Reflective Report on Leadership

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Executive Summary

Leadership was found to maximize the efforts of the individuals that help to complete the organizational and individual goals. A positive leadership quality was found to improve the emotional intelligence that has the ability to manage the work and reduce the stresses by positive emotions. A capable leader might convey a clear vision for the engaging individuals by utilizing their competencies to achieve the results for a company’s success.

Introduction

Leadership refers to the ability of a leader through which a leader motivates the entire team towards organizational success effectively and efficiently. Leadership is basically a process of influence to the particular team and increase their performances in order to move the company forward to achieve the goals. For managing sustainability of a particular company, motivation of employees is required to be provided by the leader in that particular organization. In this reflective report, the leadership quality and its effectiveness towards the organization will be explained below in detail.

Reflection using Gibbs Model

Description of situation and feelings using STAR technique

Situation

Since last two years, I have been working in a company as a senior intern where the working culture or the environment is adjustable for me. However, the main problem is cultural diversification and differences in opinions among the employees that may affect the organizational success.

Task

Though I am an intern, still I have the responsibility to achieve the organizational success with the help of my colleagues and seniors. Furthermore, it is also my duty as a senior intern to help my juniors in critical situation as a leader.

Action

At first, as a leader I prepare a plan regarding the work activities that guide me to move in the right direction. I would figure out my positive points that help me to establish good professional relationship among all my colleagues as I think I have few leadership capabilities to mitigate the difficulties and help the organization. Moreover, I basically prefer Democratic leadership quality and through this quality I motivate and guide my entire team in a single direction as this leadership quality motivates the employees to provide their experienced knowledge to the work for better growth of the company in a specific direction.

Result

Emotional intelligence includes self awareness, social skills, motivation power and self regulation that are necessary factors to improve leaders’ emotional intelligence which has a significant impact on the organizational success by building collaboration in the workplace and between the employees. According to me, I think that cultural intelligence is essential within the leaders that help to establish good professional relationships among the individuals coming from different cultures. It is my responsibility as a leader to handle all the critical situations when my team faces the critical situation similar to this. I will develop leadership skills by traditional leadership development programs which will help to build my inner leadership qualities, intellectual power, emotional intelligence through which I may motivate my team for enhanced performances by providing them a healthy comfortable work culture.

Evaluation and analysis

An effective leader always may motivate the entire team and provide a clear vision regarding the short and long term strategic objectives of a particular company. According to me, organizational success depends on leadership quality with good communication skills that also increase the interpersonal skills of a leader. I think that Gibbs reflective model influences me so that I utilize Gibbs model to improve myself. Different companies follow different types of leadership such as Autocratic, Democratic, Pacesetting style and Laissez-faire style, however, all the leadership styles motivate the employees to improve their knowledge and input that knowledge into their work. In Autocratic leadership, only leaders may take decisions regarding the works, there is no right of the employees to keep their opinion or ideas in activities. Furthermore, it helps to maintain decision making procedure fast, although the employees do not feel motivated by the leaders as the employees do not keep and utilize their ideas (Fiaz et al., 2017).

In democratic leadership, the employees feel motivated as the employees provide their opinions regarding work and that increases their value addition in the workplace, however, this leadership also has disadvantages similar to slow running of decision making procedures. In Pacesetting leadership style, leaders set a high standard for performances that increase productivity as well as the employees easily achieve the organization results. On the contradictory note, it may be stated that employees may be overwhelmed by the demand and speed of the senior management of the organization. In Laissez-faire style, the leader may discuss the organizational objectives and ways to complete the work with the employees which influences the employees to feel free to take all decisions in order to achieve organizational success (Rahbi et al., 2017). Classic theories of leadership such as trait, contingency, behavioural and transformational theory increase the practices of leadership quality among the leaders that help to motivate the employees.

Trait leadership theory is inherent, more specifically, this leadership may be permanent within the leaders (Grimard and Pellerin, 2017). However, it may be argued that several leadership development programs are arranged to improve this quality within the leaders that motivate the employees towards their particular goal. Contingency leadership determines the leaders’ effectiveness during the situations while behavioural leadership traits may be taught. Transformational leadership inspires the employees in a specific direction that may be utilized to perform excellently for better growth of the company. I personally prefer the transformational theory of leadership where I as a leader work with the entire team to identify the necessary changes and provide a vision to guide the changes for executing these changes into the work activities. In order to develop the organization in a successful way, contemporary theories application is necessary where leaders utilize their personal influence to provide effective knowledge regarding the strategic objective goal. Transactional and transformational leaders are involved to improve the employees’ performances (Ahmad and Ejaz, 2019). On the other hand, Transactional leaders avoid the necessary changes regarding work related activities whereas transformational leaders encourage the necessary changes and try to identify and solve this situation.

