Role of leadership in communications industry Leadership in the industry of communications and media has transformed over the years due to the increasing need of brands to communicate their message to stakeholders and to keep them aware of brand’s performance and future. The spread of education, telecommunications and networks made people want to know more about brands and companies. Past great economic growth and development altered people’s needs and expectations from companies, needs moved from being basic commoditized needs to more of an identity requirement. A leader in the field of communications is surrounded with uncertainty and intangible requirements and results. He/she is surrounded by an audience that usually look for certain types of information about the company’s performance or status. Communications comes here to restructure information and to shape it in a certain way to make it compliant with business strategy and the image of a company and to keep digestible as well to the audience. Usually, communications plays a meditation role between the corporate leadership and the audience of information. The role of a communications director is to make sure that he conveys the company’s message properly through medial, branding, events, corporate social responsibility and lobbying. In the process of message delivery, the leader should be aware of the surrounding cultural, political and economic situation. He needs to make the company look and feel relevant to its environment. Increasing relevance of the company to its environment increases trust in it, and trust is reflecting on the economic performance. Communications directors need a lot of emotional intelligence to deal with skeptic public, customer and journalists; especially journalists who have no interest in the wellbeing of the company at all. You will need to build trust with media and manage a relationship that is mutually beneficial. Communications also makes sure that the company has a consistent message across all communications channels, everything should reflect what the company stands for, was it media press releases, marketing materials, company staff during events and so on. A communications director will usually manage people who are not fully dedicated for him 100%, he will be managing third-parties most of the time to achieve his goals and will a great deal of skills to make sure of on-time delivery and alignment of resources.

Aspirations
My most important values are: * Credibility * Ethical conduct * Accountability * Equality

Leadership legacy:
I’m extremely positive about my leadership legacy so far. I’m remembered by commitment, maturity, ambition and high degree of responsibility. But I would also like to add one more thing to my future legacy, I would like to be remember as someone who stood up for his team till the end and didn’t give up until he got what best for him and his team. I will need to develop a reputation of endurance over a long period of time and supported his team till the end. As you will is in my SWOT analysis, I feel that need more patience and endurance to change my situation instead of changing my location.

I believe I have the ability to create a strong team environment that goes far beyond short-term business objectives and goals, but I never could do so because of pressures of a fast paced business environment. Usually leaders shine and jump out conflicts and change, but we usually don’t know about those who led to prevent conflicts. We know about problems that happened, but we don’t always know about problems that didn’t happen. I’m a kind of person who doesn’t really pay too much attention to being recognized by others because I don’t see a need to convince others that I can do better, I just do it and act like if it usual. In my situation I will need a really intelligent mentor who can look at things from my perspective and appreciate my way of doing things.

Role Models of leadership I have a deep appreciation to Mikhail Gorbachev. He is leader who was brave and determined to change regardless of how his own people would look at him. He wasn’t keen on adopting a loud, revolutionary and expressive style as much as the need to initiate aggressive change on ground. He ended an era where his country was economically bleeding for no rational reasons other than maintaining a statue quo situation. His courage and determination to open up to the West despite of the rooted heritage of anti-Western dogmatic communism sets an example of how can an amiable looking person take such aggressive decisions. He understood his country’s situation and understood that it won’t last long if it kept such performance; he wasn’t encouraged to keep a domestic reputation in favor what he thinks rational. He isn’t an approval seeker or purely affiliative, sure he needed those elements for certain degrees but to achieve what he thinks best for his people.

Life Styles Circumplex
Here I will talk about my own results of the life styles circumplex. I will comments on my results and may provide alternative explanations. When I look at my results I see them moderately spread around the main three styles with outliers only in the self-actualization and approval parts. I believe that this shape wouldn’t look this way if I did the analysis eight years ago when I first graduated. Definitely experience, age, the people I worked with and training contributed to this current shape of my personal situation analysis.

Humanistic-Encouraging
My score in the high-middle range represent keenness on supporting other people and a positive reception for constructive feedback. I usually tend to help people, but only those who show commitment, passion and hard work; my intention is to give these truly ambitious and professional people an advantage over those who don’t deserve. It might be because of I personally passed through to get all of the jobs I had where I only depended on myself to secure them while I see people around me using connections or other means. I appreciate real positive feedback, but not the shallow one. I would feel better getting a normal neutral feedback over a positive one for a typical or mediocre job I did.

Affiliative
Here is a score in the high-middle range as well. It indicates that I’m usually open and friendly with those interest me. My score in this style complements the previous one and it is limited as well to my attitude toward the people I believe in and those who demonstration passion and self-worth. The middle range of the score demonstrates that I don’t really focus too much on affiliation as a way of doing things at work or life, but I take affiliation in a healthy and moderate dose to catalyze and encourage social or group interaction and to create common grounds when needed. I would say that sometimes one needs to build or find consent to keep things going.

