what makes leaders effective?

My Leadership Profile

            There is some question that we all ask, what makes leaders effective? Regardless of the response, there are some qualities and strength that makes to standout good leaders from the rest of the population. One best way to adopt leadership is to develop and assist the strength of individuals and help their strength to apply (Warren, 2017). Through the Gallup’s Strengths Finder assessment, I was able to reveal my five highest rated themes: Learner, achiever, intellectual, input, and analytical. I agree that the five themes of the survey reflect my talent. I don’t personally believe there is a specific trait for leadership. But I believe that people born with unique strengths. Individuals can utilize their strength in a way to manage and lead their employees. Sometimes I work as a charge nurse, I use my strengths to engage, motivate, and encourage my employees to increase productivity and job satisfaction.

I love learning and always driven to the process of learning. It is possible to change an individual from novice to competent through the process of learning. The process of learning energizes, thrives in the fast-moving world. According to Gallup’s StrengthsFinder assessment, my second highest theme is an achiever. It gives me a good feeling when I achieve something either at the workplace or at home. My inborn desire of achieving something push me every day to accomplish tasks. My achieving desire might not be always planned or focused but is there all the time. I can utilize my achieving talent to empower my employee to visualize their goal and outcomes. The third theme-intellection helps me to critically think. The critical thinking could be to solve a problem, engage individuals in a certain activity, or to establish an idea. As a leader, my intellectual thinking always helps me to make the right decisions. My fourth strength is input. I like collecting pieces of information and put them together so that to develop ideas. As a leader inputting information provide me with good information about my employees. According to Gallup’s StrengthsFinder assessment survey, being analytical is my other strength. I like to input other people’s idea and enjoying analyzing them objectively to see the pattern and connections of the ideas. This fifth theme also crucial for my leadership process in the way that I can accept my follower’s idea and analyze and then observe the association between the idea and the outcomes.

The literature agrees that strength-based leadership is valuable and effective (Welch, Grossaint, Reid, & Walker, 2014). One interesting pointed by Welch and his colleagues are that working to build strength is valuable and efficient than fixing weaknesses. The challenging part of the leadership process is to integrate strengths. Integrating strength perspectives requires concomitant exploration and research (Louis, 2009). According to Louis (2009) report, the strength approach is empowering individuals to do things passionately rather than merely survive. The ultimate goal of leadership is the act of action, not understanding or knowledge. Therefore, building individuals strength rather than focusing on fixing their weakness will provide workers the opportunity to learn from their work area rather than moving them away to learn. Finally, the integration of talents and involving to act is a critical point for a leadership process to achieve the desired outcomes.

References

Louis, M. C. (2009). A summary and critique of existing strengths-based educational research utilizing the Clifton StrengthsFinder. Omaha, NE: The Gallup Organization.

Warren, R. (2017). Strengths-based leadership assessments miss the target – and the species. Development and Learning in Organizations, 31(6), 1-3. doi: http://dx.doi.org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1108/DLO-06-2017-0060

Welch, D., Grossaint, K., Reid, K., & Walker, C. (2014). Strengths-based leadership development: Insights from expert coaches. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 66(1), 20–37. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1037/cpb0000002