More specifically, I would prefer to motivate the employees and feel comfortable in a new work culture and help them to evolve in the new work culture. If a company decides to shift one business model to another business model then the individuals who are experienced in the previous model may be dissatisfied and worry about their employment contracts, however, it is the effective leader’s duty to motivate them by providing the proper training. The above mentioned situation may be taken as an example for understanding the role of leadership quality in managing a complex change in the organisation.

I, as a leader, need to improve my knowledge and skills from attending various leadership training and action programs where I and other leaders discuss the critical situation and the best possible solutions of those critical situations which may help us to improve our guidance power to the employees. According to the Gibbs reflective model, I need to improve my interpersonal skills by analysing the negative points within me to evolve as a good leader. Communication is one of the critical traits of the leaders’ role because with the help of good communication, a leader interacts with the team members and understands their difficulties regarding work (Karagianni and Montgomery, 2018). On the contrary, a leader may not motivate the individuals through adverse communication and misunderstanding that has adverse effects on the organization. In order to improve the leadership quality within the leaders, it is necessary to join the action learning sessions which involves four fundamental components of the action learning similar to genuine problems, exploration of those problems in real world, a significant learning process and peers acting. Moreover, by this learning session, the leaders including myself will meet the real world problems and adverse effects of those critical situations in an organization and a proper way to handle all the critical situations.

For a significant growth of a company effectively, action learning is necessary to be implemented per year or on one year interval so that it may help the organizational leaders to practically understand the complex situation. I may develop my leading skills to gain practical knowledge as only theories may not increase the interpersonal skills until the leaders do not experience practically by facing the critical change management situations. The leaders may grow their leadership abilities by self awareness and self leadership that help the leaders to progress their careers in change management (Khajeh, 2017). On the contradictory note, it may be stated that political leadership achieves the goal and work commitments by personal followership. Leadership quality with good communication skills increase the organizational productivity by motivating the employees and that has definitely a significant effect on the employees’ careers also.

From the Gibbs reflective model, I learnt to prepare a clear plan developing the leadership qualities through pointing out the positive and negative points and utilising those positive points for improving myself (Refer to Appendix). More specifically, I as a leader need to change myself according to the organizational requirements, as a result, the individuals may communicate easily and give their best for organizational success.

Conclusion

Considering the above discussion, it may be concluded that effective leadership quality increases the organizational success and motivates the employees in the right direction. Leadership quality enhances the interpersonal skills, behavioural trait, communication power and intellectual power which provide a clear vision towards achieving the strategic objectives. It also develops the knowledge skills and understanding among the leaders and employees that help the entire team towards a definite goal. The effectiveness of the leadership qualities and its importance build inner willingness to lead or guide an entire team effectively and efficiently. It establishes an effective team or group who meet all the aims and objectives of a particular company.

Recommendation

The recommendations for developing the leadership qualities are given below:-

Developing the self-leadership skills more to achieve organizational success along with individual goals
Enhancing more accurate traditional leadership training program
Organizing action learning program frequently to understand the critical situations
Improving own vision of leadership to motivate the employees significantly
Finding inner competencies regarding leadership quality
Weekly arrangement of leadership related sessions for better improvement of the inner skills

In order to improve the leadership qualities, the traditional training and action planning should be required through which the leaders understand their difficulties or negative points and improve the qualities.

References

Ahmad, M. and Ejaz, T., 2019. Transactional and Transformational leadership impact on Organizational Performance: Evidence from Textile sector of Pakistan. European Online Journal of Natural and Social Sciences: Proceedings, 8(2 (s)), pp.pp-97.

Al Khajeh, E.H., 2018. Impact of leadership styles on organizational performance. Journal of Human Resources Management Research, 2018, pp.1-10.

Fiaz, M., Su, Q. and Saqib, A., 2017. Leadership styles and employees’ motivation: Perspective from an emerging economy. The Journal of Developing Areas, 51(4), pp.143-156.

Grimard, C.M. and Pellerin, S., 2018, March. Developing leadership through leadership experiences: An action learning approach. In Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning: Proceedings of the Annual ABSEL conference (Vol. 45).

Karagianni, D. and Jude Montgomery, A., 2018. Developing leadership skills among adolescents and young adults: a review of leadership programmes. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 23(1), pp.86-98.

Rahbi, D.A., Khalid, K. and Khan, M., 2017. The effects of leadership styles on team motivation. Academy of Strategic Management Journal, 16(3).