MSLD 511 Module 6 - A Leader from the Past

Transformational leaders are identified as leaders whom really provide a number of positive traits and skill to their teams, these include including creating a vision, motivating, being a change agent, building trust, and providing nurturance, among other factors (Northouse, 2016). Looking back at my various experiences, I have been lucky enough to have some really great leaders. In my current role, I would most certainly define my manager as a transformational leader. My manager is quite visionary, for the past two years we have undergone significant organizational changes, for one we went through major layoffs, cutting us down to a team about half the size that it used to be. In this sort of environment, my manager had to be a source of vision and future perspective in these times that we were stretched thin. Now we are in a sort of upswing where in the past we have been stretched thin resource wise, more recently we are hiring and expanding our efforts. Now my manager is able to continue to motivate us towards the vision while also being a change agent in these times of positive transition. Just the fact that I perceive these changes as positive, though very uncertain, is proof that my manager has provided a clear vision and has advocated for that vision as a change agent.  

Nurturance is another big one, my manager actually works remotely, I see her about once every three months, yet she provides the most personal developmental support I have ever experienced by a manager. The ways in which she does so is by simply asking how I am doing and how I am feeling about the things I am working on, things that I want to achieve. It is beyond offering up her self as a resource for escalation, she goes as far as asking about how this course is going for me. Due to this extra support, I have had the benefit of striving to do my best and achieve greater things in the workplace not only for myself and my own job satisfaction but also for my manager. Because she has an invested interest in my projects and my efforts I feel motivated to go beyond just satisfying her with the quality of my work. A real world example is when I re-launched an external website that received little to no traffic last year. I focused my re-launch in updating the quality of the site and getting it linked in the appropriate places to drive the proper audience to the site. In the journey of re-launching this site there was a heavy role of project managing that I had to take on. This project managing was a new experience for me and my manager instilled the confidence in me to take on the project, making me aware that she believed that I had the necessary skillset to accomplish the project, while she also was sure to act as a resource to fall back as the project progressed into unknown waters. This type of transformational leadership that she employed allowed me to successfully complete the project and add the skillset of project managing to my own abilities.

References

Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice 7th ed. Los Angeles, CA:
     Sage Publishing