MBA Essay：从领导的角度谈谈我的强项和事业目标

领导是指一个人的能力，激发其他人的信任和支持，这是实现组织目标的影响其他人的能力。领导通过利用理想的个人属性来帮助组织的有效性，从而取得良好的结果。             

一个优秀的管理领导能力强善于发现企业的优势，员工和其他管理，并限制发挥优势作用，从而促进企业的发展。因此，当今企业越来越重视领导能力。在管理人员的招聘，很多公司会考察候选人的领导。本研究首先介绍了领导理论和优秀领导者应具备的素质、特点。然后，阐述了作者希望在以后的工作中所处的地位，以及领导地位的要求。最后，本研究提出了作者在领导方面的优势，以及如何利用这个职位的领导才能。 

 

1.0 Introduction 简介

 

Leadership refers to a person’s ability to inspire other people’s confidence and support, it involves the ability of influencing other people to achieve objectives of an organization (Schaubroeck, Lam and Peng, 2016). Leadership contributes to an organization’s effectiveness by making use of desirable personal attributes, so as to achieve good results (Li, Zhao and Begley, 2015).

Strong leadership of an excellent management is good at discovering the advantages of an enterprise, employees and other management, and plays the role of the advantages to the limit, so as to promote the development of the enterprise (Rowold and Heinitz, 2007). Therefore, leadership is paid more and more attention by enterprises today (Li, Zhao and Begley, 2015). In the recruitment of management personnel, many companies will inspect the leadership of candidates (Schaubroeck, Lam and Peng, 2016). This study first of all introduces theories relating to leadership and the qualities, characteristics that excellent leaders should have. Then, it describes the position that the author hopes to take in the future, as well as the requirements of the position for leadership. Finally, this study presents the author’s strengths in leadership, and how to take advantage of the leadership in this position.

 

2.0 Main body 正文

 

Through study of the course I realize the importance of leadership to the success of modern enterprises, while in the recruitment of certain employees, modern enterprises will focus on inspection the leadership of the staff, they need staff with excellent leadership. Considering from the content of this course, leadership is divided into many different types, different types of leadership have different characteristics, different types of leadership apply to different business environment. What kind of leadership enterprises need, and what type of leadership we should have are questions that we need to consider in the process of finding a job. In general, the best way to determine leadership includes the following four steps, first, to understand the environment that an enterprise is in; second, to determine the most suitable leadership mode for the enterprise in the environment; third, to understand the characteristics of staff leaded, including their interests, goals, and concerns; finally, to apply the theory of leadership to management practice. Combined with my own characteristics, job orientation and specific learning points from courses, I think that transformational leadership is a management skill that I need to learn and master in  my future work.#p#分页标题#e#

 

2.1 Transformational leadership theory

Burns (1978) argued that in traditional leadership model, leaders and those who are leaded are always engaged in constant exchange, in the process of exchange, leaders' incentives and obedience of those being governed by leaders are taken as a condition of exchange, but this leadership mode does not lead to a positive passion in the heart of the followers, and the internal motivation of the staff is limited, so the traditional leadership can not make an organization make more progress.

In order to cope with more intense market competition and a more complex market environment, a series of theories about leadership have been put forward, the most important of which is transformational leadership theory (Burns, 1978; Li, Zhao and Begley, 2015). Transformational leadership theory believes that leaders are through making employees recognize the significance of their task and their own responsibilities to stimulate and meet the subordinates’ high-level needs, so that the subordinates will actively strive for greater benefits for the organization (Judge and Piccolo, 2004). Transformational leadership believes that leaders have four characteristics, first is idealized influence, idealized influence refers to that a leader generally has a higher recognized ethical standards and strong personal charm, and he is loved and trusted by his subordinates, they agree with and support the vision that he advocates (Rowold and Heinitz, 2007). Second is inspirational motivation, leaders express their high expectations to subordinates, motivating them to join in the team and become part of the team to together achieve the dream of the team (Burns, 1978). Third is intellectual stimulation, it is to encourage subordinates to innovate and challenge themselves, including instilling subordinates new ideas, enlightening subordinates to express new insights and encouraging subordinates to use new means to solve problems encountered in their work (Li, Zhao and Begley, 2015). Last is individualized consideration, it is caring every subordinate, paying attention to individual needs, ability and desire, listening to them patiently and meticulously, as well as giving them personalized guidance (Wang, Demerouti and Blanc, 2017). 

