Leadership Development: Strategies to Improve Your Efficacy as a Leader

Leadership is critical for the growth and development of an organization. Desklib's Leadership Development Plan helps you reflect upon your leadership qualities and develop strategies to improve your weaknesses. Learn how to improve team working ability, self-management, and become a good orator. The plan includes research and observation, self-reflection, feedback, and a development plan. The article also includes diagnostic tools and feedback from a leader.

Leadership development

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Stage one: Research and observation..............................................................................................2
Stage 2: Leadership development plan............................................................................................4
Self-reflection...............................................................................................................................4
Results from diagnostic tools.......................................................................................................4
Development plan........................................................................................................................5
Stage 3: Feedback............................................................................................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................8
Appendices......................................................................................................................................9
The leader’s background..............................................................................................................9
Leader’s feedback on the feedback checklist form....................................................................10

Introduction
Leadership is one of the most critical aspect about the success of any organization.
Organizational performance is largely dependent of the kind of leadership that rests at the top. A
leader is bestowed upon with the responsibility to motivate team members, ensure fulfilment of
organizational goals and build a positive working culture (Fairhurst & Connaughton, 2014).
Certain leadership traits are present within an individual by the virtue of their personality while
certain traits can be acquired with time. However, there are some attributes that a leader must
possess in order to improve their efficacy as a leader.
Through this course, I have been able to reflect upon my own leadership qualities as well as
work closely with my role model and identify the traits that make her a great leader. Following
this reflection, I have developed a leadership development plan wherein I have tried to address
and devise strategies to improve upon my weaknesses. I have also gained feedback towards the
same from my leader. There are several aspects of my personality that make me a great leader
but there are certain areas that I need to work upon. This course has helped me in effectively
identifying both. Being an effective leader is essential for my longer term success and retention
in my career and I surely hope to work towards improving the same.
Stage one: Research and observation
Leadership is a very important trait of an individual’s personality. From the organization’s
perspective too, leadership is critical for the growth and development of the organization and its
members (Antonakis & Day, 2017). Having a role model as a leader is essential as it inspires
people to work towards self-improvement. I have been fortunate enough to encounter a leader
who is also my role model. My friend Dhivya Leeladharan has been working and studying in
close association with me for the last 6 years. She is from India and pursued her BBA (Bachelors
of Business Administration) from a reputed university in the country. She started working even
before she graduated. She has been associated with Amazon India wherein she started her career
in the business development department and was soon promoted as a team leader.
I had the privilege of being associated with her on a personal as well as professional front. I did
my summer internship under her leadership wherein I developed a deeper understanding about

her leadership abilities. Despite being my friend and knowing me from a long time, our
relationship at work was truly professional. In fact, as my team leader, I have found her to be one
of the most fair and impartial people I have ever worked with. There are several attributes of her
personality that make her a great leader. She adopts a servant leadership style which is very rare.
In the team of 8 people, she had a personal connect with everyone. She always tries to know all
her team members better so that she can devise a proper course of future action. It is her
compassion towards her people that helps people to trust her immediately. Her team members
depict that they can rely on her and she whole-heartedly fulfils her responsibilities in an effective
manner and proves to be a wonderful leader for the team time and again.
As a leader, she encourages everyone to take part in team discussions and fosters creativity by
encouraging people to share new thoughts, ideas and opinions. What I admire the most about her
is that she does not believe in giving orders and getting work done. Rather, she leads by example
and gives people the freedom to take a few decisions. As long as the work is being done on time,
she does not interfere about how people are spending their time in the office. She believes that
everyone has a different style of working and no leader should impose a particular working style
on all team members. For example, some of us prefer to listen to music while doing data entry.
While other managers have raised their concern regarding this attitude, she allows us to take any
steps as we may deem necessary for our concentrated efforts.
Communication is very critical to the success of any team’s coordination (Men, 2014). Dhivya
has always encouraged us to transparently communicate about all our issues in order to ensure
clarity within the team. She encourages us to be critical and share our opinions regarding her
leadership or the overall team’s performance. Since she is a team leader, she has authority over
us by the virtue of her designation. However, she has a really flamboyant personality and has
some excellent convincing skills owing to her personality. People just tend to listen to her and
respect her even when they are working with her for the first time. Her charisma and strong
personality make her a great leader which adds on to her effectiveness. Charismatic leadership is
that form of leadership wherein the leader has a strong charismatic personality and followers
tend to follow the leader owing to this personality attribute (Gebert et. al., 2016). She is an
orator. Every Monday we have a weekly meeting wherein we plan the entire week. She

