Leadership Learning Journal Essay

As I reflect upon the readings of our text book and the leadership self-assessments I have learned a great deal about myself in regards to leadership. I have a lot of leadership experience but there are some areas I need to work on and improve. I’m not as resilient as I thought I was because one of the outcomes of the tests was that like most people I cope well with some type of adversity, but not others. Naturally I don’t agree with that outcome because I feel I handle almost everything but as I dig deeper into it and keep an open mind I can kind of see that. According to DuBrin (2010) most of my leaders have been transformational leaders based on the definition and the self-assessment results (p. 77). I’m a participative leader, with average situational perspective, have a high quality leader-member exchange, and works well by myself but also works well with others. Another trait that I learned I need to work on is I’m only average when it comes to the knowledge and skill to motivate others whereas I thought I excelled and continually motivated others. While reading the chapters we have so far and the various discussion boards I have learned that there are many ways to be an outstanding leader and that there isn’t really one style that works for everyone and all of the time. As a leader you have to consider the people your leading and what their abilities are when choosing the best style because a style that might have worked at your last company might not work at your next one. One of the biggest eye openers so far was when we had the discussion assignment on path-goal theory. I thought that there was no way that method would work. Boy was I dead wrong because when it was stated by Vandegrift & Matusitz (2011) that they conducted an analysis that applied the principles of path-goal theory to a renowned music recording company, Columbia Records and that this theory was used by them and was credited to their success I knew then that I had to stay open to any and all theory’s (p. 350). I don’t typically like to read other then article on sports but so far this course has been very informative and will help me in the future to hone my leadership skills.