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I have a dream that in a couple years I will be leading a project team and I will have a reputation that recognizes my past teams for our great successes. However, I have a long way to go before I get there. An assessment of my current skills in regards to leadership and negotiations tells me that although I already have some of the characteristics it will take to achieve my dream I am far from having enough. I currently posses great listening skills and some of the leadership qualities that are necessary to be an effective leader. The leadership skills that I need to work on lie largely in the Instrumental set and partly in the Direct set. I am also completely lacking the negotiation skills that will allow a win/win situation when there is a conflict or difference of opinion. If I am going to learn the necessary negotiation, leadership, and listening skills required to lead a team to success I will need to increase my attention to networking and put myself in a position to learn and practice the skills I desire. Currently, the leadership styles (as described by Jean Lipman-Blumen) that I tend to focus on can be found within the Relational set. After taking time to reflect on the way I handle tasks and relationships with people both within and outside of the work environment I have learned that I tend to be very cooperative with others, especially when accomplishing a task. Most of the tasks that I take on are group oriented or the goals of the tasks are not my own. I take great satisfaction in working with a team and may or may not need to receive any personal reward or acknowledgement. I also have used some of the styles contained in the direct set. Sometimes I find that by challenging myself to do something and setting my own standards I am adhering to the Intrinsic style of leadership. I am rarely competitive, however just growing up in America I think gives me some sense of how I can utilize the Competitive style from time to time. The Power style is one that I have always tended to shy away from. The last set of styles, the Instrumental set, is a set that I have rarely thought about and I do not think that I use this set to my benefit. After taking the self-assessments in class I realized something that I have never even thought about. My current negotiation tactics generally end in a compromising situation or I tend to accommodate the other party in order to steer clear of conflict and maintain relationships. While in a negotiation I ask for and give out a lot of information. This is mostly a good thing because it opens the window of information and allows both parties a greater chance to understand all issues involved. The weakness to the amount of information that is shared is that I tend to give more information about myself than I expect to receive from the other person. This puts me at an instant disadvantage in the negotiation because the other person has more information to leverage their interests. Perhaps the area of communication that I am currently the strongest in is listening. When I was young I had the opportunity to take part in an extra-curricular peer listening training program at my school. I think that this training was very helpful for me because it caused me to focus on how to listen and reflect at an early age and I have been practicing ever since. The listening characteristic that I could benefit from practicing is asking about what people want. Even though I am careful about not trying to solve other people’s problems I rarely take that extra step to help them to consider what it is that they do want.
Approximate Word count = 2499
Approximate Pages = 10
(250 words per page double spaced)
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