Leadership Differentiation Statement, Essay Example

What differentiates you as a leader? Share an Example

I personally consider being a leader as an opportunity more than just a task. I do believe that it is a course of directing others that provides me the distinctive capacity to make effective impact on the lives of those who I am supposed to lead. Being influential and authoritative among others however comes with a specific point of crucial responsibility. In a way, this is what differentiates my leadership styles from others. Being a leader for me is not simply dependent on my capacity to command and demand from others. Instead, it relies on my capability to hear and see what the people I am leading demand for. In a way, this indicates my concern over the fact that effective leadership comes from a two-way direction of benefit that comes from the leader received by the members of the team and vice versa. The beneficial condition of making a great impact on how others operate or how others function is a gift that is given for leaders to experience. This experience is what I consider an opportunity that I, as a leader, should never let go of. The consideration over the capacity to be authoritative and influential to other people could be used in a very meaningful way by leaders as they aim to not only motivate others but also to change the way they think and live in numerous ways.

As for example, whenever I am given the chance to mingle with others as their leader, I do take every chance to know who they are, what they want, what they expect of me and what strengths and weaknesses they have. Knowing these details about my subordinates allows me to see the value they could provide the team with based on their capacities. It is also through knowing this information that I am able to set a complementing schedule of tasks that each of the team members share between each other. In a hope of having them work under a cooperative and complementing system, I do presume the responsibility to take over the need to make sure that every strong point of each individual is used effectively while every weakness of each individual is supported promptly by the strength of the other.

From this particular condition of leading approach, I do use the assumption of reality and reasonability of expectations among those that I am leading. Knowing what they can and cannot do allows me to create a schedule of tasks that could help them work alongside each other and not against each other. I do believe that a machine, like a team, only works when there is subordination and coordination among all its parts. The same way it is when leading; the better defined the capacities of each individual is, the more solid the team becomes as one becomes a complementary member of the other. I have observed that through being able to apply this particular consideration over my team members, I have been able to provide the people a chance to see who they are, what they can do and what they can still improve not only in their work procedures but on themselves. This way, not only am I able to empower them to function better, but I am also able to influence them to think better of themselves and use their strengths in better positions that benefit them personally as well. As for the benefit that I receive, I do realize that enforcing camaraderie through working alongside among the team members create a solid source of team foundation resulting to good outcomes and performance.

What is your greatest liability as a leader? Share an example.

While my strength focuses on how I am able to empower others work alongside each other, I find it hard for myself to apply a sense of trust on some of my team members. I often profile people based on how they respond to me. At first, this attitude did not seem to be so much of a problem. However, in the long run, I have realized that neglecting its impact on my personality and my approach to leadership hurts the very strengths that I have in dealing and motivating other individuals in the team. Profiling individuals mainly involve judging them even before they are able to present themselves to me. It is as if I am prejudging their capacities as well as their behavior which is most often than not hard to ignore when the real issues are pressed on me as the leader of the team. Some call it prejudice, but I simply call it a sense of weakness in seeing who the real person is with such an impartial position. Leaders are of course required to be impartial at the most possible way to all those that they are mingling with, especially towards those that they are leading. In the course of hoping to contend with this requirement, I still find myself putting favor on others and simply putting others aside. Not that I directly shun those that I do not want and put to the pedestal those that I do like, but the consideration over my personal opinion about my team mates often raise issues of favoritism that specifically hurt the environment where the team tries to exist.

It is because of this that at times, the desire to create a more unified environment for the members of the team to work effectively become deemed over by the option of competition that is set up by the subjective treatment that my subordinates receive from me. There were instances that this particular attitude of mine caused a commotion within the team as we were completing a particular task that has been placed under our responsibility. A team member, thinking that I was more in favor of him that that of the other has pushed through to make changes in the process we were supposed to take without my knowledge. Perhaps it was the confidence he gained from knowing that I give him much favor that pushed him to make decisions outside of his jurisdiction. The other team members, knowing that the approach he suggests will not work began to stir up arguments hence causing a clash on the team. At this point, I realized that if one of the team members, who I did not give so much favor to, had not stepped up to fix the problem, then the whole team could have failed in completing the responsibility we were supposed to accomplish.

True, organizing people from different walks of life and different points of uniqueness is not an easy task; especially if they are expected to work on one unified goal only. A leader, first and foremost, should know that such a challenge should be dealt with serious concern and attention. It is only through knowing the uniqueness of each individual and accepting such differences equally that a leader could stand impartial in the midst of his team members and subordinates. As for me, spinning off from being objective about my members and subordinates, I hope to create a much better environment that would allow everyone to set aside competition amongst themselves and embrace the culture of equal camaraderie as they complete their responsibilities as part of the team. Leading at this point relies on the impartiality of my consideration and appreciation of every individual in the team as valuable members who have something great to offer.