The leadership behaviors which I feel are needed to improve the work environment are the
following: showing discipline, step out of your comfort zone, ability to inspire and trust others,
and learn to have an open mind. In my opinion a good leader should display the behavior of
discipline and the ability to inspire others. I can remember back when I was in boot camp for the
United States Air Force and all I would hear is the word “discipline” from the training
instructor. You can see as time went on, we all started to emulate the training instructor’s
behavior and followed his lead outside of the barracks by displaying discipline. It was a clear
reflection on how the training instructor was able to inspire others in my unit by displaying the
proper behavior. f
To help develop into an effective leader, taking on more responsibility outside of your job
description and getting out of your comfort zone by learning new ideas is great way to increase
your skills. A great way to accomplish the above is by taking on projects outside of your
expertise and working with other different departments. This will allow you to network with
others and get you noticed as a person who takes on the initiative to learn new skills to help with
growth potential. Delegation and trusting others are also a key attribute to an effective leader.
Keeping an open mind and learning new ideas from others will help the leader to learn from
others. Regarding delegation, this will free up time and allow others on the team to grow by
completing tasks they would not normally do.
The leadership skills that I would recommend for today’s leaders are self-development,
developing a team, and strategic thinking. I firmly believe that leaders should continue to
develop by learning new ideas. This is the reason why I am pursuing a master’s degree so I can
learn new ideas from others and help develop new skills to become a more effective leader.
Developing a team can be just as important. A leader should know how to communicate
effectively to train, build relationships with the team, and develop a since togetherness to help
achieve common goals. My manager displays the above traits allowing the team to use critical
thinking when making decisions and trusts that the team will always put the company’s interest
to heart. Strategic thinking is another skill that should be utilized. For example, strategic
thinking is used at my company to help forecast the potential of new suits coming through the
door in order to help problem solve around increasing the team to ensure the work is handled
properly without being overworked.
Improvements in the recommended leadership skills and behaviors can help increase
productivity, morale, and customer satisfaction. Let us be honest when people are happy in the
workplace, it promotes positive results. Due to the pandemic more people are working from
home. As an example, my current team at work displays a more positive attitude, file handling
mistakes have been reduced and productivity has increased. As a result, we were able to reduce
the pending for the team and thus keep stress levels down to a minimum. There has also been
more focus in the managers reaching out to their teams to ensure everyone is fine which has
affected morale in a good way. As a team we reach out to each other more than ever for
assistance if needed which helps promote a team first mentality. Regarding the customer,
leaders should try to build relationships with the customers as well and communicate
effectively which in turn will make a customer feel like they are part of a family. This will get
the customer to want to come back due to the experience.
Leadership behaviour is the traits and actions that make an individual effective as a leader in
which a person can guide, direct, and influence the work of others to meet specific goals. Based
on the employee survey, the leadership behaviours needed to improve the work environment are
creating a rewards program for employees, addressing potential issues before they become
problems, and attending to the needs of the employees.
Firstly, the survey showed that employees are increasingly unhappy about not being rewarded
or recognized for their contribution to the company's goals. Creating a rewards program by
publicly recognizing each team member's achievements and milestones can decrease the
number of unhappy employees. When employees feel their accomplishments are appreciated,
they are more likely to work towards new goals and achievements. Having a reward program in
place helps motivate employees towards reaching individual and team objectives.
Secondly, the survey showed that employee’s express dissonance with the company's strategic
goals. Addressing potential issues before they become problems can be an advantage; by
closely monitoring your staff, you will be able to notice areas that have the potential to develop
into a problem. If there is a lag in employees' development or progress, you will recognize the
issue and take measures before it becomes a more significant problem.
Finally, the survey also showed that enough is not being done for employee development. In
addition to monitoring your team members for potential issues, leaders can attend to employees'
needs. Supporting professional development and growth would allow employees to develop
their skills and capacity to be more productive. This can improve motivation and job
satisfaction.
The leadership skills I would recommend to develop the leadership behaviours are motivation,
communication, and creativity. Firstly, motivation skills allow leaders to inspire their workers
to go the extra mile; a large part of the role of a good leader is to motivate and inspire other
people to do the tasks well. There are often several ways to boost your team members – by
building employee self-esteem through recognition and rewards or giving employees new
responsibilities to increase their investment in the company. Secondly, communication skills
are one of the most basic yet vitally essential skills of a good leader. A large part of successful
communication also involves active listening. It makes team members feel more valued and
creates a much more positive and open working environment. Therefore, as a leader, it is
imperative to establish a steady flow of communication by making yourself available to discuss
issues and concerns with employees. Finally, in a fast-paced and often challenging world,
leaders must be able to 'think outside of the box' and choose to make creative decisions. This
includes learning to approach and solve problems in non-traditional ways and using critical
thinking, imagination, observation, and open-mindedness to deliver innovative solutions and
ideas.
