Leadership Style Analysis and Improvement: A Personal Reflection

This essay delves into the student's self-assessment of their leadership style, specifically identifying a tendency towards laissez-faire leadership as a personal weakness. The student describes how this style, characterized by minimal direct involvement, hindered team effectiveness. Through discussion with their manager, the student recognized the need for change and adopted a coaching leadership style, which emphasizes understanding and engaging with team members' individual competencies. This shift involved a more proactive approach to support and guide the team, leading to a successful project completion and the onboarding of approximately 500 customers. The essay references academic sources to support the concepts of laissez-faire and coaching leadership styles and highlights the practical impact of adapting leadership approaches to improve outcomes. The student's experience at Citibank in Singapore and their career goals are also briefly mentioned in the supporting document.

Running head: LEADERSHIP STYLE
Leadership Style
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Notes:

1LEADERSHIP STYLE
Greatest Personal Weakness and measures to overcome the same
Back in March 2015, I was involved in a project where I was acting as the leader of tech
team. The team that I was leading was a team of 6 individuals, which consisted of people from
engineering backgrounds. This was a new type of project that I was dealing with, and hence, I
was a bit unprepared. However, my experience of being part of project management made me
think that every member of the team would be able to comply with activities in the project in the
same degree of effectiveness as me. The project was associated with the development of an iPad
application that would serve a purpose for the sales agent of Citibank. It was my role to preside
over the operations in which the six professionals would work towards the development of the
application within the given timeline.
My expectations gave rise to the problems that bobbed down the performance of the team
in the first stage. I was a personally driven individual who has always been able to meet the
deadlines, go the extra mile and grind, to achieve the expected outcomes. Furthermore, I used to
go beyond my working hours to complete the tasks that I was supposed to. It was my fault to
expect the same from the members of the team who were from different backgrounds. Hence, I
used to assign various tasks to the members that they had to perform. I realized that I used to
allocate regardless of their competencies.
After the failure of the performance of the team, the activities experienced hindrances as
a result of which the management decided to intervene. The project manager informed me that
the leadership style that I was following was resulting in the lackluster performance of the team.
According to the manager, I was developing the laissez faire leadership style.

2LEADERSHIP STYLE
Laissez-faire leadership is a style of leadership in which the leaders allow the members of the
team to carry out their tasks and operations in an independent manner (Wong and Giessner,
2018). Thus, it was the problem that I was suffering from. The problem was causing hindrances
in the effectiveness of the company. After discussing with the manager, I realized that I had to
change the style of leadership. The manager suggested me to try a Coaching leadership style.
Coaching leadership is a style of leadership with the help of which the leader of an organization
understands the personal competencies of employees, after which they can engage with the
employees (Becker 2019). This can help in the engagement of the employees with the leader of
the team; furthermore, the problem being faced by a team or groups can be solved
(FutureofWorking.com 2020). After the change was suggested by the management, the project
was deemed to be a success, and the company was able to onboard 500 customers
approximately.

3LEADERSHIP STYLE
REFERENCES
Ali, M., Lodhi, S.A., Raza, B. and Ali, W., 2018. Examining the impact of managerial coaching
on employee job performance: Mediating role of work engagement, leader-member-exchange
quality, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions. Pakistan Journal of Commerce and Social
Sciences (PJCSS), 12(1), pp.253-282.
Becker, B., 2020. The 8 Most Common Leadership Styles & How To Find Your Own. [online]
Blog.hubspot.com. Available at: <https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/leadership-styles>
[Accessed 15 March 2020].
FutureofWorking.com, 2020. Coaching Leadership Style Advantages, Disadvantages And
Characteristics. [online] FutureofWorking.com. Available at:
<https://futureofworking.com/coaching-leadership-style-advantages-disadvantages-and-
characteristics/> [Accessed 15 March 2020].
Wong, S.I. and Giessner, S.R., 2018. The thin line between empowering and laissez-faire
leadership: An expectancy-match perspective. Journal of Management, 44(2), pp.757-783.