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Personal Leadership Profile

My personal leadership approach is captured by my leadership: “No one achieves great
success alone”. This motto is a reflection of my strong belief in teamwork. To accomplish
great things, one must work with others. Compared to individuals, teams have more energy,
are more resourceful, they minimize weaknesses of individual team members, offer multiple
perspectives about a problem and potential solutions, and, therefore, make it easier to achieve
a given goal than individuals.

Summary of my Personal Leadership Style

My personal leadership style is democratic. In this style, the leader gets the input of
team members before making a decision (Rifaldi et al., 2019). I prefer this leadership style
because it fosters teamwork which I believe is key to both individual and organizational
success.
Apart from fostering teamwork, democratic style of leadership also allows effective
solution of complex problems (Rifaldi et al., 2019). I have been faced with complex and
difficult problems that I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how best to solve them. By
bringing together colleagues and seeking their opinions on the best solution to the problem, I
was amazed at how fast we arrived at a suitable solution.
Democratic leadership style also creates an environment where creativity thrives
(Rifaldi et al., 2019). Rather than micromanaging everyone under me, I prefer holding a team
discussion, coming up with broad goals, and then letting everyone explain how they are going
to achieve them. Left to come up with plans of achieving a given goal, I often feel amazed at
the creativity of the ideas that team members come up with.

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Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I have found democratic leadership style to lead
to superior decisions. Left alone, I can only make a decision that my limited education, skills,
and experience judge to be the best. However, when working with people with various levels
of education and experience, the suggestions they bring during the discussion often result in
better decisions being made.

Summary of my Leadership Strengths

My key leadership strengths are conflict resolution, delegation, decisiveness, problem-
solving skills, and good listening skills. Conflict resolution skills have served me well because
they help me to ensure that morale and productivity of employees remains high in teams.
Conflict, no matter how minor it is, can destabilize teams thus preventing them from achieving
the team’s objectives.
Apart from conflict resolution, my other leadership strength is decisiveness. As a
democratic style leader, I usually solicit views and opinions from my colleagues. However,
once I have gotten all the information that I need to make an effective decision, I usually make
one quickly. The decisiveness allows me to lead teams in an efficient manner.
I am also good at problem-solving. It is true that I do not solve all problems. However,
I am good at identifying the exact problem that needs to be solved. I can also quickly identify
weaknesses in the suggested solution. Due to these skills, I have become adept at identifying
the best solutions to a given problem.
While these strengths have made me a generally effective leader, there are some
leadership areas that I still need to improve on. Top among them are communication skills.
Granted, I am effective when communicating in written form. However, I am not equally
effective with verbal communication especially when I have to communicate with teams

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involving a large number of people. My plan of solving this problem is enrolling in an online
public speaking class. I hope that through the lessons provided in those classes I will become
an effective public speaker.

Leaders that I Admire

Henry Ford
I admire Henry Ford for his vision and the great way in which he treated his workers.
Ford had a vision of having every American family own an automobile (Schlichting, 2016).
Rather than being a preserve for the wealthy, Henry Ford believed that families of average
means should be able to afford cars. To bring production costs down, he introduced assembly
line in vehicle manufacturing, thus significantly reducing cost of cars (Schlichting, 2016).
More importantly, Henry Ford was an excellent employee. He paid his employees at a rate
twice the industry’s average (Schlichting, 2016). Additionally, at a time when discrimination
was rife in the USA, his company was among few major American companies that employed
African and Americans and women (Schlichting, 2016). He was, therefore, a pioneer of not
just mass production but also of concepts that are only now gaining traction in modern times,
such as workplace diversity.
Warren Buffet
I admire Warren Buffet because of his patience and ability to take long-term view of
issues, and treatment of subordinates. As one of the most successful investors, Warren Buffet
often makes investment decisions based on the ability of a company to make good returns in
the long term, not short term (Kelly, 2016). I believe that this trait of making decisions with
the long term in mind is important for leaders who plan to grow businesses that will last for
ages. Another important leadership trait that I admire about Warren Buffet is his treatment of

