MBA 530 – Leading People & Organizations

Scenario

The organization you work for as a director of leadership and learning is looking to create an adaptive leadership toolkit to help improve employee leadership skills and behaviors over the next two years. To begin this work, you conducted a personal leadership self-assessment to take a leadership inventory of yourself. Now that you know areas that you can improve upon as a leader, you decided to create a personal development plan that will identify actionable steps toward improving these areas you’ve identified. Your intensions are to incorporate your personal development plan into the adaptive leadership toolkit to serve as an exemplar that can be used by all people leaders in the organization.

Prompt

Using the provided template, address the following:

Leadership behavior: Based on the results of your personal leadership self-assessment, describe the leadership behavior you scored lowest in and explain how developing this could have a positive impact on your ability to lead.

SMART Goal: Apply SMART goal setting to create a personal development plan that aligns with the leadership behavior you’re looking to improve. Keep in mind that your personal development plan will be used as an exemplar for the adaptive leadership toolkit in Milestone Two. Your SMART goal should address the following:

“S” Specific: Your goal must be specific.i) State your personal development goal.ii) Describe the reason for this goal.iii) Describe the objective(s) needed to ensure this goal it met.“M” Measurable: Your goal must be measurable.i) Describe the metric(s) that will be used to determine if you meet this goal.ii) Describe the metric(s) that will be used to measure performance of meeting objective(s) along the way.“A” Achievable: Your goal must be achievable.i) Describe the tools and skills you will need to achieve this goal.ii) Describe who needs to be involved to allow you to be successful in achieving this goal.“R” Relevant: Your goal must be relevant.i) Explain how this goal can be linked to an overall business objective.ii) Explain how this goal will increase your knowledge and improve your overall performance as a leader.“T” Time-Bound:Your goal must be time bound.i) Provide an overall timeline for the completion of this goal.ii) Provide tangible deliverable(s) with due dates that support the objective(s) you indicated above 1
Leadership Self-Assessment Report
Courtney Roberts
MBA 350 – Leading People & Organizations
June 2, 2024
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Leadership Self-Assessment Report
Overview
In my role as the director of leadership and learning in an organization that deals with
prosthetics, it is imperative to develop leadership qualities in the organization. In light of the
organization’s plan to expand its operation into the Canadian markets and the recent
employee engagement survey that revealed indifferent responses towards leadership
practices, such areas of strength and areas of concern have become evident. This focus entails
working on skills such as social skills, emotional skills, and personal skills. As it has been
established, my task is to develop an adaptive leadership toolkit. In this context, the first step
is to take the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) of my leadership behavior.
Self-Assessment Results
Upon completing the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) self-assessment (Paskova,
2023), my scores across five key leadership behaviors were as follows: Model the Way (57),
Inspire a Shared Vision (54), Challenge the Process (58), Enable Others to Act (58), and
Encourage the Heart (60). These scores give more information about my talents and
weaknesses in leadership; it indicates that I am good in skills such as collaborating with
co-workers and valuing others’ input and ideas while pointing to weaknesses in expressing a
vision and motivating people towards embracing organizational goals (Paskova, 2023).
Lowest Ranked Leadership Behavior: Establish a shared vision
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Fostering a Shared Vision is one of the core competencies of leadership; it entails
communicating a vision that all can embrace. This way, leaders get people excited, dedicated,
and focused on what could be done for them, thus creating a sense of vision and mission. This
behavior is imperative for leadership development as it plays multiple significant roles.
Firstly, a vision provides direction and drives enthusiasm within the team, which also ensures
that team members try their best to achieve common goals. Secondly, it enhances congruency
and due diligence since everyone is working towards the realization of shared objectives
instead of having to decipher what needs to be done. Lastly, this practice fosters a culture of
innovation because it encourages people to think outside the box and come up with new ways
of doing things, hence creating positive change in the organization.
To improve my ranking in this leadership behavior, there is a need to improve on the
aspects of leadership communication by developing the capacity to present vision clearly and
persuasively to the subordinates. It means not only that the direction is set that points to the
future, but people are mobilized and included; they get the feeling that they are contributing
to the creation of that vision (Setiadi et al., 2023). By engaging the team in conversation and
actively seeking their opinions, I am seeking to ensure that everyone becomes personally
invested in achieving the identified goals and objectives, which can help bring about change
that benefits the organization.
Highest Ranked Leadership Behavior: Encourage the Heart
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Encourage the Heart, identified as the leader’s behavior with the highest priority in my
self-reflective data, involves an appreciation of the team members’ efforts and
accomplishments. It includes acknowledging workers and their contributions, as well as
creating a team focus and common objectives. From this perspective, leaders create contexts
that ensure people feel appreciated in the organization and, therefore, motivated to work
harder.
Achieving success in this area of leadership is therefore crucial in leadership
development for the following reasons. Firstly, formal rewards and appreciation of the
milestones help enhance the morale of the employees, making them more productive,
focused, and happy (Setiadi et al., 2023). Second, when the leaders are able to rejoice together,
the team members feel a sense of oneness, which makes them work together as a cohesive
