I found that the personal assessments were very insightful into my leadership skills. I do believe that they align with my self-conception of myself because I see myself as being a futuristic, conceptual person. In addition, I believe that I have developed social judgment skills because I naturally socially adapt to a situation by taking both individual and social perspectives into consideration while leading (Northouse, 2018: p.50). Communicating the vision to followers is key. Therefore, emotional intelligence is a critical component of effective leadership. I would consider myself to be fairly emotional intelligent and the personal assessments confirmed this self-conception. If I relate this to the behavioural approach to leadership, I would fall under relationship behaviour because I value reinforcing and developing relationships with my employees (Northouse, 2018: p.75).
It was enlightening to see that one of my weaknesses is the technical side. As I seek to be a more effective well-rounded leader, this is definitely an avenue that will need further development. It will be challenging to become better at noticing details of the technical side of projects. A critical component to the skills approach is problem –solving, whereby leaders need to be creative as they solve complex or ill-defined problems (Northouse, 2018: p.48). The problem solving skills that I believe that I need to work on include problem definition, constraint analysis, planning, forecasting, and wisdom. My strengths related to problem-solving are those that are related to brainstorming and working with ideas and concepts, such as creative thinking, visioning, and idea evaluation (Northouse, 2018: p. 48). In my past experiences, I usually assigned others to tasks that would compensate for my weaknesses. However, this assignment made me realize the importance of increasing my competency with regards to the technical side. If I were to apply this to the behavioural approach, my weakness would be tasks behaviours related to initiating structure and production orientation (Northouse, 2018: p.74, 75). I found this exercise to be enlightening because it provided insights into how I can become a more effective leader.
Christina
Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: theory and practice (Eighth ed.). Thousand Oaks. Sage Publications.
Christina,
These are interesting insights into your leadership skills. We often tend to focus on the areas identified for growth, instead of our strengths. This is part of an ongoing conversation regarding whether it is more effective to focus on using our strengths than on minimizing our weaknesses. I wonder what you think about that balance? It sounds like focusing on other aspects of leadership (beyond technical skills) has worked for you, as you have relied on others on your team to engage in that work. Do you think you would do well to seek to expand those skills without shifting your focus significantly?
— Leadership Prof