Leadership planning

Name of the student

Name of the university

Author note

Table of Contents

Introduction. 2

Methodology. 3

Key findings. 8

Lessons learned. 9

Reference list 10

Individual leadership development plan and covering report

Introduction

The report is prepared to discuss about the aims of developing the plan related to the leadership aspects. The last two decades have experienced something huge and there has been growing interest in the development and management of leadership within the organisations. The leaders of the industry have now faced pace of change in business functions, which has created pressure for them as well as in the increased globalisation, the new business models and new communication channels have affected the ability to promote as a leader (Nicholson and Kurucz 2019). The roles and responsibilities of a leader are to accept change, implement the change by remaining more agile, responsive to change and actions and remain adaptive in their approaches too. With the changing workforce, new employees such as millennial have entered the workforce and career cycles have become shorter, which has created interest and willingness at all levels to share and collaborate the knowledge economy across all the levels of the work. With proper leadership, the organisations tend to gain new development opportunities for accelerating their progression in career and also improve their own employability skills. The leadership roles should also be here, to change the workplace, drive motivation factors, mange communication and engage employees together to work within the flexible ad volatile workforce quite effectively (Couch and Citrin 2019).

The aim of the report is to develop the leadership development plan and based the roles and aspirations, achieve the personal vision to develop as a leader. This report also evaluates my need to become a democratic and transformational leader for engaging people together, manage shared decision making and ensure progressing in the professional career much more conveniently. The development of a leader can be daunting task for the organisations and in such cases, the management needs to evaluate the right systematic approach for translating the management training into the real life leadership practices, furthermore, shift from the training of individual leaders to improve the leadership skills and capabilities of the organisation as a whole (Redekop 2019). Thus, it will help in embracing the agenda of the organisation and use personal values and beliefs to guide the employees properly and ensure accomplishment of business objectives too. I have recently been appointed as a team leader within the retail company named XYZ in Astralia. I have marked my presence as a leader and it is a new role for which, I am quite excited and feel to keep the workforce productive and also improve overall performance as a leader. As per the Individual Leadership Development Plan or ILDP, my vision is to consistently lead people with integrity, honesty, fairness, humility and through establishment of clear and honest communication. In the long term, i.e., in the next 12 months, I would like to train them efficiently and create a respectful and professional working environment, which the employees shall feel interested to work with and also raise my overall potential as a leader of the organisation.

Methodology

The methodology of the section of the report represents the entire process that have been used to establish the Individual Leadership Development Plan or ILDP and make sure identify leadership strengths and areas of weaknesses too. To undertake the self-assessment of the leadership strengths and weaknesses, the processes that have been undertaken include the self-assessment activities and through readings (Shufutinsky ET AL. 2020). The collection of useful data and information has been possible with the use of assessment tools represented in the course notes while the other techniques have helped me to identify the developmental vision, build self-awareness and the development objectives too. Considering the focus on what type of leader I want to become, it has been clearly stated that the democratic leadership should be the most suitable as it has helped in participation of employees and engaging them together to make decisions in a shared manner. This kind of leadership has also the potential to make people admire the leader and result in good working environment, where coordination and cooperative working are promoted along with ability to make quicker business decisions too. Knowing the leadership style has helped in deciding whether the organisation should be culturally fit or not and how effectively it could help me to communicate within the team (Oreg and Berson 2019). Understanding the style of leadership properly could also help in managing good communication, enable transparency about what has been focused on, furthermore, create alignment between the vision and objectives to be achieved. It could also help me to create a good culture where people could understand their own potential strengths and evaluate their contribution that they collectively bring to the team. As a newly appointed leader, I would like to set the vision, align people to that vision and make them understand how they could achieve the vision together.

The assessment tool that has been used here is the Evidence of DAC that demonstrates about whether the leadership is occurring properly or not and how well it has been accepted by the people present within the workplace. It is based on the three major components such as the Direction of the organisation, alignment of vision with the corporate goals and commitment. Based on the leadership skills and capabilities, it has to be determine about whether it has been happening or not within the workplace with guidance of mine, as a leader of XYZ Company in Australia.

Considering the assessment tool, I have followed the vision of working and leading people with honesty, integrity, fairness and knowledgeable about the organisational aspects, which has been possible with the help of adhering to the corporate values and beliefs. I have managed to make them learn about what they need to achieve and how they could do so and then agree on what collective decisions and success should like in the future. I have engaged the employees together, which has helped in participating decision making and focus on shared decision making, which also helped me to provide a good direction to the workforce and its people. The alignment of vision and values with the objectives has helped them to understand their own work and responsibilities while fitting to the work of others too (Ravitch and Carl 2019). Due to this, a sense of coordination and synchronisation has been formed, but in few cases there were emergence of conflicts that left things in disarray and errors experienced at the work. People though did not feel isolated, as I managed to frequently communicate with them, which made them work collaboratively and compete with each other. In terms of commitment, I did introduce some new policies and rewards systems, which made them put their extra effort and thereby, formed a good level of trust between me and the employees. They have expressed their views and opinions and felt valued by the organization as essential organisational assets.

