Blog 4: My Development as a Future Leader

 

The purpose of this blog is to discuss about the leadership style that suitable for myself which can be able to use in my career in the future. Also, I will share some of my leadership experience when I worked as a Modern Trade Key Account Representative of the forefront retailer and manufacturer company in my home country, Berli Jucker (BJC), Thailand. As mentioned in blog 2, there are innumerable number of leadership style. The most acceptable one is Lewin’s leadership style that contains three styles which are Autocratic (authoritarian), Democratic (participative), and Laissez-faire (Delegative) (Fentiman-Hall S., 2017). As Donald H. McGannon said, “Leadership is action, not position).

 

My leadership brand

 

 

The ideal leadership that I want to be in the future is the combination of democratic leader and transformational leader. With these two, I will be the leader who are open-minded that allow others to give an opinion but still have a right in final decision. Also, I think transactional leader which influence team members with punishment and reward is the short-term motivation to them, while transformation leader manages the relationship between leader and team members by using communication skill to share vision, and goal to encourage them and make them have a faith in the leader. In addition, I found the Hudson Leadership Model which focused on five components which are vision, action, impact, connection, and drive is very useful in terms of improving my leadership style (Hudson, 2018). Also, I believed that every employee need to be able to lead other, not only the high-level manager.

 

 

Demonstration of my leadership style

 

 

          When I was in Thailand, I worked as a Modern Trade Key Account Representative who take a responsible of tissue category and coordinate with the most valuable client in the company which is Tesco Lotus. In Thailand, almost every company have a high-power distance index acceding to the Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions which high level manager always have an authority (Mulder P., 2009). Although, I am not a manager who have a role to lead the subsidiary, I still have an opportunity to lead the product consultant (PC) which I have to understand them and use my leadership skill to make them trust in my potential. When I have a project, I always listen to their opinion and adapt it to the final decision that I have an authority to make. Furthermore, in my university life, sometimes I have been chosen to be the leader of the team which I also applied democratic leader style as my leadership style in order to manage the team without any conflict.

 

Development plan to become better leader

 

In Thailand, there are many autocratic leaders in the business world, and also political (Sifton J., 2017). Thus, I expected to see more democratic leaders in the future, and everything should start from myself. Not everyone is a natural leader, so those who is not should develop themselves to become the better leader. In order to develop my leadership skill, I will focus on passion, communication, listening, and following. In details, if the leader has a passion to lead and truly engaged with the task, others are willing to follow. So, it’s important for leader to be passionate. Also, communication is necessary for the leader, because leader have to communicate with the team members. With the high skill in communication, they can motivate their team members and make them inspired by the leader (Pham T., 2018). Moreover, good leader need to listen to other in order to get feedback regarding their leadership style which is a key to develop their style (Yan A., 2017). In addition, leader is not only lead, sometimes they have to follow others in order to get the better result. True leader need to be open-mind who allow their teammate to give an opinion (Author G., 2017).

 

 

Furthermore, OEC’s leadership development model which contains four stages, discover, design, deliver, and develop can be used to achieve goal in this aspect. This model will help to understand the process to develop better leadership style in the appropriate direction (OEC, 2018).

 

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References

• Author, G. (2017) 9 Ways to Develop Your Leadership Skills [online] available from <https://www.wrike.com/blog/9-ways-develop-leadership-skills/> [21 July 2018]
• Fentiman-Hall S. (2017) Autocratic, democratic or laissez-faire – what’s your leadership style? [online] available from <https://www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/autocratic-democratic-or-laissez-faire-whats-your-leadership-style> [21 July 2018]
• Hudson (2018) The Hudson Leadership Model: A New Global Model [online] available from <https://au.hudson.com/talent-management/hudson-leadership-model> [21 July 2018]
• Mulder, P. (2009) Cultural dimensions by Geert Hofstede [online] available from <https://www.toolshero.com/communication-skills/hofstede-cultural-dimensions/> [21 July 2018]
• OEC Strategic Solutions (2018) Leadership Development [online] available from <http://oecstrategicsolutions.com/services/leadership-development/> [21 July 2018]
• Pham, T. (2018) 7 Ways to Start Building Your Leadership Skills Today (No Matter Where You Are on the Ladder) [online] available from <https://www.themuse.com/advice/7-ways-to-start-building-your-leadership-skills-today-no-matter-where-you-are-on-the-ladder> [21 July 2018]
• Sifton, J. (2017) Another week, another autocratic leader visiting Trump’s Washington [online] available from <https://qz.com/1091575/thai-prime-minister-gen-prayut-chan-ocha-is-another-autocratic-leader-visiting-trumps-white-house/> [21 July 2018]
• Yan, A. (2017) How to Improve your Leadership Skills [online] available from <https://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/12/leadership-skils.asp> [21 July 2018]