Contemporary Issues in Management: A Reflective Essay on Leadership

This essay discusses the contemporary issues in management, focusing on the role of leadership in overcoming challenges. It explores the use of Gibbs Reflective Cycle to evaluate personal experiences and develop an action plan for improvement.

EC4006 –
Fundamentals
of Economics

INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Under the present situation in business sector is full of pressure. Every day
new technology introduced which generate accelerated change in markets and companies that are
all moving for modernization (Collings and Isichei, 2018). Young executives with a management
degree turn out to be winners of such challenging situation. The business world's greatest
challenge is to generate competent and productive managers with creative work actions and role
design to leverage tacit knowledge and productivity potential of all kinds of employees. This
individual report based on the contemporary issues which management faced during the process
of achieving their business goals & objectives. As a manager of large size organization, I have to
face various difficulties at the time of managing internal work process. In order to maintain
effective work culture, I have to follow leadership skills to make organizational culture better for
everyone. This essay based on personal reflection of an individual at the time of managing
contemporary issues in management. This individual essay based on the topic of leadership that
is very essential to manage organization and its operational activities.
MAIN BODY
Gibbs Reflective Cycle is the model which is used to encourage people to
work systematically think about their experiences during a particular situation, incident or
activity. Reflection of those experiences helps the individual to evaluate their own performance
by using this reflective circle model (Green, 2018). That also helps people think in more depth
about an encounter, behaviour or occurrence, making them more mindful of their own behaviour
and more likely to respond and adjust their behaviour. When digging at the event's negative as
well as positive effects, people will benefit from it. Gibbs model help me to evaluate my own
experience working as a manager in a company where I have to manage many people at the time.
By using Gibbs model, I am able to describe my situation, personal experience and what
was its positive or negative impact in my future growth. This model include six stages which
include description of the situation which individual face, feeling or emotions which they
actually feel that particular time, evaluation of the entire situation and what individual experience
that time. After that, analyse the situation and what exactly person learn from that phase because
in future it helps very much. At the end, made conclusion of the final outcomes and build an
action plan which required improving their current skills and develop new skills for future.

Description: I was handling team of five members where i have to manage entire function
and make sure that task will be completed before the given deadline. It was not the first time
when I am handling a whole team individually (Howard and Hatfield, 2018). But this time, I face
lot of difficulties because of the team members and they all are from different culture so they
have different perspective or values. Cultural difference affects the team work which
automatically affect the organization and its performance which impact the production as well as
profitability. Due to different perspective or level of understanding was generating issues among
the team members. In result, it was creating conflict among the people which affect overall
performance of an individual and it unable the business to achieve their goals and objectives. I
observed that, before working on the task which assign to entire team, I have to done employee
engagement where they get time to understand each other and become comfortable with each
members because it increase the efficiency as well as effectiveness of each employee who
working in a team.
Feelings: This section is about the emotions caused by the incident, and what the thoughts
of someone were during the scenario, operation, or circumstance mentioned in firs stage. The
purpose is not to address or reflect explicitly on the feeling in depth. You don't need to measure
or evaluate feelings. This step targets the awareness regarding the situations which can impact
the outcomes. It is one of the Helpful questions which are widely used that exactly individual
feel in that situation (Nikolaou, 2018). At the time of working with team, in order to achieve
team objectives, I feel that we are five members excluding me, so we are able to complete our
group task easily. In addition, every member has their own expertise in the specific field which
was positive aspect for me. But, due to cultural difference every individual different perspective
which become barrier for us and we all are unable to make any decision quickly because team
members not agreed on other suggestions or ideas. In addition, communication is the factor
which affects the team work. In order to achieve any group task or team work, effective
communication is the essential aspects which provide success or lack of communication become
the reason of failure.
Evaluation: In this phase, individual ask themselves about the experience which they feel
during the situations and it was good or bad. Identify the strategy which did work well, and how?
What solution just didn't work? Being rational about the situation can be hard on employees. The
following questions may be useful if a proper evaluation is still to be carried out (O’Cass and

