Blog 5: My Vision of Leadership

Figure 1.0: Vision of Leadership (Reiss 2017)

What is my vision of leadership?

A good leader needs to be able to adjust their leadership style depending on the situation, the organization, or the task at hand. My vision of leadership is to be a leader that leads by example, that creates a culture where members of the team feels comfortable sharing their ideas, and a leader that guides the team to work towards the mission of the task at hand. This is aligned to with the transformational leadership style where leaders inspire, encourage, and motivate the team to innovate and originate change that helps shape and grow success in the company (White 2018).

Who has inspired my understanding of effective leadership and why?

Figure 2.0 Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google (Kiss 2017)

In May 2018, Sundar Pichai the CEO of Google was named World’s Most Reputable Chief Executive in a study conducted by the Reputation Institute (Gleeson 2018). He is known and admired for being a creative thinker,for encouraging his team to continue working on new innovations in an already innovative company, for leading by example, and for being an advocate for diversity and inclusion (Valet 2018). He believes that failure plays as much of a role as success for when an individual or team always succeeds, it most probably means that they are not setting their goals high enough (Mishra 2018).Pichai believes that leadership is about motivating others to overcome their barriers to achieve success (Towers 2017). He to the lead when the company was going through an overhaul where Google was being restructured under Alphabet (Bhardwaj 2018). When he took over, he simplified Google’s employee’s goal-setting system, objectives and key results (OKR) to one set of goals compared to the previous two sets of goals which is the strategy needed in thetimes of confusing change (Bhardwaj 2018). Sundar Pichai did not have the meteoric rise that is common of the Silicon Valley legends, his was a slow and steady pace with a few powerful sprints with many achievements under his belt(O’Brien 2015).

Sundar Pichai inspires me because thinks for the benefit of the team, he focuses on the people he leads, guides them through their personal barriers to achieve greater success, and he has the ability to involve everyone in the team and take the company to new heights. 

Peer Feedback, Strengths, and Room for Improvement

I agree with the results of this personality test as shown above. The combination of the individual results for Intuitive (77%),Feeling (75%), Prospecting (53%), and Turbulent (67%) shows my ability to be flexible and open to ideas, in my ability to support the team with the tools they would need to overcome barriers, and my focus on achieving the task at hand with the team which is aligned to the elements of a transformational leader.  

However, the results also show that I am very introverted (89%) which reflects my aversion towards outer stimuli like interacting with unfamiliar people for prolonged periods of time, speaking up about ideas, and public speaking which is necessary for good communication skills that is critical for good leadership. Therefore, it is important that I invest some time into improving my communication skills through practice in the pursuit to become a transformational leader.  

Feedback from Peers

Skills	Model the Way	Inspire	Challenge	Enable	Encourage	Hofstede’s Culture
Average Score	9.47	9.47	9.33	9.53	9.6	8.57

Table 1.0 Feedback from Peer Results

According to the Feedback from Peers questionnaire results, my team mates rated me as a good role model, inspirational,supportive, and encouraging. This rating is based on our group work and interactions throughout the period of two to three months. This reflects my contribution to the team like listening during discussions, taking ownership of the tasks assigned to me, and contributing as an active team member. From the results, it shows that I have some room to improve in the “challenge” category which reflects my aversion towards risk-taking and this is what I would like to develop as I progress through my Masters in Business Administration. It is essential for leaders to take calculated risks (Harvey 2017). However,risk-taking is a choice and requires practice – it is not a skill that can be learned (Kerpen 2018). Therefore, I will have to continuously, actively, and consciously take calculated risks that can elevate the results to the next level.

Conclusion

In this leadership journey, I’ve had the opportunity to discover my preferred leadership style and to understand better what makes a leader great. I’ve also had the opportunity to learn more about myself through the personality test and the peer feedback questionnaire to allow me to focus on using my strengths to strengthen my areas for improvement which would allow me to be a better leader in the future.

(754 words)

References:

Resiss, R. ‘WomenLeaders Share How Value Drives Success’ IWEC [online] 
available from < https://iwecawards.com/news/women-leaders-share-value-drives-success/&gt; [17 November 2018]

Bhardwaj, P. (2018) ‘Google boss Sundar Pichai named most reputable CEO’ Business Insider Malaysia [online] available from < https://www.businessinsider.my/google-okr-goals-sundar-pichai-vs-larry-page-2018-6/?r=US&IR=T&gt; [17 November 2018]

Gleeson, C. (2018) ‘Google boss Sundar Pichai named most reputable’ CEO [online] available from <https://www.irishtimes.com/business/google-boss-sundar-pichai-named-most-reputable-ceo-1.3500147&gt; [17 November 2018]

Harvey, C.T. (2017) ‘The best leaders take calculated risks, learning from failure as they go’ The Telegraph [online] available from < https://www.telegraph.co.uk/connect/better-business/leadership/best-leaders-take-risks-learning-from-failure/&gt; [17 November 2018]

Kerpen, C. (2018) ‘Risk-Taking Isn’t A Skill, It’s A Constant Choice We Make’ Forbes [online] available from <https://www.forbes.com/sites/carriekerpen/2018/07/23/risk-taking-isnt-a-skill-its-a-constant-choice-we-make/#bd095a4598be&gt; [17 November 2018]

Kiss, J. (2017) ‘Google CEO Sundar Pichai: ‘I don’t know whether humans want change that fast’ The Guardian [online] available from < https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/07/google-boss-sundar-pichai-tax-gender-equality-data-protection-jemima-kiss&gt; [17 November 2018]

Mishra, T. (2018) ‘Google’s captain Sundar Pichai bats for wearing failure as a badge of honour’ Your Story [online] available from < https://yourstory.com/2018/01/googles-captain-sundar-pichai-bats-for-wearing-failure-as-a-badge-of-honour/&gt; [17 November 2018]

O’Brien, M. (2015) ‘Sundar Pichai’s climb to Google CEO was a marathon, not a sprint’ Mercury News [online] available from <https://www.mercurynews.com/2015/08/11/sundar-pichais-climb-to-google-ceo-was-a-marathon-not-a-sprint/&gt; [17 November 2018]

Towers, P. (2017) ‘Leadership Strategy: How The CEO’s of The World’s Top 5 Tech Companies Choose To Lead’ Task Pigeon Blog [online] available from < https://blog.taskpigeon.co/leadership-strategy/&gt; [17 October 2018]

Valet, V. (2018) ‘The World’s Most Reputable CEOs 2018’ Forbes [online] available from https://www.forbes.com/sites/vickyvalet/2018/05/17/the-worlds-most-reputable-ceos-2018/#7a57cb5c705c&gt; [17 November 2018]

White, S.K. (2018) ‘What is transformational leadership? A model for motivating innovation’ CIO [online] available from < https://www.cio.com/article/3257184/leadership-management/what-is-transformational-leadership-a-model-for-motivating-innovation.html&gt; [17 November 2018]