Approval
The score here is in the middle-low range. My low approval score represents a degree of indifference when it comes to what would others think about my opinions or points of view. Low levels of eagerness for approval promote intellectual independence, especially of guided by strong and clear personal goals and values. However, independence needs to be built on a solid ground of knowledge and experience; otherwise it would isolate the person from reality and will disconnect him/her from the surrounding environment.

Conventional
The score is almost high-middle. It is usually inferred from such an assumption that I give a great importance to the existing or long used procedures or ways of doing things, and would usually be prone to play safe and not to take risks. I would say that this is a backup style I have. When my superiors or the environment are indifferent or don’t appreciate my efforts to be creative and think out of the box, I usually put this backup style in practice till I find a way out. To save the frustration, when I first join a company, team or a project; I try to sense the attitude or mode towards the energy of creativity. When I sense opposition to creativity and insistence on the conventional way, especially when I don’t have an effective say, I tend to save my efforts and ideas for another company or other project. I believe that creativity is a waste of energy and waste of ideas when it happens in an unwelcoming environment.

Dependent
The score is in the high-middle range. Although it says that I usually feel better and safer when others set the course, I believe that is about consent for the sake of the team in my case. To tell the truth, I actually have problems with accepting or complying with authority and I tend to be more oppositional when the use of authority increases. Instead of dependence I would say no harm in seeking consent when it is possible.

Avoidance
The score is in the high-middle range. In spite of my score range in this style, I believe I have a low avoidance level in my personality and work style. I don’t tend to deny responsibility and I don’t fear failure, a style that sometimes irritates superiors when they try to practice power and start blaming to find the employee not being defensive, confident and saying “ok, now we are in this situation, I suggest we do this”. Sessions or doses of avoidance are expected by manager and they program themselves to face avoidance of their subordinates when something go wrong, but me not having this attitude may surprise people around me and leave them unprepared to deal with me.

Oppositional
The score is almost in the high-middle range. I would classify this style as another backup style that I may use when I don’t feel in sync with the plan and I don’t feel respect or appreciation to what I’m proposing as a solution or an idea. Most of the time when I’m asked to do something I would usually try to give people the big picture and manage their expectation by explaining possible issues and difficulty that may arise, for some people this attitude will be considered as oppositional.

Power
Another one in the high-middle range. This is another backup style that may automatically activate during a crisis when I feel that no one is willing to help and when I feel that my nice guy attitude is being used being taken advantage of.

Competitive
In the high-middle range. I have a competitive behavior at work, but I try to make sure that this doesn’t become an obvious attitude. I personally believe that having an obvious competitive attitude most of the time can create enemies and may irritate team members. I feel that being competitive is a good secret to have, but not a very good attitude to spread. If everyone is moderately competitive we can achieve a lot, but when everyone is highly competitive I think team spirit will be lower and self-interest will dominate.

Perfectionistic
In the high-middle range. I would say that pay a lot of attention to detail and try my best to make sure that I don’t miss any expected flaw without preparing for it more than being a perfectionist in nature. I’m training myself to not worry a lot about details but make sure that someone else does to make a better use of my time and practice delegation rather than micromanagement. The challenge is when you try to be less perfectionist and but you still keep an appetite for eliminating error and mistakes at the sometime. Perfectionist attitude can be useful in relaxed pace projects or when there is a lot of time, but it can lead to disasters when there is a serious time sensitivity and acceptable results may be achievable over the short run.

Achievement
In the high-middle range. I believe that having a result-oriented approach rather than a process-oriented one gives me a clear view of possible outcomes or challenges. The clear view of goals and standards is always helpful in spreading commitment, trust and confidence among employees. High degrees of achievement requires high degrees of reality and applicability, otherwise you can be too perfectionist but without results.

Self-actualization
In the high range. I strongly believe that high self-actualization is what keeping me going despite all of the uncertainty or dissatisfaction I passed through in my career. I tend to strongly believe in self-development and feel that one needs to take the responsibility of developing himself and know what he needs to do rather than expecting something from outside, it needs a lot of self-awareness and a strong feeling of self-worth. I also have a tendency to experience things myself, I may ask for advice but to create my own plan and not necessarily to shape my opinion. Going back to my introduction where I showcased a rapid changing of jobs during a certain period of time, I would say that in three of the jobs where I didn’t last more than a year I was warned by some friends from accepting the job offer because they had opinions about the employer or the atmosphere, but I wanted to make sure and check by myself because what applies to someone doesn’t necessarily apply to everyone. I have certain views, values and aspirations; if my current environment doesn’t respect them or doesn’t comply with them I would usually change the environment and looking for another one. This may be seen impatient but some, but I see it more of a clear direction.