To collect data and information and further analyse those, I have gathered feedbacks and responses from the five colleagues with whomI have worked or beenworking to assess my own leadership strengths and weaknesses. It has been done with the help of distributing survey questionnaires to them which were filled by them representing my own areas of strengths and weaknesses (López-Alcarria et al. 2019). The questionnaires distributed to the employees of the organisation also helped them to represent their own views and opinion considering how I have been performing as a leader and whether they have been properly supported and motivated at not at XYZ Company. Moreover, this has helped in the collection of useful data and information, supported by effective execution of the leadership development plan. The Collection of data has been possible as well with the assessment of course materials and notes that constitute the secondary data and information while carrying out the methodology here.

The methodology also includes the use of personality test assessment tool for analysing the personality traits of being a leader and which areas should be improved for emerging as a successful leader in the long term future. The 16 Personality Test Assessment Toolhas helped in gaining a better understanding of the effectiveness of myself as a leader. Using this assessment tool, and considering the arguments of Ayub, Kanwal and Kausar (2019), I have been able to develop deeper into the mind-sets of others in terms of accepting me as a leader. This assessment tool has added a constructive direction into my roadmap towards success as a leader.

Fig: Test results of the 16 Personality Test

(Source: 16personalities.com 2020)

            According to the results of the 16 personality tests, I found that my personality is that of ISFJ-T, that is, of a defender. The result exactly matches with my personality in terms of possessing interest and activeness towards learning new things and abilities. However, I am sensitive towards responding to the people in the environment, within which I am surrounded. Herein lays the weakness of the communication skills and the lack of awareness and trust within the team members. In spite of this, I consider socialisation as one of my strengths, which helps to me adjust within any kind of environment including those of changes.

In case of the mental abilities, my score is that of 58% introvert and 42% extrovert. Here, I can relate the goals of improvising on the communication skills for gaining awareness and trust among the team members and higher authorities. This is because, affirming with the arguments of Crawford and Kelder (2019), I think acceptance is one of the basic aspects towards gaining respect as a leader. I consider it to be a positive aspect that my score as an observant is 58%. This is correlative with the reflective observation, which I have planned to incorporate into my individual development plan for concretizing my experience as a leader. Defenders are considered to be perfectionist, therefore, I affirm with the score of 25% towards thinking. My thought processes are inclined towards generating creativity in my approach, so as to influence others with due consideration to rationality and logical reasoning.

According to Zhao and Li (2019), Defenders or the ones with the personality as ISFJ-T, often find a challenge in terms of making themselves recognized through their actions. Therefore, the score of 58% contradicts this assumption, as I am judgmental towards implementing an action. This approach helps me to be clear in terms of behavioural action planning. As a result of this, I also consider failure as a stepping stone towards success in the professional career establishment. According to the assumptions of Yang et al. (2020), defenders are to be rational in their approach for maintaining their confidence. In this context, the score of 90% as turbulent exactly matches with my personality. This is because of my intention towards influencing and leading others with honesty, integrity, fairness and humility.

I have been in regular contact with my mentor at XYZ Company, which has allowed me to understand all these strengths and weaknesses while work on how to gain the trust of the employees while providing them feedbacks too. This has formed own credibility and made me competent enough to positively impact the business organization by enabling innovation and adhering to the values, principles and vision too (Dopson et al. 2019).

Key findings

Based on the research methodology used here and also on the basis of data and information presented in the ILDP, I have managed to evaluate my areas of strengths and weaknesses. I am time punctual firstly and have always felt interested in learning new things and most of all, I have remained confident about what I am doing, which could be the major strengths. Previously, while working as a manager of an organisation, I aligned my values with the corporate goals to generate personal commitment and at the same time, build group resilience. I possess good interpersonal skills, which has helped me to interact with people from different backgrounds and cultures, and remain sociable which could also be a major strengths of mine while respecting each other’s’ opinions and giving priority to them , have made me empower individuals to bring their optimal performance. The adaptability to change can also be considered as a major strength that I intend to share with my peers and subordinates too. A shared vision often connected people at the deepest values level and they have often been motivated by the main purpose of the initiative.

