Personal Leadership Philosophies

The main aim of this paper is to elucidate my personal philosophy on leadership.
Leadership is very important in any setting since it provides direction and control as well as a
strategic plan to follow to achieve organizational goals. As a leader, I believe that my followers
and colleagues have the opportunity to learn from my skills as a leader in the organization.
Therefore, this paper will reflect on my core leadership values, my vision and mission
statement, and the analysis of Clifton’s strengths assessments. Moreover, I will assess my
behaviors from Clifton’s strengths assessments and select two behaviors that I would like to
improve on or strengthen to perform better as a leader. Besides, I will provide a
development plan while providing examples of how I would improve on these behaviors.

My Personal Leadership Philosophies

Personal leadership philosophies refer to the set of principles and beliefs that a person
uses to evaluate the information they receive and how they respond to different situations and
individuals. These philosophies allow other people to glean a clear understanding of your
priorities, values, and decision-making approaches, as well as what to expect when dealing with
you. As a leader, my personal leadership philosophies would help me relate with other people in
my organization since they would understand why I handle issues the way I do or why make
specific decisions. The main leadership philosophies include ethical leadership, authentic
leadership, value-based leadership, and servant leadership (Frunză, 2017). These philosophies
depend on your strengths as a leader and the values that you revere.
Based on my values and strengths, my mission is to integrate critical thinking knowledge
gleaned in the classroom, experience gained in different working environments, and skills
learned from my peers with the nursing process to serve people with a commitment to lifelong

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learning empathetic and compassionate care. My vision is to have a professional career with
meaning to myself and others while showing love, care, kindness, concern for family and
friends, and care for everyone, including strangers.
Clifton’s Strengths

The Strengths Finder assessment reveals that I have the strengths of ideation,
individualization, connectedness, and that I am also strategic and restorative. Ideation deals
with being able to find connections between disparate phenomena. This means that I am a
strategic thinker. Individualization deals with building relationships. I can spot the unique
abilities of other people and find ways to make different people work together. Connectedness
deals with having faith in the links between people. I hardly believe and coincidences and
concede to the idea that everything happens for a reason, and each person has a role to play in
these events. The strategic strength means that I am good at creating alternative ways to
proceed. I can quickly spot relevant issues and patterns. Finally, being restorative implies that I
am adept at dealing with problems. I can figure out what is wrong and resolve it.

Development Plan

The two core values that I would like to strengthen based on the results are commitment
and patience. Commitment deals with fully dedicating oneself to the cause to meet set
objectives (Saleem et al., 2019). This means working towards achieving a state of willingness to
work an extra two hours to meet deadlines whenever necessary. On the other hand, patience
deals with the ability to not only persevere through challenges but also be calm and
understanding even in the case where one does not agree with what is being presented
(Lunsford & Brown, 2017). First, I would like to strengthen my patience through a strategic
plan of evaluating the environment where I work and assessing the challenges that I face. This

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includes accepting things that I cannot changes and working towards changing those that I can
influence their implementation or initiate or influence their change process.
Strengthening commitment requires a step-by-step procedure that ensures the personal
goals and organizational goals are aligned towards achieving the overall organization’s purpose.
First, I would set SMART (Specific, Measureable, Attainable, relevant, time-bound) goals.
Thereafter, I would write the goals on a paper to increase my commitment to the goals.
Research indicates that writing your goals on a piece of paper is something bigger because it
makes you more committed to your purpose than when there are just conceived in mind
(Flanigan, 2018). It is easy to be committed to your statement than your thoughts. Next, I would
present my goals publicly by sharing with my peers and followers to seek their opinions. This
would be a step to make me feel responsible among my peers. Finally, once I have the goals set
and written down, I would list the activities in order of seniority and priorities to perform to
ensure that I follow through the development plan.
Conclusion

Personal leadership philosophies refer to the set of principles and beliefs that a person
uses to evaluate the information they receive and how they respond to different situations and
individuals. Since every leader has different values, people subscribe to different leadership
philosophies. In my self-assessment, and according to Clifton’s Strengths Finder assessment, I
believe I subscribe to servant leadership in which my main goal is to serve. With the strengths
of ideation, individualization, and connectedness, as well as strengthened commitment and
patience, I believe my followers would get the best of my values and goal attainment strategies.

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References:

Flanigan, J. (2018). Philosophical methodology and leadership ethics. Leadership, 14(6), 707-
730.
Frunză, S. (2017). Seeking meaning, living authenticity, and leadership in public space. A
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Lunden, A., Teräs, M., Kvist, T., & Häggman‐Laitila, A. (2017). A systematic review of
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Lunsford, L. G., & Brown, B. A. (2017). Preparing leaders while neglecting leadership: An
analysis of US collegiate leadership centers. Journal of Leadership & Organizational
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Mudallal, R. H., Othman, W. A. M., & Al Hassan, N. F. (2017). Nurses’ burnout: the influence
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