Blog 4: My development as a future leader

Under the challenging and changing business environment, to develop into a capable leader, people need to work out practical personal development plans (Daniel, 2010). I have long been targeting at continuously improving my own capabilities in management and decision making in the business context. I would make a variety of useful preparations for reaching such a goal in my career development and personal development processes.

My preferred leadership brand and evaluation

I hope to develop into a capable manager in the banking industry. Among the varying leadership styles, I prefer to democratic leadership style. Democratic leadership enables the leader to make the best of the capabilities of subordinates by inspiring them to actively take part in the decision making and problem-solving processes in work (Wood and Barker, 2011). The leader would emphasize on the contribution to be made by each of the members by finding out optimal solutions of matching them with the corresponding work tasks in allocation of work. Through effective communication between the leader and the subordinates, democratic leadership style will help reduce the possible disputes within the management group and the workers in the organization or work teams.

Compared with another leadership style that is opposite to it in a sense, namely coercive leadership, which excessively emphasizes on the power distance or the authority of the leader, democratic leadership may prove to be more effective when the leader is not sure about working out the optimal strategies or plans to reach the best business performance in reality competitive processes (Anderson, 2011). Compared with still another leadership style, namely pacesetting, which is mainly applied when the group is highly motivated although, democratic leadership can prove to be more adaptable in varying contexts in the workforce. For example, when there is high level of staff turnover or there is a short history in the business development of an organization, it may be improper for the pacesetting leadership style to be applied in reality competitive processes. The democratic leadership style may prove to be more practical and effective in enhancing the work enthusiasm of employees too. The work performance and business performance can thus be improved accordingly.

Current strengths and development needs

At present, I have three main strengths. One is that I am good at communicating with people with appropriate skills. I am sociable in character and prepared for exchanging ideas with others. I have been noticing the importance of selection of expressions in communication with others for preset purposes. That will help me find more suitable measures to approach my communicative goals when working as a manager in the banking industry sector. In addition, I have a good command of the various sorts of theories and concepts relating to management and some professional skills about banking, such as statistics calculation, financial terms and management approaches.

However, I have few experiences of working in reality business world. In addition to that, I do not have a good memory, which would prevent me from quickly coming up with accurate judgements in making important decisions based on some basic information or messages relating to my work, such as accounting and investment plans. I will try to seek more opportunities of practicing what is learnt in class and from books in work in reality workplaces. What is more, I will try to make up for my poor memory by taking notes on more occasions if possible. By way of practicing more in using all sorts of skills and knowledge relating to my desired job in the future, namely manager in the banking industry sector, I believe more progresses will be made on my way of career development and personal development.

Requirements for being a good would-be leader

To successfully develop into a capable leader, apart from a variety of skills, such as communication skills and professional skills, students need to be prepared with sufficient skills of leading the followers on the way to continuous and desirable progresses in work (Kaminski et al., 2013). There may be defects in individual employees included in the work team of an organization. While working as a leader, people need to try to timely and accurately identify the problems facing them, so as to work out practical countermeasures for making improvements in management processes.

To be a good leader in the future, I will try to learn more professional and useful skills about banking businesses. That will be an important basis for me to succeed in helping my followers find out effective solutions to problems facing them in work. In addition, I will try to apply different leadership styles when leading or inspiring different workers in a same work team or under varying management contexts. I will notice the appropriateness of my selected strategies and solutions to be used to deal with the problems facing me.

References

Anderson, K. (2011). Reluctant leaders: why are some capable leaders not interested in the principalship?. International Journal of Management in Education, 5(4), 384-400.

Daniel, R. (2010). Excellent leaders do better than fixing problems—they foresee them. Journal of Psychological Issues in Organizational Culture, 1(2), 90-93.

Kaminski, G. M., Britto, M. T., Schoettker, P. J., Farber, S. L., Muething, S., & Kotagal, U. R. (2013). Developing capable quality improvement leaders. Postgraduate Medical Journal, 89(1048), 78-86.

Wood, R., & Barker, P. (2011). Developing key leaders to manage complex programs. Journal of management and entrepreneurship, 44(3), 201-220.