Few weaknesses of leadership here could be the lack of trust and awareness within the team and it is evident as I have been newly appointed at XYZ Company as the team leader. I often acted as a failure while setting clear expectations, due to which, the employees often reacted reluctantly and deadlines were found to be missed along with errors. This also hindered achievement of goals and objectives while at the same time, I could not provide effective feedbacks to the employees. This could be a case of micromanaging where I might be failing to check what they had been doing, which made me remain authoritative and fear of losing the control of the processes. I could not set the expectations properly that need to be completed, which led to misunderstandings about what the employees have been expected to be doing. Due to this, the production was somewhat low. I would also like to work my ability to provide feedbacks to the employees and deliver them training to make them excel in their areas and remain motivated.

Lessons learned

From the assessment of these various methodologies, not only the strengths and weaknesses of me being working as a leader of the organisation, i.e., XYZ company has been understood but also has made me confident and active to learn new things. Based on the social influence theory, I learned that the leadership is not only about building connections with people and engage them to make shared decisions, but much more than that. The employees are often encouraged to acquire rewards and benefits and also get identified, when their behaviours are congruent with the value system. Thus, as a leader, I have always managed to take care of their needs, aim to create a good working environment, where they could connect with their personal values and achieve the international level that has been desired.

It has also been learned from the report that the development objectiveshave been aligned with the corporate goals, which are to act with integrity, honesty and fairness while leading the people within the workplace. This should create a good working environment to keep the workforce empowered and motivated in the long run while promote a good corporate culture where people should work cooperatively and as a team. It is also a part of the development objective to accept change as much as possible and implement the change properly to achieve the desired outcomes and ensure exceling in my own leadership roles and success ability for the future. Other than that, it could also be related to the establishment of proper communication between employees at work, prioritise, plan and delegate responsibilities accurately and provide feedbacks to the employees consistently about their work.

As per the key findings, it would be important for meto focus on the development objective by attending the spoken English communication classes and learn some other languages too for interacting with peoplefrom different backgrounds and cultures at the workplace quite comprehensively. Moreover, getting trained to write speeches and deliver those through ihetarc8tove sessions could facilitate discussions between me and the team members while even engage the audiences by keeping them engaged throughout the decision making process. The active listening skills should be practiced by me as well to approach proactively while managing discussions with my mentor or leader and also maintain consistent transparency in the communication process.

Reference list

16personalities.com 2020. Personality test. Available at: https://www.16personalities.com/isfj-personality [Accessed on 13th August 2020]

Ayub, M.U., Kanwal, F. and Kausar, A.R., 2019. Developing knowledge creation capability: The role of big-five personality traits and transformational leadership. Pakistan Journal of Commerce and Social Sciences (PJCSS), 13(1), pp.30-61.

Couch, M.A. and Citrin, R.S., 2019. Strategy-driven leadership: The playbook for developing your next generation of leaders. CRC Press.

Crawford, J.A. and Kelder, J.A., 2019. Do we measure leadership effectively? Articulating and evaluating scale development psychometrics for best practice. The Leadership Quarterly, 30(1), pp.133-144.

Dopson, S., Ferlie, E., McGivern, G., Fischer, M.D., Mitra, M., Ledger, J. and Behrens, S., 2019. Leadership development in Higher Education: A literature review and implications for programme redesign. Higher Education Quarterly, 73(2), pp.218-234.

López-Alcarria, A., Olivares-Vicente, A. and Poza-Vilches, F., 2019. A systematic review of the use of agile methodologies in education to foster sustainability competencies. Sustainability, 11(10), p.2915.

Nicholson, J. and Kurucz, E., 2019. Relational leadership for sustainability: Building an ethical framework from the moral theory of ‘ethics of care’. Journal of Business Ethics, 156(1), pp.25-43.

Oreg, S. and Berson, Y., 2019. Leaders’ impact on organizational change: Bridging theoretical and methodological chasms. Academy of Management Annals, 13(1), pp.272-307.

Ravitch, S.M. and Carl, N.M., 2019. Qualitative research: Bridging the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological. SAGE Publications, Incorporated.

Redekop, V.N., 2019. The Emergence of Integrative Peacebuilding: A Complexity-Based Approach to Professional Leadership Development. Journal of Peacebuilding & Development, 14(3), pp.272-287.

Shufutinsky, A., DePorres, D., Long, B. and Sibel, J.R., 2020. SHOCK LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT FOR THE MODERN ERA OF PANDEMIC MANAGEMENT AND PREPAREDNESS. International Journal of Organizational Innovation, 13(1).

Yang, C., Chen, Y., Zhao, X.R. and Hua, N., 2020. Transformational leadership, proactive personality and service performance. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.

