What, Why, and How of Your Leadership Ambitions Assignment Sample

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• Subject Name : leadership

Contents

Introduction..

Goleman’s three areas of focus.

What, why, and how to achieve goals in “self” area.

What, why, and how to achieve goals in “other” area of focus.

What, why, and how to achieve goals in the "organization" area of focus.

Challenges in achieving the goals.

Strategies needed to overcome challenges.

Conclusion

References.

Introduction to What, Why, and How of Your Leadership Ambitions

Leadership refers to the process of inspiring the actions of a systematized group to the achievement of goals. Usually, leaders are those individuals who influence various group members to follow his path. It is the most vital ability or competency that helps one to make efficient decisions for the success of life. In this competitive environment in a business setting, it is important to build good and effective leadership to ensure willpower and desire. It can also be defined as the procedure of social influence that exploits the determinations of others for achieving the goals. The objectives of effective leadership comprise of proper organization of employees, working for a mutual goal, motivating workers, achieve a unified organizational structure, innovation, transformation, strategic management, change management, and more.

However, to achieve all those objectives successfully, a leader needs a strategic approach (Indrawati 2014). Every individual must have ambitions for good leadership as these skills are required at some point in everybody's life. After setting the ambition of good leadership, individuals must excel and develop certain qualities like honesty, ability to delegate, communication skills, confidence, commitment, positive attitude, creative mind, inspiration, and more. This report is set to discuss the what, why, and how to achieve the goals set in three areas of focus "self", "other", and "organization" as per Goleman's theory in leadership. Moreover, this report discusses the leadership concepts like self-leadership strategies, self-determination needs, and more.

Goleman’s Three Areas of Focus

There are three areas of focus as per the Goleman’s theory in leadership on which leaders must focus to lead in an improved manner. These areas are interrelated with each other and Goleman defines how these elements operate together in outlining how top managers and business proprietors get to the core of successfully implementing focus not only individually but across their businesses. These are the core of effective leadership. The three elements of focus to lead are demonstrated below:

• Inner focus (self): This focus is based on the insights and managerial values. In leadership, self-focus is essential as it enables the leader to remain focused on the goals that he has for himself and the company.
• Others focus: This is necessary as it reinforces the ability of the leader to be associated with other people. Moreover, it needs a robust sense of sympathy and kindness, and a wish to understand the viewpoints and circumstances of those around the leader. It helps the leader to shift his focus from himself to other individuals. Sympathy is the crucial element in doing so as it is the foundation of all association skills, teamwork, inspirations, and collaborations. To be an effective leader, one needs to focus more on the needs of others and help them effectively.
• Outer focus (organization): Outer focus means here the ability to steer the superior world. This focus is essential for a leader so that he can think strategically and effectively. It enables one to think about the outer market products and strategies and their impact on the organization. Moreover, to ensure this focus, a leader must develop his knowledge for the process and the system's awareness (Goleman 2017).

What, Why, and How to Achieve Goals in “self” Area

According to my leadership skills, I am the leader who always motivates others in the team, and always committed to share my vision with them and attain the same. However, there are certain other goals that I need to achieve effective leadership. Moreover, to be a successful leader, I must know my strengths and weaknesses for continuous improvement. I must make myself self-aware so that I could work upon my weaknesses while leading a team. I always think that I am not a perfect leader and always do efforts for my improvement. In the self-area of focus, I want to achieve the goal to be a transformational leadership style as I perceived and learned from my seniors that this type of leadership is helpful and effective for the success of the team as well as the company. To achieve this goal, it requires four characteristics to achieve namely idealized influence intellectual stimulation, individual consideration, and inspirational motivation.

Moreover, the goals that I want to achieve effective leadership in the self-focus area are self-regulation, self-awareness, and motivation. These three elements are required for me to develop the traits for effective leadership. Self-awareness is the capability to identify and understand the emotions, moods, and drives affecting others. Self-regulation is the capability to regulate the disrupting desires and moods (Lopez et al 2016). This element is a required trait for me as it helps in making one reliable person. Furthermore, motivation is a vital skill to develop in the self-focus area. It means that I need to be a self-actualizing individual who can become optimistic even at the time of failure.

The above goals mentioned in the self-focus area are required due to numerous reasons. Transformational leadership skills are needed as these will help me to assign or allocate suitable roles and responsibilities to the members of the team (Ghavifekr, et al 2017). Moreover, these skills would help make all the downward and upward communication in the organization activities that further creates a motivational environment within the workplace that drives members and me to be committed all the time. Furthermore, this would help me in following an open door policy for enabling effective communications for discussing the issue of the company effectively. As I am not much creative and innovative in taking decisions regarding business activities, I would likely become creative with these leadership skills. Moreover, the self-awareness focus area is needed as this is the crucial aspect for effective leadership and one can develop skills like teamwork, empathy, and emotional self-control after making him aware of his feelings. Moreover, it is necessary as it aids me in linking my emotions to the effectiveness of my interactions with other people. Besides, it will help me in strengthening not only the individual performance but also the entire company’s performance. However, some characteristics will be needed to become self-aware namely humility, humble, and more.

