Learned Leadership Skills
Leaders tend to have innate characteristics like charisma and confidence that inspire a following. However, such characteristics do not guarantee that they will be successful leaders (Andersen, 2012). According to the MindTools’ content team, good leadership skills can be learned (“How Good Are Your Leadership Skills”, n.d.). The MindTools leadership quiz allows one to understand their leadership strengths and weaknesses and suggests tools for improvement. Below is a discussion of my scores and the recommended areas of improvement.
Results
From the quiz I received an overall score of 79. This falls within the 53-90 range, interpreted as being on one’s way to becoming a good leader. However, the quiz suggests that no one can be too good of a leader or too experienced
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Such leaders create an inspiring vision of the future, motivate and develop their followers to achieve it (“How Good Are Your Leadership Skills”, n.d.). The areas I specifically need to work on are consistently knowing what to do when circumstances change and planning for the future. The MindTools’ suggested improvement tools which I believe will be helpful in building the confidence I need to inspire and these are; vision of the future, building expert power, strategy and decision making techniques.
In regards to being a good role model, although I consider myself as someone who do what they say and say what they do; I could be more intentional in exemplifying this to my team. What I recognize as of most importance is that in order to earn the position of a role model t is important to inspire; hence the importance of the suggested expert power tool. According to Abudi (2011), gaining experience and becoming a thought leader in a particular area, allows one to gather expert power that can be utilized to get others to help one meet their