Leadership Management Analysis for Business

Introduction
Leaders cultivate trust and provide guidance.  Dividing a leader’s sphere of influence into the two halves, trust and guidance, is one method for defining the role of leadership.  One sphere, cultivating trust, includes actions such as building credibility, establishing relationships and demonstrating one’s integrity.  The other sphere, guidance, a leader creates through activities such as establishing a vision, role modeling and instituting performance measures.
I believe the long run success of a leader, within the spheres of trust and guidance, depends upon the leader’s own personality traits and behaviors.  Most likely, this belief stems from the strength of my own internal locus of control.  Although external factors may affect short-term success in the spheres of trust and guidance, over the years of their career, a leader’s personality traits and behaviors will ultimately determine their success.
The essence of an individual is their individuality.  Thus, a unique set of personality traits and behaviors make up each individual leader.  Some personality traits and behaviors can be looked at strengths that allow a leader to better cultivate trust and provide guidance.  Weaknesses, on the other hand, hurt a leader’s ability to positively influence others.  Nevertheless, one can often utilize weaknesses as strength, if implemented in a complimentary circumstance.
This paper will first explore the sphere of trust where I will objectively identify my personality traits and behaviors that strengthen my ability to cultivate trust.  Following, the analysis of the strengths I will analyze personality traits and behaviors that weaken other people’s trust in myself.  Next, I will perform the same analyses for the sphere of guidance.  For last half of the paper, I will lay out a self-improvement plan with the hopes that the plan will act as a catalyst for personal leadership growth.

Cultivate Trust
The personality traits and behaviors that strengthen my capacity to cultivate trust all seem to be traits I developed in my earlier years, before high school and definitely before college.  Integrity and a commitment to ethics represent my foundation as a leader.  This foundation makes decision-making easier since I can always refer back to what I feel is right.  People want to be piloted by a leader who will take them down the moral path so they do not have to make the tough decisions between what is moral and not themselves.  The recognition of me morality is an integral part of a follower’s decision to trust in me.
Fairness and objectivity are valuable traits for earning trust as leader.  Americans hold strongly to the idea that they have a basic right to justice.  They believe the ultimate authority, whether it is the judicial system or a CEO, should make decisions in a fair and objective manner because that is their right.  Thus, fairness and objectivity remain essential to sustainable leadership.  As a team leader I strive to represent fairness by objectively dividing workload and opportunity, no matter my relationship with the members.  Team members trust in my leadership knowing that I will treat friend and stranger on the same level of equality.  
Authenticity, openness and honesty have been with me as long as I can remember.  My reasoning is, “I like who I am, so why not share who I am with others.”  New people I meet can sense they are getting to know the real me through their intuition, by reading my facial expressions and listening to my voice inflection.  These are all natural consequences of my authenticity.  People immediately realize I lay my motives out in the open and this allows me to build trusting relationships with others by our first meeting. 
Active listening, empathy and understanding solidify my relationships.  Active listening encourages others to share and open up.  After an individual opens up, my empathy and understanding cause him/her to believe I recognize and appreciate their needs and desires.  Believing I that I know their needs and desires, an individual is apt to trust me in leading them to place where these needs and desires will be met.
Unlike the previously described strengths that were developed fairly early on in my life, emotional intelligence and the ability to deal with failure remain areas that I continue to work on and develop.  I attribute my day-to-day, situational reactions to emotional intelligence.  These reactions dictate whether others view me as a leader or not.   For instance, an authentic, ethical and understanding worker, who breaks down when their idea fails to earn their Vice President’s approval will not be seen as a leadership material even though they strongly exhibit earlier criteria.  In contrast, a worker who takes criticism well and uses that criticism to improve their idea will be more likely to gain the admiration of coworkers and the Vice President.  The ability to deal with daily situations with intelligence and savvy inspires those around me to believe and trust that I will lead them with the same emotional intelligence.
Through self-assessments and reflections on my leadership experiences, I realize I lack certain personality traits and behaviors that cultivate trust.  Strong convictions and making it known where one stands attracts others to a leader.  Nahavandi refers to Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. as examples of leaders whose strong convictions drew others towards their movements of self-government and equality, respectively.  My motivation to lead corresponds directly to the strength of my convictions.  Since I do not hold any strong convictions, I am not strongly motivated to lead or state my weak convictions to subordinates.  To a degree, subordinates will sense my wavering convictions and lose trust in my motivation to lead us where we want to go.
This lack of conviction affects other personality and behavior traits as well such as dealing with pressure, reliability and consistency.  When schoolwork and other responsibilities do not provide stress for me, I do not focus on searching out my convictions.  Yet, when the stress elevates, I find it difficult to handle because I do not have the convictions to support me through the tough times.  Tough times cause my reliability and consistency to fade.  My motivation falls and I want to escape the responsibilities that create this stress.  A leader needs to stand as a pillar of strength during tough times for everyone else to lean against and find vigor.  When the leader falters during stressful instances and is not there to provide that strength for others, people lose their trust that leader will be there for them in future.