Emotional regulation and self-leadership strategies are the best way to achieve the above goals set for the self-focus in leadership. Both these concepts are linked with the regulation of self (Shek and Leung 2016). One way for these strategies is behavior-focused self-leadership strategies that entail action-oriented approaches for fulfilling activities that are complex in nature. The strategies included in this are self-evaluation, self-reward, self-observation, self-punishment, and more. I would like to adopt a self-observation approach that entails maximizing self-awareness and it helps me in determining how, why, and when I behave in specific ways. Moreover, the strategy of self-evaluation will help me in determining the extent to which a specific behavior is negative or positive, required, or not required. I believe that self-reward would be a useful strategy in motivating myself even to achieve small success. Furthermore, there is a cognitive-based self-leadership that refers to purposely trying to regulate, impact, and creatively improve my thinking. These approaches further entail mental rehearsal, managing beliefs, self-talk, mental imagination, and more. Mental imaginary is the strategy that allows me to imagine myself involved in particular essential actions. The rehearsal component allows me to be preparing for future events and increase my confidence and unearth probable issues before the event (Uzman and Maya 2019).

What, Why, and How to Achieve Goals in “other” Area of Focus

Indeed, only motivated leaders are not enough for the success of the organization. However, there must be other people as followers of a leader to ensure the complete success of the project within an organization. I would like to achieve the goal of motivating others in the company to the fullest so that the needs of the individuals could be fulfilled and they are to be gratified. Therefore, I would like to develop my motivational skills and competencies for inspiring the team for success. I have analyzed one weakness in me while leading a team in the organization that I was motivated. It means that I failed to involve people in the activities and they took less participation due to lack of interest and motivation. I would also like to achieve a motive for developing an ethical reward system for my team members that ensures providing rewards for true performance rather than based on politics, position, and term. I want that the association between the reward and performance must be transparent, stable, and reliable. For focusing on others as a leader, I want to ensure or provide them a good and healthy work-life balance.

As a leader, it is important to motivate others within an organization as it is necessary for their growth as well as the growth of the organization. The main reason why my team members lacked motivation is that I considered just more on extrinsic motivation. However, both the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation skills are needed for a leader to become an effective guide. Extrinsic motivation enables members to be motivated through external incentives. I usually motivate them to perform activities in better ways to attain rewards. However, I failed to induce intrinsic motivation that occurs when individuals are motivated to perform activities for their satisfaction. I must motivate them to perform the work that personally satisfying and gratifying them due to the nature of work they desire that they can even spend more hours in the workplace to meet the deliverables (Liang et al 2018).

Furthermore, motivating the workers is essential for effective leadership as it leads to increase productivity, boost engagement, preserve workforce stability, and more. Workers are indeed more productive when they are affiliated with the vision and mission of the company. Motivating them is essential for me to make them more desirable to complete the work and make them gratified all time. Furthermore, it is important to bring more committed team members by involving them in certain decision-making areas of the business. It is essential to ensure that they have a stage to say their thoughts and philosophies about problems that directly affect them. Moreover, I want to achieve this goal of motivating others at the workplace to maintain workforce stability. It is true that the workers who are not satisfied with the workplace environment are likely to leave the work and increases the turnover rate for the company. Therefore, all the above factors are responsible for bringing success and sustainability for the organization.

The strategies to achieve the motivation goal of others could be accomplished using the self-determination guidelines and the strategies to overcome the lack of motivation in individuals I seek to inspire. To apply the self-determination theory for motivating others, I would require motivating them by fulfilling their needs for connection, autonomy, and competence. According to the self-motivation theory, individuals are motivated to grow and change by three inborn and common psychological needs mentioned above. Moreover, this theory suggests that there are two assumptions: the need for growth drives behavior, and autonomous motivation is vital (Molina and Sundar 2020). I will assist individuals to attain their psychological needs. These psychological needs can be made achievable for the team members when I have to take responsibility for the same.

I will help them gaining mastery of activities and learn varied skills so that they could be more probable to take action in achieving goals. Moreover, I will induce in them a sense of attachment and belonging so that they can pass on these skills further to other people. I will make them autonomous so that they can feel in control of their performances and aims. This further helps them in taking direct engagements that will lead to bring actual change and help them feel self-determined. It is a fact that individuals who feel that they are capable to have progressive effects at work incline to feel more involved and motivated. I would like to foster these skills in them by allowing my team members to participate actively in decision making. Moreover, I will offer them accountabilities, offer significant feedback, and provide support and reassurance whenever needed. Further, I will ensure that there is minimum use of extrinsic rewards since much of these rewards may lead to weakening the intrinsic motivation (Deci, Olafsen, and Ryan 2017).

