Leadership Style Attempt 2

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Utah Valley University *

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332G

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Management

Date

Jan 9, 2024

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docx

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Uploaded by DeanLeopardMaster922

Reflect on the results of the five categorical strengths from your CliftonStrengths assessment When I took the Clifton Strengths assessment, my results were as follows: 1. Competition 2. Context 3. Achiever 4. Activator and 5. Arranger. I would like to say there was some kind of surprise in these results, but there was not. When I think of myself, I am aware of how intense and competitive I truly am. I always want to be the winner and consider second place the first of the losers. This “win at all costs” mentality comes through in my leadership style. I push my teams to be the top performing teams in all key performance indicators. This has made it so I focus on my own and my team’s short comings instead of their strengths or wins if you will. How does this competitiveness translate to the rest of my results? I for one think they all connect to help or hinder each other. For instance, when you consider the second strongest category, context, you know I value history and what we can and should learn from it. This is true in life and work. We can never stop learning from our past. It is how we get better and learn from our mistakes. That is how I maintain my competitiveness. I look at past data and experiences to ensure I do not lead my team or myself down a path that doesn’t work. On reflection you can say that the results I got were a very accurate representation of myself as person and a leader. However, is this a good thing? Maybe. Pushing and striving to win at all times can lead to great things. Though great, this style leads to short comings. For example, you may be seen as a jerk and a sore loser, you may be seen as someone that applies too much pressure on yourself and your team. These are both things I currently struggle with as winning is always my number one objective. Evaluate your leadership.

Three Strengths I would define my leadership style as more of a transitional leadership style. I know because of my strengths as a leader. First and foremost, I ensure that I set clear and precise expectations for my team. This sets my team up for success. They always know not only what we are trying to accomplish as an organization, but also as a team, and as individuals. When I set and discuss goals with my team, I coordinate all the goals that we want to achieve as a team with the goals of organization; all while tracking and encouraging individual progress. I find it my job to set clear goals and objectives with my employees to make sure that organizational goals are met (Tavanti, 2008) . My second strength would be that I set the expectation that I am in charge and that there is a clear chain of command. As a transactional leader I can get the job done only if I am in charge. We cannot have everyone trying to pull the team in different directions. As I like to tell my team even the most highly trained professional sports have one head coach. Meaning that if we want to succeed, we can only have one voice telling the team what to do and how to do it. This intensifies my first strength of setting clear goals. My third strength is rewarding my team when they do something well and having consequences for unwanted or bad behaviors. As a transactional leader I need to make sure that goals and expectations that I set are met. I achieve this in two ways. If a member of my team hits a goal or displays a behavior that helps us progress, I reward them. This reward can in many forms. Such as merit raises, free lunch coupons, company swag or at times just a high-five and saying “good job” is rewarding enough for the employee.

On the contrary, if my team is displaying unwanted or bad behavior, they understand there will be consequences. These consequences usually come in the form of formal coaching for improvement and corrective action or what some companies call write ups. If it is a minor infraction, I may just have an undocumented verbal warning with them. A lot of employees see these corrections or consequences as a negative thing. They presume that they did something wrong and now are being punished it for it. Though it may seem like this, that is not the case, at least not to me and my transactional style of leadership. I use the consequences to inform my employee that the behavior they are exhibiting is unacceptable and to create a plan to eliminate the behavior. This helps create a positive tone around an action that usually comes with a major negative connotation. Three Weaknesses As a leader I must be able to identify my weaknesses and improve on them on them. The first weaknesses I would like to speak on is emotional connection. I see this short coming affect me in both my work and personal life. As a leader I struggle to build an actual relationship with my employees. This causes problems in finding what motivates my employees at an induvial level. If I don’t know what motivates them, I cannot reward them. I can usually get to a point where that emotional connection is made but it can take me much longer than the average leader to do so. Additionally, another short coming of mine is that I can tend to be a passive leader. A passive leader waits for the problem to happen rather than being active and anticipating the problem (Tavanti, 2008) . I know that as a leader I should be able to anticipate issues and take corrective actions before they happen or before they escalate into bigger issues. I think might just

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come to an assumption that the problem will fix itself; or that the problem is not that big of a deal. This leads to me coming across as a strict, no-nonsense leader. As I reflect on my final weakness, a weakness I have is focusing on the short-term aspects of the job and not the long term. This causes my team to not be as engaged in their own long-term success. This can result in many negative outcomes. One of which is poor employee morale which can lead to high turnover. I constantly must remind myself that for my employees to feel fulfilled in their work and want to put their best foot forward. I need to do better about thinking about the future, and help my team set goals that lead where we want to be in the long term. Recommend three actionable items to improve the effectiveness of your leadership. How to improve my leadership: This is something I am always trying to do. I am a big believer in continuous improvement. First and foremost, I need to find a way to connect with my employees in a more personal and emotional way. They will help build a better rapport with my team. Which leads to better performance and increased morale, the end goal being a reduction in turnover. Connecting with my employees will also help me be a more active leader, which is the second thing I can work to improve. As an active leader I will see and correct problems before they get too big (Tavanti, 2008) . Why would I want to improve on this aspect of my leadership ? The reasoning is twofold: First, it allows the business to flow without interruption. Secondly, it allows my employees to improve the behavior without having to be assessed with a greater or more serious from of consequence.

As I talk about being more of an active leader, this bodes well with the next item I would like to improve on, which is being more long-term minded when setting goals with my team. A long-term goal can consist of a series of short-term goals that need to be reached to achieve the long-term objective. If my team has a long-term goal to strive for, they have something to desire. This desire motivates them to progress and improve themselves as they work to reach their goal. Two Short-Term Goals Goal: Over the next month I will strive to build stronger emotional and personal connections with my team, to increase employee productivity and morale. I will implement weekly progress and performance review, and mentoring conversation in order to promote personal progress for my team. This will all be measured by KPI and attendance tracking. Goal: Over the next two months I will be more active in my leadership approached, to increase workplace safety and continuous improvement. I will implement daily Gemba and safety walks to indicate possible improvements and fix any potential safety hazards. I will have to note one possible safety hazard and one continuous improvement idea per shift. Discuss at least two specific actions you will take to reach each of the SMART goals. My first goal is to build stronger emotional and personal connections with my employees. I want to that having one on one review session with my team members. This allows me to converse with them that is unique to each induvial employee. Each employee deserves to be approached in a way that will help them improve. When I tailor my approach to each this will result in trust being built, which the foundation of an emotional and personal connection. This is something that can greatly improve my team’s productivity; thus, I am holding myself to timeline of one month to start fostering these relationships.

My second goal is to become a more active leader. Recognizing problems and hazards before they happen is paramount to keep a business operation flowing. Thus, I am implementing daily Gemba walks and safety walks. I am holding myself to a two-month deadline and reporting of two incidents a week. This strict guideline is because of how critical safety and continuous improvement are to any given business. This goal also helps build up the relationship between my employees, as discuss in my first goal. I intended my goals to support one another thus making easier to track the progress of said goals. References Tavanti, M. (2008). Transactional Leadership. Leadership Studies: The Key Concepts (Routledge Key Guides) .

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Leadership Style Attempt 2

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