Table of ContentsThe Oxymoron of LeadershipConclusionWorks CitedLeadership is the power or ability to lead other people, the act or instance of leadership. I believe leadership is an art, the art of getting others to follow and accomplish a common goal or task in a harmonious manner. A leader can be represented in all kinds of forms. For many, being a great leader is about leading the way, inspiring a shared vision, enabling others to take action, and encouraging the heart. As I learned about how to become a better leader and take on leadership roles, I learned that all of these are essential to being a great leader. An important element of effective leadership is the close bond between leader and follower, which often determines the success of the leader's mission. Unfortunately, this leader-follower relationship cannot be created using a simple formula. Without inspiration, involvement and encouragement from both participants, the relationship suffers. Leaders, in particular, must make an extra effort to reach out to their followers to initiate and develop that alliance so essential to achieving goals. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay In my personal experience, I have found profound utility and effectiveness in authentic leadership. It is a leadership style that encompasses the personality and core values ​​of leaders, including honesty, ethics and practicality. An authentic leader is more interested in empowering their employees and making the most of their potential, rather than money or personal power. Authentic leaders draw inspiration from their own lives. A good example of this is my leadership interview with Patricia Chan, my former high school teacher. She inspired me and others to succeed in her class by drawing on life experiences and sharing with us what she learned along the way. The feeling of authenticity and the inner desire to lead others on the right path is what struck me the most. In the following article, I will identify and reflect on several themes that have come up in our leadership studies. Additionally, I will develop my own personal leadership philosophy. I'll try to delve into topics like my own personal vision for the future, how I bring it to life, and what the process will look like. I hope that by the end of this article I will shed some light on the areas of leadership that I am not comfortable with and need to practice, as well as the areas of leadership in which I 'excels and that I can reproduce in the real work environment. The oxymoron of leadership Warren Bennis said it well: “no leader seeks to be a leader.” Individuals are not born into leadership. Presidents, CEOs, and leaders around the world are not born knowing that they will lead large numbers of people. This burden was placed on them by demonstrating leadership qualities by being themselves. The individual traits they possess have been selected and honed into a person capable of handling thousands of employees' working lives. For some this may come naturally, but for most it is a skill that has been developed over the years. The full quote from Warren Bennis is: “No leader sets out to become a leader. People decided to live their lives expressing themselves fully. When this expression has value, they becomeleaders. So it’s not about becoming a leader. The goal is to become yourself, to use yourself fully – all your skills, gifts and energies – in order to manifest your vision. You don't have to hold anything back. In summary, you need to become the person you started out being and enjoy the process of becoming. » This quote really resonated with me and shed light on a perspective of leadership that I had not examined in the past. I used to have the idea that leaders are born and bred. That the world's top leaders were given these skills by chance and over the years they have understood these characteristics and used them effectively. However, this has another side. Warren Bennis does a fantastic job painting a picture that leadership comes from within. Not so much by luck, but because I am an individual person. By culminating all of your skills, gifts and energies, you can create a leadership style that is uniquely yours. Of course, he will borrow ideas from several different leadership theories. Whether it's transformational leadership or adaptive leadership, the style someone can bring always has a personal touch. The idea that leaders are not born to be leaders took me a while to digest. Of course, with all things, it is natural that when you are taught a different light or a different point of view, you are hesitant to reject your initial thoughts. I was hesitant to reject the idea that the world's top leaders were unlucky in the way they were born and the values ​​they were instilled with. However, I quickly realized that this way of thinking was incorrect. Warren Bennis' quote inspired me to think from a different perspective. The Elon Musks and Steve Jobs of the world are inherently very intelligent and have a natural intrinsic motivator within them that drives the desire to succeed at a high level. However, that doesn't mean these people aren't incredibly deserving of their praise and accolades. The constant retooling, the dedication to learning to lead, and the hours and hours spent honing their craft and overcoming setbacks makes me believe these people have worked on their leadership skills at an immense level to get to where they are. Currently. A fantastic example of this is a quote from Elon Musk himself. An anonymous Tesla employee recalled an email Elon sent him after he missed