What, Why, and How to Achieve Goals in The "organization" Area of Focus

For the organization-focus area, I want to achieve numerous goals like a profitable business, successful business, higher ROI (return on investment), top position in the market and build the competitive advantage of the company. Despite all these goals that I want to achieve, I want to serve the social purpose also for the organization. Socially responsible business is nowadays most demanded and appreciated by the stakeholders including the customers (Rhou, Singal and Koh 2016).This goal of serving social purpose if accomplished can help in building and creating a brand reputation of the company in the minds of people in the external environment. It is a fact that to serve a social purpose, the company must have to form a social purpose using its products and services. In the competitive business environment, it has become essential for all the businesses to adopt the strategy of CSR practices to be competitive in the market. I want to achieve that goal for the success of the organization as I believe that my organization is somewhere lagging in this respect.CSR practices refer to the business guidelines needed to run the business operations in a moral, and a social friendly manner. Nowadays, every business is taking a step ahead in accepting these practices so that they can place themselves in the attentions of the public as a business who thinks for the well-being of society at large (Tencati, Misani, and Castaldo 2020).

I would like to achieve the goals of higher profitability, higher ROI, more innovation, higher competitive advantage in the market because of the reason that these are certain goals of the organization itself and are necessary to be accomplished for the reputation of a business within the industry. These goals are essential for bringing more creativity to the people working for the organization. Moreover, it leads to creating brand loyalty, more customers, and more by building a competitive advantage. My main motive for the organization that I want to attain is to make the organization a socially purpose-driven company that thinks for the betterment of its entire stakeholder. The CSR practices are essential to building the trust factor among the stakeholders of the company. It is because today most of the consumers buy from the companies to whom they trust the most (Zak.2017). Social purpose means taking into consideration the sustainability issues and other bigger concerns of the society by the business (Kolk 2016). For example, the company named as TOMS started funding for the clean water programs and the eye surgery programs. These are some actions of the companies that can be seen in their business reports and this is for the welfare of the society not for any profit-making business. However, these practices help businesses to achieve higher profits as they have made their best position in the minds of customers hence it will lead to an increase in the sales of the company.

The strategies that I would like to adopt for achieving the goal of social purpose will begin by recognizing the range of social needs to which product or service of business can make a significant contribution. The main thing that I will consider to compete on the social purpose by forming value for all the stakeholders of the company like investors, clients, community, employees, and more. Furthermore, I would like to follow the approach of Indra Nooyi, the CEO of the PepsiCo Company. She has transformed the business using the approach performance through purpose. Nowadays, consumers do not just desire a product with functional benefits but they want that product to serve some social purpose (Vilá and Bharadwaj 2017). There are numerous examples of firms that have been doing this way. For example, the company named as Airbnb utilized a super bowl advertisement to publicly reinforce its promise to diversity. Then, there is a firm known as the P &G brand of India that assists child acceptance rights for transgender individuals. I would like to first assess the thing in respect of social issues I care for in the external environment. Further, I will identify what my customers care for and then I align with suitable cause partners. I will use certain storytelling to strengthen the journey. This is the time when I have to communicate the reason behind the social issue I am going to work on and share this as far as possible to attain trust among a larger audience. After that, I will examine my commitment and social purpose performance (Kimmorley 2018).

Challenges in Achieving the Goals

There may be occurrence certain challenges while accomplishing the goals set by me in three focus areas namely “self”, “other”, and “organization”. These challenges are as follows:

• Change: Change can indeed take place at any point in time and it is inevitable. In case the leader is not adaptable to change then he may not be able to effectively control the unpredictable environment. Hence, the responsibilities of the leader like controlling, planning, and analyzing will become insignificant. I am likely to face this challenge while I move towards achieving my goals. Moreover, I have to make myself adaptive to change to bring successful leadership.
• Collective intelligence: In the leadership, there must be a more collaborative approach rather than vertical structures in the company. The challenge that I will like to face is of collective intelligence. Since there has been increasing development of novel technologies, leadership also has to depend on it to simply the things. Therefore, I as a leader have to make my team members behave intelligently and competently.
• Proper awareness of leadership: It will indeed be difficult for me to achieve success in leadership goals without proper knowledge and awareness of the leadership. The challenge in this way that I will likely face is to develop my skills consciously like innovation, working in a team, decision-making skills, leading change, and more.
• Overloaded information: It is also a fact that the organizations of today are having access to widespread databases that contain huge information useful for decision making. However, the amount of data that is to be analyzed on a routine basis can be devastating. I have to robust enough to extract valuable and useful information from large datasets. It means that I have to become a strategic leader and enhance my strategic skills that I am lagging the most.

