Leadership Development Plan for Contemporary Organizations

This reflection journal focuses on the leadership development plan for the first five years based on current leadership practices in relevance with identifying appropriate actions for enhancing future leadership practices. It discusses the qualities of a leader, effective leadership styles, and the importance of communication and teamwork in leadership. The essay also highlights the significance of leadership and the abilities to inspire, influence as well as to motivate employees for performing the organizational tasks.

Running Head: Leadership
Leading Contemporary Organizations

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Abstract
Leadership is an art and research skill of leading an organization in order to attain goals and
objectives. Leadership is the ability of an individual to lead, motivate, influence, and inspire
team for attainment of goals and objectives for the organization. This reflection journal will
mainly focus on the leadership development plan for the first five years based on current
leadership practices in relevance with identifying appropriate actions for enhancing future
leadership practises. Apart from this, this reflection will also focus on the introduction of
leadership and the usage of leadership tool for relationship building amongst the teammates.

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As per my opinion, leaders cannot be created, some people are born with leadership qualities,
thus, they are natural leaders but there are numerous people who work on their skills so that they
could be good and effective leaders. In organizational success, growth and expansion in the
domestic as well as in international market, leaders play vital role. Leadership is the primary
contributing factor for sustained growth of organization (Antonakis & Day, 2017). There are
various prominent names who have proven that leadership is the most appropriate and effective
tool for organizational growth and success. Bill Gates of Microsoft Corporation, Jack Welch of
GE, Steve Jobs of Apple Inc. and Jeff Bezos of Amazon Inc. From my own experience, I have
acquired useful information through which I have learnt the qualities of leadership through
which a successful leadership plan could be developed in respect with the different
circumstances (Bolman & Deal, 2017).
Main quality of a leader is inspiring teammates with his vision into organizational culture so that
whole organization could in same direction to attain same goals and objectives. Leaders have
unique skills and traits through which they could establish effective communication amongst the
teammates in relation with the attainment of the organizational goals and objectives. For
example, when Amazon was initially established, it was dealing in only books. But vision of Jeff
Bezos, founder of Amazon was to sell every item on internet and slowly and gradually, he made
the company, the largest e-commerce company in the world with millions of product offerings.
Jeff Bezos is a transformational leader and with the help of transformational leadership skills, he
made the Amazon a highly successful company (Covin & Slevin, 2017).
Every leadership style is unique and effective in different scenarios. Leadership style cannot be
adopted on the basis of current scenarios for future improvements in organization. Each
leadership style is unique and different from each other and in relation with this; leaders
generally adopt flexible and dynamic leadership styles in order to enhance future leadership
skills. Prominent leadership styles which have been effective in past, present and current
business environment are democratic, autocratic, transformational, charismatic and Lassiez-Fair.
Democratic leadership is one of the most effective styles for the purpose of convincing all
employees of the organization towards one direction. This is because, employees are involved in
the decision making process and provides employees to share their views and opinions along

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with executing allocated tasks by their own ways and they are held responsible for the outcomes
originated from those actions (DuBrin, 2015).
I relate my leadership style mostly with transformational leadership style as it is the most
effective technique and this helps to inspire teammates in leading them by front. Leaders mould
its vision into the organization and ensure that his leadership styles matches up with
organizational culture. Transformational leaders take every appropriate action to engage with
employees in decision making process along with valuing their feedback. This develops
reliability amongst the employees for leaders and leaders ensure that employees are up for the
task and consistently working towards enhancing employees’ productivity and excellence (Renz
& Herman, 2016). Apart from this, transformational leadership style helps in building a
sustainable culture in the organization along with inspiring teammates to invent new measures
for enhancing organizational performance. Autocratic style of leadership is another effective
style of leadership. In this leadership style, leaders not only guides and motivates its employees
for performing their tasks, infect leaders personally analyse each and every teammates’ skills and
talent and then allocate the tasks as per employees’ abilities. This is done to gain better outcomes
and it is practiced by major leaders for performing their operations in relation with gaining
operations. Lassiez-Fair is another extreme leadership style and in this style, leaders do not
interfere in employees’ operations and provides full freedom to the employees to perform the
allocated tasks by their own way (Goleman, 2017).
As per the analysis, it has been found that some leaders needs to inherent the traits for becoming
successful leader while some born with master leadership skills and in both the scenarios,
qualities of leaders remains same. In my opinion, leader should execute futuristic approach so
that future trends could be determined which could occur in the business and on the basis of
those assumptions; designing of policies and measures should be done. This helps the leaders to
acquire positive outcomes in the current as well for the future scenarios. This makes a leader
efficient and effective and by this way, leader gains respectful position from teammates and also
various opportunities for business to gain competitive advantage along with enhancing
organizational efficiency. Improvement of leadership is mostly based on feedbacks from other
teammates and the top level management. This helps leader to review its own actions’
effectiveness and gaps. Taking feedback from employees develops a positive image amongst

