will develop your weaknesses to become strengths.
Competency 4: Communicate effectively through academic and professional writing.
Develop text using organization, structure, and transitions that demonstrate understanding of the relationship between the main topic and subtopics.
Convey clear meaning in text through sound grammar, usage, word choice, and mechanics.
Defining Myself as a Leader
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliations
Defining Myself as a Leader
Those who aspire to hold leadership positions in the future should make efforts to acquire relevant skills that will enable them to perform effectively in their roles. The best way to understand the strengths that can make one become a good leader and the weaknesses that need to be improved is to engage in a personal reflection (Dutton et al., 2014). A number of self-assessment tools have been developed to help people to evaluate their skills as far as leadership is concerned. Leaders use results from these assessments to refine their values and purpose, identify growth opportunities, and develop strategies to strengthen their weak areas (Friedman, 2014). In this report, I will analyze my personal leadership strengths and skills based on the self-assessment results and the responses received from people who are close to me. The report will also include my leadership statement that specifies my purpose and values as a leader. Additionally, I will also explain how I am using my personal strengths to achieve my professional goals, the growth opportunities revealed by the self-assessments completed, and the actionable steps that I plan to take to strengthen my weak areas.
My Strengths
The three assessments that I completed revealed that I have a number of strengths, skills, and key positives that define my leadership potential and abilities. My top five strengths that came out of the VIA Character Strengths Profile, from the highest downward, include honesty, kindness, love, humor, and love of learning (Littman-Ovadia et al., 2021). The top two skills that emerged from the Communication Assessment are Amiable (45%) and Analytical (25%). It was also evident from the Agility Self-Assessment that I have developed Interpersonal Agility and Learning Agility more sufficiently with scores of 30/40 and 29/40 respectively than the Execution Agility at a score of 25/40 (Horney et al., 2010). The Ariel Self-Assessment Results showed that I am a ‘People Manager’ with scores of 70, 70, 75, and 70 in the Present, Reaching-Out, Expressive, and Self-Knowing traits respectively. These strengths, skills, and positives reinforce what I already thought regarding my leadership behaviors. I use these skills currently at my place of work and in social settings to bring people together and support my organization to meet its objectives. For example, my skill as an amiable communicator is usually reflected in my interaction with others because I normally utilize every opportunity to connect with my audience at a personal level. These skills are further supported by my high Interpersonal Agility scores that have confirmed that I am always sociable, opinionated, and extroverted. I often remain expressive when managing people as I strive to remain honest, kind, loving, bring a smile to other people’s faces, and learn how best I can work with people to make them feel inspired. As a leader, I believe that these skills and strengths will give me the confidence to perform my leadership roles effectively for both organizational and people’s success.
Some of the responses that I received from my contacts adequately fit with what I already knew about myself. However, some of the strengths identified by contacts came as a surprise to me because I did not know that I possess such skills. For example, most of my contacts stated that “you are always at your best” when managing people. They further explained that I usually demonstrate emotional competence when handling others, especially those with views that contradict my own. I already knew that I always give my best to every situation and that I often control my emotions during communication. However, I did not know that I am an approachable person who people feel comfortable working with as reported by some of my close contacts.
In my current role as a leader, I apply my strengths, skills, and key positives as revealed by the responses from my contacts and assessment results to ensure success in all that I do. For example, I am always present to members of teams that I lead, listen to the needs of each and every one of them, and work with them to address their concerns. Additionally, I communicate clearly with my followers and reach out to them to build meaningful and lasting relationships and trust. I always express myself clearly, utilizing my strong foundation of self-knowing to inspire and manage my followers. I believe that managing people effectively acts as a good roadmap to success for every leader who wants to succeed in his or her leadership roles.
Leadership Statement
My personal leadership statement clearly outlines my purpose, goals, and values as a leader. The statement defines the type of leader that I want to become in the future and it reads “I aspire to be a leader who utilizes effective communication skills to build strong relationships and trust with members of my team. I also want to be that leader who can utilize innovative strategies while also inspiring teams to implement change.” My leadership purpose is to work with teams to help them to achieve personal growth as we work together to ensure organizational success. According to Spreitzer et al. (2012), effective communication, the ability to build strong relationships with teams, and having employees’ interests at heart are among the skills that today’s leaders need to enhance human sustainability and help their organizations to thrive. Horney et al. (2010) further outline the positive impacts that leadership agility has on the success of an organization. Leaders who demonstrate agility are able to succeed in three major areas including learning, interpersonal relationships, and execution. Examples of the competencies that agile leaders need to demonstrate include innovativeness, ability to engage in reflection, sociability, optimism, reliance, and flexibility (Horney et al., 2010). Honesty, kindness, love, humor, and love of learning are the specific values that influence my leadership style.
