Assignment: Personal Leadership Philosophies
Many of us can think of leaders we have come to admire, be they historical figures, pillars of the industry we work in, or leaders we know personally. The leadership of individuals such as Abraham Lincoln and Margaret Thatcher has been studied and discussed repeatedly. However, you may have interacted with leaders you feel demonstrated equally competent leadership without ever having a book written about their approaches.
What makes great leaders great? Every leader is different, of course, but one area of commonality is the leadership philosophy that great leaders develop and practice. A leadership philosophy is basically an attitude held by leaders that acts as a guiding principle for their behavior. While formal theories on leadership continue to evolve over time, great leaders seem to adhere to an overarching philosophy that steers their actions.
What is your leadership philosophy? In this Assignment, you will explore what guides your own leadership.
To Prepare:
Identify two to three scholarly resources, in addition to this Module’s readings, that evaluate the impact of leadership behaviors in creating healthy work environments.
Reflect on the leadership behaviors presented in the three resources that you selected for review.
Reflect on your results of the CliftonStrengths Assessment*, and consider how the results relate to your leadership traits.
*not required to submit CliftonStrengths Assessment
The Assignment (2-3 pages):
Personal Leadership Philosophies
Develop and submit a personal leadership philosophy that reflects what you think are characteristics of a good leader. Use the scholarly resources on leadership you selected to support your philosophy statement. Your personal leadership philosophy should include the following:
A description of your core values.
A personal mission and vision statement.
An analysis of your CliftonStrengths Assessment summarizing the results of your profile
A description of two key behaviors that you wish to strengthen.
A development plan that explains how you plan to improve upon the two key behaviors you selected and an explanation of how you plan to achieve your personal vision. Be specific and provide examples.
Be sure to incorporate your colleagues’ feedback on your CliftonStrengths Assessment from this Module’s Discussion 2.
Personal Leadership Philosophies
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliations
Personal Leadership Philosophies
Leadership attributes usually have a significant influence on employee performance. It is the responsibility of every leader to create a peaceful work environment where employees can interact freely and remain motivated to perform their roles. Through their philosophies, great leaders can remain effective and offer the right guidance that their organizations need in order to achieve success (Broome & Marshall, 2018). The purpose of this assignment is to describe personal leadership philosophy based on the results of the CliftonStrengths Assessment.
Core Values
The approaches used by a leader to execute leadership, work with teams, and achieve success depend on his or her core values. Core values guide leaders to adhere to the professional and ethical standards required to support the achievement of the organization’s mission and vision (Steinmann et al., 2018). The core values that direct my leadership strategies are trustworthiness and humility. By being trustworthy, I am able to acquire the trust of my colleagues and followers. Besides, the value of humility influences my decision-making abilities and defines how I handle people. These core values have helped me to achieve a lot in my role as a leader.
Personal Mission/Vision Statements
My personal mission and vision statements are as given below;
Mission Statement
“To be an exemplary leader who follows professional and ethical standards to promote organizational growth and employee development.”
Vision Statement
“I aspire to make my organization grow and strengthen relationships with my team members while also encouraging them to achieve their full potential.”
CliftonStrengths Assessment Results
Through the CliftonStrengths assessment, leaders are able to identify their leadership attributes including characteristics that make them effective in their roles and areas that they need to improve. The top 5 themes generated from my CliftonStrengths assessment include; restorative, responsibility, includer, individualization, and strategic (Gallup Access, n.d.). The ‘restorative’ theme best defines my leadership attributes because I am the type of leader who assesses problematic situations and works to solve existing problems. My leadership qualities are also aligned with the ‘responsibility’ theme because I am a responsible leader who always drives tasks to completion (Gallup Access, n.d.). With respect to the ‘includer’ theme, I demonstrate respect for diversity by practicing inclusivity as I work with people from different backgrounds. Again, the ‘individualization’ theme matches my leadership characteristic because I am the type of leader who views my followers as unique beings with varied goals, beliefs, values, and needs. I must also admit that my leadership attributes are in agreement with the ‘strategic’ theme because I usually strive to find the best approaches to face every situation that I encounter in my role as a leader (Gallup Access, n.d.).
Key Behaviors
An effective leader should not only pay attention to his or her strengths but should also identify and take action to improve key behaviors that contribute to their weaknesses. The two key behaviors that I wish to strengthen are Maximizer and Belief attributes. For example, I have strong beliefs and values in my faith. I believe that I need to improve in this area to allow me to demonstrate cultural competence and engage in effective decision-making (Giddens, 2018). I also need to improve my ‘maximizer’ abilities to be able to work towards achieving the best in every situation that I encounter.
Development Plan
My plan to develop the key behaviors identified above entails benchmarking and professional development through leadership training. For example, I will imitate the leadership approaches applied by successful leaders in order to grow. I will also obtain guidance from these leaders on how I can prevent my strong belief in faith from affecting my decision-making. Most importantly, I will register for leadership training to improve my leadership skills and abilities (Cable & Graham, 2018). I believe that I will be able to improve further in these areas through continued practice.
References
Broome, M., & Marshall, E. S. (2018). Transformational leadership in nursing: From expert
clinician to influential leader (2nd ed.). Springer Publishing Company.
Cable, S., & Graham, E. (2018). “Leading Better Care”: An evaluation of an accelerated coaching intervention for clinical nursing leadership development. Journal of Nursing Management, 26(5), 605-612.
Gallup Access. (n.d.). CliftonStrengths:Summary. Gallup Analytics and Reporting
Giddens, J. (2018). Transformational leadership: What every nursing dean should know. Journal of Professional Nursing, 34(2), 117-121.
Steinmann, B., Klug, H., & Maier, G. W. (2018). The path is the goal: how transformational leaders enhance followers’ job attitudes and proactive behavior. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 2338. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02338