 

2.2 Empirical research on transformational leadership

Taking Judge and Piccolo’s study (2004) for example, he used meta-analysis to analyze 87 research samples relating to transformational leadership, transactional leadership, and laissez-faire leaders from 1995 to 2003. These research samples cover a wide range of career areas and contexts, such as enterprises, universities, military and public sectors (Judge and Piccolo, 2004). The results showed that there is a significant positive correlation between transformational leadership and job satisfaction of subordinates, satisfaction towards leadership and the motivation of work (Judge and Piccolo, 2004).#p#分页标题#e#

In empirical research, Jaiswal and Dhar (2015) showed that there was a significant positive correlation between transformational leadership and innovation of subordinates, and the subordinates of transformational leaders showed a higher level of innovation. The survey from Wang, Demerouti and Blanc (2017) proved that there was a significant positive correlation between transformational leadership and empowerment, supporting innovation and organizational innovation, and supporting innovation was positively correlated with organizational innovation.

In terms of job performance, Rowold (2007) took the staff of public transport companies as research objects to find that transformational leadership has a direct and significantly positive impact on the profit of a department. The study from Lehmann-Willenbrock, Meinecke, Rowold and Kauffeld (2015) indicated that transformational leadership has a significant positive impact on organizational citizenship behavior, this influence was mainly reflected in the fact that individualized care from leaders could significantly predict the subordinates’ altruistic behavior, sense of responsibility, civic virtue and civilized courtesy; Mohamed (2016) found that transformational leadership behavior could significantly reduce subordinates’ behavior of absenteeism.

In general, the growing pace of business development brings forward a higher demand for leaders’ ability, hoping that leaders can demonstrate greater resilience and greater flexibility, enabling teams and enterprises to behave more efficiently, more innovatively, more flexibly in rapidly changing environments. Burns (1978) believed that transformational leadership meets this need.

 

2.3 Target position 

My future target position is to work as senior manager at PwC, DTT, KPMG and Ernst & Young , the position requires that I should have a certified public accountant qualification certificate, and I should be proficient in using accounting standards; I should be familiar with tax, foreign exchange and other relevant laws and regulations; and I should flexibly apply relevant policies and regulations of tax and foreign exchange to the daily accounting practice; I should be familiar with business modes and accounting systems of different industries. What’s more, according to the different types of customers and business characteristics, I should have the ability to establish accounting system for customers, take the initiative to promote the advantages and characteristics of my company in a variety of occasions to develop potential customers and serve the existing customers at the same time

Considering from the theory of transformational leadership, the position has the following four requirements for leadership. From the point of view of idealized influence, it requires the leader should be full of passion, have good conduct, and strong work responsibility, it should have good work and study habits and can withstand greater work pressure. From the perspective of inspirational motivation, it requires the leader to have a wealth of team management experience, according to the company's values and cultural ideas to motivate employees to contribute to the company. From the point of view of intellectual stimulation, it require that the leader can organize and provide a variety of professional guidance and training, including training about teamwork, culture and philosophy, work habits, professional knowledge and other aspects of training. In terms of individualized consideration, it requires the leader to have team spirit and be able to care for, and support the work of team members in their daily work.#p#分页标题#e#

I choose this position for the following three reasons, first, there are high requirements for staff’s accounting theory, practical experience, management skills and other comprehensive quality requirements, and I think that my overall quality is fully able to cope with the needs of this position, this position provides a good platform for playing the roles of my personal ability. Second, the position can help me to gain more experience in international accounting practice, understanding the dynamics and trends of accounting developments and know more people in the accounting industry, and these experiences, knowledge and contacts will be very helpful for my future development in the accounting industry. Finally, senior manager in the four major companies is the ideal position for most accounting practitioners. If I am qualified for this position, it is not only the recognition of my professional ability, and it also gives me enough sense of accomplishment and the force of hard work. 