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subordinates. He treats them with respect and gives them the independence that they need to
create and implement plans that help the company to achieve its objectives (Kelly, 2016).
Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs is the late CEO of Apple. While he had many excellent leadership traits, the
one that I admired the most is ability to create a powerful vision and then challenge employees
to pursue a similar vision and achieve it (Baker & Baker, 2017). This skill is important
because it enables organizations and their employees to focus resources on a common goal
thus making it easier for the goal to be achieved.
Jack Ma
Jack Ma is the founder of Alibaba, one of the biggest technology companies in China
and the world. The two leadership traits that I admire about him are his practice of forming
teams of highly talented employees and tenacity. Jack Ma believes that organizations can only
achieve their objectives if they have high performing teams working for them (Clark, 2018).
Secondly, I admire his tenacity. Even though Alibaba is a technology company, Jack Ma
trained as a teacher. To form a successful technology company he faced a lot of problems as
he was not a technology expert but never gave up (Clark, 2018). Such level of tenacity is
important for any leader because it is not always a guarantee that leaders will be successful in
their plans and goals.
Pope Francis
The head of the Roman Catholic Church has many excellent lessons for leaders. I
especially admire his modesty. Modest leaders set a good example to other leaders and
employees within an organization that they are against wasteful use of resources. Pope Francis

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lives in a simple apartment that costs the church little money to maintain (Krames, 2014). He
also a very humble man as it has been shown through regular washing of feet of other people.

Things to do to Develop my Leadership Skills

Developing critical thinking skills
Critical thinking skills help leaders to make more effective decisions, communicate
better, and improve the manner in which information is processed. In the next one to three
years I intend to improve my critical thinking skills by practicing more self-reflection and
regularly asking questions when presented with a given set of information.
Listening skills
Listening skills help in resolving conflicts, solving problems, and enhance
interpersonal relations in a team. I hope to become a better listener through paraphrasing
words when being communicated to, being attentive and maintaining eye contact.
Motivation skills
It is important for leaders to be able to motivate their employees. Proper motivation
results in higher productivity and better job satisfaction. I plan to practice my motivation skills
through regular recognition of small achievements of employees, setting achievable goals and
rewarding employees when they achieve them, and having positive communication with
employees that makes them feel better about themselves and the work that they do.
Communication skills
Effective leaders are also effective communicators. To improve my communication
skills I intend to do learn and practice non-verbal communication. Around 60% of all
communication is non-verbal. One cannot, therefore, be an effective communicator if they
ignore non-verbal communication. To become a better communicator, I will also regularly ask

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for feedback from colleagues after doing any sort of communication. I will also regularly
record myself communicating and then review the records to determine my strengths and
weaknesses.
Team building
As a firm believer in teamwork, I also hope to develop my team building skills. I hope
to achieve this through more effective assignment of roles and improving my communication
skills.

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References

Baker, J., & Baker, C. (2017). Transformational leadership—steve jobs. SAGE Publications:
SAGE Business Cases Originals.
Clark, D. (2018). Alibaba: the house that Jack Ma built. HarperCollins Publishers.
Kelly, E. J. (2016). Transformation in leadership, part 1: A developmental study of Warren
Buffett. Transformation.
Krames, J. (2014). Lead with humility: 12 leadership lessons from Pope Francis. Amacom.
Rifaldi, R. B., Ramadhini, N., & Usman, O. (2019). Effect of Democratic Leadership Style,
Work Environment, Cultural Organization, Motivation and Compensation to the
Employees Performance. Work Environment, Cultural Organization, Motivation and
Compensation to the Employees Performance (January 6, 2019).
Schlichting, N. M. (2016). Unconventional leadership: What Henry Ford and Detroit taught me
about reinvention and diversity. Routledge.