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them for organization as well as for the leaders. Feedbacks not only help in improving policies
and practices of business, it also helps to empower employees (Heifetz & Linsky, 2017).
Another quality which will be added in the list of effective leadership traits for empowering the
leadership plan for being creative and successful for future business conditions is valuing other
employees’ opinion and understating their significance. Employees are known as the finest
resource for the organization and it helps the organization to perform their desired tasks as want
to do with attainment of positive outcomes. Leaders with creativity, innovation and efficiency
not only value their employees, but also takes all possible actions which are necessary and
crucial for making them feel satisfied, secure and safe at workplace. Leaders always get involved
with HR team so that appropriate policies and measures could be adopted in terms of fulfilling
employees’ needs. Apart from this, appropriate motivational strategies are also being adopted for
increasing job satisfaction for employees. Leaders also empower its employees by involving
them into decision making process and it helps leaders and top management to gain trust from
employees and it also create hyperbole of positive synergies in organizational workplace
(Klenke, 2016).
Leaders have effective communication skills through which they could easily communicate
amongst all stakeholders in an appropriate manner and communication skill is one of the most
crucial factor through which leader’s effectiveness could be determined. This skill is also used
for communicating employees along with inspiring and influencing employees at workplace.
Effective leaders welcome change and opinions from employees and they develop an effective
culture under which everyone could share and communicate with top management without any
barrier (Tourish, 2014). Apart from this, communication also helps the employees as well as top
management to discuss regarding change management and it reduces resistance from employees
towards change management. Thus, it helps the organization to attain its desired goals and
objectives (Komives, 2016).
I mostly admire combination of al leadership styles because every leadership style has certain
limitations depending upon the circumstances which organization faces. I found myself capable
enough to analyse the situations before anyone else so that appropriate strategies could be
developed in order to tackle those situations. I good at communication as well as listening and I

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also found that I could better understand my co-worker’s feelings and expectations from
management. Various times, I have tackled employees’ issues at my end only without getting
management involved. I generally practice my leadership skills at my university for completing
Group Assignment and there I used to follow deadlines for completing tasks so that our team
could gain higher grades and for motivating my teammates, I used to execute certain
motivational and interactive activities so that assignments could be completed in an effective and
appropriate manner. Thus, in my opinion, I could be the successful and efficient business
manager and effective leader (Northouse, 2018).
Leaders believe in team work as it is the best form through which the difficult tasks could be
accomplished along with gaining positive outcomes. Leaders have unique skills and attitude for
analysing its teammates’ skills so that appropriate task could be allocated to the teammates
which have appropriate skills to perform the task. Apart from this, I used to execute training and
development sessions on regular basis so that employees’ efficiency could be enhanced (Raelin,
2016).
Conclusion
To conclude this essay, I would like to highlight the main components of leadership skills which
are essential for effective leadership and success of the organization. In this essay, significance
of leadership and the abilities to inspire, influence as well as to motivate employees for
performing the organizational tasks.

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References
Antonakis, J. and Day, D.V. eds., 2017. The nature of leadership. Sage publications.
Bolman, L.G. and Deal, T.E., 2017. Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and
leadership. John Wiley & Sons.
Covin, J.G. and Slevin, D.P., 2017. The entrepreneurial imperatives of strategic
leadership. Strategic entrepreneurship: Creating a new mindset, pp.307-327.
DuBrin, A.J., 2015. Leadership: Research findings, practice, and skills. Nelson Education.
Goleman, D., 2017. Leadership That Gets Results (Harvard Business Review Classics).
Harvard Business Press.
Heifetz, R. and Linsky, M., 2017. Leadership on the Line, With a New Preface: Staying Alive
Through the Dangers of Change. Harvard Business Press.
Klenke, K., 2016. Qualitative research in the study of leadership. Emerald Group Publishing
Limited.
Komives, S.R., 2016. Leadership for a better world: Understanding the social change model
of leadership development. John Wiley & Sons.
Northouse, P.G., 2018. Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.
Raelin, J.A., 2016. Imagine there are no leaders: Reframing leadership as collaborative
agency. Leadership, 12(2), pp.131-158.
Renz, D.O. and Herman, R.D. eds., 2016. The Jossey-Bass handbook of nonprofit leadership
and management. John Wiley & Sons.
Tourish, D., 2014. Leadership, more or less? A processual, communication perspective on
the role of agency in leadership theory. Leadership, 10(1), pp.79-98.

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