Professional Development Plan

Leadership as a vocation requires a commitment to professional excellence and integrity, which can be achieved through establishing habits of self-reflection, life-long learning, and professional development. The purpose of this assignment is for you to reflect on where you currently are in your leadership capabilities; define where you want to go; and specify goals, plans, and a timeframe for achieving your professional objectives. Your professional development plan will be composed of three parts: Vision, Goals/Objectives, and Plans. 

Vision:

The ability to create, communicate and compel vision is critical to inspiring and effective leadership. While ultimately many leaders are responsible for developing visions to guide complex organizations, effective leadership begins on a much more personal level—a vision of yourself as a leader. Who are you and who do you want to become in your field or sphere of influence? Once you are clear about that, you can then confidently establish how you will help others and your organization achieve their visions.

Your leadership vision is based on a number of factors including your attitude, values, personal beliefs, guiding principles, and how you behave. It may also be influenced by theoretical, philosophical, or religious frameworks and the leadership traits, values, and behaviors of others. A leadership vision is also dynamic. No great leader ever "arrived." Those who have adopted leadership as their vocation can spend a lifetime in self-reflection in order to continue to learn and more effectively motivate and inspire others. 

Spend some time reflecting below on where you currently are in your leadership capabilities, what you have learned about leadership in the course, and how you want to develop and improve as you continue your leadership studies and move forward in your field. Review the document “Essential Leadership Competencies” for an overview of the scope of effective leadership capabilities.

Reflection:

So far, I have learned a lot about the concept of leadership, leadership skills and competencies, attitude, behavior, and desire to lead a group of individuals and organizations. As I am gaining more knowledge about leadership such as skills and competencies, I am practicing to learn and acquire those skills and competencies. I have learned how to communicate effectively with my colleagues, subordinates, and management. I have also learned the skills to motivate and encourage people to get work done collectively. However, I need to develop the skills to inspire people. Leadership is all about inspiration. An effective leader must be able to inspire people so that people or followers can follow the foot-steps of the leader to get the work done (Antonakis and Day, 2017). I need to develop the skills to promote diversity and values of different cultures so that the team and organization can be benefited from it. In order to improve my leadership abilities, I will learn the skills to inspire and promote cultural differences or diversity within the organization. I will follow the guidelines of the great leaders who have achieved the milestone in these fields. I will continuously practice these skills and competencies so that I can effectively learn them. I will develop a timeframe for the same purpose to learn and improve my leadership abilities. 

Vision:

Then, in 300-500 words, briefly articulate your vision for yourself as a leader 3-5 years from now. Where do you want to be? What kind of leader do you want to become? 

Creating a vision is a very tough task. There are several factors which should be kept in mind while creating a vision for self, team, or organization such as the vision should be attainable and realistic. Setting an unrealistic or unattainable vision will mislead the individuals. The vision is the secret to leadership success (Grenham and Mitra, 2018). 

I want to be a democratic leader or a participative leader. A democratic leader is a leader who has shared power in the process of decision making. A democratic leader always talks about collectivism. He or she wants to move together to achieve the common goals of the team or the organization. The leader always allows and motivates the team members to participate and hence the group takes a more participative role within the organization in the process of decision making (McKeown and Carey, 2015). Every member of the team gets the opportunity to participate and share their ideas freely. It also promotes creativity, high productivity, and morale of the individuals. It sets a system of reward where high performers are recognized and rewarded.

The concept of democratic leadership always attracts me and hence I want to acquire the skills and competencies of democratic leadership. I always believe in collaboration and cooperation. I believe that people should be free to work according to their working style so that creativity and innovation can be ensured. I always favor diversity as it brings new ideas. 

My vision statement for leadership is “To consistently lead a group of individual and organization with fairness, humility, integrity, as well as honest and clear communication.” I want to be in the position of a CEO of a multinational organization in 3 to 5 years and lead that organization successfully. I want to mentor and develop my team to achieve the goals and objectives of the organization effectively and efficiently. I want to create an environment and culture of respect for all. There should be an enjoyable and professional working environment. There should be equal opportunity for every member of the organization to grow and develop.

Goals/Objectives:

After you have stated your vision, create five to eight leadership goals/objectives you will strive to meet in the next 3-5 years. Try to formulate at least one goal/objective related to the four major leadership competencies included in "Essential Leadership Competencies": self-leadership, leading others, leading an organization, and leadership as a vocation. Include a brief justification for each goal/objective to explain how it will help you achieve the qualities of professional excellence and integrity required of excellent leaders. 

Setting leadership goals to achieve the vision is necessary as it provides a definite direction to achieve the vision within the given timeframe. The goals will guide to achieve the vision effectively and efficiently (Gündemir et al., 2017). The following are the leadership goals that I will try to achieve in 3 to 5 years so that I can realize my leadership vision in the next 3 to 5 years.

1) To learn the skills and competencies of inspiring others

2) To learn the skills and competencies to promote diversity within the organization 

3) To develop personal responsibility as well as the self-discipline

4) To identify and foster leadership in others

5) To identify and recognize the effort of the employees and reward them

6) To mentor the followers to develop leadership skills

7) To be a role model for the followers

8) To continuously learn and improve my leadership skills and competencies 

Plan:

Specify activities you will engage in to achieve your goals/objectives. You may find it helpful to research professional development activities in your field or organization to determine what resources are available to you. Be specific about projects you will engage in either as a student or as a professional and identify people in your life who can help you achieve your goals. Be sure to include a timeline of events.

Finally, include a method for evaluating your professional development plan at regular intervals. What milestones will you include in your plan to help ensure its success? How will you use methods of self-reflection to assess your progress as you move towards your goals?

In order to achieve the defined goals to achieve the vision, I will create a learning environment within the organization so that every day I can learn new skills and competencies. I will communicate with other leaders to design my leadership activities more effectively to achieve the defined goals. I will practice the following activities for professional development. These activities will help me to achieve my goals and ultimately the vision. 

Activities                                                                                                         Time duration 

Workshop to deal with resistance                                                            10/12/2019-10/01/2020

Simulation on implementing important organizational change               11/01/2020-11/02/2020

Immersive team experience                                                                     12/02/2020-12/03/2020

Application of different thought process                                                 13/03/2020-31/03/2020

Learning ways to creativity and innovation                                             01/04/2020-15/04/2020

Learning active listening skills                                                                 16/04/2020-30/04/2020

Taking accountability and responsibility of the failure                           01/05/2020-15/05/2020

On-the-job coaching                                                                                16/05/2020-16/06/2020

Presentation                                                                                             17/06/2020-30/06/2020

Functional training                                                                                  01/07/2020-31/07/2020

I will be actively engaged in the above-listed activities to learn the necessary skills to achieve my goals and vision of leadership. With the help of these goals, I will learn the new skills and competencies to improve my leadership. The deadline given for each activity will be followed strictly so that I can learn the new set of skills and competencies within the given timeframe. Apart from the above-listed activities, I will also read the autobiography of the great leaders of the world to learn how they led their team, organization, and country. I will focus on reading more on leadership (democratic leadership) to learn the required skills and competencies to improve my leadership abilities.