The Clifton strengths profile is an essential tool that helps individuals identify their unique strengths and potential as leaders. The assessment test enables me to identify the unique ways I exhibit effective leadership traits daily at the workplace and school. The domain key summarizes the traits in four categories according to an effective leader's key traits, which include executing, influencing, relationship building, and strategic thinking. In this paper, I will explain my test results, explain an effective leader's cognitive abilities, and highlight two examples where my traits have helped me achieve class and work goals.
Results Summary
Under the executing leader, the theme category contains the traits that enable a leader to be action-oriented, transform words into, action and make things happen. My traits under this theme include responsibility and consistency. A responsible person owns up to what they promise to do and is committed to ensuring the promise's actualization; they take personal ownership of the promise and exhibit higher degrees of loyalty and honesty. I always strive to do right from a legal and moral perspective, and that sense of doing the correct thing extends to the quality of work. As a consistent person, I am is always committed to extending the same treatment of all people. I have established stable routines, procedures, and rules, which, as a leader, I would like to be emulated by everyone. Under the influencer theme, the profile brought up the most visible traits as an activator. An activating person is committed to turning words into action at the moment rather than an empty talk. I am always an action-oriented person who prefers my actions to talk rather than just empty talks.
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The activator trait is closely related to the significance trait because, as an action-oriented person, the aim is always to impact actions. The commitment and dedication to any designated project always give me higher satisfaction levels since the dedication and commitment always radiate on people around me. The motivation to make a significant impact enables me to be independent and influence people around me to focus on projects or ideas that I have prioritized. Besides, the ability to relate with people with a drive to excel has helped me improve. Achieving the bare minimum is not enough; it does rub my colleagues wrong, but they understand my enthusiasm levels.
The relationship builder theme brought out the empathy trait, which is a true reflection. I always identify with other people's feelings and emotions by putting myself in their shoes and experiencing their emotions. This enables me to seek out solutions to people going unpleasant experiences and share moments of joy. Also, I am delighted due to the level of trust colleagues have in me and can share their ambitions, plans, worries, or doubts. They expect me to give an opinion on the ideas shared and improve or implement solutions. My strengths enable me to calm the nerves of those who are about to make difficult decisions and bring out the emotional awareness in conversations that help calm individuals going through uncertainty.
Cognitive factors associated with leadership
A recurrent theme in the analysis of cognitive factors that contribute to a leader's success is competence. Technical competence is a significant cognitive factor that includes the level of knowledge of the business or the task at hand and the overall mental capability to make effective and sound decisions ("Leadership," 2020) . The activator theme has a strong relation to a leader's ability to turn words into action and make things happen through a deep understanding of the factors at play and the use of common-sense and intuition to improve decision making. The activator trait also helps in identifying and picking the right people for each task. This is an area that I fair reasonably well as she considers herself intelligent and has a higher ability to grasp new ideas, tasks, or assignments and reasonably quickly and efficiently handle the problems.
Creative leaders envision and create; they have unique abilities to discover, imagine and see the future in unprecedented detail and bring people to their vision level (Sparks, 2019) . Creative leaders are a prized possession in organizations who are always trying to challenge the status quo in terms of current challenges and problems, envisage solutions, and then explain their vision to the rest. Creative leaders have a unique mindset that enables them to see and evaluate problems differently ("Leadership," 2020) . As they are focused on finding solutions to the problems and envisage a better future, their traits fit in the activator theme as persons who can focus on courses of action that activating mindsets into action. The results of their creative minds do most of the talking and create a great inspiration to other people by encouraging creativity and a problem-solving mindset.
Influential leaders always maintain an open mindset, which is a cognitive factor that is related to the strength themes explored in the paper. Effective leaders are always ready to try out new methods and approach through synthesizing intelligence and wisdom to achieve a set of objectives for the organization ("Leadership," 2020) . A leader needs to consider various viewpoints and different team members' backgrounds, which helps build a common ground that helps members move forward as a cohesive team. Through maintaining an open mind, they can pull the rest of the team members towards an efficient realization of objectives.
Conceptual thinking and being far-sighted is another cognitive factor associated with successful leaders. The ability to think and connect separate pieces of abstract concepts and ideas to create a deepened understanding of the issue helps effective leaders employ their technical knowledge and skills to propose solutions that help an organization within a given time horizon (Bailey, 2019) . They maintain the long-range time horizon and put it into perspective. They draft company policies, ensuring that the policies are relevant and help the organization tackle current and future problems. For conceptual thinking to be practical, it has to be translated into tangible and useful actions, which is a trait that influential leaders have exhibited. Effective leaders put the big abstract ideas into actions and disrupt an industry with their revolutionary creativity that makes them an invaluable asset to their companies.
Application of Leadership Strengths and Traits
My ability to turn words into action as an activator positively impact my colleagues, enabling the team to accomplish tasks in time and help the organization accomplish its goals. The nothing is impossible mindset generates enthusiasm all around me. For example, when working as a group and each member is allocated a set of tasks to complete, I am always the first to complete my part. The level of motivation it generates for the rest of the members to complete their parts is essential. Thus, as a team, we complete assignments in time. With the monthly objectives for my team, I am always expected to give a peer talk on the task, encourage and instill a sense of "we can make it" which greatly help the team forge forward and work towards meeting the goals.
As a responsible person, I commit myself to the expectations of the employer's responsibilities. Being honest with myself has helped build integrity which has made me a reliable employee. I have established routines that are effective in getting the job done. Organizations are always looking for effective and efficient employees, and being one has enabled me to rise to a departmental supervisor position. The staff is always aware that I consider all factors before making a decision. Besides, I am always ready to listen and put myself in their shoes in case of problems that help them understand my course of action.
References
Bailey, D. (2019). Cultivate Your Conceptual Thinking for Visionary Leadership - Honestly.
Retrieved 8 March 2021, from https://www.honestly.com/blog/cultivate-conceptual-thinking/
Leadership. (2021). Retrieved 8 March 2021, from
https://college.cengage.com/business/dubrin/leadership/5e/improve/summary/summary_ch02.html#:~:text=Cognitive%20factors%20are%20also%20important,widely%20in%20their%20creative%20contributions .
Sparks, R. (2019). The Creative Leader, Are You One of Those Rare People? – Ron Sparks.
Retrieved 8 March 2021, from http://ron-sparks.com/wild-creative-leaders-are-you-one-of-them/