Wetzels, 2018). As a manager, I have done all the responsibility which I required to do. I
observed that selection of team become wrong decision for me. I have to follow some leadership
skills to motivate every team members who are in the group and encourage them to perform or
push their limits regarding to follow common goal of the organization. Due to lack of
communication among the team members or managers affect the entire work or become failure
of this group task. In addition, lack of trust issues on each other decisions also affect the
working condition which make delay in work or unable to achieve business target on time.
Analysis: This process is on what you know from the situations, incidents or behaviours.
You now know what to do in specific, potential circumstances, because of the past. It ensures
that all good and bad events and/or issues that you have encountered can be personally set down
and analyzed. People are benefiting from failures, after all. This research is mostly performed in
pairs with stage 3 of this model (O’Gorman and et.al., 2018). As a leader of group, I analyse that
effective communication is very essential for the organization to maintain good relation among
the people and make them comfortable to share their thoughts or suggestions. In order to achieve
group task, individual presence in very important and their participation in the decision making
process. As a manager of the company or leader of the entire group, it’s my responsibility to
make each member effective for the task (Phillips and Moutinho, 2018). Leadership,
management, effective communication, engagement and individual participation are required to
achieve business goals & objectives. As a leader of the group, it is my responsibility to supervise
each member and correct then where they were go wrong. While completing the process, I need
to provide some skills training to the individual to improve their existing skills and develop new
skills which required in the future achieving their goals & objectives.
Conclusion: In this stage, individual looking back to the situation and looking at yourself
from a distance and wondering what else you could have done in this situation. Collected
information was valuable or not, it further encourages me to reach a good and useful conclusion.
Basically this stage helps me to evaluate positive as well as negative aspect of particular situation
and how further I can improve it (Turchini, Trushenski and Glencross, 2019). This stage also
include the strategies which taken by individual to improve their weakness and converted into
their strengths. After analysing entire situation I was able to evaluate the positive as well as
negative aspect or actions which I was done during the process of completing team work. From
the overall observation, I evaluate that there was nothing good in the process of achieving team

work. There are various issues which I was facing and which become the reason of failure entire
task. Lack of communication among team members affect the individual or group performance
as well. After talking to my mentor, I acknowledge that I need to build confidence or encourage
employees to face challenges, colleagues' practice, putting clients ' well-being at the back of my
mind. I realize I need to support colleagues, understand the pressures they may be under, but
make sure their practice doesn't put customers at risk. As a manager of the company I have to
implement leadership in the working culture and make sure that it positively affects the
organizational culture.
Action plan: In this last step, plans for future circumstances, incidents, or activities are
created. In the 5th stage' Conclusions ' people make themselves clear promises. The purpose is to
keep those promises. If everything goes right, then next time you should expect to behave the
same way. You should trust yourself not to make the same mistakes again in places where things
were not going too far. Which solution will be more successful and which transition will lead to
real improvement? Besides an action plan, it's also wise to make a schedule to discourage
yourself from avoiding promises. In the future, while working with colleagues, I would continue
to improve my assertive skills and ensure that the well-being of clients is protected (Vrontis and
Christofi, 2020). I will make this a target for my learning in my next placement, and will explore
it with my coach to figure out ideas on how I will do this. In the future, I make sure that I am not
going to repeat any mistake which I was doing that time. As a leader of team, I have to evaluate
individual employee’s performance or potential as well which further make me able to assign
their task accordingly. After that provide training to enhance existing skills or improve the
capability to achieve organizational task.
CONCLUSION
From the above discussion it has been concluded that, an organization various management
issues which further impact their operational performance as well as productivity. Above study
helped in classifies the set of factors to be considered during the planning of a reflective
report. Whole situation is based on present or past emotions and feelings are examined in order
to define the potential plan of action. Looking of one's own behaviour in the future will help to
execute or do something differently. These experiences needn't be positive, as the latter shows;
negative experiences are still useful. In future, if individual face similar situation than it is
beneficial for them to face and use better approach for the situation in a different way. That is

the nature of the Gibbs Reflective Process. People are not only learning to better understand
certain situations, but are also learning to judge how to handle the same situation in the future in
different ways.

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Collings, D. G. and Isichei, M., 2018. The shifting boundaries of global staffing: Integrating
global talent management, alternative forms of international assignments and non-
employees into the discussion. The International Journal of Human Resource
Management. 29(1). pp.165-187.
Green, C., 2018. Contemporary issues: The pre-licensure nursing student and medication
errors. Nurse education today. 68. pp.23-25.
Howard, D. and Hatfield, F. M., 2018. Aphasia therapy: Historical and contemporary
issues (Vol. 7). Routledge.
Nikolaou, P., 2018. Effective strategies for human resource management in educational
organizations. Conflict management case studies.
O’Cass, A. and Wetzels, M., 2018. Contemporary issues and critical challenges on innovation in
services. Journal of Product Innovation Management. 35(5). pp.674-681.
O’Gorman, J. and et.al., 2018. Contemporary issues in the management of grassroots
football. Routledge Handbook of Football Business and Management, pp.56-70.
Phillips, P. and Moutinho, L., 2018. Contemporary issues in strategic management.
SURYANARAYANA, A. and BHUSAL, M.R.L., CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN
MANAGEMENT.
Turchini, G. M., Trushenski, J. T. and Glencross, B. D., 2019. Thoughts for the future of
aquaculture nutrition: realigning perspectives to reflect contemporary issues related to
judicious use of marine resources in aquafeeds. North American Journal of
Aquaculture. 81(1). pp.13-39.
Vrontis, D. and Christofi, M., 2020. Contemporary Issues in Management and Marketing
Research.