Strategies Needed to Overcome Challenges

Certain strategies can be useful for me to overcome the above-stated challenges:

• I would require encouraging face-to-face communication among my team members that can ease the task and lessen the delay of activities. Moreover, it helps me to reinforce the bond between me and my members and it also aids in smoothening the conversations about the product and processes.
• I would have to ensure that all the team members are gratified all the time with the tasks. This can be done by offering them rewards for meeting deadlines or achieving something even smaller things. This will maintain the quality of work by keeping the workers gratified all time.

Conclusion on What, Why, and How of Your Leadership Ambitions

From the above report on the what, why, and how of my leadership ambitions, it can be concluded that there are three focus areas given by Goleman's theory of leadership. These areas are "self", "other", and "organization". It means that I have to set my ambitions in these three areas while leading self, leading others, and leading organization. In terms of self-leadership, I have set certain goals like self-regulation, and self-awareness. Self-awareness is the capability to identify and understand the emotions, moods, and drives affecting others. Self-regulation is the capability to regulate disrupting desires and moods. Furthermore, it can be concluded that I would like to achieve the goal of motivating others to the fullest using the self-determination theory that says that individuals are motivated to grow and change by three inborn and common psychological needs mentioned above.

Moreover, this theory suggests that there are two assumptions: the need for growth drives behavior, and autonomous motivation is vital. Further, in respect of leading organization, I would like to achieve the goal of social purpose meaning that making the products and services in such a manner that resolves some social issue and benefit the society at large. Moreover, I would like to bring CSR practices in the company that is necessary for building a competitive advantage and help the business in creating a brand reputation in the market. In addition to this, I would like to achieve the goals of higher profitability, higher ROI, more innovation, higher competitive advantage in the market because of the reason that these are certain goals of the organization itself and are necessary to be accomplished for the reputation of a business within the industry.

References for What, Why, and How of Your Leadership Ambitions

Deci, E. L., Olafsen, A. H., and Ryan, R. M. 2017. Self-determination theory in work organizations: The state of the science. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 4, pp.19-43.

Ghavifekr, S., Hoon, A. L. S., Ling, H. F. and Ching, T. M. 2017. Heads of departments as transformational leaders in schools: Issues and challenges. MOJEM: Malaysian Online Journal of Educational Management, 2(3), pp.119-139.

Goleman, D. 2017. What Makes a Leader? (Harvard Business Review Classics). Harvard Business Press.

Indrawati, N. K. 2014. Management by inspiration: Implementation of transformational leadership on business at pondok Pesantren*) Sunan Drajat. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 115, pp.79-90.

Kimmorley, S. 2018. Tips for building a social purpose strategy that will help your business stand out. [online] Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/how-to-create-social-purpose-strategy-2018-6 Accessed on 30 May 2020

Kolk, A. 2016. The social responsibility of international business: From ethics and the environment to CSR and sustainable development. Journal of World Business, 51(1), pp.23-34.

Liang, H., Wang, M. M., Wang, J. J., and Xue, Y. 2018. How intrinsic motivation and extrinsic incentives affect task effort in crowdsourcing contests: A mediated moderation model. Computers in Human Behavior, 81, pp.168-176.

Lopez, R. B., Milyavskaya, M., Hofmann, W. and Heatherton, T. F. 2016. Motivational and neural correlates of self-control of eating: a combined neuroimaging and experience sampling study in dieting female college students. Appetite, 103, pp.192-199.

Molina, M. D. and Sundar, S. S. 2020. Can mobile apps motivate fitness tracking? A study of technological affordances and workout behaviors. Health Communication, 35(1), pp.65-74.

Rhou, Y., Singal, M., and Koh, Y. 2016. CSR and financial performance: The role of CSR awareness in the restaurant industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 57, pp.30-39.

Shek, D. T., and Leung, H. 2016. Developing self-leadership and responsibility and moving away from egocentrism. International Journal on Disability and Human Development, 15(2), pp.157-164.

Tencati, A., Misani, N. and Castaldo, S.2020. A qualified account of supererogation: toward a better conceptualization of Corporate Social Responsibility. Business Ethics Quarterly, 30(2), pp.250-272.

Uzman, E. and Maya, I. 2019. Self-Leadership Strategies as the Predictor of Self-Esteem and Life Satisfaction in University Students. International Journal of Progressive Education, 15(2), pp.78-90.

Vilá, O. R., and Bharadwaj, S. 2017. Competing on social purpose: Brands that win by tying mission to growth. Harvard Business Review.

Zak, P. J.2017. The neuroscience of trust. Harvard Business Review, 95(1), pp.84-90.

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