Deacu Mihaela Leadership 18.02.07

Personal Leadership Characteristics

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For Master of Business Administration Degree Tiffin University at University of Bucharest Leadership and Influence Course

By Mihaela Deacu

Instructor: Dr. Dan Mays

Cohort 4 February 18, 2007 1

Table of contents

Table of contents.......................................................................................................................2 1. Introduction............................................................................................................................2 2. Personal Strengths and Weaknesses as a Leader...................................................................2 2.1. Strengths...............................................................................................................................2 2.2. Weaknesses...........................................................................................................................5 3. Key Top Staff Personal and Professional Characteristics......................................................6 4. Conclusions............................................................................................................................7 5. References .............................................................................................................................8

1. Introduction This paper will analyze my personality as a leader, detailing my strengths and weaknesses, the ways of improving my weak points. My personal and professional characteristics will guide me to the persons that should be present on the key top positions in order to complement or compensate for mine characteristics. McClelland considers that effective leaders have specific personality traits. According to his theory, my personality traits related to leadership will be analyzed in the following chapter.

2. Personal Strengths and Weaknesses as a Leader 2.1. Strengths In order to be an effective leader (effective, from my point of view, meaning make the company perform at a high level, may be the highest, but should be measured reporting it to other situations, using all the resources in the best way with the maximum effect), I started to analyze what motives me. 2

According to the Big Five Model, I score maximum on Adjustment and Conscientiousness, after that following Openness to Experience and on the last places I have Agreeableness and Surgency. According to this scale, the fact that I have a low surgency shows that I am a better follower than a leader. The fact that I score a little better or agreeableness means I like so get along with people, but not too much in my case. I go to different events to meat people, but I ma not crazy about it. The highest score for adjustment is directly related to the emotional stability, the attitude in stress conditions: good under pressure, relaxed, secure, and positive, praising others for their efforts. The conscientiousness score is directly related to what I can achieve. I see myself as an organized person, responsible for my actions. I present much credibility for our clients and employees. I like to work hard and go home with the feeling that I fulfilled my job daily and that I get my company in the right direction. The openness to experience helps me try new things for the company I work for, I easily accept change and I am able to make changes when necessary. My leader motivation profile indicates that I am more in need for achievement and socialization than the need for affiliation (that is on the 3rd place) and the need for power (that is the last one). I order to better explain this, I see myself as having high energy, being self-confident, able to take decisions, open to new experiences and conscientious, according to the Big Five Model. Regarding the need for power, I see myself using it for helping the company and the employees. So my socialized power that scores as the need for achievement (and that is different from the need for power) includes the traits of sensitivity to others and stability, as the Big Five Model speaks about the adjustment dimension. Some of the charismatic leader traits I have are related to building trust and commitment, being persuasive and attracting attention when needed.

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I can say about myself that I am more a transformational leader than a transactional leader. I seek to change the status quo by articulating to followers that problem in the current system and a compelling vision of what a new organization could be than to maintain stability within the organization through regular economic and social exchanges that achieve specific goals for both me and my followers. I have a high level of trust for my intuition, I am a risk taker, but not reckless. As about the stewardship leader and the servant leader, I see myself more of a stewardship leader because I am sincerely concerned about their followers and assist them to grow, develop and achieve both personal and organizational goals. In the environment that I create around me everybody works together as a team to achieve organizational goals. I am more a facilitator than a leader. I put a lot of responsibility in the hands of my employees and appreciate/ reward them for their successes. The relations inside our company are flat, all of us are equal, we are like partners. So we are strong oriented to teamwork, I don’t have to put the follower in the direction I want, because they do it by themselves. Regarding the leadership styles according to the Three Pillars of Leadership, I consider myself a relationship builder (I am sensitive and I shoe respect to others and their needs, I am friendly, open, approachable, trustful, I solicit feedback and I am opened to new ideas, I am sincere and direct with others, I don’t have any hidden agenda, I am committed and I am credible, I encourage teamwork by fostering cooperation, communication, trust, shared goals, interdependency and mutual accountability. From the manager of execution I have most of the skills: I am oriented to getting results, I see my projects completed, I set priorities, I identify inefficiencies and other problems and find solutions to solve them, I meet commitments and deadlines, I am able to design structures, processes to improve efficiency, I set challenging goals and high standards of excellence, I align

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the organization to the strategy, I am taking initiative to identify problems and opportunities without being asked.

