Unit 4, Assignment 1
Richard Hairston
GM586-01 Transformational Leader
Dr. Sue Pettine
11/8/17
Transformational leadership is a style of leadership where a leader works with subordinates to identify needed change, creating a vision to guide the change through inspiration, and executing the changes in tandem with committed members of a group (Martin, 2013). Using the SMARTER model, this paper will create five goal statements that will transcend me to realize what it takes to be a transformational leader as well to evaluate how realistic those goals are.
As a transformational leader, one has to have the ability to see the big picture and take a longer range, broader perspectives. This will me as a leader step back from the day-to-day tactical details of the organization and focus on the “why” and not just “what” and “how”. It is important that transformational leaders be able to effective change to help bring about success for the organizations. For such changes to be realized, it all has to start with strategic thinking where the focus is not more about the short-term goals, but rather long-terms ones.
This goal is one that is realistic and achievable. This is because what needs to happen for such a goal to be achievable is first the identification of the long-term goals that can help see changes that can last for the organization. This will enable me to think on how such long-term goals can be achieved through strategic thinking.
As transformational leader, it is my goal to learn to pay attention and demonstrate to others that I value what they have to say (Greer & Plunkett, 2000). It is my goal to use active listening, open-minded questions, body-language, and eliminate distractions that get in the way of my ability listen. As leader who is supposed to engage with his subordinates, listening is very important for better communication and understanding.
This is a realistic goal because it is a goal that is more of improving my skills as a good listener owing to the fact that there are people that are working under my guidance and watch. It is all about letting my subordinates tell me what they feel about my leadership and how this should be run in regards to ensuring that the organization achieve its objectives. Transformational leadership entails listening the various people that are being provided with guidance and assistance. This is the kind of leadership that is more of providing assistance that giving orders and directions on how things should be done.
It is my goal to shift my leadership style away from always giving direction and telling to guide and develop my direct reports. Work with each of my direct reports to create their own individual development plans. It is the expectation of subordinates that as transformational leadership is more of coaching to the let the junior be like you. This is why it expected that guidance will be the key role and responsibility of me as leader of the team that will be working under my watch and authority.
This is realistic goal because it is all about changing attitude towards the team and seeing them as people who can be mentored to become greater people even better that me as their leader. This way it will enable me to stop giving orders but instead coach the team to be able to perform various tasks even without my watch. This will make the team to develop courage and experience to be able to engage in tasks that they could not engage in without the me leading the team. Coaching will mean that bring a workforce that knows the importance of professional ethics among other ethical obligations they may have.
It is my goal as a transformational leader to improve my relationships with my peers. This is to ensure that I become a better partner, understand their goals and needs, and learn to work together to help achieve each other’s goals. Transformational leadership is one that entails working with a group through helping them. It is through collaboration with the people that one is working with either as equals or as subordinates, it makes work easier people help each other through sharing of ideas. This makes tasks that would be otherwise difficult easier and faster. This is a realistic goal as it is one that will need change of interaction with people to that which can facilitate collaboration. It is all about ensuring that one feels that you are helping them in achieving what they are tasked to achieve and this will naturally trigger a collaboration kind of relationship among the various people that are involved as part of the group I am leading.
As a leader, transformational leader, it is good to be able to assess, hire, promote, and develop workforce that can fill the many positions that organization being led has. It involves, developing a virtual bench for all key positions and a succession plan for my own position. A leader is always appreciated with the kind of workforce that he or she has been able to maintain and lead an organization with to success. This means a leader one should be able to create a pool of talent people that can be able to replace him or her once he or she has retired or left such a leadership position. This is why most leaders are always considered failures because the organizations they lead collapse when the leave such leadership positions. This goal will help create a measurable achievement (Ekeberg, 2010).
As a leader time is of very great importance. This is because there are various projects that will be started that will require time limits. This means that working with the timelines is very necessary for achievement of goals of the organization. Every goal has to be time bound, this means having time as one of the goals means that as a leader time will always be respected.
References
Ekeberg, S. (2010). An integration of four models of goal setting. London: Pearson.
Greer, C., & Plunkett, W. (2000). Supervision: diversity and teams in the workplace. New York
City: Prentice Hall .
Martin, B. (2013). Innovative management strategies: leadership styles. Washington. D.C:
American Institutes for Research .
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