motivates us a lot during these meetings which really encourages us to start the week on a great
note and work hard throughout the week.
Decision making is a highly critical aspect of every leader (Muenjohn & McMurray, 2018).
Dhivya’s decision making skills are highly prompt and effective. This makes her an ace leader.
A major part of her job is to coordinate and guide the interns. Every day she needs to make
several decisions regarding department allocation and work given to interns based on the intern’s
abilities and goals. She consistently strives to ensure that the organization gets the best out of
every intern and that all the interns have a fantastic learning experience. It is her ability to trust in
her team, motivate team members and ensure fulfilment of organizational goals through mutual
coordination among many people that makes her a great leader and my role model.
Stage 2: Leadership development plan
Self-reflection
Leadership has always been an important part of my life too. I have always felt that I possess
good leadership abilities. Through this course, I have been able to deeply reflect upon my own
leadership abilities and identify my strengths as well as weaknesses. My biggest strength
continues to be my ability to communicate effectively with people. I believe in honest
communications and practice the same with those around me. This helps me build and maintain
positive long term relationships. In my office also, I try to reach out to people if I need help and
try to make a positive foundation for a long term relationship.
As a team leader, I need to improve upon my ability to work in a team which is a critical aspect
of an effective leader. Every time I am given a job which is critical to the organization, I tend to
take complete responsibility rather than trusting the team to do the work as a group. This only
goes to show that I have difficulty in trusting people easily making me a bad team person.
Another weakness that I believe I have is my inability to control my emotions. Great leaders can
take important decisions and conduct their responsibilities without a hint of any emotional
burden that they may be feeling. However, I have a difficult time in keeping my emotions in
control and they often tend to guide my decisions too. My lack of team working ability and skill
to keep emotions in control are important aspects of my personality that I need to work upon.

Results from diagnostic tools
In order to reflect upon my leadership style better, I took three important tools and tests which
helped me analyse my confidence, leadership and emotional intelligence. The first test that I took
was for confidence. The tests results depicted a score of 65. The result shows a high level of
confidence but is also borderline arrogance. I have taken up several leadership roles since my
childhood. Confidence as a leader helps team members in trusting the leader (Glauser & Holland,
2016). These roles have developed a sense of confidence in me. I have also always been very
comfortable on stage and while performing in front of an audience. I do not even shy away from
communicating with stranger. This confidence helps me in presenting my thoughts in an
effective manner and have faith on my decisions. Nevertheless I need to be careful about
drawing the line between confidence and overconfidence.
In the team leadership tool, I score 10 out of 15. The score is fairly decent but there is surely a
room for improvement. This test helped me reflect on my inability to trust others while
performing a critical job. I prefer to take complete responsibility rather than working as a team. I
prefer doing things my own way and in my own time and space. However, this attitude does not
frequently work well while working with a team. Therefore I need to enhance my participation
with the team in order to trust them better.
The last tool helped me gain a deeper insight regarding my level of emotional intelligence. The
test judged me on four important criteria including self-awareness, self-management, social
awareness and relationship management. I scored high on self and social awareness but I scored
badly on self-management. This is because my emotions tend to play an important role in my
decision making. I am frequently guided by my emotions that make me take biased decisions. I
also need to work upon my relationship building ability. Emotional intelligence and the ability to
have control over emotions is essential to be an effective leader (Gnambs, 2017).
Development plan
Based on my self-analysis, I have identified three key areas that I need to work upon in order to
improve my leadership skills. There are certain strategies that I can take in order improve these
skills. The development plan for the same is as below:

GOAL Strengths/Weaknesses ACTIVITY TIMEFRAME MEASUREMENT
Goal # 1 Improve self-
management.
Make conscious
efforts to keep
emotions under
control
Resort to Yoga or
meditation
Seek therapy
6 months
Four times a
week.
After three
months
Indicator#1:
Improved control
over emotions.
Indicator#2: Ability
to take decisions in
the face of conflicts
or strong emotions.
Goal # 2 Improve team working
ability
Participate in team
decisions and get to
know my team
members better
Read books on team
building.
Participate in team
building workshops.
2 months
One book in
two weeks
Once in three
months
Indicator#1:
Improved
relationships with
team members.
Indicator#2:
Increased sense of
ownership for
teams.
Indicator#3:
Increased
participation in
team activities.
Goal # 3 Become a good orator Read books and take
online lessons on
speaking eloquently.
First four
months.
Indicator#1: More
confidence while
speaking to a team.

Practice before a
mirror
Daily.
Indicator#2:
Motivated team
members.
Stage 3: Feedback
Through this course, I have also been able to seek feedback from my role model and my leader.
The leader had strong and clear opinions about me. I also showed the development plan to my
leader and the feedback she gave me helped me improve upon the plan. I had only entered two
goals but it was my leader who mentioned that as a future leader, I need to be a good orator too
as it helps in keeping the team motivated and having a strong influence among team members.
Therefore I understood the importance of this skill and decided to incorporate this in my
leadership development plan.
From the leader’s feedback on a regular basis, I have understood that I need to improve my
ability to work in effective coordination with a team. Owing to this feedback I have decided to
know my team members better in order to coordinate with them in an efficient manner. The
feedback on my leadership development plan helped in having faith on the effectiveness of my
plan. Now I feel more motivated towards improving my leadership abilities. Feedback often
helps in seeing that aspect of the personality that is difficult to understand or that remains hidden.
A critical feedback is important for the growth and development of any individual (Hodge,
2015).
Conclusion
Leadership in organizations has always played a critical role in the success of the organization.
Since a young child, I have understood the importance of effective leadership as I have always
taken up small leadership roles. Through this course, I have been able to identify my own