a work event in order to attend the birth of his child. The email said: “This is not an excuse. I am extremely disappointed. You need to figure out where your priorities are. We are changing the world and history, and you either get involved or you don't. » When your leader places such high priorities on the organization and even goes so far as to say that the birth of your child is no excuse for missing important work events, then you know the leadership style that he produces. This shows an intense and passionate vision for Elon's organization and he expects all of his employees to have the same level and desire to succeed as he does. The fact that he makes this known is a positive aspect because it allows any candidate interested in a position at Tesla to understand the mental capacity required. This is an example of a leader who took on this role not from birth, but from experience and constant failures. This failure and this desire to succeed made him the person he is today. This all ties back to the Warren Bennis quote because it provides insight into what Warren was trying to convey. Elon Musk is one of a kind. He lives his life the way he wants and doesn't try to be someoneother than himself. The skills, gifts and energies that he possesses that make him the individual that he is also make him the exceptional leader that he is. That's the point of Warren's quote. This is why I titled this section “The Oxymoron of Leadership.” When people think about leadership, it is always about the process of “becoming” a leader. You can search online databases and read hundreds of articles that attempt to explain how one becomes a leader, as if it were an entity different from oneself. Leadership and being yourself are not exclusive, the two work together very synergistically. Ever since I had my first job as a cashier and storefront clerk at Tim Hortons, I have always been intrigued by good management demonstrations. However, over the years I have always been disappointed by the lack of effective leadership displayed in the work environments in which I have worked. In almost every industry and company I have worked with, I immediately noticed gaps in leadership skills among managers and lack of attention from upper management. With these entry-level jobs, I was primarily involved in customer service and customer-facing positions. Even though these positions are entry-level positions and have a low skill barrier to entry, they are still extremely important to organizations. I couldn't believe that some organizations don't realize that these lower level jobs are actually the face of your organization. When you walk through the doors, these people working at the front desk are the first faces you see and the ones that mark you as the face of the company. Extreme attention needs to be paid to these customer-facing employees because they are essentially the only ones communicating with your customers. By establishing a level of management that takes into account different leadership methods and ensuring that employees have a path to follow, you not only show that care is being taken for lower level employees, but you also identify that these positions are important. for the reputation of the company. My vision in terms of leadership philosophies is that all entry-level employees have an authentic leadership experience and leadership that embraces their skills and does so in a way that makes them feel valued. I'm lucky in the sense that I have the language skills and experience to get into these positions, but others aren't as lucky. Immigrants and newcomers to the country who have difficulty with their first language and who do not have work experience in Canada find themselves stuck in these low-paying, morale-depressing jobs. Even if they have the required qualifications abroad, sometimes they are not transferred for benefits here. In a perfect world, all businesses would recognize the value of effective leadership. On a more personal level, my vision would be to encompass the values ​​and traits I have acquired through both authentic leadership and transformational leadership in my future career positions. I am excited about future leadership positions because I feel like the knowledge I can gain from this course will be extremely beneficial in showing my followers what an effective leader is capable of. As Northouse said, “There are almost as many different definitions of leadership as there are people who have tried to define it. It sounds a lot like the words democracy, love and peace. Although each ofwe intuitively know what we mean by such words, these words can mean different things to different people. This strongly ties in with Warren Bennis' quote and the individualization that people have when it comes to leadership. I'm excited to bring my vision of authentic leadership to teams who look to me as a leader. The tools and ideas the course taught me throughout the course will coincide with my intrinsic motivation to inspire others with my leadership. My vision is to bring my passion for authentic leadership and inspire others with its methodology. My path to realizing this vision goes through my work environment and, secondly, through my personal environment. I believe that the skills learned throughout this course are not only applicable at work, but also at home or in your personal life. Being a leader is about more than delivering bottom line results and getting employees to be productive. This could be leading a family, being a leader to children, or even managing the expectations of your own children. As a