force. Finally, the experience shows that high retention rates are achieved due to the culture
of appreciation and recognition of employees since people behave accordingly. Hence, as a
leader, encouraging the Heart on a regular basis enhances morale in the team and binds the
team to goals towards the organization’s success and the happiness of those in the
organization.
Impact on Leadership and Organizational Development
Addressing Weaknesses
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Enhancing my skill of creating a shared vision will be most beneficial to my leadership
career. I must have a clearer vision and implement efficient communication strategies, as this
will assist in motivating the team for the upcoming challenges, particularly as the
organization seeks to expand into new markets. This should also increase my capacity to lead
change and inspire innovation among the team, thus fostering a progressive atmosphere
within the group.
Leveraging Strengths
I am most passionate about encouraging the Heart and, therefore, have all the
potential necessary to create a morale-boosting atmosphere in an environment. This
capability will aid in achieving high employee satisfaction and productivity to retain key
people during organizational transition and growth. Building on this strength, it will be
possible to guarantee that positive reinforcements are the definitive components of the
organizational culture.
Leadership Behaviors for Improvement
When using the information from the Employee Satisfaction Survey, one can conclude
that the organization should focus on enhancing particular leadership behaviors to respond to
particular business challenges. To be specific, Inspiring a Shared Vision is considered one of
the organization’s significant ideas for improvement (Rezeki et al., 2023). In this way, by
presenting clear goals and involving staff, a manager can help an organization find its sense of
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direction, which can offset the consequences of employees’ decline in satisfaction with their
work. It is equally crucial to improve the option Enable Others to Act as it fosters trust among
employees and provides them authorization to act and work in synergism. Last but not least,
leaders should be instrumental in the practice of Encouraging the Heart by complimenting
people for the work done and rejoicing in the successes achieved as they attend to what is
perceived as a lack of recognition or appreciation of employees’ efforts at contributing to
organizational innovation and productivity.
Successful Leadership Behaviors
On the other hand, this paper established that the organization’s leadership has
achieved some leadership behaviors that help in managing relationships with direct reports
(Rezeki et al., 2023). Importantly, Encouraging the Heart has been observed as effective, as the
leaders in question do provide recognition and praise for work done, as well as successes
made. Such behavior creates positive feelings of ownership and commitment from the team,
an aspect that helps in boosting morale and productivity. Moreover, leaders are great at
Enabling Others to Act, creating an environment that encourages people in the team. When
leaders give support to their subordinates, as well as open opportunities for their professional
development, trust is established, and good working relationships are produced. Sustaining
such successful leadership behaviors enhances the entire organizational culture of support
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and unity between the leaders and their subordinates in the organization, hence enhancing
organizational performance.
Conclusion
The reflection was based on the LPI self-assessment, and the experience was rich with
knowledge of my leadership skills. My career strength reflects my achievements in Encourage
the Heart, which is my highest score, while my area of improvement is reflected in my lowest
score for Inspire of a Shared Vision. So, with the help of the further development of visioning
and communication with subordinates, I will ensure their correct orientation and motivate
the team to succeed in achieving the organization’s strategic objectives and development
initiatives. Such strength-based and weakness-focused strategies to help build a list of
developmental tasks for my development plan and form an adaptive leadership tool kit for
the
organization
will
be
invaluable.
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References
Paskova, L. (2023). MOTIVATION TO ACHIEVE IN THE CONTEXT OF TRANSFORMATIVE
LEADERSHIP. In ICERI2023 Proceedings (pp. 3898–3904). IATED.
Rezeki, F., Mardiputera, H. M., & Wulandari, A. (2023). High and low levels of employee
performance: The role of transformational leadership styles and employee
engagement. Asian Journal of Management, Entrepreneurship and Social Science, 3(03),
568-584.
Setiadi, M. T., Sofi’i, I., Wahyudi, W., & Haryadi, D. (2023). Dynamic capability of servant
leadership as a triggering factor for organizational commitment and employee
performance. International Journal of Applied Finance and Business Studies, 11(2),
246-254.
MBA 530 Module Six Assignment
Personal Development Plan Template
Complete this template by replacing the bracketed text with the relevant information.
First and Last Name: [Insert text.]
Date: [Insert text.]
Goal Description: [Insert your personal development goal and the objectives that describe
successful completion of this goal.]
Leadership Competency: [Insert the leadership behavior or skill that will be improved upon
completion of this goal.]
Category
S: Specific
M: Measurable
A: Achievable
R: Relevant
T: Time Bound
Explanation
What do I plan to accomplish?
What do I plan to achieve?
What is the reason for this
goal? Why is it relevant?
Example: Ensure a
development plan, with
specific deliverables, is jointly
developed with all of my direct
reports.
What metric(s) will be used to
determine if you meet the
goal? If more than one
milestone is included, provide
the metric that will be used to
measure performance.
What tools and skills do I need
to achieve the goal? Who
needs to be involved for me to
be successful? What is my
motivation for wanting to
achieve this goal?
How is this goal linked to an
overall business objective?
How will this goal increase my
knowledge and improve my
overall performance?
Provide tangible deliverable(s)
with due dates if more than
one milestone is included.
Provide the final due date for
completion of this
development goal.
Response
[Insert text.]
[Insert text.]
[Insert text.]
[Insert text.]
[Insert text.]