Leadership Quality: Personal and Professional Development Essay

This essay delves into the personal quality of leadership, emphasizing its significance in personal and professional development. The author identifies transformational leadership as a key framework, highlighting integrity, goal-setting, high expectations, and supportive behavior as crucial attributes. The essay explores leadership as a strength, enabling the individual to motivate and influence others. It further examines attributes and values, such as vision, courage, and focus, that contribute to effective leadership. Challenges faced, including staying humble, managing stress, and improving communication skills, are discussed using the Adaptive leadership theory. The essay provides examples of contradictory experiences, such as overworking team members, and concludes with the future benefits of leadership. The essay emphasizes the importance of self-reflection, understanding strengths and weaknesses, and continuous development to enhance leadership effectiveness.

Personal & Professional
Development

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Personal quality description.........................................................................................................1
Quality as a strength.....................................................................................................................2
Attributes and values of strengths................................................................................................3
Challenges faced..........................................................................................................................4
Contradictive experiences............................................................................................................5
Future benefits of quality.............................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Personal and professional development both require an individual to have personal
quality and skills. The personal quality chosen in this essay is leadership quality. This project
talks about the ability of an individual for evaluating individual and professional qualities in a
business environment. This project will have the application of the concepts of self-reflection for
explaining the personal and professional behaviour of effectiveness. In this project the
identification and appraisal of work-based skills, competencies and values is done for
understanding their impacts on the behaviours of the individual. With the help of this project
investigation is done on the conceptual underpinning of the individual's behaviour in the context
of a business.
MAIN BODY
Personal quality description
My personal quality is leadership. Leadership is known as a very important quality which
is needed for a good leader who is responsible for the introduction of integrity, accountability,
empathy and decision-making. Leadership has its place in both personal and professional
development of an individual. Its importance is mainly seen in the decision-making of the
individual in both the personal and professional life. Leadership is very important for an
organization as it helps it with organizing, planning, decision-making and also motivating the
other member of the group. My quality of leadership can be explained better with the help of
theory. The theory used for understanding this personal quality is the concept of transformational
leadership (Chicca, Frank and Hagy, 2018). This theory was first introduced in 1978 and defined
transformational leadership as a process in which the leaders and followers help one another to
reach higher levels of motivation and morality. According to this theory the leader which in this
scenario its me have the following,
Integrity and fairness :
I have noticed in myself that I have this extreme quality being fair to even people who I
have nothing to do with. It can be said that I have a good leadership quality because I notice
integrity and fairness in the decision in make in the personal and professional life.
Sets goals :
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I am one of those persons who believe in having a goal set for all the activities I do. This
is important as I believe that the people who have no goals do not quite know how to reach
success, whereas I believe that it is important to have a goal that you can accomplish.
High Expectations :
One of the reason I believe I have good leadership skill because I have very high
expectation about every thing. I expect more from myself and also people around me this makes
me a great leader (De Nobile, 2018).
Supportive :
This quality of leadership of mine is reflected even better as I have a tendency to be very
supportive to the people around me and I also don't hesitate to get recognized and it makes me
feel more confident.
Understanding people emotions :
I have understood that I am very social, and can easily connect with other team members
and followers. This allows me to understand the emotions of the surrounding people which I
used for motivating them and changing my decision (Harrison, 2017).
Quality as a strength
The leadership quality of mine is known as my strength because of many reasons. It helps
to me understand and motivate the people I am working with. This quality of mine has made me
be fair to others and develop integrity in my decisions in both personal and professional life. This
quality has also been a strength due to the fact that it makes me set my goals prior to what I want
to accomplish. Due to this leadership quality I have developed high expectations in everything I
want to achieve and also have developed high expectations from others. Leadership has made me
very supportive to others this has been very important as by supporting others I can not only
build good relationships with them but also motivate them to get the work done. Leadership
quality has provided me the strength of understanding the peoples emotions which is very
important for motivating them and tuning their performance (Keskes and et.al., 2018).
Strength-based Leadership is a leadership theory that explains that the ability of
identification in an individual gives them the strength to utilize both own and others strength for
benefits of the group. According to the strength based leadership theory a leader has the
following friends for producing effective team performance a strong leadership in the group.