2.2. Weaknesses As I mentioned in the previous subchapter (2.1), I scored lower for the need for affiliation and power. Having a higher need for affiliation than the need for power means that the relationships inside the company don’t get in the way of influencing the followers. I am reluctant to play the bad-guy role, such as disciplining and influencing followers to do things they would rather not do. As a leader, I should have a higher level of surgency, according to the Big Five Model. The low level of surgency forces me to make extra efforts for delegating responsibilities, I don’t fight too much with my superior (investor) to sustain my causes (even if he says I am doing it, but in the wrong direction – that means I am fighting for what I think is right, not for what was demonstrated to be right – I don’t agree with him). As a leader, what I see at myself that I would like to improve is the capacity of being assertive. I work on this going to a specialist, so I hope I’ll solve it. What I also feel I need is creativity. Even if I am opened to new experiences and I like the change, I am not so much creative. It could be good as well, because otherwise I would have wanted to change too much and I could focus on other things. I don’t consider myself a charismatic leader. Sometimes I would like to be a charismatic leader in order to easier get some results, but not all the time. Some of the charismatic characteristics that I use from time to time are the rhetorical ability, when I want to attract attention, I can build trust and commitment, I can be persuasive. All these characteristics helps me almost daily in everything I do, no matter if it is business or not. 5

Here I could also speak about the fact that many times I consider myself discriminated due to the fact I am a woman in the men’s land and I feel daily how much I have to fight for each step I want to do. Regarding the leadership skills according to the Three Pillars of Leadership, I don’t see myself as a visionary leader, because I lack the visionary thinking, I am not so much an inspirational model; I lack creativity and innovation (I have some of this, but not too much). I would like to improve my creativity and innovation skills, but I think this is born, you can’t learn it. You can practice some thinking, but you are always on the second place. From the manager of execution I have most of the skills, less the planning, prioritizing and marinating focus, especially the fact that I am distracted by unimportant details or activities. I have learned how to improve this in one of the MBA courses, so I should do it better now.

3. Key Top Staff Personal and Professional Characteristics First of all, the followers that would work with have to know/ learn how to work in a team. From my point of view, this is the most important, because this tells more about their personality. They can be flexible, they can adapt to the others, they can easily accept suggestions, they can take responsibilities, they can help the others. In the same time, they should be able to work as individuals as well, because not all the work has to be done in team. So they have to know how to plan their own resources in order to get the best results. All these skills will complete my leadership skills, when I am not with them, or even when I am. Being a team member, I can be a leader or not, no matter my managerial position. So they have to even be leaders, if needed. In order to compensate my lack of bad –guy role, I hired people that do not need to be watched all the time and told what to do, and if they haven’t done right, to be the bad-guy an try to have results in this way. 6

In order to keep them working in good conditions, I prefer the try and maintain a positive, optimistic attitude, both towards the others in the company and toward our clients. I don’t allow them speak badly about our customers, no matter if they hear us or not. This is also directly related to the ethic behavior of the leader. If I want to get from them an ethical behavior, I have to behave accordingly. This, I think, makes them understand they should respect them, no matter what our clients do to us. The Pygmalion effect is the best way, from my point of view, I can do my staff work most efficiently. In order to compensate my lack of creativity, I would like to have a creative person in my team, but doesn’t happen here. I miss it and I try to compensate it by spending more time searching for ideas that can be adapted, in order not to be copied. Due to the fact that we are only few persons here, I consider it is not efficient to use forcing methods to get to the results. This is why I hired people that share the company’s culture and, in the same time, I respect them and they respect me. Due to the trust I gave them, they are committed to their job, and I want to augment my way of showing them appreciation for what they are doing for our company. The first step was to change the names of their positions, in this way showing them that fact that we respect them and the flat company exists.

4. Conclusions After studying this course I realized that what I considered to be a leader was the visionary leader type. In fact I discovered that according to all the studies that have been done so far, I can place myself in some categories of leaders, so I am a leader in this sense. This is a situation that helps me define my place better and helps me position myself in a team easier. I know my role, especially my strengths and my weaknesses, so I know what I have to look for. I have to say that 7

I knew it before instinctively, so I acted accordingly. Now, that I have the theoretical part, it is easier to identify and classify the people that I need in order to get the results I want.

5. References 1. Luissier, R. N., Achua, C. F. (2004). Leadership: Theory, Application, Skill Development. Thomson South Western, 2nd ed. 2. Harberg, R, Forem, J.(2004). The Three Pillars of Leadership: Differing Styles of Successful Leadership. HCG Hagberg Consulting Group

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