Leadership skills

Leadership is an art and a science of making sound decisions that inspire others and makes them follow a certain direction towards good performance. Leadership is a tool that provides objective direction, inspiration as well as encouragement to motivate others to attain institutional pursuits. Leadership differs from management from the fact management involves the organizational activity of coordinating efforts as well as the allocation of resources for maximization of efficiency to achieve targets. The salient distinguishing factor between leaders and managers is that leaders have the ability to motivate others to act in their desire while managers make people work for either through will or force. Strategic leadership often poses capability of setting and achieving sophisticated ends goals. Leadership focuses on fast, choices in challenging situations. As a result, these attributes remain critical in surviving in strong competition. Leadership also relies on calculating risks as well as and failure, patience to move hard and complex issues. Hence, good leadership demands robust communication skills, commitment, influence, and positivity to initiate change.

My Strengths

I got my initial leadership responsibilities when I was in my last year of primary education. I got selected as a class representative after having succeeded in managing and representing our school football team the previous holiday. Since that time I have remained a successful leader despite some ups and downs. They key attributes that I always associate with my leadership success are confidence, commitment as well as creativity. The three have made me strong and inspirational despite many oppositions as well as failure forces.

As a young leader, I always eliminate any attitudes of giving up. The reason is that giving up is in itself a failure. It demoralizes team members while at the same time, destroys the trust which the team has in me. I always remain committed to the issues at hand to find an alternative to the better state. The virtue of commitment in my leadership has not only helped be to avoid diversion from focus but also eliminated fear in pursuing complex goals. Hence, the commitment has remained one of my key leadership strengths. The second strength of my leadership is commitment. I have always believed that if I want my team to work hard, I must lead by example. I always take assignments similar to them to bring closeness in my team. I always work to motivate them. It has helped me in improving communication and understanding the challenges faced by my team. I always have a strong a notion that being committed as a leader earns me respect from the team and instill hard work among my team. The last strength that has made me succeed is creativity. Coming up with solutions to the complex situation have been my key strength. I always involve my team to try options whenever found in a hard situation. I always rely on the present and the current resources to solve critical issues. Creativity has been helpful in that it makes my team trust in me. Inclusiveness also makes them feel important team members.

My Weaknesses

My greatest weakness as a leader has been the inability to multitask. I find myself over-concentrating on one issue whenever faced with multiple issues. This weakness has affected my leadership in that such situation always brings one side to failure. I have been unable to handle two concurrent issues at the same time. The other weakness is that I hate working under close supervision. I always view close supervision as lack of trust in my abilities. I also like to carry out my duties with my creativity so long as the results get realized. In many situations, close supervision demands total following of some steps irrespective of whether they are tiresome or time wasting. It has made me find difficulties in my leadership role. Anger management has been my other great weakness. I always find myself losing temper quickly especially when some of my team members pull the efforts of other back. I also find myself angered when lazy around when we have team activities.

Description of Leadership Experience

When I joined high school, I was chosen as a class representative. I was tasked to ensure that tidiness of the class at all time. I was also entrusted to ensure class discipline. Many differences emerged between my classmates, and since I had learned some leadership skills, I always involved the entire class in healthy resolving of conflicts. The class trusted me to the extent that every student ran to me whenever a problem arose. I had arranged a class cleaning roster with student assigned their specific days. I also included myself to clean on Wednesdays. One day, the worst happened. Tuesday cleaners felt sick making them absent. To salvage the situation, I cleaned the room by myself. In the afternoon, I discussed with my classmates and proposed to come up with a standby team to clean on days where our colleagues would be absent because of various reasons. They unanimously agreed. I came up with a new roster with standby force on rotational; basis and from that day, the classes were clean whether some members were absent or not. A small idea made me liked by my classmates.

The Leadership Skills I Used

The first leadership skill I applied was commitment through working as a role model. Despite being a class representative, I also allocated myself a day to clean our classes. This strategy motivated my peers and eliminated resistance. The second leadership skill I used was creativity. I realized that absence would affect class cleaning, and hence I decided to implement a standby force to clean on occasions where routine cleaners would be absent. This strategy ensured that our classes remained clean even when those assigned were absent. The other skill I used was inclusiveness and commitment. I ensured that our class was ever clean. I also involved the entire class to settle our differences as a class. This leadership strategy made my class to be the most disciplined and the one with much cooperation among ourselves.

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