Leadership: Motivating People to Reach Their Full Potential - Essay Sample

Introduction

Leadership is explained as the act of motivating people to do more than ever thought possible in quest of a greater good. This means that every individual at any level of an organization can become an effective leader. However, being an effective leader means being able to create a connection with one's followers, which means that the leader helps others to reach their full potentials. During an internship at the Quidam Depression dessert in China, where i trained children to survive in the desert and how to develop leadership skills, I enabled children to reach their maximum abilities through various activities and exercises that helped them to bring out the good out of every situation. However, to allow one to reach their maximum potential, one must be able to communicate, motivate, delegate, positive, creative, responsible, committed, flexible, and trustworthy. The formal leadership activities are generally thought to be training or development, which might not make one realize their abilities. However, numerous activities offer leadership growth without the individual recognizing they are involved in knowledge of becoming a leader. They include volunteering, teamwork, social groups, and passion projects. The paper shall discuss the activities that help one to realize their full potentials, basing the argument on the teachings of the survival tactics in the desert. Effective leaders help their followers understand their abilities by engaging them in activities that require a personal contribution.

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Training children to survive in the desert gives them a chance to develop their leadership skills and realize their potentials as leaders. The essential part of the training in the desert is finding water since one requires to stay hydrated in the hot weather of the desert. To find a source of water, a good leader will emphasize teamwork. This might be in the form of planning and participating in the activity. Collaboration is seen when the children work together to bring the ideas that may help to find the source of water. Teamwork appreciates the efforts of every member of a group that contributes to the success of the goal. It encourages individuals to reason and act in their natural ways. Effective leaders embrace the habits of thinking and use it to shape one's strength (Watt et al., 109). In standard settings, children will always have ideas that seem ordinary, although they might help find a solution to the situation at hand once they are evaluated and positively assimilated. However, if they are put in cases that leverage their strength and make them shine, they may develop their full potential. Therefore, teamwork helps to create situations where individuals can showcase their thinking capability and eventually offer a chance for them to realize their natural strengths that may be effective in providing a solution.

A good leader must help the team members to develop their decision-making abilities by making sound judgments and being able to convert the ideas into a sound decision. To survive in the desert, one must be able to make decisions that help to improve the chances of survival. One must ask the children to give their ideas and use them to make decisions on the activities to undertake to improve the situation. After analyzing the views, the team members are given a chance to select the ideas that are best and use them to make a decision. This acts as a motivation that increases their self-esteem by recognizing their efforts and achievements and giving them the responsibility that furthers their contribution to survival. Besides, one must be positive, no matter the pressure of the situation, to realize their full potential. However, one must recognize that it is not just the immediate decisions that need to be made, but the subsequent choices that must be expected before the situation forces them into their hand (Western 13). Deprived of the aptitude to perceive past the obvious, one is vulnerable to tumbling into the trap of their decision. Thus, a resilient leader begins to determine where every team member is least or most foreseeable in reacting to a difficulty. By guiding the children justly to find the outcomes and the prospect outlines of every decision made, problem-solving develops into a pursuit of a treasure of the unpredicted chances (Western 13). Thus, helping the team members to make firm decisions helps them realize their ability to judge and convert ideas into a decision, which enables them to achieve their full potential in decision making.

One can also enable individuals to realize their full potential by expanding their performance broadmindedness verge. A good leader can measure the performance verge by recognizing how sound one can cope with adversities, how they can maneuver under stress, their preparedness to admit different encounters, and their general mental sturdiness. To enable full potential means functioning in zones that need additional development and attention, which means that one, can be able to escalate to every occurrence personally (Storey 17-41). In the case of training children to survive in the desert, the right guidance from leadership encourages the children to take risks, test their ideas and standards, and challenge their potential to make things better. This must be followed by proper communication, delegating, and responsibility from the team leader to ensure that the children develop a sense of reliability. Communication helps a leader to convey the expectations and interact with the team members (Storey 17-41). It includes activities such as listening, identification of body language, and written communication. Communication also helps the leader to develop a relationship with the team members, which opens up opportunities to get suggestions for valuable information that may help in a specific situation. Delegating helps a leader to identify the skills that the children have, and assign them the tasks that they are competent in. Responsibility helps a leader to accept failures and mistakes and look for alternative ways to look for a solution that may improve the situation (Storey 17-41). However, giving open feedback helps the children to learn about their performance and may also enhance their knowledge of their potential. Thus, expanding the performance tolerance threshold helps one to realize one's full potential due as it creates a sense of mental toughness and reliability in various situations.