 

2.4 My strength 

One of my strengths is my cheerful character, I am happy in and good at communicating with other people, and I am willing to share my knowledge and experience with others, and I am willing to inspire people around me to work hard and study. This strength will help me in this position to better motivate the employees to contribute to the enterprise, as well as to understand and meet the individual needs of the employees. My other strength is having a solid knowledge of accounting theory and a wealth of work experience, which will help me to give the employees the guidance of professional knowledge to help them to use new approaches to solve new problems encountered in the work. My last strength is that in the course of my career of studying for more than 10 years, I have formed rigorous, serious, diligent, responsible work and life attitudes that can help me to work well and give the subordinates positive guidance and motivation with my work attitude and behavior, therefore getting their support for me and the team work.

 

2.5 How to play the roles of my strength in the target position

I will play the roles of my strength in my target position from the following four areas. First, I will use my rigorous, serious, diligent, responsible work and life attitude to set an example for my subordinates, so that they will agree with my management philosophy, values and work vision, allowing them to be willing to imitate my work and study attitude, so that they will be willing to accept my leadership to form a solidarity team atmosphere under my leadership. Second, in accounting firms, the work is difficult, and staff will face many unexpected situations, so employees more work under pressure, under the strong work pressure, staff prone to have slack, frustrated and other negative emotions, I can use my strong communication skills to communicate with them on the work in time, soothing their pressure, so that my subordinate staff will always maintain a high enthusiasm and high efficiency. Third, many professional problems will be encountered in dealing with accounting work, the problems include that some staff fail to master proficient accounting standards well, or some staff are not familiar with relevant laws and regulations about tax and foreign exchange, or they are not able to make a flexible use of tax, foreign exchange and other relevant policies and regulations in the daily accounting practice. This will bring many employees a great challenge in completing their tasks successfully. On the one hand, I have learned a lot of accounting knowledge in my study, on the other hand, I also have a rich accounting work experience, so I can actively guide my subordinate employees on how to solve problems at work, especially when they are faced with new problems, I can also use my expertise to guide and encourage the employees to try new ways to solve the problems. Finally, employees of accounting firms are usually knowledge workers who are more eager to be respected and to gain development opportunities than other types of employees. I can take advantage of my pleasant personality to actively communicate with them and listen to them, while giving them the views on their work, at the same time, I will help them to achieve their own needs and personal development.#p#分页标题#e#

 

3.0 Conclusion 结论

 

Faced with more intense market competition and more complex market environment, compared to traditional leadership, transformational leadership is more able to improve the enthusiasm of staff to bring more competitive advantage and interests for enterprises. Through the study of this course, I have realized that transformational leadership is characterized with idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intelligence inspiring, individualized consideration. My future target is to work as a senior manager at PwC, DTT, KPMG and Ernst & Young (EY). Thus I should pay attention to enhance my ability and knowledge in these four areas, so that I will be able to play the roles of my own advantages to meet the requirements of my ideal position in the future to contribute to the development of the enterprise.

 

References

Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

Jaiswal, N. K. and Dhar, R. L. (2015). Transformational leadership, innovation climate, creative self-efficacy and employee creativity: A multilevel study. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 51(10), 30-41.

Judge, T. A., & Piccolo, R. F. (2004). Transformational and Transactional Leadership: A Meta-Analytic Test of Their Relative Validity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 755-768. 

Lehmann-Willenbrock, N., Meinecke, a. l., Rowold, J. and Kauffeld, S. (2015). How transformational leadership works during team interactions: a behavioral process analysis. The Leadership Quarterly, 26(6), 1017-1033.

Li, C., Zhao, H. and Begley, T. M. (2015). Transformational leadership dimensions and employee creativity in China: a cross-level analysis. Journal of Business Research, 68(6), 1149-1156.

Mohamed, L. M. (2016). Assessing the effects of transformational leadership: a study on Egyptian hotel employees. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 27(6), 49-59.

Schaubroeck, J. M., Lam, S. M. and Peng, A. C. (2016). Can peers’ ethical and transformational leadership improve coworkers’ service quality? A latent growth analysis. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 133(3),45-58.

Wang, H. J., Demerouti, E. and Blanc, P. L. (2017). Transformational leadership, adaptability, and job crafting: the moderating role of organizational identification. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 100(6), 185-195.

Rowold, J. and Heinitz, K. (2007). Transformational and charismatic leadership: Assessing the convergent, divergent and criterion validity of the MLQ and the CKS. The Leadership Quarterly, 18, 121–133.