Leadership in Organizations

1.How can you further develop your management and leadership skills? What experiences do you need to become a better manager and a better leader?

Before I start the journey to develop myself both as manager and as leader, I need to get acquainted with the traits of transactional and transformational leaderships. By reflecting my current management style and behavior, which mainly refers to the approach of “Management by exception”, I aim to continuously shape my management skills towards the level of the “Management by Contingent Reward”, and to increase interaction with the team members instead of solely organizing, controlling activities and coordinating team members according to the corporate process.

According to the “SMART” criteria, I am going to formulate the goals as clear as possible for my team and break them down into projects with defined milestones in future, before the work packages fairly and appropriately get distributed to my team members according to their individual capabilities and work experiences. Based on mutual respect and trust in the team, we will focus on our overall team performance as a whole. Thus, as manager I will be committed to assure the available resources and provide the best support for everyone to achieve team’s goals. By arranging regular jour-fixe meetings, we will consistently monitor the progress of our activities and struggle to analyze the root cause of the problems. In addition, we aim to set priorities for problem-solving and develop proactive measures to prevent problems in advance. Also, rewarding for individual achievement and critical reflection will be part of my management career.

Comparing to management, leadership is more complex and linked with social behavior of leaders as well as their transformational abilities to take influence on other people. The development of leadership skills is a long-term journey as it takes time for every individual to shape his personality traits. Therefore, I need to find my leadership purpose and aim to formulate a compelling vision under weighing of positive or negative situations for our team. Also, I have to get used to making strategic decisions and taking responsibility for any potential risks.

In particular, born as a Chinese and inherently growing up with the reserved Confucius mentality, I will encourage myself to show more confidence and passion while I am presenting the vision to my audience. Also, I am endeavoring to strengthen my charisma by practicing rhetoric and presentation skills. Appropriate body gestures and facial expressions shall help me evoke, revoke and reframe emotions of my supporters. Although the vision has to be frequently repeated, I strive to deliver on the made promises and motivate my team members to contribute to the team’s goals.

As leader, I am committed to take on the role of a mentor, and to implement a “big-family” feeling based on mutual trust, respect and support in my team, where creative and critical thinking of every team member will be listened and stimulated, and everyone will be motivated to develop his abilities. Also, care about the team on the job and in social life will be an indispensable part of my leadership career.

2.Who could best help you and motivate you in your pursuit to become an ever better leader?

Leadership is a complex social behavior that has to be continuously developed on an individual journey. Thank to this leadership course, which not only helped me detect and reflect my leadership deficiencies but also inspired me with successful leadership behaviors as well as valuable techniques, I learned on how to strengthen my leadership skills.

First of all, the person who could best help me become a better leader is myself indeed. To succeed as a leader, I have to find my leadership purpose by questioning myself why do I wish to lead, why should anyone follow me, and how can I make a change in this world. Furthermore, I need to create a compelling vision and define measures in order to put my leadership purpose into action. Being supported by my passion and purpose, I will gain strong will and firm determination to motivate people to follow my vision and achieve the goals step-by-step.

In addition, as effective leadership is a matter of making influence on people, great international personalities with extraordinary charisma traits and abilities of persuasion will positively inspire and encourage me to develop my charisma. I would learn much from the unique charismatic leaders like Barack Obama and David Cameron etc., who are excellent at holding speeches and motivating their supporters through their visions, and thereby passionately catching their heart. Therefore, in order to gain charisma, I intend to frequently watch speeches of charismatic leaders or “TED” talks and read the related books, which will convey me a strong sense and awareness of the well-articulated