MGT5SLB Essay: Positive Leadership and Strength-Based Approach

This essay delves into the concept of positive leadership, highlighting the significance of a strength-based approach, authenticity, and social construction in leadership development. It emphasizes the emergence of positive cycles and the importance of strong relationships in advancing leadership. The essay explores the validation of strength-based approaches, focusing on an individual's existing talents and strengths. It contrasts this with traditional leadership literature and examines authentic leadership within nonprofit boards, as well as the social construction of leadership. The author identifies creativity as a personal character strength, discussing its role in problem-solving and adaptability. The essay concludes by reflecting on how creativity contributes to effective leadership, emphasizing the need for confidence and strategic skills. The references include research from various scholars on leadership and character strengths.

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Introduction:
This paper will be focusing on the concept of positive leadership and its aspects. In terms
of highlighting the strength-based approach, authenticity and social construction in the field of
leadership development, it is important to focus on the emergence of positive cycles and
enhancing the role of high standard connection and relationship in facilitating the leadership
progression. Such theoretical insights deliver the group for new emerging theory on capacity
regarding extraordinary leadership in organizations and future research stimulation on the
dynamic and positive processes merged in leadership progression. The establishment of
validation in terms of strength based approach, to leadership development is connected to the
influence that the individual have on its current talent and strength and have on future learning
experience (Ng, et al. 2017).
Strength-based leadership development:
Positive organizational scholarship is placed in an affirmative bias which leds in focusing
on engagement of strength, maintaining and keeping a positive orientation for what is correct,
and human potential affirmation, in order to overcome deficiencies and obstacles. The
declarative bias is placed in an supposition that, organisation, groups and individuals have an
inherent latent capability and innate desire in order to excel, prosper and improvise the
mentioned expectations. A defined group of scholars have applied to this affirmative bias as an
exemplification of the heliotropism effect, whereas system of living beings are away from
negative energy and pulled towards the positive energy. The implementation of affirmative bias
in the field of progression of leadership implies that it would function more effectively in
framing individuals positive capabilities, existing strength along with successions in the past as
the possibilities for building on something which is already magnificent, as contrasted to

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focusing on individuals existing problems and liabilities, such as, negative qualities, performance
gaps and weaknesses. The validation regarding the strength based approach in the field of human
development, are stated in various domains of research. A strength based approach stands in
contrast to the literature which is existing in the field of leadership. For instance, most of the
learning researches from experience enhances the vitality and progressive value of the on job
experiences which are subsequently unpleasant and supremely stressful. Research back in time
as far as Lombardo, Morrison and McCall in the year 1988 and as recent as Wellman and DeRue
in the year 2009, recognize job assignment which involve extreme outside pressure along with
constituencies, lack of support from the organizational side, and inherited issues of being
completely developmental (DeRue, and Workman, 2012).
Authentic leadership:
In order to learn more efficient leadership in terms of organization, the most useful
source is the study of interactions among board members in the non profit making boards of
management and particularly the structure of authentic leadership and its influence on
functioning of board. This contrasts with the extant research boards and governance, that has
often concentrated on components, such as, policies, processes and structure. As per the scholars
exploration of the theme of leadership within management at the coach, individual, team and
department of organizational level. Within the domain of sports government limited attention has
been given to the leadership study, however, the vitality of gaining the understanding of this field
has been taken into account by researchers and the industry both alike (Takos, Murray, O’Boyle,
2018).

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Social construction of leadership:
The conventional approach to leadership in the field of management regards the notion of
leadership as a phenomenon which is completely leader centred. Current advances in the field of
generic literature based on leadership has been focused on the manner people structure their
understanding of the concept of leadership and presents that these impact their responses and
evaluation of people they consider as leaders. This observer centred standpoint altogether is
termed as the social construction of leadership (Billsberry, et al. 2018).
Character strength:
Out of twenty four other character strengths my personal character strength is, Creativity,
establishing the statement, “I am creative, conceptualizing something useful, coming up with
ideas that result in something worthwhile”. The notion of creativity us all about thinking news
methods of doing things. Creativity is a strength which is into the virtue wisdom category, one
out of six virtues which subcategorize the other twenty four strengths; wisdom is the strength
which helps in collecting and using knowledge (Ruch, et al. 2010). The rest of the strengths in
the field of Wisdom are, curiosity, perspective, love for learning, creativity and judgement. It
includes producing behaviours and ideas which are original. Besides all this, originality is never
enough, as no matter what is created, whether a product or an idea, it must be adaptable and
useful. For instance, you supposedly write an unique blog post, as it is totally gibberish; that will
not be useful and adaptable, so cannot be considered as a creative piece. Two of the most vital
elements in the ground of creativity are, originality and adaptability. An individual who belongs
to this creative category has the ability to generate, behaviours and ideas which are unusual or
unique, which makes a positive contribution to life of individuals (Ng, et al. 2017). As per the
research findings on the profits of the strength of the concept of creativity helps in developing

