Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton has been one of the leaders that I have admired throughout the years of her political affiliation and career. Hillary Clinton has been labeled as a transformational leader. The characteristics that she displays is that, she inspires a shared vision, not afraid to challenge a process, and the ability to enable others to take action. The practices and values that she shows, puts her in the position of being a very effective and inspirational leader. Effective leaders are clear about their own value and philosophy, which is exactly why Hillary Clinton has been an accomplished leader during her term as a secretary of the state, and as a Governor’s wife, while Bill Clinton was the Governor of Arkansas, she has been very clear in regards to her philosophy of making the United States a safer and stronger country. While serving with the State Department, her hard work and dedication to empowered her team to raise their awareness and to use their own interest to help and impact others.

Hillary Clinton didn’t just empower others, to see and share her vision, but she also lives her vision. Hillary Clinton’s leadership style helped to build trust and to be able to collaborate with others. Hillary has focus on her follower’s needs, values and their morals, which shows how well she demonstrated the transformational approach. According to Business Dictionary (Transformational Leadership), the definition of a transformational leader is one that identifies the needed change, creates a vision to guide the change through inspiration and executes the change with the commitment of the members of the group. In order to help understand the actions of a transformational leader, it is good to know the five principles of leadership, according to Kouzes and Posner. The five principles are; 1) Challenging the process, which is simply means a leader who doesn’t choose to stand still in processes but desires and will achieve the mobility of moving the team forward. 2) Inspiring a shared vision leaders need to have the ability to create relationships with teammates that will share power in such a manner that it will enable followers to move in the visions direction.

“When people have more discretion, more authority, and more information, they’re much more likely to produce extraordinary results” (Kouzes and Posner, 2002, p. 12). This is also where the 4) Enabling of others to act comes into the effectiveness of this type of leadership. 3) Modeling the way is important in leadership, because it molds the desired path, which requires articulation of guiding principles that will be implemented into practice. This is when an informational leader will get involved in the day to day operations and if needed will work side by side with their team to complete the task. 5) Encouraging the Heart is often over looked in the leadership practice. It is very common for leaders to have the opinion that adult employees should be able to behave accordingly and as expected within the workplace, and not have to be coddled, but the need for encouragement is not necessarily a sign of an employee’s immaturity but it is one of the keys to motivation for employees.

In my own views of my leadership style, I believe that I am a transformational leader, because I truly believe in the organizations mission and vision and when I interact with my staff, I display my commitment to the vision in every action that I take. I encourage those that seem to be not engaged in their day to day functions and expectations, by looking for their own personal interest in what their contribution is to the organization, because I believe that there is some employees that may not be the right fit for their position and that they may have other attributes that need to be encouraged and possibly used to help move the organization or processes forward. Often I challenge processes because not all processes are adequate for every situation, and sometimes there needs to be changes to make a more efficient process. The responsibility of being a front line supervisor, requires me to be able to enable employees to be effective within their position, and there are times when an employee or employees need me to provide them with the best guidance that I can offer, in order for them to have a clear idea of what will be expected from them and the outcomes.

When comparing myself to Hillary Clinton, I need to improve on my abilities to direct large groups of people and to have the confidence in what I do, so that I can appreciate my failures as well as my successes. Hillary Clinton not only challenges processes, but she also moves out of her comfort zone and challenges herself and her own abilities, which is a good quality in a leader, because it shows how diverse a leader can be. In conclusion according to Kouzes and Posner “The Leadership Challenge is about how leaders mobilize others to want to get extraordinary things done in organizations. It’s about the practices leaders use to transform values into actions, visions into realities, obstacles into innovations, separateness into solidarity, and risks into rewards. It’s about leadership that creates the climate in which people turn challenging opportunities into remarkable success.”

Reference
Robbins, S.R. & Judge, T.A. (2013). Organizational behavior (15th ed.) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall. transformational leadership. (). Retrieved from http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/transformational-leadership.html http://sites.psu.edu/leadership/2013/06/16/hillary-clinton-the-transformational-leader/