Leadership blog 5: My vision of Leadership

Fear is the only thing that makes everything real, It drives us towards our goals. Fear of missing out, Fear of losing, Fear of never having even tried. Fear helps me achieve. Fear helps me evolve. What does fear do for you ?

– Pratham Amitabh

Time really does fly when you’re having fun, But it flies even faster when you’re trying to get work done. I think everyone who really works hard with whatever activity they are currently pursuing, it can be their jobs, a masters programme, a hobby or even a charity that they might be organising, will agree with the above sentence. When you are really involved with your work you do not realises the speed at which time passes by and that is why, Time management is one of the most important skills a great leader must master.

The last ten weeks, that is since the beginning of this Leadership module, I have noticed that time management is the skill I can most improve on, as it directly impacts all my strengths and weaknesses. Before I could work on ways to improve my time management skill, I first tried to identify the factors causing the lack of time management. I was able to identify two major factors affecting the mentioned skill and they are procrastination towards work not involving any reward and short time spans of attention for tasks, that I do not find challenging or those that do not involve any creative thinking. So to over come these factors I was able to devise a plan that would help me gradually become more time-effiecient and over the weeks I can say I have noticed significant improvements.

Now to talk about my style of leadership. At the beginning of this course, I would employee a mix of autocratic and transactional styles of leadership to get my team to complete our tasks to meet the end goals. I am very goal driven individual and I take my work very seriously, as I always want to win. But then I noticed some drawbacks to this style of leadership, I was not becoming better, I was not evolving, I was just getting work done. But that wasn’t my aim, I want to learn while I do my work, otherwise I don’t see the point of doing anything. So I started to talk less and listen more, I started to go out of my comfort zone, starting talking to people I wouldn’t usually interact with, I started to challenge myself. This is when the change started to take place, I was learning new concepts and ways of thinking from other people that I could now incorporate into my daily life. So my leadership style changed to a more transformational approach, I now had the ability to identify peoples strengths and weaknesses and was there by able to motivate and inspire then using the needs that appealed to them the most. I want o inspire people to do more and utilise their skills and abilities, to achieve their complete potential, If I am getting better at something and improving everyday, I want others to improve along with me.

We all want to be better in life, we want money, power, fame and whatever else that may have a certain appeal to us. But how can we do this effectively ? I found that having a role-model or a mentor works best because they are someone who has already experienced what you will experience in life and can guide you through the process by pointing you in the right direction. My mentor, as most of you would now know by reading my previous blogs is former Apple Inc. CEO, Steve Jobs. He embodied every quality and skill that I wish to have and some of which I already do. He was a visionary, inspirational and out of the box thinker who revolutionised technology for many generations of individuals. He is also a genius when it comes to marketing and a perfectionist. I am inspired by him and aspire to be like him and will work hard towards achieving that. The following video is what inspired me the most and I suggest you all watch it with great interest.

To conclude I would like to say, find your passion, if you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, listen to your heart and intuition they will know when you have found what you love and lastly don’t ever let failure stop you, learn from your mistakes and keep moving forward.

References

Smallbusiness.chron.com. (2016). 5 Different Types of Leadership Styles. [online] Available at: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/5-different-types-leadership-styles-17584.html [Accessed 24 Jun. 2016].

Belbin.com. (2016). Belbin Team Roles | Belbin. [online] Available at: http://www.belbin.com/about/belbin-team-roles/ [Accessed 24 Jun. 2016].

Harvard Business Review. (2005). Seven Transformations of Leadership. [online] Available at: https://hbr.org/2005/04/seven-transformations-of-leadership [Accessed 24 Jun. 2016].