HOTO7016 Mentoring and Leadership Development Assignment Sample
Reflective summary
During my engagement as a marketing manager in a travel and tourism company, I have realised the fact that leadership or mentoring the other people is one of the most critical activities I have ever experienced by noticing my mentor at the company.
However, at this point, I must state that mentoring was not only critical to a leader, but it was much challenging and interesting activity to be performed. While working with my mentor for the marketing team of the company,
I noticed the fact that in a team, different people behave in different ways and understanding their needs and strengths along with their weaknesses is much difficult. I experienced the real essence of mentoring while I joined the travel agency as a marketing head.
During the time, when I was working as the marketing head in the travel agency, I faced some issues due to my weakness in the context of accepting the new matters or situations in my life.
During the personality test in the previous section, I have mentioned that my score in the context of openness to experience was very low and it caused the actual weakness in me. At the beginning I was very shy and could not cope up with my team members properly,
especially with the team members, who were elder than me and were working within the company for several years. However, I tried to develop a better relationship with my team members as I clearly knew the fact that without developing a strong relationship with the team members, it was not possible for me to mentor the team.
However, I must state that though I was facing issues in the beginning period, I started to gain practical knowledge during the process of mentoring. It is very important to develop a better and smoother communication channel with the team members to manage their productivity and enhancing the same (Christensen et al., 2020).
Initially, I emphasized on formal way of communication; however, I noticed that the team members are not feeling free to communicate their issues through formal mails or telephonic conversation;
due to this, later I changed my communication strategy and initiated informal and verbal communication with the team members. This process helped me developing a better relationship with the team members.
During my training for a marketing manager, I learned about the behavioural theory of leadership, which I applied during the process of mentoring the other people within the travel agency. As the marketing manager, I was responsible for new customer acquisition and promoting the services of the company; due to this, it was very important for me to motivate my team members,
so that they can enhance their productivity and meet the target. Motivation is the key to develop an efficient team and perform a perfect mentoring process (Rastegar Kazerooni et al., 2020). At this point I used the behavioural theory. According to the theory, I emphasized on understanding the behavioural pattern of each of my team members;
I realised the fact that to motivate the employees in a better way, it is my responsibility to engage them in a better way; I had the responsibility to develop a team spirit among them and due to that I adopted the democratic leadership style, which helped me engaging my team members in a better way. For example, in one month, our team had a large target to generate new customer base for the business;
my team members were highly de-motivated as they believed that it was impossible to meet the target; at that moment I applied a strategy to develop our new strategy to acquire new customers; I involved each team member by asking them to give their ideas to meet the target; after a long hour of brain storming, we developed a new strategy; though,
at the end, we could not fulfil our target properly, we were satisfied with the execution of our plan. My team was highly confident at that time, which helped me enhancing the overall productivity of them in the next month.
Therefore, in this way, through democratic leadership style, I was successful in mentoring my team members in a better way. However, the major issue that I faced during the process of mentoring was related to my poor technological knowledge. I was very poor in using the technology for performing the job of mentoring in a better way.
For example, I used to face problem in maintaining the excel sheet that was given my manager to monitor and mentoring the team members in a better way. At the same time, it is also true that due to the lack of knowledge in technology I was unable to provide the training to me team members in an advanced way.
However, my strength in terms of natural reaction helped me much in managing the situation in a better way. As a leader or mentor, I was also focused on solving the issues faced by my team members at any point of time during the working time. I emphasized on determining the actual reasons behind the issues; it helped me solving the problems of the team members within very limited time.
This made me the best team leader or mentor to my team members. At the same time, I must state that my extrovert nature helped me much in the process of mentoring. Though my verbal communication was not very strong, I always tried to communicate the issues with the team, so that they could improve their performance in a better way.
As I way extrovert, me team members felt much free later during the session of my mentoring as the marketing manager. The team members got the opportunity to express their thoughts while making the team strategy. This actually helped me much in the process of developing new effective ideas.
As different team members used to provide different views, I was able to evaluate a large set of options while making any decision; this helped me making the best decision for the team.
However, at this point, it must be mentioned that as a mentor, I was lacking behind in terms of decision making. Decision making is an important part of mentoring session (Kow et al., 2020). My decision making capacity was not very strong and due to that I used to involve my team members more effectively, so that their collaborative ideas could determine the best strategy. In this way, I dealt with the situations, where decision making was very important for performing the activities of mentoring perfectly.
By evaluating the overall mentoring process of myself, I must state that I have learned several new matters during the process of mentoring. I have identified the areas, where, I was lacking behind and it helped me much in improving my skills and knowledge in different areas.
I have learned about the ways of implementing or following the theories in the practical situations. I could match my learning in the class with the learning at the workplace during the process of mentoring. It was not the case that I was very good in this mentoring, but I can state that I have managed the work, the team and my responsibilities in a better way during the time, when I was appointed in a travel agency as a mentor of the marketing team.
From the overall evaluation, I can state that mentoring was much interesting to me; I was able to utilise my strengths to improve the team power during the time of mentoring. The knowledge, which I gathered during my training as a marketing manager, helped me much in dealing with the situation.
I have learned some behavioural patterns, which are very important to be followed to be a good mentor or leader. For example, I have learned about shyness; I have learned that shyness is not good for a mentor because a mentor must communicate with the team members properly and at the same time,
I have also learned the fact that democratic leadership approach is much suitable for mentoring a team in the volatile situation, when the situations of the businesses change over the night. Democratic leadership style helped me engaging the team members in a better way in the process of decision making.
Therefore, from the overall discussion, I must state that the process of mentoring or the experience of mentoring was quite good for me. I have developed new skills line informal communication, leading a team with democratic leadership style and in many other areas. I can state that as a mentor I was successful enough as my team members mentioned that they enjoyed working under my team or under my supervision.
Reference list
Christensen, K.M., Hagler, M.A., Stams, G.J., Raposa, E.B., Burton, S. and Rhodes, J.E., 2020. Non-specific versus targeted approaches to youth mentoring: a follow-up meta-analysis. Journal of youth and adolescence, 49(5), pp.959-972.
Kow, C.S., Teo, Y.H., Teo, Y.N., Chua, K.Z.Y., Quah, E.L.Y., Kamal, N.H.B.A., Tan, L.H.E., Cheong, C.W.S., Ong, Y.T., Tay, K.T. and Chiam, M., 2020. A systematic scoping review of ethical issues in mentoring in medical schools. BMC medical education, 20(1), pp.1-10.
Rastegar Kazerooni, A., Amini, M., Tabari, P. and Moosavi, M., 2020. Peer mentoring for medical students during the COVID‐19 pandemic via a social media platform. Medical education, 54(8), pp.762-763.
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