Personal Reflective Essay: What Makes A Good Leader?

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Leadership in my terms is - ‘The ability of an individual to infuse a strong drive in other individuals in his sphere of influence to achieve a desired state and to inspire people even outside direct the sphere of influence’. To achieve this a leader must have certain traits, which vary from a leader to leader but are generally accepted as the precursors to leadership. These traits are both innate and cultivable by practice. To start enumerating the most important, I believe they are Clarity of thought, Concise and direct communication, Action oriented approach, Foresee the results and Empathy for others.
Clarity of Thought: A leader has to have clarity of his thoughts, a clear set end goal – a vision, a need for achieving that end goal- a mission and a way to achieve that
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And more fortunately, I have come to Johnson and have got a platform to introspect about those experiences and understand the short comings that I can work upon here and later in my career.
Being youngest on the team that I led, I was a Democratic leader in the beginning and had a participative leadership style where I took advice from the senior and trustworthy members of the team. In retrospection I think, I was clear on the mission and strategy execution but lacked a clear vision of the goal and also lacked on the communication aspect of the 5 important skills to have. I was good at ‘Action Oriented Approach’ but with the Vision for the branch it was transactional.
I could not envision the larger state of the team and my branch but could only act on immediate problems ahead and could make good plans to conquer them. Though, difficult I learned the art of communication slowly with growing responsibility and more experience into the position, I understood how to direct others towards a goal and how to keep them

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