Growing as a Leader

Growing as a Leader

Creating Change in My Leadership

Last week I did a SWOT analysis about my leadership skills and characteristics and I came to the conclusion that the weaknesses I identified can be changed if I work hard on them and create a plan of how to change my leadership.

The following weaknesses were identified:

• I am not a good public speaker and I tend to become shy if I need to speak up.

• I tend to become impatient when things are too slow and what I realized is that compared to other people almost everything is too slow for me.

• I sometimes tend to judge people too quickly based on obvious signs.

• I don’t ask enough questions.

• I am not strong at defining my expectations or establishing my rules to others.

They also say 80% of the people tend to have optimistic bias but I can see both the optimistic and pessimistic tendencies in me when I look at myself and my prospect of becoming a successful leader.

It’s somewhat the same with this assignment; I don’t entirely believe that the plans I am just about come up with helping me in my endeavors.

Yet, if I compare myself to even with my version of myself from a year ago, I see a big change. My public speech became much better and much more confident. My problem-solving skills are significantly improved and my patience with other people is also better. So, I would say these things did not improve from one day to the other but gradually I will be able to see the change, and eventually, I will become the type of leader I want to become.

Let’s then go over the list and create a strategy:

• I am not a good public speaker and I tend to become shy if I need to speak up.

Skills: Public speaking

Category: Leadership skills

Personal development: Gaining confidence in myself

Plan for improvement: Practice recording shorter or longer speeches and presentations regularly. Watch TED talk or other related material about public speaking. Ask other people to listen to me while giving a presentation and ask them for feedback.

• I tend to become impatient when things are too slow and what I realized is that compared to other people almost everything is too slow for me.

Skills: Patience

Category: People skills

Personal development: Listening to others and slowing down, empathy

Plan for improvement: Try to listen to others more and by listening to them, try to understand their point of view. By doing so, I should be able to understand and follow their dynamics of thinking and apply them to my own world. Impatience is probably the sign that I am not genuinely interested in what other people want to say.

• I sometimes tend to judge people too quickly based on obvious signs.

Skills: Intercultural competence

Category: People/intercultural skills

Personal development: Refining intercultural competence skills

Plan for improvement: Continue to be exposed to different cultures and different backgrounds. To observe people, to listen to their stories, and to read between the lines. To lose guardedness that causes sometimes to react too quickly because of fear.

• I don’t ask enough questions.

Skills: Effective questioning

Category: People/leadership skill

Personal development: Learning to speak and ask in open-ended sentences.

Plan for improvement: Engage in conversations - formal or informal - where I will need to ask questions. Even if I feel uncomfortable asking something, make the effort and ask. When engaging in casual conversation, be genuinely interested in the person I am talking to by asking questions and thus learning things about them.

• I am not strong at defining my expectations or establishing my rules for others.

Skills: Defining and establishing expectations and rules

Category: Project management

Personal development: Improving my project management skills related to task management and communication

Plan for improvement: Practice breaking down everyday actions, create simple projects and break them down into tasks and milestones. Learn to define project briefs, realize actions items by writing them down instead of just keeping them in my head. Once I practiced breaking down things into smaller steps, to try to build up logical ways to explain and describe those items to others. Write down goals and achievements on a daily basis.

Well, I managed to get through the list, and I must admit I am truly surprised even as of now by the fact of how clear things and expectations became by simply creating a plan or strategy for growth.

I am excited to see how my leadership style will be affected by next year and I am hoping that I will be able to keep up the good work I started with this essay. But in case, the ten thousand steps only start with the first step anyway, and I definitely made that first step today.