strengths and weaknesses and device strategies to work upon the same in order to improve my
leadership skills.
A leader has various responsibilities including team coordination, team motivation, and clarity of
goals and accomplishment of the same (Brasfield, 2015). In fact building a strong and positive
team culture is also the responsibility of the team’s leader. Over a period of the last few years,
leadership has changed shape. Leaders are becoming more participative and democratic in nature
as opposed to being autocratic (Storey, 2016). New age leaders need to work upon their skills
and contribute to the team through consistent efforts.
This course helped me understand my weaknesses and based on the same I have built a
leadership development plan. In order to become an effective leader, I need to improve my team
working skills and have a deeper control on my emotions. There are steps that I will take to
achieve the desired state of being a highly effective leader. More than the success of a
designation, I wish to contribute as a team leader by ensuring that people associated with me can
learn and grow. A leader is not just a designation but it is a huge responsibility and I hope to
fulfil the same by consistently improving myself and being open to learning.

References
Antonakis, J. and Day, D.V. eds., 2017. The nature of leadership. Sage publications. United
Kingdom.
Brasfield, D.A., 2015. The effects of leadership traits in change management on operational
excellence (Doctoral dissertation, Capella University). United States.
Fairhurst, G.T. and Connaughton, S.L., 2014. Leadership: A communicative
perspective. Leadership, 10(1), pp.7-35.
Gebert, D., Heinitz, K. and Buengeler, C., 2016. Leaders' charismatic leadership and followers'
commitment—The moderating dynamics of value erosion at the societal level. The Leadership
Quarterly, 27(1), pp.98-108.
Glauser, M. and Holland, D., 2016. The Leadership Traits Shared by Successful
Entrepreneurs. Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange. Pp.87-89. United Kingdom.
Gnambs, T., 2017. Opinion leadership types or continuous opinion leadership
traits?. International Journal of Psychology. Pp. 85
Hodge, M.E., 2015. Performance feedback in organizations (Doctoral dissertation, uga). Pp.85-
86. United States.
Men, L.R., 2014. Why leadership matters to internal communication: Linking transformational
leadership, symmetrical communication, and employee outcomes. Journal of Public Relations
Research, 26(3), pp.256-279.
Muenjohn, N. and McMurray, A., 2018. LEADERSHIP AND DECISION
MAKING. Leadership, p.379.
Storey, J., 2016. Changing theories of leadership and leadership development. In Leadership in
Organizations (pp. 33-58). Routledge. United Kingdom.

Appendices
The leader’s background
There is a big difference in being part of the team and being a team leader. My friend Dhivya
Leeladharan pursued a BBA at SRM university, India. She started working even before she got
graduated. At first, she was part of the Business Development team for Amazon, India. Recently,
she got promoted as a team leader and coordinator for interns. She constantly inspires and
motivates me with her management and leadership skills.
I choose her as my role model because of her effective decision making. In 2015, she started of
managing both studies and work. She managed her time wisely. After she got graduated she had
a full-time job to do and a goal to reach. I did my summer internship at Amazon, India. My job
was filing, data entry duties and managing accounts. There were too many students seeking
internship with me. Even though Dhivya was my friend, our relationship at work was purely
professional. During my time at work, she was a team leader for a project and she used to
manage a batch of interns too. So, that is how I got an opportunity to work under her. She was
very directive and supportive. Although she used to be busy, she managed her time to train us.
She adapted her behavior according to the situation. Thus, I feel that I look across her on many
aspects of leadership and it was great working under her.

Leader’s feedback on the feedback checklist form
Leadership Development Plan
Feedback Checklist
YE
S
NO UNCLEAR
Are the goals set out clear and achievable? ✓
Are the activities set out clear and doable? ✓
Are the goals aligned with the strengths or weaknesses
set?
✓
Are the activities aligned with the strengths or weaknesses
set?
✓
Is the timeframe for the activities and goals reasonable? ✓
Are the measurement indicators appropriate and
measurable?
✓
Would I do the same as the student? ✓
Overall, is the development plan
feasible/reasonable/appropriate? (e.g. does the proposed
plan address the strengths and weaknesses?).
✓
Feedback and Suggestions

Throughout my interaction and working, I have noticed him to be very proactive and
participating. His self-confidence is almost mesmerizing. He is not afraid to take on new roles
and responsibilities and is always willing to take steps towards improving himself and learning
more. As a team person, he often plays the individual game and tends to take a lot of
responsibility and seek credit for the same. The trust among team members and coordination
towards them can be remarkably improved. I have often spoken to him and through the one on
one conversations, he seems to have clear goals and directions. He is well aware of his strengths
and weaknesses and continues to work towards them.
The leadership development plan precisely highlights his weaknesses and the activities planned
to improve upon the same are clear. However few of the measurement tactics are not clear. For
example it is difficult to measure the level of motivation among team members. But yes, that can
be the first step to improving team coordination. I wish him luck for following this plan
effectively and ensure improved leadership abilities in the days to come.