Independence
I believe everything in my life begins from the place of the values I hold dear. Personal values reflect how I lead myself and reflect on the story, which I believe and what I tell myself daily. When thinking of this, I remember a recent retreat where I intended to place the term ‘values’ in different contexts. Within the course of the retreat, which happens in the summer of last year, I understood that my personal values are indeed the convictions about what I find desirable and important. These values help to establish my personal desired characteristics. They help me prioritize tasks, make credible and ethical decisions, prioritize different tasks, and, more importantly, develop credibility as a leader. It can be noted that instrumental values are values that often reference ideas and beliefs marked by the desirable patterns of the behavior. () The instrumental value focuses on competence or moral values, which include independence, responsibility, utilitarianism, helpfulness, and intelligence. One of the core values that cultivate an integral part of my leadership practice is independence and imagination.
Independence
Independence involves achieving an optimal balance between relationship and task in which both are working in positive synergy. As it pertains to leadership practice, independence goes well beyond personal beliefs to include heroic action and individual experience. Independence within leadership practice is a collective action that is for the firm’s benefit as a whole. I have associated independence as a positive leadership trait that aligned leadership practice with self-reliance, autonomy, and freedom. Through independence, I have gained the willingness to break from the prescribed norm, which my peers upheld, to step into a lane of my own with an innovative vision.
My view of independence often extends well beyond the activity of following my own path but also into the action of interdependence in which I can see the world through the lens of ‘we’ as opposed to the ‘I.’ in this, my leadership action of independence works with interdependence through the connection with others and maintenance of viable and valuable relationships. I view the leadership practice as more of a collective activity, which often requires additional learning and increased mutual inquiry. Within a group task recently assigned to me, we were tasked with preparing a report for our class assessment. The task calls on increased collaboration. The team of 5 had to coordinate numerous meetings in which there was sharing of knowledge and collaboration to allow us to complete the assignment. One of the increased benefits from this experience attributed to independence is increased collaboration through independent leadership and interdependence. The action served to create strength in which the independence allowed for my assignment team members embraces collaboration, which allows for the best use of each individuals’ talent. Independence leadership allows for increased perception of different availed possibilities in everything, and understand how different disparate things can be connected. In the group assignment, there was a mash-up of knowledge, and unique juxtapose of ideas that, once morphed together, enabled us to develop a winning report for an excellent grade.
Imagination
Imagination serves as an n avenue for the cultivation of creativity as a leadership value. I strongly believe that creativity cultivated by increased imagination can often increase success and productivity. It is no doubt that imagination will allow for the focus on things in a novel way to resolve problems that often elude others. We live in a unique world where the problems we are experiencing are intense compared to past problems. Getting beyond these unique problems can often start from the imagination of how these problems can be resolved in a new way. For me, the abandonment of rigid structures can only be achieved with an imagination that often serves as a fuel for innovative activity. Imagination as a leadership value for me is visible in the action of problem-solving. For any of the tasks I work on presently, I always focus on exploring new opportunities for the resolution of problems well beyond the more conventional methods. In the summer of last year, I was privileged to work part time in a startup. one of the most enjoyable sessions in the startup was the Ideas lab, which helped each week. The founder focused on using nontraditional techniques in which people brainstormed about a problem the team was currently facing and how teams and people can resolve for greater success. The employees do not always have similar information, and therefore it allows them to see problems uniquely and therefore come up with new and profound ways to resolve the problem. The action of increased imagination works in the development of a positive workplace mentality while providing unique perspectives. Imagination helps to breakdown boundaries. And from the experiences, the leadership practice has enabled me to look beyond arbitrary boundaries, which help maintain and emphasize personal integrity. I recognize that imagination begins with identifying the boundaries that limit my activities, such as working, because there is a directive. Imagination allows me to focus on my being a value in any activity while boosting my personal integrity.
While these traits help me the most, I believe that I have a weakness that often hinders my leadership activity. The action is the provision of ineffective feedback. The ineffective feedback, especially constructive feedback, often makes me fail to communicate to anyone whom I am working with their successes or inadequacies in the place of work. One incident of this is when I worked as a study group leader. A student was persistently late coming into the meetings and did not participate in the group work. I failed to address this situation where I would have followed the member up, got the problem, and identified how we could help him be a better participant. The failure to do this action resulted in persistent behavior by the individual which delayed our study process. It is my firm belief that earlier enagegement would have helped me ensure that there is great success.
As a leader, we should be able to communicate the details on how our peers perform to allow for the setting of quantifiable and clear actionable goals that can be applied in the future. Without such feedback, change is almost impossible, and there is a likelihood of the individual being unmotivated. In overcoming the weakness, the first action to be done is identifying the issue to identify the required skillsets to allow for improvement. Following the identification of the weakness, there is a need to focus on an improvement strategy in which the weakness can be resolved. In my case, my lack of feedback can be managed by focusing on the development goal which I would work towards. Finally, there is room for appropriate feedback from external parties, which will help me adjust to suit my personal leadership needs. Finally, I aim to ensure to evaluate my personal progress. Consistency will be key in the management of the problem because I believe that improvement is not instantaneous. Consistent self-evaluations coupled with continued education will help improve my leadership traits. Finally, looking up to individual with greater experience, especially people who have overcome leadership weaknesses will help ensure that I have not only fantastic resources, but visible models on how to improve my leadership practice to make me a better leader.