leader, my personal philosophy on leadership includes a few other points as well. First, I believe your title makes you a manager, but it is your people who will decide if you are a leader. Leadership is not only about inspiring people's potential, but also recognizing that their potential exists. As such, the attributes that I aspire to model every day include integrity, transparency and humility. As a leader, I will always say what I think and mean what I say. Ultimately, my words and actions should be synonymous with each other. With humility, I will seek to learn from others, treat every success and failure as a learning opportunity, and strive to be a better leader and person every day. On the other hand, there would also be expectations from my team members. . To be an effective leader, you need people alongside you who are willing to work for you and give 100%. As I said before, as a leader, I will try to be a better person day by day, because each day brings new lessons. Therefore, I expect my team members or followers to look like themselves and aspire to be the best version of themselves. People who are true to themselves and play to their strengths are invaluable. Likewise, it's important to be aware of opportunities to improve a skill or learn something new. Being adaptable, engaged, and responsible are all subscriber traits that would allow me to bring my vision to life. The following “SMART” list is my action plan to achieve this vision: S: The specific area I am targeting for improvement is my interpersonal skills. I believe I have a wide variety of skills appropriate for the job, but improving empathy and transparency with others would benefit me from authentic leadership. M: Measure my success with employees in the workplace by tracking their progress from the time I started leading them to the time I stopped. If they are not where I want them to be in terms of reproducing authentic behavioral values ​​(transparency, honesty, ethics, self-awareness), then I have failed in my measure. A: achievable through an upcoming promotion in my current position. work. With this promotion, I will have increased responsibility for other employees and will have tasks that fall under the direction of a small group of customer service representatives. A: realistic in the fact that I seebehaviors among current customer service representatives that do not lead by example. These are employees who do not have an authority figure they could consider a leader. They need direction and I believe I can step in and guide them through a vision that would best suit the organization. T: limited in time because I give myself a maximum of one year to be put in a position where I can realize this vision. If by then I don't have enough responsibilities in the workplace to make this vision a reality, then I would try to focus on authentic leadership in my personal life. Throughout the summer, I learned from the Northouse workbook and the Rowe In some cases the importance of different leadership styles. For example, we started the semester learning about the trait approach. Northouse states that “an individual does not become a leader simply because he or she possesses certain traits. Rather, the traits that leaders possess must be relevant to the situations in which they operate. This brings us back to my idea that leaders are “born and bred,” which was a thinking error. On the other hand, this approach involves a different style of thinking called the skills approach. The competency approach takes a leader-centered perspective on leadership. This is a leadership style that I struggle to identify with, as I believe that leaders should not be at the center of the organization. However, this approach suggests that three basic personal skills are necessary for effective administration: technical skills, people skills and conceptual skills. In my personal experience, I have noticed lower management and supervisors possessing the technical skills needed for the job. However, they are seriously lacking in human resources and conceptual skills. I would rank the latter two more important than technical skills because they are more intrinsically linked to your personal values ​​and emotional skills. Technical skills are learned, human and conceptual skills are a little more difficult. “Since the time of the Industrial Revolution, managers have tended to view people as tools, while organizations view workers as cogs in a machine. Over the past few decades, we have seen a shift in this long-held view. Today, in countless for-profit and nonprofit organizations, we see traditional, autocratic, hierarchical modes of leadership giving way to a different way of working: one based on teamwork and community, one that seeks to involve others in decision-making, another based heavily on ethical and caring behavior, and one that attempts to enhance the personal growth of people while improving the caring and quality of our many institutions. » The following quote from the Journal of Business Strategy shows that views regarding leadership styles are changing. In the past, managers didn't tend to inspire employees and viewed them as "cogs in a machine." The new era has arrived and employees must feel empowered. It appears that a handful of organizations are stuck in the ways of previous generations and have not adapted to leadership styles that embrace teamwork and community. This may be because these companies are still owned and operated by the same people as they were several years ago. The mentalities of older generations are difficult to understand..