Reviewing the notes from the class, I am amazed at how the study of leadership has progressed so far.

 

To start with, leadership was studies as certain traits that only a certain individuals process, and therefore, only these people who have the traits are leaders. Now when I view back, the theory seems to be outdated, as later studies like the Skills and Behavioral approaches all abandon the “trait” limitation set by the Trait approach, and make the leadership study more applicable to real life improvements as they suggest that leadership involves certain skills, abilities and behaviors that can be trained and learned. This is a big progress in leadership study as it indicates that everyone has the potential to become leaders, rather than people who have innate characteristics. As it is possible for everyone to develop leadership skills, the leadership study further progress to address the question of what makes leadership effective.

 

For leadership to be effective, leaders need to be aware of their followers’ need and get to know them at an individual level. For example, situational approach is very useful in real life because it takes a prescriptive approach and give advice to leaders on how they should behave in different situations of their followers. On the other hand, LMX takes another angle to address the same question of effective leadership. LMX suggests that leaders need to form individual relationship with their followers and their goals is to form “mature partnership” relationship with all of their followers. Situational approach and LMX both give ideas on how to become effective leaders, and both suggest that it is important to view followers as individuals. As they address from different angles, the two combined helped me gain a more comprehensive picture on how to become a more effective leader.

 

Lastly, the Servant Leadership theory stimulate me to rethink the definition of leadership. It broadens my scope of understanding of leadership. Before, when I think of leadership, I think of people who are running organizations, leader in a school’s group assignments, and other similar roles like this, that are quite limited in their scale of influence. The “common goal” components to me had been some very specific and cleared goals like “finish the task by next week with a high quality”. However, learning Servant Leadership reminds me of the servant leaders who promote social changes for a better world in the history. Like Martin Luther King, the man who stood firmly against racial inequality, and who influenced and inspired millions of people. I refreshed my definition of leadership. The “common goal” is not necessarily something that’s very clear and specific. It could be something big and abstract, yet powerfully, like “for a better tomorrow”. Also, the scale of leadership is broadened to a society’s level, where servant leaders’ morality, encouragement and sacrifice can in turn influence their followers, and together, they can create more values to the society.

 

For the future, in order to develop my leadership, I think it is important to have a thorough understanding of myself at a regular time basis. I plan to take different leadership surveys at a regular basis of twice a year in order to monitor my improvements and work on my weaknesses. For now, based on all the leadership questionnaires I have done, I think that I am good at building relationship with followers and I have good interpretation skills on followers’ different situations. What’s more, I am good at encouraging people and am supportive in helping them realizing their professional and personal goals. I also have a strong sense of social responsibility and like to volunteering and initiate social changes. I would like to maintain improve the above mentioned. On the other side, I tend to engage in too much “directive behaviors” even when my follower does not need it; what’s more, sometimes I avoid making decisions; also, as sometimes I am too busy that I don’t have time to volunteer. I would like to work on these problems by making practical schedules to improve my time management, and also write on my notebook to remind myself situations when I don’t need to be directive. Also, in my life, I will try to make decisions when needed and propose ideas to a group when decisions need to be made.