Personal Reflection Report: Leadership and Business Strategies

This personal reflection report, written by a business management student, explores key parameters of strategic planning and their impact on business organizations. The report delves into essential topics such as optimism, work ethics, service orientation, emotional intelligence, resilience, creativity, critical thinking, cognitive flexibility, teamwork, communication, and coaching. The author emphasizes the importance of developing an efficient and innovative workforce, highlighting how these factors contribute to building a successful business. The report provides detailed analysis of each topic, including practical strategies for fostering an optimistic work culture, ethical practices, servant leadership, and emotional intelligence. The author also examines the role of creativity, critical thinking, and resilience in navigating challenges and achieving organizational goals. Furthermore, the report touches on the importance of cognitive flexibility, teamwork, communication and coaching within a business environment.

Personal Reflection Journal and Report

Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Optimism.........................................................................................................................................3
Work Ethics.....................................................................................................................................4
Service Orientation and Servant Leadership...................................................................................5
Emotional Intelligence.....................................................................................................................7
Resilience.........................................................................................................................................8
Creativity.........................................................................................................................................9
Critical Thinking............................................................................................................................10
Cognitive Flexibility and Mindfulness..........................................................................................11
Teamwork......................................................................................................................................12
Communication..............................................................................................................................13
Coaching........................................................................................................................................13
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................14
References......................................................................................................................................15
Page 1 of 18

Introduction
The development of the capitalism under this neoliberal era has emerged a new dimension
corresponding to the business motives and objectives. The older days of businesses with
predictable characters have been displaced by nowadays 'sustainability with strategic planning'.
This is what makes a student of business management to be cautious and serious about
investigating the major key-parameters of strategic planning corresponding to a business. With a
comprehensive knowledge in both theory and practice only the pragmatic solutions of every day
emerging problems can be found (Gangl et al. 2013). The analysis below will be revolving round
those key-parameters that mostly seem like jargons but are the most essential and impactful
components in analyzing the methodology of an entire business organization. Being a business
management student and having a research aspiring mind, I would like to venture the key
phenomena of a business organization along with the central question of developing a team,
better to speak a force that consists of the most efficient, most intelligent and hardworking staff
who are ready to face any sort of challenge with a sporting spirit and cleverly designed
techniques. The studies and the rigorous researches that I have done have made me to conclude
that the key challenge of developing a business program lies upon the development of a work
force of efficient staffs with creative ideas and innovative skills. The entire analysis below will
thus be developed upon the comprehensive assessments of the given key points.
Page 2 of 18

Optimism
Optimism is the first and foremost thing that a company must have to pursue a strong and
efficient business organization. That is optimism which develops the creative ideas to be
implemented in an innovative way (Erl, 2016). That is the fundamental question that must be
investigated regarding the framework of an efficient work-culture and the business organization.
How can this be effective will be examined with the following key points those I have found
relevant regarding a positively thinking work-culture.
 Employee’s strength should be learnt.
 Knowing the employee’s holistically
 A strong incentive system
 Pulse of the workplace should be checked daily
 Leaders should align with their purpose
 Work arrangements should be flexible
 One-to-One interactions should be carried out with each employee regularly
 A team goal should be set
 A regular training system for the employees should be conducted by the leaders
 The leaders should establish their personal values inside the workplace
The abovementioned key points develop the model which is to be set up while developing an
optimistic workplace and work-culture. The optimistic work culture helps to develop an active
exhibition of creativity and innovations from the employees. That is how an efficient team can be
developed.
Page 3 of 18

