LEADERSHIP EFFECTIVENESS

 

Our personality has a lot of impacts in our lives, our personality is responsible for how we interact with each other, and how we interact with our families and friend. The five traits of personality are important in helping us understand how personality makes one an effective leader.  Personality plays an important role in our live, it acts as our automatic drive in situations. The five traits are; Dependability, this trait depends on one’s ability to show the trait of responsibility. Agreeableness when one has the capability to show sympathy. Intellectance, is when one is capable to be open minded. Surgency which is the capability to be social with others and emotional stability which is the leaders ability to stay calm when put under pressure (Pendleton &  Furnham, 2012).

The trait of surgency is defined by talkativeness and assertiveness. This trait is also referred to as extraversion and leaders who poses this trait like to be in charge and being responsible for others. Leaders with this personality trait tend to make good effective leaders.  Leaders who score high on the agreeableness are warm and easy to approach while leaders who score low on this dimension are cold and distant. For a leader to be effective they have to score high on the agreeableness dimension. For one a leader to be effective they have to have high emotional stability such that they display a high degree of being calm and adjusted (Pendleton & Furnham, 2012).  For a leader to be effective they have to be open minded and imaginative this means that they have to score high on the intellectance dimension or trait. Personality plays a very large role in determining the effectiveness of a leader.

Preferences have a large impact on leadership effectiveness. An individual with a preference for extraversion are energized by interacting with others and love to work in groups rather than work alone and are easily approachable.  Introverts take time to think things through.  Individuals with a preference of Sensing always prefer to take in the details of information that is real and tangible. They are very observant and tend to take in every little detail of their environment. Individuals with a preference for intuition tend to look at the bigger picture and asses information from a certain point of view. Intuitive individuals think and process multiple  ideas (Alkahtani, Ismael, Mohamed, & Davoud, 2011). Individuals with a thinking preference tent to always consider the logical consequences of a decision before they take or steps they take.  They are always energized when it comes to logical arguments while individuals with the thinking preference tend to consider what is important for others, they place themselves in situations so that they can identify others and make a decision based on honoring the values and beliefs of others.  Individuals with the judging preference love to approach things in a planned way. These individuals tend to be organized. Individuals with a perceiving preference are very flexible they are always going for last minute options.  All this preferences have a large impact on how effective a leader will be.  

Motivation is the extent to which much effort is directed towards achieving a certain set goal.  Motivation has four aspects. Efforts, which an individual may apply tremendous efforts that help achieve or might not help achieve a set goal. Persistence is the second aspect of motivation, this is the willingness to accomplish a task or achieve a set goal.  The other aspect of motivation is direction which is the efforts that are directed towards achieving the set goals. The last aspect of motivation is goals, individual and organizational goals (Nader, 2019). All these aspects of motivation play an important role in determining how effective a leader will be, an effective leader should be able to motivate those who fall under his leadership.  A leader should seek out and know what motivates his employees.

Leadership styles are also responsible for impacting a leader’s effectiveness. Leadership styles impact the organization by affecting the morale of employee and their decision making. An effective leader should be careful when it comes to analyzing problems, assessing the skills of their employees and being able to make careful informed choices (Duggan, n.d.). It is only through choosing the most appropriate leadership style for the situation that an effective leader provides a long lasting solution.

 The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a tool that helps identify one’s personality and preferences. The tool is made up of self inventory questionnaire.  According to this tool there are four areas of personality that affects one’s ability to learn. The results of this tool are in four dimensions namely; Extraversion and introversion based on how one directs their energy sensing and intuition based on how one processes certain information, thinking and feeling based on how one makes judgments and judging and perceiving which is based on ones organizational preferences (Gordon, 2000).  From this tool one can be a perceiver, judger, feeler, thinker, intuitor, sensor, introvert, or extravert. This tool is effective and the preferences can be combined.

            As a leader and as a subordinate I prefer the democratic leadership style where decision involves the leader and the employees.  The leader values the efforts of his team of subordinates, criticism and praise are given objectively and a sense of responsibility is developed in the group (Khan, Khan, Qureshi, Ismail, Rauf, Latif & Tahir, 2015). From my personal experience this leadership style has its pros and cons. The first advantage if this style is that it helps solve complex issues, this style encourages the development of a creative environment, and it also helped encourage connectivity between team members.  The disadvantages of this style include; it is regretful at times when every member of the team thinks that their input has to be implemented and as a leader I spent a lot of time apologizing to individuals whose idea was not implemented and processing decision at times tends to take a lot of time and this slows down implementation of some input (Miller, 2017).

            Being an effective leader means I have the ability to influence and motivate others work well.  As a leader I am responsible for creating a vision and the duty to motivate others to pursue this vision.  My personality greatly defines how I fit into a leadership style. My personality as an extraversion and conscientiousness puts me in a good position to be an effective leader. The leadership style I use also impacts my leadership a lot (Bertsch, Nguyen, Alford,  Baran, Reynen, Saeed & Ondracek, 2017). To achieve a higher effectiveness as a leader the democratic leadership style can be improved through taking some of the control back from the subordinates the control will be taken from an area that has the chance to improve a business (Bianca, n.d). Lastly, this style can be improved by taking charge of opening another business location and develop a new product while the team of subordinates handles the existing operations. 

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Reference List

Alkahtani, H. A.,  Ismael, A., & Mohamed, S., and Davoud, N., 2011. The impact of personality and leadership styles on leading change capability of Malaysian managers. Australian Journal of Business and Management Research. 1. 70-99.

Bertsch, A., Nguyen, H.T.H., Alford, A., Baran, W., Reynen, J., Saeed, M. and Ondracek, J., 2017. Exploring the relationship between personality and preferred leadership. Journal of Leadership, Accountability, and Ethics, 14(1), pp.32-45.

Bianca, A., n.d.  Three ways to Improve leadership styles. Retrieved from; https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/3-ways-improve-leadership-style-3522.html

Duggan, T., n.d. The Effects of Leadership Styles on the Organization. Retrieved from; https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/effects-leadership-styles-organization-5247.html

Gordon, H.R., 2000. Myers Briggs Type Indicator Personality Characteristics of Beginning Trade and Industrial and Health Occupations Education Secondary Teachers. Journal of Health Occupations Education, 14(1), p.6.

Khan, M.S., Khan, I., Qureshi, Q.A., Ismail, H.M., Rauf, H., Latif, A. and Tahir, M., 2015. The styles of leadership: A critical review. Public Policy and Administration Research, 5(3), pp.87-92.

Miller, O., 2017. 8 Pros and Cons of the Democratic Leadership Style. Retrieved from; https://medium.com/democraticleadership/8-pros-and-cons-of-the-democratic-leadership-style-5b668f070c1b

Nader, R., 2019. Leadership and motivation (Doctoral dissertation).

Pendleton, D. and Furnham, A., 2012. The impact of personality on leadership. In Leadership: All You Need To Know (pp. 135-154). Palgrave Macmillan, London.