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divergent thoughts and exploring, thinking and focusing on the new ways of solving a particular
problem. This utilises details and ideas in such a manner that can be integrated for the positive
social purpose. Self knowledge and better self confidence are the creativity by-products which
can help in promoting the feeling of comfort in a variety of situations as well as adapt to stressors
and challenges (Kieran, 2014). Creativity promotes, drives and boosts interest in terms of
activities and can support in generating ideas and processes which will inspire and gather interest
in others. There are some certain questions which needs to be followed for better understanding
of the strength, in my case, the strength is creativity, so regarding that the question are: what
promotes creativity and what holds back in becoming creative? How do people reactive affects
the creativity and impacts it in both negative and positive way? In what way creativity must be
used in order to solve real life problems of own and of others like, family, friends and colleagues.
Some examples based on this strength of creativity and in what situations a person can be
creativity: creative solution exploration in terms of some difficulty or challenge in all aspects of
the society for own and for others; when a new topic emerges at a work situation or meeting and
brain storming of several ideas in that particular moment, and reflecting and discussing those
ideas within the group or with colleagues; writing a short story, essay, and poem and creating a
painting or sketch and sharing it with other people around (Forgeard, 2013).
In order to be creativity to a greater extent, one has to follow some ways, when someone
is struggling with a problem or having an issue while doing a particular task, divergent thinking
practice is suitable, for example, developing various outcomes and solutions rather than one way
out; another is setting aside each day in order to be creative or to explore self creativity level,
such as, finding news ways and processes of doing things or writing story or poems; doing a
typical basic task in a new innovative way and transforming the difficulty into ease. Such habits

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boosts the self creativity level and promotes character strength in an individual (Beaussart, et al.
2013).
Reflection:
As per my character strength which is the strength of creativity, I can consider saying that
this potential serves a lot of purpose in the process of becoming a good leader. An efficient
leader in all aspect is all about being massively efficient in terms of qualities and must have
controlling ability using strategical skills. Focusing only the creativity aspect, a leader in this
field can create many new ideas of problem solving which will automatically gather the attention
of people and attract them towards the leader in the sense dependability. A good leader
understand the needs and problems of self as well as others and solve them the way possible.
Using the strength of creativity it is much easier and effective to do this process. There is no such
scope of negativity in this field although criticism can be a great issue in demotivating a leader,
for which a leader must be self confident and rigid with its decision making. A case study
investigation in any aspect regarding authentic leadership revolves around three dimensions,
which are, relational orientation, balanced processing and self awareness.
Discussion and Conclusion:
After going through all the in-depth details regarding the concept of leadership
understand the strength based approach, it can be considered that positivity is the key in
maintaining this abilities. Leadership is a skill which can be achieved by following traits which
are mentioned above. A leader has to be efficient in all aspects, and confident to the core and
despite all these a leader must be skilful in terms of solving problems of own as well as others
using different ways of possibilities.

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References:
Beaussart, M. L., Andrews, C. J., & Kaufman, J. C. (2013). Creative liars: The relationship
between creativity and integrity. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 9, 129-134.
Billsberry, J., Mueller, J., Skinner, J., Swanson, S., Corbett, B., & Ferkins, L. (2018).
Reimagining leadership in sport management: lessons from the social construction of
leadership. Journal of Sport Management, 32(2), 170-182.
DeRue, D. S., & Workman, K. (2012). Toward a positive and dynamic theory of leadership
development.
Forgeard, M. J. (2013). Perceiving benefits after adversity: The relationship between self-
reported posttraumatic growth and creativity. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the
Arts, 7(3), 245.
Kieran, M. (2014). Creativity as a Virtue of Character. The philosophy of creativity: New essays,
125-144.

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Ng, V., Cao, M., Marsh, H. W., Tay, L., & Seligman, M. E. (2017). The factor structure of the
Values in Action Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS): An item-level exploratory structural
equation modeling (ESEM) bifactor analysis. Psychological assessment, 29(8), 1053.
Ruch, W., Proyer, R. T., Harzer, C., Park, N., Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. (2010). Values in
action inventory of strengths (VIA-IS). Journal of individual differences.
Takos, N., Murray, D., & O’Boyle, I. (2018). Authentic leadership in nonprofit sport
organization boards. Journal of Sport Management, 32(2), 109-122.