Blog 5-Your Vision of Leadership

                             Your Vision of Leadership

Introduction

This blog focuses on one's leadership vision and how different leaders have varying front-running ways. Leadership vision refers to a defined path towards a leader's goal to achieve the set goal. Having a vision is an essential aspect for leaders, and it should go beyond the set organizational mission and vision statements. There are some fundamental characteristics that each vision statement should have. These include inherence, very powerful to the point that it sounds unbelievable and not obvious. A leader’s vision is felt in the workplace through the frontrunner's actions, beliefs, and goals. This vision attracts and affects each employee in fulfilling the set goal. This blog contains two parts. The first part describes how leadership styles are diverse. The second part analyses the factors that make it known to a leader of their leading capabilities.

 Leadership Styles are not a One-Size-Fits-All.

The first part of the statement focuses on how leadership styles are not one-size-fits-all, and the real question is the type of leader that one aspires to be and not the kind that they are. This part of the statement can be backed up by the contingency leadership theory, which is founded on the fact that no one leadership style applies to every situation (Bachrach & Mullins, 2019). Researchers to the theory believe that the best form of leadership finds a perfect balance between behaviors, contexts, and needs.

My Vision of Leadership

In light of this, my vision of leadership is one where I have to possess the ability to inspire and motivate others to work smart and align their personal goals with that of the organization so that everyone achieves a common goal.

 My Inspiration for Effective Leadership

Many industry leaders inspire me. However, my greatest inspiration comes from Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors. He is a true description of authentic, visionary, and effective leadership. He displays various psychological attributes of a visionary leader, such as emotional intelligence, open-mindedness, inspiration, imaginative, resoluteness, and persistence (Nagelhout, 2016). He faced failure and yet, remained to be optimistic and carried on through his resilience. Through his positive visions for the future, he creates hope for his employees and clients, and the level of confidence that he has for his products creates a huge following for his products. His moral reasoning is also exemplary especially given that he focused on producing environmentally-friendly vehicles (Musk, 2021).

Knowing one’s leadership Style Directs one’s Strength into Becoming an Effective Leader

This part is a continuation of the first, which evaluates one’s readiness to lead others through recognizing and directing one’s strengths towards becoming the kind of leader that one wants to be. This part of the statement is in line with the behavioral leadership theory, which suggests that effective leadership results from many learned skills (Oberer & Erkollar, 2018), including; technical, human, and conceptual skills.

Feedback from My Colleagues That Has Helped Me Become Aware of My Strengths

My colleagues have played a huge role in helping me become more aware of my strengths as a leader. Through their various appraisals, comments, and criticisms, I learned that my strength lies in effective planning, actively participating in group activities, good listening, humility, and confidence. However, I also need to develop intentional time-management strategies to prove successful as a leader in the marketing industry. I have extensive research and found that time management is key in obtaining timely results.

As I progress through my MBA, some leadership skills I want to develop include relationship building, agility, adaptability, and decision-making skills. I intend to build relationships with others by sharing more during meetings, sending out thank-you notes to employees, and organizing more team-building activities (Mao et al., 2019). As for agility and adaptability, I intend to stay on the cutting edge by having a proper plan for responding to change. Lastly, I intend to develop decision-making skills through defining my values and understanding that of my organization, studying them closely, and applying both values in my decision-making process.

Conclusion

In conclusion, to develop leadership qualities, I will make it a mission to be aware of my strengths and weaknesses through self-evaluations and my colleagues and improve on them. I further plan on exposing myself to more experience to effectively develop leadership skills.

 

 

References

Bachrach, D. G., & Mullins, R. (2019). A dual-process contingency model of leadership, transactive memory systems, and team performance. Journal of Business Research, 96, 297-308.

Mao, J., Chiu, C. Y., Owens, B. P., Brown, J. A., & Liao, J. (2019). Growing followers: Exploring the effects of leader humility on follower self‐expansion, self‐efficacy, and performance. Journal of Management Studies, 56(2), 343-371.

Musk, E. (2021). Elon Musk Biography.

Nagelhout, R. (2016). Elon Musk: Space Entrepreneur. Greenhaven Publishing LLC.

Oberer, B., & Erkollar, A. (2018). Leadership 4.0: Digital leaders in the age of industry 4.0. International Journal of Organizational Leadership.