Leadership: Reflective Essay on Key Terms and Personal Observations

Student Name
| INSTITUTIONAL AFFILIATION(S)
LEADERSHIP

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Introduction
Leadership is referred to as a complex phenomenon which touches many significant
aspects of organisational, personal and social processes. “Leadership is like the Abominable
Snowman, whose footprints are everywhere but he is nowhere to be seen” (Ali, 2012, p. 76).
On this note, this reflective essay proposes to discuss upon key terms associated with
leadership that has been taught to me during my entire course journey from week one to week
nine on leadership theory and practice. In the beginning of the course, my personal definition
for leadership reflected more on direction and motivation factors among leader’s and that
they consider achieving organisational goals by creating certain time limit and scope. I also
believed that leaders influence others and motivates the followers which was identified by me
during my course lectures even. However, my personal definition for leadership has been
altered considerably due to influence of academic and theoretical perspective and now I view
leadership more like a process in which a leader facilitates various functions in organisations
through charismatic and team-oriented approach that not only enables success in
organisations but also develops an effective organisational culture.
In the personal observation and analysis section I will discuss upon four key themes
that were taught to me in between week 1-9 along with discussing what I have learnt about
my leadership topics that can benefit me in my future career as a leader. All the definitions
and analysis have been made after taking help from my class tutorials and scholarly articles.
This reflective essay will also discuss about my class activities, films watched by me and
experience that has been gained after reviewing current business examples which can help me
significantly in my future career as well as my present working style. Finally, this essay will
reflect upon the implications and my critical discussion where I will access my personal
leadership development opportunities and how my class learnings can improve my leadership
perspective skills throughout my working life.

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Personal observation and analysis
The very first week of my course, I was introduced with key terms associated with
leader’s role and how great leaders influence group while achieving vision or any specific
goals. Even Simiyu (2015) says that leadership is a process in which an individual exerts
influence over his/her subordinates and motivates, inspires and directs them to perform
activities that can help them in achieving organisational objectives. During the first few
classes, I learnt that organisational leadership is both facilitating and influencing through
which a person with effective leadership quality and collective efforts accomplishes shared
goals. Leaders improve group performances by determining individual role after establishing
phenomenal interactions which helps them in identifying behaviour and other aspects of team
members, organisation and work units. However, few researchers argue that physical
attributes of leaders are more focused while evaluating leadership capabilities and their
relationship with followers. Physical attributes may include behavioural categories,
measurable and observable characteristics, etc. Others who focus upon relationship building
between leaders and followers looks upon situational determinants of leadership (Yukl,
2012). Previously, all I knew was that leaders role focused upon directing and motivating
others, but during the class, I became aware that leadership role is far more than it when I was
informed about leadership behaviours like legitimacy, intentions, initiative, morality and
personal behaviour through which they are able to invoke changes in others perceptions.
During the first week, we were told to perform an activity in which we were supposed to look
at the job advert for a government position in Australia. Though, I was not sure about its
relevance with my leadership study in the beginning, as I started working upon the project, I
realised that in government firms, the role of leadership is quite different than in non-
government organisations.

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Week 2-3 taught me that in today’s highly educated and full of expectation society
living in urban cities demands effective service delivery processes by public organisation that
are operated on ethical grounds, reflecting good governance. I came through an article written
by Mohamad, Daud , & Yahya (2014) where the authors opine that in government
organisation’s dynamic work environment, transformational leadership can prove more
appropriate as they lead and empowers subordinates through which good decision making
and performance gets fostered in them. However, according to me, charismatic and
intelligence dimensions of leadership shall be given more value than leadership behaviour
while measuring leadership effectiveness since charismatic leadership engages in such
behaviours that are associated with collective history, communicating collective mission and
vision, emphasising upon collective identity and pursuing collective interest and group goals.
All these behaviours are further complimented by intelligence dimensions in leadership that
helps them in realising the requirements for accomplishing desired vision through goal
setting, task execution and strategic planning (Vergauwe, Wille, Hofmans, Kaiser, & Fruyt,
2018). Moreover, most of the successful leaders leading today’s corporate world like Mark
Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Kazuo Hirai reflects charismatic personality in them. After
completing the first week, I was sure that to lead contemporary organisation, the basic factors
that requires to be developed in me includes decision-making, planning, directing and
controlling abilities along with developing effective leadership dimension that are grounded
upon both theoretical basis and practical experience.
I also came to know about leadership values and ethics during which I learnt about
leadership culture and behaviour that can considerably impact workplace values and what
factors can give shape to value systems and leadership paradigms. During fifth week, our
class acknowledged ethical issues taking place in organisations and how leaders of the
organisation’s adopts strategies to deal with them. Before moving on to the theory, our class