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Executing
This is the quality of a leader which says that he should have the ability to get people do
thing for him. Getting things done from others is the most important skill I have as a leader and
that’s what makes my leadership strong and is very helpful for both personal and professional
development (Karami-Akkarw and Hammad, 2019).
Influencing
Leaders are known for making an impact over their followers. My quality of leadership is
no different I have notice that I can influence others to perform well or to get a project or task
done with a certain approach. Getting things done is very important for the leader but what's
most important is getting it done in the way he wants.
Relationship building
The leadership quality has given me the strength of building good relationship with the
people I work with. Good relationships makes me the next with them and gives me the strength
of encouraging then towards the goals I have as a leader.
Strategy thinking
Best quality which our individual develops as a leader is that he understands the work
and its strategies. With experience in both personal and professional lives I developed better an
better strategic thinking which is now one of my biggest strengths and helps me in my decision-
making by linking all the connection (Lipscombe and et.al 2020).
Attributes and values of strengths
For developing the strengths I have as a leader there are some attributes and values which
are needed. You guys ship itself is a strength and the personal quality which I have developed in
my personal and professional life. The attributes and values of these strengths are the important
factors which influenced these strengths in my leadership. The following attributes and values
are,
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Vision
It is very important for me to have a great vision of everything including my execution
the influences I have and others and also the relationship between the followers and the leader.
Vision helps the leader who to see into the future and have a clear idea of what should be
changed to have better results. Vision is a quality itself as it separates leaders from managers and
makes them special. It is impossible for a leader do things strategically he has poor visionary
quality (FWJ Inc, 2020).
Courage
courage is considered as a virtue which provides a person the will power to do something
or make a decision it is not easy. It is very important for a leader to have great courage as
without having courage it is very hard for a leader to enforce something he has planned. For
being a great leader a person should have the courage to take risks which provides him
achievement of your goals and assurance of success.
Focus
Focus is very important for every and it contributes get all the strengths of the leader. It is
the reason why my leadership quality is very strong. This is because I am very focused in all the
aspect including Strategical thinking relationship building influencing other and also executing
the plan (Moodly and Toni, 2017).
Cooperation
It is important to be strong as a leader to have good cooperation in the team and also with
the team. This is because cooperation is the best way of getting things done together. The job of
the leader is to make other do what he wants them to do in such case it is very important that the
leader be cooperative.
Challenges faced
Adaptive leadership is the theory which explains the practical leadership is a framework
which helps an individual to adapt with the challenging environment which he faces during
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leadership practices. With the help of this theory of leadership the challenges faced by the leader
can be understood and resolved. The challenges faced by me in my leadership quality are,
Staying humble
A leader needs to stay humble so that he does not lose his cool while confronting a team
member. However, this is a very big challenge as situations are not always in the favour of the
leader.
Self confidence
It isn’t very important for a leader to have good self-confidence otherwise it's difficult to
implement strategies and planning over the team members. this has been a challenge for many
leaders to accomplish (Reis-Marques, Lages and Caminati, 2019).
Fear of risk
It is a part of a leaders job to take risks and with risks there is always the chance of
failure. this fear becomes a challenge for every leader.
Consistency
Being consistent is the most difficult part of any leaders job as Continuous success or
failure of the organization.
Stress
As a leader I have faced stressed do too extreme pressure which is that on the shoulders.
It is important for the leader to make decisions without being in stress.
Being motivated
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A leader is very good at motivating others however get being motivated has always been
a challenge for as a leader myself.
These challenges can be solved by gaining experience as a leader at any workshop. Apart
from the challenges faced by me in leadership the other challenges which I face in the work-shop
is regard some other skills which I lack (Timmerman and Mulvihill, 2018).
Communication skills
Communication skills is considered to be very important for developing good relations
with the team members and as a leader it helps to understand the problems and issues the
followers have. My communication skills need improvement and is said as the biggest challenge
for me to over come. This theory of Adaptive leadership states that for adapting to the challenges
the individual needs to increase its practices and experiences that will help him get use to the
challenges.
Contradictive experiences
I have had many such experiences which were contradictive in nature specially during
my leadership in both the personal and professional life. I have great leadership quality however
I should have done something else in these situations. Some of such experiences are as follows
(Reis-Marques, Lages and Caminati, 2019).
