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Leadership Profile

Leadership Profile

Master of Education Student

Khilola Alihon

Dr. Alexandria Proff

EDUC 525: Theories of Leadership and Administration

November 29, 2022

Leaders are someone who can inspire and motivate people through their actions and traits. Their

personalities and willingness to the action of leading people are what make them an effective

leader. According to Robbins, DeCenzo, Coulter and Anderson, “Trait theories of leadership are

the theories that isolate characteristics (traits) that differentiate leaders from nonleaders”

(Fundamentals of Management, 2017, p.186) This theory discusses eight characteristics of an

effective leader should have such as, Drive, Desire to lead, Honesty and integrity, Self-

confidence, Cognitive Intelligence, Emotional intelligence, Job-relevant knowledge, and

Extroversion. Three of these characteristics can be considered as my traits, Self-confidence,

Honesty and integrity and Drive.

I can consider myself as a person full of confidence even though in an under-pressure situation.

A specific example of this statement is when a technological problem appeared during our group

presentation. No one from our group was confident enough to stand and present without our

slides. We only had three minutes to decide if we can present or not. My old cohort groupmates

were having a hard time to decide, that is why I stood up and be the first one who presents in

front of our class and encouraged my groupmates to the same thing, and they did.

The second characteristic I am a great motivator. As a full-time student who also had a full-time

job as a teacher at school, I motivated my students and colleagues, even my family, to achieve
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Leadership Profile
our goals and ambitions. This statement was illustrated when I was in charge of being the

department head for three months. Our preview HOD was a wonderful and understandable

woman. When she left our school, we were a bit lost. I volunteered to take responsibility for

leading the English Department until our school hired a new leader. I motivate my colleagues to

continue what we are doing and show our best skills. We passed MOE's inspection without any

negative comments. Later, the school offered me this position. Regrettably, I was pregnant at the

time.

The third characteristic I have from the Trait Theories of Leadership is Drive. Growing up in an

ambitious family, it has been my habit to achieve higher goals in my life. For example, I am

always thinking about becoming a doctor. I married when I was 18, but I never gave up on my

education. My first education was unrelated to my primary goal. My drive is what encourages

me to continue to collect my thoughts and budget to get my second degree. This master's

program motivated me to continue my studies and connect with my dream goal. When I am able

to work as an educational consultant in a hospital in Amsterdam, I intend to do so.I will be a

teacher for students who are having long treatments. This opportunity will allow me to complete

all of my education and pursue my dream job.

Being a good listener is not included in the Trait Theories of Leadership, but I think it would

help us to become an effective leader. In my opinion, A leader who can hear his or her followers
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Leadership Profile
out will have more chances to address a specific problem easily and be able to provide an

immediate solution. I consider myself a good listener because I have always believed that it is

better to listen first before doing such an action that could possibly hurt someone’s feelings.

From all the traits I consider having, I think that there is a high possibility of me being an

effective leader. In my opinion, being a leader is not just about the characteristics you have. It is

also about the way you treat your followers and other people. It is about gaining respect and

building a good reputation that will serve as an inspiration to everyone who looks upon you. I do

believe that I can be an effective leader because besides being confident, honest and having the

drive to achieve higher goals, I also can gain respect from others and be a good example to

everyone.

Situational, Transformational and Servant Leadership

Being a leader is not always about telling your followers what to do. Leaders can also lead a

group of people or an organization in different ways. Situational leadership is one of the ways to

lead people. It is argued by Hersey and Blanchard that tells us how the followers decide whether

they want to accept the leader or not. This way of leading people is not about leaders being

superior to their followers. It is about considering a follower’s readiness or willingness to act for

a specific task. In other words, leaders are not telling the followers what to do but hearing them

out first instead. Another way of leading people is Transformational Leadership. In this way,
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Leadership Profile
leaders are more on inspiring their followers to be more eager to do their given responsibilities. It

is about transforming them into someone more willing to solve an old problem by giving them

more options and ways to solve it. Transformational Leadership makes the followers more

optimistic to do a specific task that they were given. Unlike the first two ways, Servant

leadership is not about letting the followers do the task. It is a way where the leaders do the task

and serve as a model to their followers to develop a group who is focused on helping others.

From all these approaches, I believe that Transformational Leadership is the most effective way

to lead people or an organization. Motivating and inspiring followers by seeing a problem in a

different perspective to find a way to solve it is I think the best way to help them to be more

independent when it comes to accomplishing a task. In my opinion, this approach will not only

help a follower to solve a problem but also will shape him or her to become a leader.

As a master's program student, I have experienced being a leader multiple times. A specific

example of me being a leader is when I had to be the one who was responsible for assigning my

old cohort groupmates to do a part for our project in the CSR presentation in Course EDUC 660.