My strengths, skills, and key positives revealed by the self-assessment results and my close contacts support my leadership statement above. For example, the values that direct my leadership behaviors are adequately reflected in my strengths are revealed by the VIA Character Strengths Profile (Littman-Ovadia et al., 2021). Besides, I possess effective communication skills that I will apply to build strong relationships and trust with members of my team. As evidenced by the Communication Assessment, I am that type of leader with an amiable style of communication. I am a friendly leader who connects with others at a personal level. Since I am slow to make decisions when faced with different situations, I will use these strengths to involve employees in decision-making thus allowing them to feel valued and respected (Robinson, 2020). I am confident that I will effectively implement my leadership statement because I possess interpersonal agility, learning agility, and execution agility as portrayed in the Agile Assessment (Horney et al., 2010). To succeed in implementing my leadership statement, I adequately understand that I should clearly express my vision, mission, goals, and commitment to team members. My strength as an expressive leader is adequately evidenced in the Ariel Self-Assessment results.
Growth Opportunities
From the self-assessments completed and responses obtained from my close contacts, I was able to identify growth opportunities that need to be improved to enhance my leadership effectiveness. To improve in these areas, I will utilize the strengths that I already possess to achieve my professional goals and strengthen my weak areas. One of the growth opportunities that I need to consider is to improve my execution agility. I did not perform well in this area after scoring 25/40 as revealed by the Agile Assessment Results. Execution Agility is an important skill that leaders of contemporary organizations must possess to be able to steer their organizations forward (Horney et al., 2010). The reason is that Execution agility enables leaders to remain resilient, being able to rebound quickly from setbacks. It also guides leaders to remain driven and maintain a focus, demonstrate calmness under pressure, be tolerant in times of uncertainty, and demonstrate flexibility by being able to develop new ideas to promote change (Horney et al., 2010). I also need to improve my abilities to manage people with a focus on the key areas namely Present, Reach-out, and Self-Knowing (Dutton et al., 2014). I obtained a score of 70 in all these areas as evidenced by my Ariel Self-Assessment Results. I believe that developing my competencies in them will make me a better ‘people manager’ than who I am today.
The strategies that I will implement to improve my leadership skills have been influenced by my personal strengths. My action plan to strengthen these weak areas will focus on obtaining leadership training, interviewing successful leaders to understand their leadership approaches, and putting the skills and strengths that I already possess into practice. According to Dutton et al. (2014), one of the ways to become a positive leader is to take small actions that later translate into big impacts. Examples of such small actions include enrolling in a leadership training program and assessing one’s leadership skills against the strategies applied by successful leaders. For example, leadership training will help me to acquire new skills that will complement my current strengths. Additionally, I will benefit greatly by getting to understand the approaches that other leaders use by holding an interview session with them. My Four Circles Assessment results revealed that I focus on Work (25%), Home (30%), Community (15%), and Self (30%) (Friedman, 2014). These results show that I should create a balance between work and job to be able to perform my leadership functions comfortably. The best way to learn what works best for me is to practice quite often by putting the skills and strengths that I already possess into meaningful use in a busy work setting.
Conclusion
This paper has analyzed my leadership skills and strengths as revealed by self-assessment results and responses provided by my close contacts. From the assessment results, I discovered that I am an amiable and analytical communicator. My other leadership strengths include the ability to demonstrate interpersonal agility, learning agility, and expressiveness. My leadership statement states that I aspire to become a leader who communicates effectively with followers to build trust and meaningful relationships while also applying innovative strategies to implement lasting reforms. The key values that drive my leadership behaviors include honesty, kindness, love, humor, and love of learning. I will utilize my leadership strengths and skills to strengthen my weak areas. The specific actions that will help me to achieve my goals include enrolling in a leadership training program, interviewing successful leaders to understand their leadership approaches, and putting the skills and strengths that I already possess into practice.
References
Dutton, J. E., Spreitzer, G. M., & Achor, S. (2014). How to be a positive leader: Small actions, big impact. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Chapter 4, “Enable Thriving at Work.
Friedman, S. D. (2014). Work + home + community + self: Skills for integrating every part of your life. Harvard Business Review.
Horney, N., Pasmore, B., & O’Shea, T. (2010). Leadership agility: A business imperative for a VUCA world. People and Strategy, 33(4), 32-38.
Leavy, B. (2016). Effective leadership today – Character not just competence. Strategy and Leadership, 44(1), 20-29.
Littman-Ovadia, H., Dubreuil, P., Meyers, M. C. & Freidlin, P. (2021). Editorial: VIA Character Strengths: Theory, research and practice. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 653941. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.653941.
Robinson, G. (2020). Workplace communication: Examining leader-member exchange theory, uncertainty avoidance, and social styles. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2089&context=etd
Spreitzer, G., Porath, C. L., & Gibson, C. B. (2012). Toward human sustainability: How to enable more thriving at work. Organizational Dynamics, 41(2), 155-162.