This leadership portfolio outlines the author's philosophy and values of leadership. It reflects on their leadership style through case studies and projects. It summarizes two important considerations for leaders - connected leadership, which emphasizes collective leadership to address complex challenges, and cross-cultural leadership, important for multinational companies. The author's 15-year vision is to advance their career in auditing at an international accounting firm. They outline goals to improve interpersonal skills, active listening, and balancing work and family.

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Leadership Portfolio
1. Introduction
Everybody has a certain set of implicit assumptions about what a “good” leader looks like
which is called “Implicit Leadership Theories” (David 2015, p. 12). This portfolio starts with
my philosophy of leadership and values and then reflecting some criticalcharacteristics about
my leadership style stemmed from personal experience, for instance case studies and group
projects. In the next section, I will summarize two important considerations for leaders based
on literature review on related areas.Following on from this, I willdemonstrate my leadership
vision in fifteen years and development Plans.Finally, asummary and conclusion of this paper
is provided.
2. Philosophy of Leadership and Values
Although people in different eras have different viewpoints about leadership, there are still
many common characteristics of good and effective leadership. According to House, Javidan
and Dorfman, leadership is the ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable
others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they
are members (House, Javidan, & Dorfman, 2001, p. 494). I define leadership as a combination
of three elements in terms of influential leaders,passionatefollowers and changing situations.
Furthermore, in the process of leading, there should be clear directions and visions set by the
leader together with good communication and motivation within the group to achieve
common goals.
According to the “Great Man” approach, it is suggested that there are some heritable traits
that would distinguish leaders and non-leaders (Brian, et al 2011, p. 347). However, in my
opinion, leaders with innate abilities still may not succeed in directing and managing an
organization without continuously studying to equip updated knowledge about how to lead
effectively in a fast changing world with fierce business competition. In other words,
leadership can be and should be taught through formal courses and coaching to make leaders
more capable to influence receivers to attain their common goals.
Core values are the things we deem most important in every facet of your life and they are
like the foundation of our house (Lucas 2015, p. 62). In this paper, I willstate three core values
respectively.

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Create opportunities, embrace change, and support growth (Leadership Program 2015) is my
first value. To illustrate, I will keep an open mind-set to welcome challenges from work and
life.Meanwhile, I will grasp opportunities to prove that I am keeping on improving myself and
seeking potentials for my personal development.
Lead, learn, and lead again (Leadership Program 2015). I regard myself as a strong leader in
group works because I can speak out my perspectives about a certain assignment logically
and in detail. In addition, almost all my teammates will approve my proposals and we will get
started in line with what I planned. There are, however, some exceptions. After accepting my
team members’ suggestions, I always digest their valuable advice and take these new
knowledge into consideration when I lead next time.
Foster an inclusive community through communication, connection, and common purpose
(Leadership Program 2015). As we all know, the fire burns high when everybody adds wood
to it. Therefore, I hope I can be effective in team building, communicating and coordinating.
During group assignments this semester, I usuallytry to incorporate and motivate every group
members to dedicate to the whole team, share each one’s responsibilities and harvest our
success together.
3. Personal Narrative
As suggestedby Church (1997, p.281), self-awareness is the ability to reflect on and accurately
assess one's own behaviours and skills as they are manifested in workplace interactions as
well as understand the motivations for those behaviours. Having a clear self-awareness plays
an important role in enhancing leadership style for a leader and creating value for the whole
organisation. Generally speaking, I have a definite image of what I am like and what I should
be like as a leader.
The first characteristic that I cherish is vision. To be honest, I am a goal-oriented people, thus
visionary. To illustrate, I know what I should do in the short term and in the future and then I
will complete my final objective step by step.
My mother always tells me in order to attain success,peopleneeds not just perseverance and
perspiration, but alsoa clear visionto guide them and givethem adirection. If I set “obtaining
a satisfied job” as an aimin the following year, I will know that my final destination is to get a
high salary,with awelfare benefits,thus allachievements that I currently pursue should make