Improvements in leadership skills and behaviour can improve employee quality of work and
enhance their productivity and performance, which improves the organization's performance.
Continuously enhancing leadership skills, decisions, delegating responsibility, resolving
conflicts, and interacting with employees can influence employee morale, retention,
absenteeism, and overall productivity. Effective leadership skills enable leaders to lead their
employees in the correct direction according to the organization's vision and mission.
Improvements come with change, and leadership can be a factor to instil, motivate and
encourage employees, actively communicating and using critical thinking to make the change
and push them to change continuously. As a result, it can lead to increased productivity and
allow an organization to achieve higher output levels. Leadership plays a role in an organization
to inspire and encourage the employees to adjust to sustain and adapt to the business
environment and make sure the organization will improve and be innovative.
The number one leadership behaviour that I would recommend is communication. Based on the
assessment, employees aren’t feeling as though they are trained well enough to perform their
jobs well or praised enough for when they do so. In an effort to inspire a shared vision with our
employees we must first set and communicate expectations and acknowledge their progress
toward meeting them. We must also establish tools and techniques to ensure all managers are
communicating the same message to all employees across the enterprise. That is why the
second behaviour I would recommend is progress/performance evaluation. We can do this by
implementing SOPS for job training and one on one evaluations.
Relating back to the GROW model, I would categorize our plan’s objective as Encouraging the
Heart. This will improve the organization's performance by uplifting employees and increasing
buy-in to the overall vision of the company. Employees will know how what is expected of
them if they are meeting their goals and exactly how any recommended improvement can be
achieved. They will feel a greater sense of connection to their management team and therefore
feel more connected and vital to the mission.
When our employees feel that the company values them just as much or more than we value our
customers, we will know that we have succeeded in building a community that is inspired to
work as a team toward a like goal.
The employee satisfaction survey indicated that employees feel underappreciated by their
supervisors as evidenced by the declining scores over the last four years. Scores were lower in
the "recognition and praise", "reward and recognition", and "job satisfaction" focus areas this
year compared to four years ago. Employee satisfaction can be improved if employees feel
more valued, and therefore company leadership may benefit from utilizing some of the
"encouraging the heart" behaviours. LPI encourage the heart behaviours place an emphasis on
providing individuals with opportunities to grow and recognizing the successes that individuals
have made. One skill that could serve company leadership well is the ability to acknowledge
success publicly and genuinely. This could require a paradigm shift if the company is not
currently acknowledging success in this way. It also may require company leaders to re-
evaluate what constitutes success. Winning large contracts is of course successful, but leaders
would benefit from asking themselves what individual success means for each person in the
company, from a senior sales director to a entry level manufacturing worker. Based off the
findings from the employee survey there has been a consistent decrease in Job Satisfaction and
Working Conditions. Additionally, there has been very low scores in the Recognition & Praise
and the Rewards & Recognition categories. The survey results show that some of the reasons
employees feel poorly about working conditions are due to distrust towards leadership, that they
are not supported, and that they do not feel like they are able to submit suggestions or
complaints to their leaders.
For my adaptive leadership toolkit, I think it would be important to include leadership
behaviours such as acting ethically, supporting followers, and treating followers as individuals.
It will also be critical to work on building communication skills to help employees understand
how their work impacts the organization and to create clear communication channels to allow
employees the freedom to provide feedback. This will also aid in showing ethical behavior and
decisions as the rationale can be clearly communicated, which will also help in creating trust
between leaders and their followers. Another skill to include in the toolkit is the ability to
effective train employees, both during the on-boarding process and for the employee’s
continued development. To accomplish the continued development plans effectively leaders
will need to take the time to fully understand an individual so that they can help create a plan
that works for both the employee and the company.
Through improvements in these skills and behaviours the employees will feel better trained to
manage their job, have better communication, have more trust, and feel that leaders support and
treat them as individuals. In my experience when teams and organizations have trust much more
time and effort is spent on being productive compared to environments of low trust where a
notable amount of energy is wasted on constantly need to cover and protect yourself. By having
better training and communication employees may be able to provide suggestions to make
improvements in their areas of work. From feeling supported, employees could feel more
motivated to engage in their jobs and feel that any suggestions or complaints will be considered
seriously by leadership. With better organizational communication employees can even help
identify ways that they can make improvements that only be of marginal value in their area but
provides larger value for the organization.
