Leadership Potential: Personal Leadership Skill Development Essay

This essay provides a personal reflection on the student's leadership potential. The student initially led a team and, through observation and analysis, identified shortcomings in their leadership style, particularly in communication and team engagement. The essay contrasts the student's transactional leadership approach with the more successful transformational leadership styles observed in peers. It discusses the importance of active listening, feedback, and involving team members in decision-making. The essay also highlights the need for developing social skills and empathy to foster a positive and less stressful work environment. The student concludes by outlining steps to develop transformational leadership skills, emphasizing the importance of adaptability, communication, and building strong relationships within a team to achieve organizational goals and enhance team member motivation and dedication. The essay incorporates relevant academic references to support its arguments.

Running head: LEADERSHIP POTENTIAL
LEADERSHIP POTENTIAL
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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LEADERSHIP POTENTIAL
Leadership can be defined as the capability of leading a group of individual following the
best pathway that bring success and help in achievement of the goal. This also helps in
developing the working environment where all the members are enthusiastic to work beyond
their expectations (Anderson 2012). Some of the important qualities of being a leader are the
honesty, proper delegation, perfect communication, right level of confidence. Moreover, it also
comprised of proper commitment to team members and to organizations and developing a
positive attitude which helps working much easier even in stressful situations. Creativity and
inspiration are two other attributes of leadership.
When I was first placed as a leader of a 8 member team, I was quite confident about my
leadership skills although I had no prior experience of leadership. I set up the vision to the
employees perfectly and they understood it well. With the passing of time, I noticed that my
other colleagues who were also leading team were much successful in achieving productivity
than me. On thorough analysis, I understood that my improper communication style was the
main reason that affected the team members. I was an impatient listener and often used to cut my
team members midway which hurt their self respect. Moreover I never asked for feedback and
suggestions from them thinking that my decision would bring the best outcome. I did not involve
them in my decision making procedures. All these affected their self respect and they could not
align with the company’s objectives. They thought me to be bossy and developed a negative
feeling. This affected the team spirit and as a result the productivity could not be achieved. Their
motivation level was low and lack of enthusiasm in the work environment made them feel
stressed and burdened with work. However the other class members were very well in managing
teams developing effective relationship with their employees and developing an informal

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LEADERSHIP POTENTIAL
environment. As their work environment was happier and less stressful, the workers showed
huge zeal in conducting tasks.
After the survey, I understood that I am a transactional leader. My forcing decisions on
them and punishing them for poor work were wrong approaches. I should have invited them to
provide feedback and suggest better ideas if they had any. If I had not punished them, there
would have less stress developed on them as they would have been able to develop proper
relationships with me. I had improper communication skill where my impatient listening affected
their ego and self respect. I should have involved them in decision making which would have
helped them giving out innovative ideas. This could have helped me to work with creative
strategies helping to meet productivity at a faster rate. Proper communication skills involve
active listening and proper feedback giving and receiving skills (Malakyan 2014). Moreover my
lack of social skills did not allow the development of informal relationship which is very
important to release the stress from the workers due to work burden. I realized them and
therefore I have to change the attributes so that I can also become a successful leader like my
classmates.
When some researchers say that leadership is an innate ability, others believe that each
and every leader is born after a series of experiences and failure. Any person can be a leader by
practicing proper leadership skills and applying them correctly in different situation to control
them effectively. When individuals can master the skills of critical reasoning and rational
thinking and apply such features in handling a team in adverse situations, he can rightly be called
leaders. No one is born a leader. This is said so because leadership is an adaptive feature where
an individual has to apply his leadership skills according to the requirement of the work
environment. There is no such framework of leadership. An individual needs to analyze the

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situation and apply skills like empathy, social skills, proper inspiration communication skills and
others. In many severe situations where ready decisions and implementation of strategies are
important autocratic leadership is required (Bhowmick and Paul 2015). The same leaders can
also apply transformational leadership style when required (Church 2014).
As per the requirements, I need to develop skills of transformational leadership. I need to
develop proper listening skills as well as feedback giving and receiving skills. I should not
punish them for poor work but should encourage them for better work in future. This makes the
employees feel respected and loved by the organization. This prevents them from developing low
morale and help boosting their confidence (Tost, Francesca and Larrick 2013). As a result,
workers make themselves more dedicated towards team goals. Not only that, I also need to
develop social skills and empathy towards my followers. This is because it helps in proper
relationship building among the team members which makes work faster and smooth flow is
maintained. An informal environment makes employees feel less stressful and each of them
share their feelings and work burden together (Tortorella et al. 2017). These help in developing a
workplace where workers are enthusiastic, dedicating to company and work beyond their
expectation to achieve organization goals. They do not develop job stress as effective leadership
provides motivation and inspiration to rise to the zenith of success.

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References:
Anderson, D 2012, 'Is building relationships the key to leadership?', Performance Improvement,
vol. 51, no. 2, pp. 15–21.
Bhowmik, J. and Pol, H.G., 2017. Performance Management for Effective Leadership. AADYA-
National Journal of Management and Technology (NJMT), 7, pp.29-35.
Church, AH 2014, 'What do we know about developing leadership potential?’ OD Practitioner,
vol. 46, no. 3, pp. 52–61.
Malakyan, PG 2014 'Followership in leadership studies: A case of leader– follower trade
approach’, Journal of Leadership Studies, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 6–22.
Tortorella, G., Tortorella, G., Fogliatto, F. and Fogliatto, F., 2017. Implementation of lean
manufacturing and situational leadership styles: An empirical study. Leadership & Organization
Development Journal, 38(7), pp.946-968.
Tost, LP, Francesca, G & Larrick, RP 2013, 'When power makes others speechless: the negative
impact of leader power on team performance', Academy of Management Journal, vol. 56, no. 5,
pp. 1465–1486.