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a contribution to get a good job. Afterwards, what I need do now, as a postgraduate student,
is to attempt to gain professional knowledge, interpersonal skills and social skills as much as
possible. Once had a long term vision, a leader will divide his/her journey to destination into
several logical and clear parts, and allocate these tasks to followers.
Additionally, I suppose I am an energetic leader. Life is tough, but we can be energetic to
overcome difficulties optimistically and make life easier. An energetic leader would bring the
greatest benefits to followers in participating day-to-day operations.
When I did an internship in accounting department of a state-owned construction company
on 2013 New Year’s Eve, I embraced plenty of working pressure as some unexpected tax
issues happened when everyone wanted to finish those tedious tasks as soon as possible.The
financial manager was so frustrated since if all the documents were needed to be reviewed
and reported, thus it would be impossible for her to return to her hometown to be with her
families. As a result, she had a bad emotion all these days and everyone were discouraged
and needed to be careful in case of being punished and scolded by her.
Therefore, I force myself to be optimistic when facing my team mates in group projects and
to be energetic to come up with fresh ideas and appropriate solutions. Via my internship
experience, I concluded that if staffs do not have an energetic leader, then the whole
workplace would be filled with disappointing and negative atmosphere with less morale
which would lower working efficiency and effectiveness consequently.
Accountability is the third relief in my life. I define it as I will not blame any others and the
external environment when I got a bad result, and instead, I try to find a balance between the
process and the results because if the process is enjoyable, thus the outcome is valuable no
matter good or bad. I accept unsatisfied outcomes and rethink my behaviours and manners,
then reach a conclusion for myself as a valuable experience. On the other side, accountability
also demonstrates in setting milestones to check if I am on track and my followers on track.
In reality, we can connect our periodical targets with our group performance to identify
additional aspects that we need to correct or enhance.
4. Important considerations for leaders

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In this section, two important considerations for leaders will be provided. One is connected
leadership, which is derived from a new mind-set to lead together, and the other is cross-
cultural leadership, which is significantly required by the gradually increased internalization.
4.1 Connected leadership
It is said by Wilfred that as complex challenges confront people with the unknown and often
result in unintended consequences (Wilfred 2003, p. 4), it is getting harder and harder to lead
wisely and effectively. Furthermore, globalization and increased connectedness have
fundamentally changed how the world works, and organizations are moving into an era of
openness, characterized by individual empowerment, operational transparency and
decentralized communications (Saul and Peter 2014, p. 40).
Any individual leader, no matter how capable, may be unable to make such changes
personally. Getting more people working together in more ways increases the likelihood
that people who are able to make the needed changes themselves will become
influential in the leadership process.
(Wilfred 2003, p. 6)
Wilfred also suggested that it is necessary to create a more inclusive and collective leadership
in order to overcome not just complicated but also unpredictable challenges (Wilfred 2003,
p. 5). Nevertheless, we could not ignore the factthat although people in an organisation hope
leadership can create the direction, alignment and commitment that will enable them
working together to achieve their common success, the possibility of happening is lower and
lower since various conditions exist in the real world.
First of all, as firms operate globally, they set up many subsidiaries in different countries and
the number of expatriates who are sent to work in foreign countries go up. Thus, it will
become more common to work with others that do not like each other due to different
culture backgrounds, professional backgrounds and values. As a consequence, to share a
common set of targets and values becomes atough issue.Moreover, with the successfultrend
of global virtual team, staffs do not need to work side by side thus they would be scattered
over different regions , different time zones and even over different countries (Wilfred 2003,
p. 3). Last but not least, traditional ways of leadership are out of date because people want

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to set their own directions and targets without formal authority. All of these reasons make
create an inclusive and collective leadership difficult but necessary.
When I had a job next year, I may become an expat in a multinational company, thus it is
inevitable to confront these worries such as colleagues do not share common values and
perspectives with me. Therefore, I can recommend to CEOs to understand the connections
with and among employees, suppliers and customers by the means of social media(Gordon
2014, p. 9) and assemble these networks like portfolios such as generational, geographic,
institutional diversity inorder to erasethe distanceand time constraints (Saul and Peter 2014,
p. 44).
4.2 Cross-cultural leadership
Multinational companies are the products of globalisation. Global economy poses plenty of
opportunities to enter into emerging markets. However, at the same time, they encounter
with challenges such as coping with diverse cross-cultural employees, customers, suppliers
competitors and creditors (Mansour, et al 2006, p. 67).
According to GLOBE, which is the most ambitious study of global leadership, there are nine
dimensions of cultural attributes, namely performance orientation, assertiveness, future
orientation, humane orientation, institutional collectivism, in-group collectivism, gender
egalitarianism, power distance and uncertainty avoidance (Mansour, et al 2002, p. 5).
It is argued that global leadership is the critical success factors for multinational companies
to survive and compete. Leaders’ attributes, behaviours, status and influence vary
considerably as a result of culturally unique forces in the countries or regions in which the
leaders function (Mansour et al 2006, p. 70).
I think cross-cultural leadership is valuable and useful because through GLOBE research, I
understand how to adapt and work in a foreign country because I want to work in a
multinational cooperation in the future. If I were sent to work and live in another culture, I
willshare my home culture with my colleagues as wellas their host cultures. It is not sufficient
to adjust and learn the host country’s culture, I also need to tell my co-workers the culture of
my country to identify our similarities which will help to share common values and
perspectives in working.

