My Leadership Story - Reflections on Personal Experience and Learning

Running head: My Leadership Story 0
My Leadership Story
STUDENTS NAME:
2/2/2019
Nithya Vasanth

My Leadership Story 1
Introduction
Leadership is an individual ability to guide or lead teams, other individuals, or even a whole
organization. It is important to possess good leadership skills to ensure that the ability of a
person to give as well as take commands related to work is sharp. This, in long run will help
them to perform tasks with ease in order to achieve maximum results irrespective of working
position, career type and organization they work for (Grissom & Loeb 2011).
This essay will reflect learning from my personal experience, for the initial stage would be to
analyse myself, while identifying the major strengths and weakness, so as to understand the
scope of improvement for being a better leader in future. Moreover, a critical analysis would
also be conducted for wider leadership learning through different experiences in the corporate
field, and also charitable organization. (Denning 2004).
My leadership story
To analyze my skills as a leader, it is important to determine my strengths, weaknesses and
potential areas of development (Manning & Curtis 2015).
My strengths in regard to leadership, were firstly, proficiency in the official language, culture
and communication in my organisation. Since the body language is effective way to reflect
your personality in an organization, I believe to have this as my strength that is appropriate
body language while interacting with different stakeholders in an organization. This enables
me to be able to interact with co-workers efficiently in order to cross check with team if the
project is processed as per the scheduled time.
Moreover, according to the MBTI Types and Leadership Styles, which is a useful tool to
analyse the preference of a person. There are sixteen possible personality types, among which
I consider that my preference for leadership style is “ESFJ,” which indicates that I am
outgoing, friendly, more organized, and supportive leader, moreover, I prefer to enjoy being
productive and active. This indicated that I prefer facts and figure above believes and
objective logic while making decisions, which makes me better decision maker. I would like
to possess intuition preference along with sensing, for being more friendly or supportive
leader. This would help me knowing people better in my team and being a leader, empathy is
major aspect, which can be attained through this preference. My other strength includes that I
have a sharp eye of observing people and understanding their state of mind and thoughts,
Nithya Vasanth

My Leadership Story 2
which in brief can be said that I possess a considerate amount of emotional intelligence. This
enables me to be more understanding of my co-workers and work with them in a team, help
them or provide guidance to them in order to carry on work with ease (Jacobsen 2010).
Figure 1: MBTI Types and Leadership Styles (Source: (Jacobsen 2010)
Among the big five personality traits, I considered myself to possess three traits at a higher
level. Firstly, the consciousness that enables me to take correct decisions, the reason being I
am aware about the environment and people I am working with. Secondly, agreeableness that
enables me to listen to and understand others opinions on things so that my decisions do not
turn out to be selfish or biased and benefit everyone (Clark & Schurer 2012). Lastly, an
openness that enables me to speak what is on my mind in order to make people around me
aware of my knowledge and thoughts to ease working with them (Goffee & Jones 2000).
Nithya Vasanth

My Leadership Story 3
Figure 2:( Source: (Goffee & Jones 2000)
However, I also have certain weaknesses when it comes to leadership, for instance, the
agreeableness trait among the big five personality trait, which turned out to be weakness, as
this is a hurdle while getting things done through others that often leads to inadequate, low
quality or delayed work. It would be an advantage, if I would be able to identify before
assigning any particular task to the individual to avoid any error. Another weakness I observe
in my self is that I seem to score high on one of the big five personality traits that are
neuroticism, which means that I easily get worried and anxious. This often makes me
demotivated and threatens my productivity (Grissom & Loeb 2011). The tension and
anxiousness in me serves as an obstacle for me to be a good leader as it makes me capable of
motivating and supporting my workers. Anxiety is a very dreadful trait in a leader as it not
only demotivates and slows down the person going through it but it also affects the people
working under the leader because the fear and the low spirit prevents them from maintaining
the required level of motivation and thus directly threatens their performance (Antonakis,
Dasboroughc & Ashkanasy 2009).
Nithya Vasanth