Leadership 1 Final Reflection Paper Based on the insights you have learned about leadership from the readings, reflect carefully about your own personality, your strengths and areas you would like to improve. How will you leverage your strengths to be an effective leader? What goal do you hope to achieve within 3-5 years of graduating from Ashesi and how will your leadership skills help you? During the course of the century, many individuals have had the opportunity to hold the mantle and lead large groups of people, but only a select few of these groups, be it countries or organizations, have grown to their pinnacle.
This underlying fact is due to the nature and methods these various leaders chose to employ. After successfully completing leadership1, I have learnt about various leaders and how their unique leadership styles were able to affect the people were placed in charge off. Each story line spoke about the same message, good leadership benefits all and negative leadership only pleases the minority and has a detrimental effect on the majority. reflect carefully about your own personality Leadership is not just about guiding an organization or a society to achieve a set of goals but also about building upon self-leadership.
Knowing my personality is the first step to self-awareness. I believe I am an extrovert and with good knowledge of myself has helped me study others and to understand them. your strengths and areas you would like to improve Prior to partaking in leadership 1, there were some traits I possessed and believed they were fit for a good leader but I soon came to understand that being a good leader is not all about the qualities I possessed or about doing things to please myself, but rather bringing out the best in others. “Our strength grows out of our weaknesses. ” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.
I have realized that I possess some weaknesses but the best thing is to attack these limitations and turn them into strength. I was not always good at working in teams since I always wanted my say to be the final one, I was very impatient and I always preferred things to revolve around me so I will be the center of attraction This is an area I am working on and developing. I have had the opportunity to practice working on a team for some of my courses this semester, I have seen a drastic change and now I am more patient, I listen to the views of others more and I allow other individuals to take control.
In situations where we do not share the same ideas, we always end up disagreeing to agree. Strategic, tactical and the ability to energize others is a strength I possessed. During my group meetings, I always ensured that we planned ahead of schedule so we enough time to make up for other things, also at periods where we had difficulty in solving a problem, some group members were downhearted but I always managed to rally them on and for us to try other solutions to solve the problem. Other strength I possess includes persuasive skills, self-confidence and the ability to talk fluently in front a large group of people.
With these set of skills, when am communicating with others am able to draw them in and get to follow my ideas. The best form of motivation is not intimidation but persuasion How will you leverage your strengths to be an effective leader? With a good vision and clearly laid out plans, it becomes easier to set goals and also helps followers know where the organization is leading towards. By combining these strengths an these good organizational strength What goal do you hope to achieve within 3-5 years of graduating from Ashesi My main career goal is directed towards becoming an entrepreneur and owning an N.
G. O which is driven towards helping deprived women from the villages. These women are suffering from the effects of urban migration and are often taken advantage off. They incapable of taking care of themselves and always have to rely on others. They often lack quality jobs, place to rest their head and they do not have a consistent source of money. This goal of mine is being fueled by my utter hatred on seeing women being deprived of these basic amenities and also being taken advantage off.
My desire is to combat this problem at the source and help prevent more women and children from migrating to the city. So after successfully completing Ashesi University, I would like to delve into this project but I would first have to earn a living and build capital by working with other companies. how will your leadership skills help you? The leadership skills that I have acquired and learnt about will be very relevant to achieving my goal. To be able to start this project and ensure that I meet my goal, I would have to possess “The 4 E’s” which are Edge, Energy, Energize and Execution.
With ‘Edge and Execution’ I will have the ability to make and carry out certain tough decisions which will not conflict with my morals. Also, I must ensure that, the people I work with on my project also possess edge and execution. If they lack this attribute, they will not share the same ideas and will make wrong decisions which may jeopardize the status of the company and affect development of the company as a whole. Possessing energy and the ability to energize other is also another key component to developing and maintaining the company.
In hard and trying times when the organization is not prospering and facing difficult problems, it would my responsibility to energize workers and other team members that all is not over. Other leadership skills I have learnt include having a good vision about the future plans of the company. Finally, leadership 1 has had a positive impact on my personality. I have learnt a lot about how to be a good leader and always put the interest of others first. It has taught me about the benefits of teamwork and how a good team makes the leader a much better person.