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Additionally, after sharing our unique cultures, I would consider how to bridge the gap
between our cultures so that we can avoid culture shock when we had some disagreement
towards a piece of work.
5. Leadership Vision
As I mentioned before, I regard vision as one of my characteristic of being a leader. In this
part, I will draw a landscape for my next fifteen-year accounting career.
Everyone should have a vision for their life and job. A person without vision would be
perishable in the real world. I am the leader of my life, so I need to be visionary and have
foresight for my career development. As my professional background is accounting and
moreover, I am a member of Association of Charted Certified Accountants (ACCA), I intend to
work in an accounting firm abroad. I think what I learned in this programme-International
Management and Global Business will bring me a lot of benefits in working in a multinational
accounting firm.
As a new staff in an accounting firm, I would learn and accumulate experience as much as I
can in terms of taxation, consulting, financial planning and personal money management. My
working time might be from 9 amto 5 pm, Monday to Friday, but I predict I willwork overtime
to complete more cases and earn more bonus. In the first two years, I am in an entry-level
and low position, so most of my works might be less professional and repeated. However, I
do not think this is a less rewarding or tough time, and instead, this is an opportunity to gain
working experience and interpersonal skills. When I become experienced and arrive at a
higher levelposition, I would have a chance to cope with more complicated and diverse cases,
therefore, my daily life will be more challenging and colourful.
Actually, accounting is a broad and general term and there are a range of professions in this
field, for example, taxation, auditing, and consulting. I want to focus on one area--auditing
and become an expert in this areas and focus on auditing large commercial banks.
6. Personal leadership development plan
Based on the above demonstrations, I need to translate my leadership vision into reality
through a personal development plan. I will state three specific goals that I want to pursue.

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The first goal is to improve my interpersonal skills. Good communication skills might be a
strength of me as I like to chat with friends after class andat home. In workplace, having good
people skills is vital because we are working with colleagues and we will encounter many
personal issues. Improving my interpersonal skills can make my co-workers feel ease and
relaxed when they are together with me and coming to me when they have problems. In
order to improve my people skills, I can go through these following methods and based on
the number of meeting new friends in three months to evaluate my progress of enhancing
this skill.
Be energetic and smiling frequently. If I never blame others and the external environment but
always leave an optimistic impression and a happy face to my employees a colleagues, they
would feel comfortable with me because I will not let them down and instead, give them
courage and a more cheerful outlook.
Be a nice person. I will record my colleagues’ birthdays and important anniversaries so that I
can give wishes, congratulations or comfort to them at those time.
No gossip. I will treat my employees equally with respect. Gossip might jeopardise a person’s
reputation or enjoin a person’s privacy. If I hear some rumours, I will try to understand them
and consider their special situations.
My second goal is to be a great listener. Although my friends trust me and like to share their
personal feelings with me, I still need to practice myself to be an active listener to serve them
better when they come up to me. I will review my manner when I have a talk with employees
each time to evaluate whether I am a better listener to pay attention to what he/she said. I
think I can keep eye contact with the speaker to illustrate my attention and focus on the
speaker’s body languages and my body languages as a listener.
Last but not least, I want to manage my workload effectively and keep a balance between
family and career. To be honest, it is likely that I will be a workaholic when I graduate next
year but I value quality time with my families. Therefore, it is worthy to learn how to manage
my workload and increase my job satisfaction at the meantime. With the help of planning,
delegation and enhancing trust of my colleagues, I would have more effort to focus on the
rewarding tasks and boost productivity and win more time to accompany with my families
consequently.

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7. Conclusion
Through this portfolio, it is clearly for me to see my leadership philosophy and core values.
Moreover, based on these foundations, it helps me to connect my vision with my personal
development plans to make my vision more realistic and my plans more feasible. Thankfully,
I feel confident and inspired that I understand the skills and competence that I already have
and what I need to grow as a good leader.
Reference
David, B. (2015) ‘Successful leadership behaviours in Slovak organizations' environment - an
introduction to Slovak implicit leadership theories based on GLOBEstudy findings’,Journal for
East European Management Studies, 20(1), 9-35.
Gordon, P. T. (2014)) ‘Are you connected? Leadership in the era of socialmedia’, Development
and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal, 28(6), 9-11.
Leadership program (2015)’ who we are’ [online], available:
http://theleadershipprogram.com/who-we-are/core-values/[accessed 28 Nov 2015].
Lucas, C. (2015) ‘Leading through core values’, Leader to Leader, 2015(77), 61-66.
Mansour, J., peter, W. D., Mary, S. L., and Robert, J. H. (2006) In the eye of the beholder: Cross
cultural lessons in leadership from Project Globe. Academy of Management Perspectives,
20(1), 67-90.
Mansour, J., peter, W. D., Mary, S. L., and Robert, J. H. (2002) ’ Understanding cultures and
implicit leadership theories across the globe: an introduction to project GLOBE’, Journal of
International Business, 37 (2002), 3-10.
Saul, B. and Peter, K. (2014) ’Leading in the connected era’, Strategy & Leadership, 42(1), 37-
46.
Wilfred, H. D. (1996)’ Leading Together Complex Challenges Require a New Approach’,
Leadership in Action, 16(1), 3-11.