Initial Reaction to the Findings
My initial reaction to the findings of my top five strengths was that the description perfectly matched who I am and how I handle issues. My traits could not have been described any better. From the survey, my top five strengths are a learner, analytical, focus, developer, and arranger. I had never taken time to appreciate these strengths but from the description, I could relate with each one of them. The description of these strengths seemed to me like an analysis carried out by a person who had known me for a long time.
Relationship between the Strengths, Leadership Style, and Management Functions
My preferred leadership style is the participative leadership style where the input from team members is important before making a final decision. This leadership style enhances job satisfaction among the team members and creates an opportunity to develop the skills of the people. I hold the belief that every team member is critical to the optimal performance of the organization. In making this leadership style work, I believe that a leader should always seek to create a vivid outlay of the expected future and the goals that the organization seeks to achieve. This requires developing a strong sense of purpose and direction.
The top five strengths from the Clifton Strength Survey highlight important traits that I find as a prerequisite to the successful implementation of the leadership style. The strength of being a learner is relevant to my leadership style as it allows me to continuously seek ways to engage every team member. This strength assists me in always seeking new innovative means of enhancing collaboration within the team. This strength of learning is essential to the performance of the function of a manager on organizing, which involves assigning work and granting authority to the different team members. Learning facilitates this function as one is able to understand how different team members’ match up to different tasks and, therefore, assign them where they will make the most positive impact.
Being analytical relates to the participative leadership style as it entails the ability to think over the factors that might affect the situation and carry out proper planning. This strength helps attain key functions of a manager such as planning and control. Being analytical helps in proper mapping out of a situation and develop ways to achieve a certain identified goal. The control function is enhanced by being analytical as one is able to match the result and the intended goal and account for the variance.
Focus helps the participative leadership style by ensuring the democratic decision-making style follows a certain direction and that there is no divergence during the collaboration process. This helps in determining the priority between different goals. The strength on focus relates to the function of a manager on leading, where a manager is expected to motivate, communicate, and guide the process.
The strength of being a developer entails being aware of and cultivating the potential in others. This relates well with the participative leadership style, which involves providing an opportunity for the team members to contribute to the overall success of the organization. This strength allows one to seek out ways to improve on the individual’s strengths. This relates to the management function on staffing which entails recruiting, selecting, training, and developing employees (Stretton, 2015).
Traits for a Good Leader
Among the traits that I need to work on, to be a good leader are accountability and empowerment. Accountability requires a leader to take responsibility including the performance of others. The trait on empowerment involves putting in place, measures to enhance the degree of autonomy and self-determination of the team. Empowered employees are known for improved job performance, job satisfaction, and continued commitment to the organizational goals. These traits match with strengths needed to be a good manager. Being a good manager requires an individual to make efforts to empower the employees through delegating authority, allowing for increased participation in decision-making process, openness in the process of sharing information, and always allowing for their input (Lee & Tian, 2018).
Use of the Strength in the Future Career
I anticipate to specifically use the strength of being analytical in my future career. This will entail relying on a logical and objective approach to support important decisions. This will be highly essential when making business deals, investment decisions, and employment decisions. Being analytical will imply that I make use of evidence data in the decision-making process. This strength will also help me to be proactive.
References
Lee, A. W., & Tian, A. (2018). When Empowering Employees Works and When it Doesn’t. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from: https://hbr.org/2018/03/when-empowering-employees-works-and-when-it-doesnt
Stretton, A. (2015). Management Staffing Function and Activities. PM World Journal, 5(11), 1-16.
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