Work Ethics
The development of an efficient and prosperous work-force filled with immense creativity can
never be carried out under the unethical and illegal actions. That is the reason why the ethical
questions are highly important in developing an efficient team (Popli and Rizvi, 2015). The
below are the key points behind the reasons of having a work ethics in a business organization:
 It satisfies basic human needs. The honesty and the ethical correctness are such
phenomena that every person wants to be with. The employees urge to possess this by
themselves and also expect the company to follow those.
 It creates credibility as the staffs pursue efficiency under the ethical and honest
framework of business functioning that develops a confidence to pursue the work without
unfair means.
 The honesty and ethical functioning develops a unified work culture. The team becomes
most unified as the entire functioning resists every sort of unfair activity.
 The decision making as comes from the personal values, the ethical framework develops
the most creative and apt decisions while needed (Nair et al. 2013).
 There is a prominent chance of long term gain under an ethical functioning as the unfair
attitudes inside the business organizations comes from the instantaneous or short term
gains. Although it develops risks too for long term. The ethical function only confirms a
long-term gain.
The following are the key points regarding the development of an ethical and honest framework
under a business organization. The functioning of such methodology can be carried out with the
following points:
Page 4 of 18

 Rules and regulations must be set same for every staffs
 Company’s policies should be communicated to every staffs
 The dedications from the employees can be expected only by showing an adequate
respect to them (Jung and Yoon, 2013)
 Employees should not be asked to attend the workplace without any leave
 Enough space should be provided to the employees
Service Orientation and Servant Leadership
The service orientation and the service leadership refer to the entire model of serving for others
inside the organization. To deal with this topic it is essential to understand the meaning of those
terms (Dusek et al. 2014). Service orientation refers to a paradigm, to develop a software in the
stature of servicers. As the other design paradigms, this gives a centrally monitored notion to
operate business as the distributed systems. It consists of set of designed principles to confirm
the way through which it develops the separation of concerns in the software.
The servicer leadership is another part that has to be seen critically. The servant leadership refers
to the leadership style that is related with the motivation of providing the best service with the
most efficient and ethical manner. The servant leaderships speak about the servicing task that a
leader must show towards his organization and the followers that can manage the entire business
functioning according to a highly service orientated leadership strategy (Eren, et al.2013). The
servant leadership thus helps to develop the methodology of an advanced form of
transformational leadership.
The following are the points that are required for developing a servant leader:
Page 5 of 18

 Listening capability
 Empathic to others
 Healing ability
 Awareness of the business
 Persuasion.
 Conceptualization about the entire business organization in the functioning
 Foresight to predict the coming events
 Stewardship.
 Commitment towards the growth of people
Page 6 of 18

Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence is the scientific and psychological term that refers to the degree of
understanding and managing the emotions that a person possesses by him or herself and having
an idea about how this can affect the others. The belief that I perceive that the development of
the emotional intelligence is essential for a leader to develop an efficient work force in the
business setting he is working (Kowalkowski et al. 2013). The idea that comes with the
emotional quotient that at what extent a leader can control his emotions and manage it to develop
a strong organizational bonding with the followers in the organization. Below are the key points
that are required corresponding to manage the emotions and which are related to the emotional
quotient. The emotional quotient is although not a static feature and can be developed under the
certain practices of advanced leadership methodologies.
 Self-awareness: This refers to the awareness about the person himself. This helps a leader
to be clear about his or her strengths and weakness.
 Self-regulation: This refers that the leader is capable to control and manage his or her
emotions while dealing with the followers. The self-regulation helps the leader to manage
his or her emotions while taking decisions and thus the stereotype or wrong decision
making can be prevented.
 Motivation: This refers to a motivated leadership style that makes the leader attentive and
focused towards their goals which in turn inspires the followers.
 Empathy: The empathy makes a leader to judge ort deal with the situation by placing him
or herself in the place of the other employees.
Page 7 of 18

 Social skills: This refers to three components viz. conflict resolution, communication
skills and learning about praising others. This can be evaluated when a leader is enough
capable to interact with others. This helps the leader to develop a skill to understand the
psychological status of the other people.