Another way to enable full potential in others is by surrounding it with a stronger potential. One's potential requires being challenged and surrounded by other high-potential individuals to make it sturdier (Meuser et al., 1374-1403). This enables individuals to turn out cleverer and develop an outlook that is strong enough to take probabilities and familiarize themselves with the lesson of disappointment. This is practical when a lower-performing child is placed in a high-performing team. Basing the argument on desert survival, a leader can select the children with less contributing skills and put them in a group of children whose powers are more contributive. This helps to activate the potential of such children as they strive to reach the potential of the others by working and contributing as much as the children with high-potentials (Meuser et al., 1374-1403). However, a leader must understand how to organize the team members for them to accomplish their plans, advance developments, and project decision-making occurrence. A potential may stay inactive if poorly managed and not fed with the correct elements to help it grow. Thus, an effective leader gives feedback on a team member's performance to improve their motive and help them realize their weaknesses and how they can be improved. Realizing the full potentials requires breaking through barriers and creating different standards. However, the current world needs individuals who recreate the opportunities found in their ways, which helps to discover new ways to increase achievements and activities that impact the success of the underlying course. Thus, challenging one's potential and surrounding it with high potential people enables individuals to realize their full potential through the development of a mindset that can be able to take risks and experience the lesson that results from failing.

For leaders to be effective in enabling people to reach their full potentials, they must possess some qualities that make them effective leaders. They must have a dual focus, which is the mission of the organization and motivating the followers to share the vision of fulfilling the mission. It is agreeable that one must be a follower at first before becoming a good leader. Metaphorically, one needs to crawl before they can walk, which means that for one to lead, they must be good followers at first (Carmeli and Paulus 53-75). Therefore, to enable one to realize their full potential, one requires displaying their potential to the juniors so that they can have a role model. This is enhanced by teamwork, where one participates and volunteers in various activities as well as undertaking challenges from the tasks that they are not skilled in. For instance, when training children how to survive in the desert in China, the leader might choose to try lighting a fire without a matchbox, which is a task that demands the know-how, and if they are unable, they give the children the chance to present their suggestions on the best methods of lighting a fire, and to try it out. This way, the children receive a platform to showcase their skills and knowledge, which improves their self-esteem, and eventually enables them to realize their full potential. The leader should also allow the followers to guide them on how to perform various tasks to ensure that the process seems like a path that should be followed by everyone, including the leaders (Carmeli and Paulus 53-75). This helps them understand the needs of their followers, which creates the opportunity to understand the potentials of each one of them and use the opportunity to help them realize their full possibilities. Thus, being a good follower of a particular process and allowing team members to guide one how to undertake various tasks helps the leaders to learn the needs of their followers, which will enable one to decide on the best methods to help people reach their full potentials.

Conclusion

In conclusion, an effective leader enables others to reach their full potential by embracing the natural ways of thinking and build off one's strength. This is done by enhancing teamwork, where the leader appreciates the ideas form every individual and uses the plans to make firm decisions. Moreover, expanding people's performance broadmindedness verge helps them realize their full potential since they identify their strengths and weaknesses, which also helps them to achieve their points of improvement. A leader can also help people understand their full possibilities by challenging and surrounding an individual's potential with people of high-potential. This helps them to strive to reach the potential of the challenger, and eventually, they improve their capabilities. Therefore, an effective leader helps others to reach their potentials by understanding their abilities and encouraging them to use what they possess to bring out the good out of every situation.

Work Cited

Carmeli, Abraham, and Paul B. Paulus. "CEO Ideational Facilitation Leadership and Team Creativity: The Mediating Role of Knowledge Sharing." The Journal of Creative Behavior 49, no.1, 2015, 53-75. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jocb.59

Meuser, Jeremy D., et al. "A Network Analysis of Leadership Theories: The Infancy of Integration." Journal of Management 42, no.5, 2016 1374-1403. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0149206316647099

Storey, John. "...