I was a part of project in my graduation in which I had to work with certain team
members. Due to my quality of leadership it I was the one who was managing the team being
their leader. The project was about a study which included detailed research of certain topics. I
have always been a person who wants the work I do to be perfect. In that project I needed to
divide the tasks equally. However, In certain areas of research I opted to do it by myself rather
than equally distributing the work among the team members. It resulted bad and because I was
unable to get the opinion of others.
At my first job as a leader I was designated as the leader of a group of people who had to
provide a certain service to the customers. What is feel I did wrong in this scenario was that for
showing my performance as a leader I enforced a lot of work on to the employees. What I should
have done was to a lot the employees their work equally and not to put much pressure on them.
This would have helped to build strong relations with the team members (Timmerman and
Mulvihill, 2018).
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Future benefits of quality
Leadership will have a positive impact on both my personal and professional
development. The leadership skills is the only quality which does not just improves the
individual but also uplifts people around you. The quality of leadership will be beneficial for me
in the future in the following ways,
Accountability :
Leadership quality of mine will make me improve my accountability in the upcoming
years. Leadership involves taking decisions which is done by the leader after becoming
accountable (van Droffelaar and Jacobs, 2017).
Awareness :
Leadership quality will make me understand the importance of being aware of the every
surrounding. This will help my career and providing more and more opportunities.
Confidence :
The experiences I will develop during my career as a leader will me make more confident
and make better decision overall.
Empathy :
My quality of empathy over other will develop as a part of my leadership behaviour.
Honesty :
I will be able to understand importance of honest in the lives of a leader which develops
the trust of leaders with the followers.
Optimistic :
Leadership quality is very important in building optimistic behaviour in an individual
(Zaidi and Bellak, 2019).
CONCLUSION
With the help of this project it can be concluded that individual quality and skills are very
important for a person for both their personal and professional development. In this project the
personal quality is defined with the help of a theory. This project then evaluates this personal
quality and explains how this quality is a strength for the individual. The behavioural preferences
and value which underpins these strengths are also shown in this project. This project will take
about the experiences which are challenging in the workshop based exercises with the help of
theories. This project talks about the contradictive evidence of the experiences and their
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explanation. With the help of this project the benefits of this quality in the future of the
individual is explained.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Chicca, J.K., Frank, N.J. and Hagy, J.E., 2018. Servant Leadership in a Baccalaureate Nursing
Program: A Case Study.
De Nobile, J., 2018. Towards a theoretical model of middle leadership in schools. School
Leadership & Management. 38(4). pp.395-416.
Harrison, C., 2017. Leadership theory and research: A critical approach to new and existing
paradigms. Springer.
Karami-Akkary, R. and Hammad, W., 2019. The knowledge base on educational leadership and
management in Arab countries: Its current state and its implications for leadership
development. In Teaching educational leadership in Muslim countries (pp. 77-92).
Springer, Singapore.
Keskes, I., and et.al., 2018. Transformational leadership and organizational commitment:
Mediating role of leader-member exchange. Journal of Management Development.
Lipscombe, K., and et.al 2020. Middle leading in Australian schools: professional standards,
positions, and professional development. School Leadership & Management. 40(5).
pp.406-424.
Moodly, A. and Toni, N.M., 2017. Accessing higher education leadership: Towards a framework
for women’s professional development. South African Journal of Higher Education. 31(3).
pp.138-153.
Reis-Marques, C., Lages, L.F. and Caminati, V.V., 2019. VCW for social impact in a developing
country: Personal development and entrepreneurship in a leadership academy. In Social
Marketing in Action (pp. 141-162). Springer, Cham.
Timmerman, L.C. and Mulvihill, T.M., 2018. Department Chair Perspectives About Contingent
Faculty in Higher Education: Leadership Theory. In Teacher Training and Professional
Development: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 1684-1704). IGI
Global.
van Droffelaar, B. and Jacobs, M., 2017. The role of wilderness experiences in leaders’
development toward authentic leadership. Leadership & Organization Development
Journal.
Zaidi, I. and Bellak, B., 2019. Leadership development for international crises management: the
whole person approach. Journal of Peacebuilding & Development. 14(3). pp.256-271.
Online
FWJ Inc,. 2020.[Online] Available trough:
<https://www.initiativeone.com/insights/blog/leadership-challenges/>
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