Guidance
A leader draws a group of people to them self through cultivating trust.  The second part of leadership involves showing this group the way towards a group’s vision.  I refer to personality traits and behaviors associated with leading a group to the vision as the sphere of guidance.  A couple of my strengths in this area like vision creation, enthusiasm and teambuilding create a great starting point for a group.  Through my ability to synthesize a vision out of the desires of a group and my contagious enthusiasm, people get excited about working with the other people to achieve the vision.  Teambuilding further motivates people towards the vision.
After the initial excitement subsides, people need a structure in which to operate that will take them to the completion of their goal.  I can role model some of my strengths for others to emulate including a strong work ethic, flexibility, a positive outlook and an internal locus of control.  Subordinates and coworkers emulate characteristics of leaders they respect and trust.  A workforce that adopts these personality traits, works hard to reach their vision, openly responds to change, sees the good in any circumstance and believes they are in control whether they reach their vision.
My self-confidence, intelligence and willingness to take risks contribute to my decisiveness.  I feel like I have the tools available to me to make smart, responsible decisions that affect me and to others.  Even though I feel comfortable making decisions, I am open to insights and opinion of others to aid me in decision-making.  In fact, I prefer consensus decision-making.  Yet, will stand up for beliefs in face of opposition, especially when it comes to ethical issues.  A strong leader who can make decisions and stand against defectors, draws closer to them those who do not feel comfortable with decision making and opposition.  This kind of decisiveness also sets the tone for the culture of an organization.
Through my commitment to growth as I leader, I identify personality traits and behaviors I can improve upon within the sphere of guidance.  The current use of empowerment and reward power do not motivate many of those around me.  They feel satisfied doing the minimum amount and quality of work.  I often find myself incapable empowering others.  Although I employ empowerment to a degree of success, I rarely make use of my reward power.  I lack the consciousness and tact to remember to reward in worthwhile and appropriate methods.  Both of these two weaknesses keep me from motivating others who lack an intrinsic motivation towards the vision of the group.
Difficult people within the groups I lead also challenge me.  Some of these difficult people exhibit stubbornness, inflexibility, negativity, incapacity to share workload and a general lack of social skills.  I find that I have little influence over people who exhibit those characteristics.  Usually, the rest of the group suffers through the process.
Some other weaknesses include delegation, little understanding of organizational politics, articulation and development of subordinate skills.  I do not manage to delegate enough.  Therefore, I get up caught in the day-to-day minutia and do not have time to look at the big picture and lead a group towards the vision.  Organizational politics baffle me.  My lack of understanding, or expert power, in the subject may create an image of incompetence in a large organization.  Sometimes when I begin to talk before I fully decide what I plan to say, I cannot articulate my ideas clearly.  This flaw results my words carrying little weight and probably a loss of audience attention.  A leader who cannot clearly and concisely express their opinions loses the respect of a group.  Lastly, I find it difficult to empower subordinates, yet develop their skills at the same time.  I realize empowerment provides skills such as self-motivation and management.  Nevertheless, I have not found the time to pass on many skills that would provide benefit.
I excel to a certain degree in the spheres of cultivating trust and guidance due to the strengths of my personality traits and behaviors.  Working on improving my weaknesses would develop me into a much more influential leader.  I have constructed a self-improvement plan as a structure for my personal growth.
Here are the weaknesses I would like to work on: articulation, strong convictions, learning to say ‘no’, reliability, handling pressure, reward power, empowerment, dealing with difficult people, delegation, and developing subordinate skills.
Each weakness has one or a few corresponding method/s by which I can overcome the weakness.  These methods include holding the weakness in my consciousness so I can consciously make an effort to improve on that weakness during my day.  I can also use self-exploration, learning, practice and forming habits as well as a few others to improve on these behaviors and skills.
In turn, each method can only be implemented through the use of a tool.  I will put into practice tools such reflection, meditation, reading, time management, a mentor and more to aid me in my personal growth.
I will post my self-improvement plan with an attached schedule as the wallpaper on my laptop.  Using the schedule, every three weeks I will commit to working on one weakness for that time period.  I will attach a sticky note with my weakness written on it to the bathroom mirror to remind me of my commitment in the morning.  I will use a note card with the weakness written on it as my marker in my daily planner to remind me of my commitment throughout the day.  I will use the tools to implement the methods that will aid me I turning my weakness into strength.
For instance, for weeks one through three I will work on articulation.  One method for excelling at articulation is keeping the idea in my consciousness during the day until articulating becomes a habit.  I will use the reminders such as sticky notes, note cards and computer wallpaper to keep articulation in my consciousness.  Practice also improves the skill of articulation.  Conversions, speeches and, especially, class discussions will provide me with the opportunity to practice articulating. 

Conclusion
            I find leadership a complex science.  I some situations a leader can utilize weakness as a strength.  Other situations will arise where an individual will challenge a behavior a leader had always considered a strength.  Regardless of the value of a personality trait or behavior, self-assessment allows a leader to learn more about him or herself.  Furthermore, a leader discovers the influence each of these traits and behaviors has upon those others.  When a need arises, I will be able to match the appropriate behavior to the situation.  If I am unable to handle the situation, I will know what I need to look for when securing someone who can.  The key is to be able to identify the need and the corresponding influence.