SOWT Analysis
The Life Styles Circumplex helped me in addressing my SOWT and think about the clearly. I’ve done personal SOWT analysis before but without such an assessment beforehand. The assessment was a great tool to learn more about yourself to a certain extent and it makes discovering SOWT easier.

Strengths * Discipline: I’m always committed to what I want, to what I need to do and to what I believe in. It can be seen sometimes as a self-torture, but it usually has good results and positive impacts on my personality. It is about being serious. * Dedication: I devote my time and effort when I try to achieve something, was it knowledge, work or even hobby. It developed over time and age. * Vision: I always tend to look for or contrast the big picture, to visualize future, to think over the long-term. It can be seen sometime as taking long shots, but I always prefer to draw a line or a track for myself and imagine myself reaching something. * Emotional Intelligence: I claim that I understand myself and have self-awareness; I tend to manage what shows on the surface and calculate reactions. I also claim that I understand people and tend to understand my surroundings.

Weaknesses * Moody: mood swings make me loose interest in what I’m doing sometimes and they tend to make me impatient towards my environment. * Oversight: thinking a lot about the long-term and future enriches my imagination, but it results sometimes in daydreaming and losing sight of what I already have in hand. It may lead to losing short-term opportunities. * Individualism: great degrees of independence make me feel satisfied by myself and not seeking people’s involvement. I usually tend to believe that I don’t need people, while more effective people tend to ask for help and look for collective behaviors. * Skeptic.

Threats * Instability: my weaknesses mentioned above tend to contribute to ever-occurring state of general instability. * Time: time is passing quickly and whatever ideal situation I’m looking for needs to happen sooner not later. * Global economic situation: market is not like before and it has moved towards “survival of the fittest” phase. My above earth attitude may hold back when there is no more time for imagination and thinking beyond economic realities.

Opportunities * MBA time: it is not only the degree, but the time I’m taking off to do this degree is a great asset that I can utilize to develop myself more and spend more time thinking and reflecting about future and what I need to do on the short-run. * Learning: I currently have time to learn more by doing freelancing, multiple part-time jobs in fields that I want to explore, like business consulting. * Dubai: moving to Dubai is offering more creative and diverse opportunities than Saudi Arabia. It is an opportunity that can utilize to try and experience different things.

The main theme of my SWOT analysis is “dreams and realities”. My strength and opportunities complement each other in feeding my intellectual cravings and search more depth in career. My weaknesses and threats are all about the need to react rationally to what I already and have. Career wise, I developed an interest in business and management consulting and would further feed this interest to analyze opportunities in this filed. I’m eager to learn about how companies work and how to solve and fix large scale problems in companies. Consulting may give me the rapid change I want in a job when dealing with different clients and working on different projects rather than having static job over a long period of time. The whole concept of “corporation” is interesting to me. It is a long lasting, sometimes everlasting, entity created by people and then they lose control of it.

Development priorities and action plan
The development priorities I’m proposing are: * Maintain contact with reality while keeping passion and imagination:
I will need to put my passion and imagination in practice to excel in career and leadership development. Will start thinking about my independence and creativity requirements and find a way to use them as career strengths and look for opportunities in business consulting industry. The nature of business consulting will help me utilize a wide array of skills and knowledge in different situations with different clients, such industry will keep me encouraged and energized because of the constant change and rotation of responsibilities it offers. I will need to put in mind that passion can be a source of stability when I direct it into my job, in addition to personal life. I will work on looking at corporate world positively and think about how to make it work for me to achieve my intellectual and emotional wellbeing. Passion is an asset not a hurdle, but I will have to put it on the right track. * Develop a more flexible pace and patience:
Whenever I face discomforting situation I will need to think of ways to cope with it and adapt instead thinking of change right away. I will seek guidance of my friends who spent more than five years in their jobs about the most disturbing moments in their jobs and careers in general and let them explain how they dealt with it and how they overcame frustration. I will need adopt these experiences and apply them to myself and think about turning points in my career and what I would do differently to keep focused and encouraged. * Take my MBA as an intellectual experience:
Discover research assistantship or internship opportunities in business consulting to get a feel about how this industry looks like and how it can be a step up in my leadership development. I will expect a sacrifice when I chance my career, but I will have to accept it in order to achieve the change I want. * Enhance networking to keep up with developments in job market:
I’m usually approached by headhunters for brief meetings and chats over a coffee. I used to look at these opportunities as a waste of time since there are no solid opportunities to discuss. I will have to loosen up and take such networking opportunities and develop contacts. I will also monitor events and conferences in business and management consulting and try to participate and build up references and connections. I will start using my media relations and connections to enhance my activity in the social scene and to expose myself to community.