Based on the employee engagement survey, several leadership behaviours are required to
improve the work environment, such as respecting the dignity as well as the diversity of the
workforce, behaving in an ethical manner, and showcasing a commitment to help the
employees fulfil their personal and other responsibilities. A leader must also make sure to create
an inclusive environment where every single employee is treated as a separate individual
(Inceoglu et al., 2018). A leader must extend proper support to the employees and provide them
with useful information so that their performance could be improved. A sense of trust must be
created by the leader so that the employees would be able to function in the work environment
effectively (Inceoglu et al., 2018).
Several leadership skills could be recommended in the organizational leader’s toolkit so that he
identified leadership behaviors could be developed. An important leadership skill is the
relationship-building ability. It would help to establish trust with the employees and create a
healthy working environment. Another important leadership skill is integrity. This skill would
play a key role as it would ensure that a leader is able to give due respect to the dignity of the
staff members. He must have the problem-solving ability so that he could extend proper support
and assistance to the workforce at the time of need. Communication is also an important skill
that a leader must possess as it would help him to explain to the employees their exact goals and
objectives in the organization (Toor & Ofori, 2008). Researcher Dirani (2020) has suggested
that leaders must work on their skills and competencies so that human resource development
could be fostered and a healthy environment could be created within the organization (Dirani et
al., 2020).
The improvements in the recommended leadership skills, as well as behavior, could have a
positive influence on the overall organizational performance. The elements such as
communication, problem-solving, integrity, respect, and ethical behavior could strengthen the
work setting and act as a major motivating factor for the employees. By using his skills and
demonstrating his leadership behavior, he would be able to provide a sense of direction to the
employees and influence their performance (Rohana & Abdullah, 2017). By creating an
inclusive work environment, diverse ideas could be encouraged, and the organization would be
able to function and operate in an innovative way. His slid commitment could further motivate
the employees to deliver better performance at the individual level and contribute to the overall
team or organizational performance (Rohana & Abdullah, 2017).
What leadership behaviours are needed to improve the work environment, determined via your
assessment of the employee engagement survey?
The leadership behaviours that need to be worked on are focusing on the team’s needs,
encouraging the team, recognizing the team’s accomplishments, and making effective
decisions for the company. It is clear from the employee satisfaction survey that the leadership
behaviours have not been focused on in recent years. From the survey, only 60% of the
employees believe that the company cares about them, which is far too low for a company. The
company showing appreciation for the work their employees do is low as well, which is
connected to recognizing the team’s accomplishments and encouraging the team. The final
behaviour that needs to be worked on, making effective decisions, comes from the fact that
many of the employees do not trust their supervisor nor do they believe that leadership makes
ethical and just decisions for the company.
What leadership skills would you recommend including in your organizational leader’s toolkit
to develop the identified behaviours?
Based on my assessment of the employee engagement survey, there are several leadership skills
that need to be improved upon: trustworthiness, empathy, and supportiveness. It was revealed in
the employee satisfaction survey that many of the employees do not trust their supervisor (71%
do not trust their supervisor) nor do they believe that their leadership acts in just and ethical
ways (65% believe that their leadership is not currently making decisions that are ethical and
just). Both responses show that the leadership needs to work on their trustworthiness. While
over half of the company still believes that they care about their employees, the number is still
too low, proving that the leaders need to work on their empathy and supportiveness. About 60%
of the employees believe that the company does not appreciate the work that the employees do
daily.
How will improvements in the recommended leadership skills and behaviours improve
organizational performance?
Improvements in the recommended leadership skills and behaviours would greatly help the
company’s organizational performance. Trust makes or breaks a company; if employees do not
trust their supervisors, the company could be disbanded. The decisions made by leadership
determine if the employees will trust their supervisors. By not making ethical and just decisions,
employees are going to trust the leadership less and less to make the correct decision for the
company. Likewise, when a company does not appreciate nor care about their employees, they
could slowly lose these employees to other companies that do care and appreciate them. By
working on all these leadership skills and behaviours, the company will retain more employees
that are satisfied with their job as well as employees that enjoy working for the company. This
satisfaction will help the company in the long-run as the employees will want to continue
working there
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