Tuesday, April 14, 2015

A511.4.3.RB_EllisMark Leadership Traits

A511.4.3.RB - Leadership Traits



Managerial Motivation, Traits, and Effectiveness

Managerial motivation, traits, and effectiveness are the attributes that are required for leaders to be successful. Managerial motivation is based on the leader and the amount of achievement motivation they have.  The higher the achievement motivation the more effective the manager is, in contrast a manager with low achievement motivation is less effective and successful. Traits are the skills and values a leader possesses and they contribute to how a leader is perceived by senior leaders, peers, and subordinates.  This is driven by “a variety of individual attributes, including aspects of personality, temperament, needs, motives, and values (Yekl, 2013, page 136),” where an individual behaves a certain way.  Effectiveness is how a manager’s motivation and traits lead to success or failure of the manager’s goals.  A good manager is considered respected, confident, and knowledgeable.  A not so good manager can be perceived as defensive, weak, and considered a failure.  These deference depend on how a manager is perceived, its ether strong, weak, motivated, effective or ineffective.

My Leadership Skills, Traits, and Competencies

My leadership skills, traits, and competences have grown over the last 20 years of military service.  I entered the military with high moral values, honesty, fairness to others, and loyalty to the organization.  I was lacking in job skill knowledge, military customs, and politics. I improved my knowledge about the military, occupational skill, and leadership. I am considered a subject matter expert in military human resource, but had to grow to attain that position. The road to success required me to learn how to work with others that possess diverse skills, beliefs, and leadership styles.  Being confident, learning from others, positive or negative, contributed to my development. I maintain a positive outlook even in stressful situations to provide the confidence that even if we fail, there is something positive to learn from it. I learned as written in this week’s text, “optimism and persistence in efforts to accomplish a task or mission are likely to increase commitment by subordinates, peers, and superiors to support the effort (Yekl, 2013, page 140)” works when applied.

Strength, Leverage, and Variables

I have high self-confidence, I am emotionally mature, power motivated, and achievement motivated.  I spent seven years as an Enlisted member of the Air Force.  As an enlisted member I observed a lot of negative leadership and worked in environments that would have been improved if there were better leaders in charge.  I was confident I would be a better leader than the NCO’s and officers in my organization at that time.  I was emotionally mature than a lot of the leaders around me, so I set a goal of becoming an commissioned officer.  My motivation to gain power or rank in this case was driven by my desire to make the work environment better for people of lower rank like myself.  It took two years, but I completed my undergraduate degree and was accepted to officer training school.  My leadership traits have helped me over the last 13 years as an officer.  Having developed a locus of control, I believe that everyone is responsible for the situation around them, meaning bad things will happen, so learn from them and move on.  My traits also help me to work with variables such as toxic narcissistic leaders who possess “a strong personalized need for power, low emotional maturity, and low integrity (Yakl, 2013, page 143).”  Being a flexible leader able understanding the positives, negatives and variables of an organization is critical and has helped me to be successful over the last 20 years.




Reference 
Yukl, Gary, (2013), State University of New York, Albany, Leadership in organizations 8th Edition, Pearson Education, Inc.


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