Zhao, H. and Li, C., 2019. A computerized approach to understanding leadership research. The Leadership Quarterly, 30(4), pp.396-416.

Individual Leadership Development Plan Template

Please refer to the guidance in Unit 2 of the course notes and the instructions for Assessment 3 to help you build your plan.

Name:                                     Date last updated:

My leadership development vision (i.e. the kind of leader I want to become)

I want to become a democratic and transformational leader to guide and support employees as well as bring positive changes through enhanced employee performance and overall business effectiveness too.

In the short-medium term (~5 years): To upgrade communication skills and consistently lead people with integrity, honesty, fairness, humility.

In the longer term:

• To create a healthy, professional and respectful working environment where people could work as an unit and in coordination with the shared vision in mind
• To enhance own leadership and management skills and emerge as a successful leader at XYZ Company, Australia

My personal values

Core personal values that will provide direction to my leadership include:

• Honesty
• Integrity
• Fairness
• Humility

Summary of my leadership strengths and weaknesses

The following list of key strengths and weaknesses originates from self-assessment and reflection exercises, as well as feedback from my supervisor and a small group of trusted colleagues.

Key strengths:

• Sociable
• Can work under pressure
• Hardworking
• Adaptable to any kind of change
• Confident
• Punctual
• Inquisitive towards learning new things
• Good interpersonal skills and being friendly to others have helped in making them feel free to share their opinions
• I have engaged the employees to make them feel valued and also improve the process of decision making

Key weaknesses:

• Inadequate communication skills
• Improper managerial skills
• Lack of aware and trust within the team members
• Micromanaging case where the employees‘ activities are not monitored properly
• Failing to provide feedbacks to the employees is another major weakness of mine

Developmental objectives

In the next 12 months (13^th August 2020 to 13^th August 2021), I plan to focus on the aspects of communication skills, leadership and managerial skills for achieving the developmental objectives of establishing my career as a leader in the XYZ Company. The actions associated with each objective are listed in the following tables. These specific actions collectively provide elements of challenge, assessment / feedback, support and reflection.

Developmental objective 1	To upgrade the preconceived communication skills
Actions	Timeframe	Ongoing action	Priority
1. To attend Spoken English communication classes	4 months	Semesters in English communicative	Giving presentations to foreign delegates
2. Writing speeches	3 months	Research papers for assessing the extent to which I can engage the audience	Maintaining influential tone throughout the paper
3. Participating in interactive sessions	3 months	Involving in debates	Maintaining consistency in displaying argumentative tones in propositions
4. Practice active listening skills	1 month	Practicing interpretations by listening to various business cases	Proactive approach in listening the arguments
5. Identifying potential issues	1 month	Identifying the problems and offering solutions verbally	Maintaining transparency in the communication
6. Learn to provide feedbacks to the employees through performance monitoring	1 month	Analyze the individual performance and provide feedbacks on their strengths or weaknesses	Understand their own skills and participate in training for overcoming their  weaknesses.

Resources needed to implement my plan

I will use the following resources to implement my plan.

• Checklists
• Templates
• Personality tests – The personality tests are crucial for assessing own strengths, weaknesses and also the personality traits that showcase the leaders to act as a role model for the employees.
• Evidence of DAC- It could help me to understand whether the leadership has occurred properly or not and whether employees have accepted my leadership style or not within the workplace.

Key performance indicators

I will know if my plan’s implementation is on-track if:

• I fulfill the targets on time
• I have control over my managerial skills
• I will use my leadership abilities in influencing others
• I should treat everyone equally from every aspects, regardless of their age, gender, race or color to prevent any forms of discrimination or biasness
• I emerge successful  in molding others into my philosophy and make them work with honesty, integrity and fairness
• I would prefer to provide feedbacks to the employees so that they could understand whether they had been working properly or not and even strengthen their skills through engagement in training sessions
• By keeping the vision, values and beliefs aligned with the corporate goals ethically

Reviewing and revising my plan

My approach to routinely reviewing and revising my plan involves:

• Evaluation through checklists and templates
• Feedbacks from the seniors, experts and team members

References

Longenecker, C.O. and Insch, G.S., 2019. Leadership development learning accelerators: voices from the trenches. Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal.

Orr, M.T., 2020. Reflections on active learning in leadership development. Journal of Research on Leadership Education, 15(3), pp.227-234.

Tang, K.N., 2019. Leadership and Change Management. Springer Singapore.

Willgerodt, M.A., Blakeney, E.A.R., Summerside, N., Vogel, M.T., Liner, D.A. and Zierler, B., 2019. Impact of leadership development workshops in facilitating team-based practice transformation. Journal of interprofessional care.