Then I gave them their assignments, but it seemed like they did not know how to do them, so I

ended up working on most of them. Although they did their best to help me, I still think that I

provided a servant leadership approach to accomplishing our project. It may seem unfair on my

part, but I know that I have taught them to be more prepared next time and to be considerate
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Leadership Profile
about the other group members' time and effort. Finally, I created an e-student educational app

for school to help students navigate their progress; it was part of a project that I included in my

business plan and sold it.

Identify a Leader

President Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy is the current leader of Ukraine and has been

using his power and influence in a harmful way. He became president on May 20, 2019 and

started ruling the country with nothing but the violence that caused the deaths of many innocent

people. Zelenskyy had directed the Ukrainian police to execute anyone they suspected of being

involved in protecting Russia or using the Russian language. Behind this propaganda, many

innocent people have been killed because they have been accused of using the Russian language

and have had no power to defend themselves. Although his motives are to make his country

better, I still think that violence is never the answer.

On the other hand, Islam Abduganiyevich Karimov, who was the leader of Uzbekistan and its

predecessor state, the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, from 1989 until his death in 2016, and

Tayyip Erdogan, a Turkish politician, are the opposites of President Zelensky. Their policy of

non-violence and protest through civil disobedience eventually succeeded when they led their

country to freedom. The motivational approach to leading is what encouraged their people to do

good deeds for others. I think that Karimov and Erdogan had a huge impact, not only on their
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Leadership Profile
country but all over the world. They became an inspiration to many people, and their words have

become motivation for everyone. 

Leadership Scenarios

On the first scenario which an employee is lacking confidence that caused him or her to have an

underperformance at the workplace, I think that the most appropriate leadership style to approach

the situation is by Selling or providing a direct and supportive behavior to the employee. This

will show your willingness to help your employee as a leader to gain more confidence and have a

better performance at the workplace. On the other hand, the second scenario would let us show a

different approach. Using the Path-Goal Theory, I think that being a Supportive leader would be

the most appropriate style to deal with the situation. Showing concern to your employees would

build a strong relationship between you and your followers. In this case, having a conversation

with your employee will help you figure out the reason why is she having an underperformance

at the workplace. Giving her a chance to explain herself would help you to decide whether to

promote her or not. Setting a challenging goal with appropriate rewards or being an

Achievement-oriented leader will make the employees perform their best at the workplace. I

think that this approach would be the best to imply in the third scenario. After knowing that your

employees are losing their eagerness to have a good performance at the workplace, giving them
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Leadership Profile
something to look forward to or a reward would encourage them to perform at their highest level.

Using the Hersey Blanchard Model, I think that Selling is the most appropriate approach to the

fourth scenario. Providing a directive and supportive behavior to the employees would help them

to perform at their highest level. Persuading the employees by giving them assurance that there

will be an immediate solution in this issue would encourage them to work hard and have their

performance at the workplace.

Personal Leadership/Management Profile

The positive environment in the workplace is important for the employees to report at work

every day with enthusiasm. A leader must have a strong relationship with his or her employees to

have this kind of environment at work. Showing compassion to all the employees will inspire

them to strive harder as a worker and give respect to their leaders. Therefore, being charismatic,

the leader is the most effective way to lead your followers. If I would be a leader, inspiring my

employees to think in new directions will help them to excel in the workplace and expand their

knowledge on what they do. In other words, I would be a charismatic leader. Wilson et al. (2017)

stated: “charismatic leader- an enthusiastic, selfconfident leader whose personality and actions

influence people to behave certain ways” (p.193) In my opinion, being a charismatic leader

would help in building a strong relationship with the employees. I believe that having this strong

relationship would let the employees express their thoughts and ideas that would give a
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Leadership Profile
betterment for the company or for the whole team. In addition to this, having a connection with

your employees would help the leader to gain their respect and loyalty that would create a good

feedback to the leader.

Given all this information, I believe that these gave me an idea of how I am going to lead my

followers in the future. These learnings gave me an insight into what types of leader can a person

can be. Even though I may not be a leader in the future, this lesson had informed me to become a

follower who can adjust for many different types of leader I might work with.
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Reference

Fleenor, John W. (2011),"Trait Approach to Leadership." Encyclopedia of Industrial and

Organizational Psychology. 2006. SAGE Publications. 16 Feb. 2011.

Northouse, P. G. (2007). Leadership: theory and practice. 4th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage

Publications.

Robbins S.P, DeCenza, D.A, Coulter, M, Anderson, I. (2017). Fundamentals of Management,

Eight Edition. Toronto, Canada, Pearson.