Resilience
Resilience is the term that refers to the management of recovering the organization from the set
back that the company faces due to any sort of financial or organizational failure. This is the fact
that the resilience is needed among the leaders to recover the problems that the company faces
through the immense effect on the management and the system of functioning the organization.
This can be revealed from the fact of the transformational leadership (Spears and Lawrence,
2016). This sort of leadership style refers to the most modern and most effective leadership style
which can be accommodated inside an organization to peruse the most cooperative and frank
management system. To elaborate this, it can be said that the development of the entire system of
the leadership style in a transformational form is unique and effective in developing the entire
process for resilience. It can be understood from the idea that the transformational leadership
where the leader works with the followers with same pace and skills and dedicates himself as
more a servant leader than a team or organizational leader the activity of the organization
becomes far work friendly.
Page 8 of 18

Creativity
The creativity is another key object in developing the effective and efficient team which can
perform at the best level for the company. This can be understood from the basic understanding
regarding the creativity. Before going deep into this I would like to venture my idea about the
definition of creativity. The creativity refers to the ideas and thoughts that a person or a team
may possess to develop the creational activities that can effect as a drastic change in the business
organization (Parris and Peachey, 2013). The creativity can be applied to any part of the
organization from the production to the marketing. Here I would like to venture my research on
how the creativity affects the leadership styles so that the development of an efficient and smart
working employee team can be made possible. This will help us to understand the entire domain
of the creative functioning regarding the leadership style. I would like to mention that the
development of the nowadays business and market dynamics that entire scenario of the
functioning of the business runs under the rapid and significant development of the ideas—the
creativity. And when the creativity is implemented inside the organization it becomes the
innovation that serves the entire organization with a new dimension (Liden, 2014).
This is to be mentioned further that the creativity that can be implemented in every part of the
organization comes from the creative development of the staffs. The creative development of the
staffs which can be termed as the team grooming—the development of the individuals as well as
the team to think out of the box, to venture something unconventional but implementable comes
from the leadership style that is mostly servant like and transformational in form and that is
capable of developing the creative and innovative ideas corresponding the team management. .
That is the relationship between the creativity and innovations in the leadership style to produce
Page 9 of 18

and encourage more creative functioning in the entire sector of business organization (Goleman
et al. 2013).
Critical Thinking
The critical thinking is the most relevant and effective part regarding the functioning of a
business organization. The critical thinking refers to the critical planning and thoughts that are
required to sustain the success and to recover the company from the setback faced by the en
merging perils. The analysis requires, as I think a philosophical idea regarding the inevitability of
the requirement of critical thinking. I would like to connect this with the idea of the innovation
and creativity (Collins and Cooper, 2014). This is already mentioned that it is essential to
implement creativity for innovating the business as a whole. To start with this let us refer the fact
that the development of the economy and the structure of the business in nowadays are not so
linear than that of older days. To deal with the curves that the organizations face it is required to
think critically regarding the issues emerging. To elaborate this, I would like to venture few
examples.
To start with the economic factors, let us remind the fact that the entire capitalism nowadays is
going under the development of the derivative trading—with the contracts of the products that
have not yet been produced. This revolves round enormous uncertainty since the bubbles of the
derivative trading once rises and collapses too under the crisis situations (Batool, 2013). Only the
critical thinking regarding the economic and financial conditions, a comprehensive
understanding regarding the international economic conditions and the predictive attitude
towards the troughs and crests of the economy can make the organization sustainable even after
Page 10 of 18

the storms in the market. This is where the critical thinking can help the organization to recover.
The critical thinking although can never be delivered with the individual leaders only; it becomes
effective only if the leaders are enough capable to develop such a mind-set among the followers
to develop a team that works with critical thinking methodology in every aspect of the
organization.
Cognitive Flexibility and Mindfulness
Cognitive flexibility refers to the development of a multi-tasking and dynamic team for facing
the multi-challenging issues emerging inside of an organization. The emerging challenges in the
business world are making the company to pursue more effective and efficient workforce in
order to achieve the business objectives (Mortiboys, 2013). The cognitive methodology is
developed inside of an organization with the help of the following points:
 Alerting the daily routine
 Seeking new experiences
 Practicing to think in a creative way
 Avoiding the short-cuts (Russ et al. 2013)
 Transformation and interchange in knowledge
 Challenging the morals
Page 11 of 18