Reflective Assignment on Organizational Behaviour and Management

Organizational
behaviour and
management
Reflective assignment

Reflective journal 1
Introduction
Leadership and management play a significant role in the success of any business (Certo, 2018).
This course has helped me identify and deeply analyze various attributes of my personality that
define me as a leader. Various leadership theories have also been analyzed in order for myself to
understand the leadership style that suits me the most. From this course, I have selected the topic
of ‘Communication’ and I have worked towards analyzing my personality based on my learning
from this topic. Through this reflection, I have tried to highlight my understanding of the
importance of communication as well as my communication styles. I have also tried to
understand various leadership theories and aimed at identifying a leadership style that suits me
best.
To provide a context for this reflective journal, I work in an organization in the retail industry
where I am responsible for leading the sales and marketing department. My team includes
twenty-three people with an average age of twenty-eight. Most of the employees are men and
there are seven women who are a part of the team. The team is required to have a pleasing
personality and great communication skills. People working in sales also need to have excellent
people management skills in order to retain clients (Powers, Jennings & DeCarlo, 2014).
Through this report, I would like to highlight to important aspects of my managerial skills. The
first is communication and the second is leadership styles.
Communication
Grapevine communication is common in every organization. Grapevine communication refers to
an informal source of communication that exists within the business and often leads to gossip
(Quirke, 2017). My organization has often faced a lot of conflicts arising owing to grapevine
communications. People within the organization are often found discussing each other’s
relationship statuses and family problems as a source of entertainment. Not only does this
hamper the overall productivity of employees within the organization but also creates a negative
workplace environment (Annan-Prah, 2015). This further demotivates employees.
I noticed that in my organization, there were various informal groups that were established. Most
of the people did not get along well with each other. Eventually working in teams was becoming

Reflective journal 2
more and more difficult. I discussed the issue with the senior management and eventually
decided to take some stern steps. My discussion with the senior management emphasized the
importance of open communication within the organization.
Upon encountering this situation, I decided to use my position leadership power and called a
meeting. Through this meeting, I tried to address the issues that the employees were facing. I
even encouraged the team members to speak on the matter. However, I realized that there were
many people who were facing various issues throughout the organization. Some people felt that
the working environment was not motivating enough while some felt that the leaders of the team
were partial towards certain employees. Overall this led to a lack of trust and the employees
working together were not productive as a group.
Through the meeting, I laid down certain ground rules. I tried to restrict the formations of
informal groups within the organization. I also tried to create a positive working environment by
encouraging someone to be honest in the firm. I allowed the team members to go out every day
for fifteen minutes during office hours so that they can conduct their informal conversations
without creating a disruption in the office premises. Besides that, if any member of the team had
to communicate with other team members, they were asked to sit in the conference room and
conduct meetings in a professional manner. This created a sense of discipline within the
organization and allowed employees to create space around each other which is professional,
disciplined and improves productivity. As employees wasted less time in gossiping, their
productivity increased. People communicated with each other regarding work and this led to the
establishment of a more improved workplace environment.
As a leader, I also understand the importance of transparency in feedback. Feedback allows
employees to grow and enhance their learning. Communication is the backbone of a constructive
feedback (Zhang & Venkatesh, 2013). The tone of communication used plays a vital role in
ensuring that feedback given to employees is transparent and constructive rather than critical.
Hence in order to create an atmosphere which encourages the feedback mechanism, I installed
feedback boxes in the office. This way people could anonymously provide feedbacks to any
member of the team. My senior manager, as well as the human resource manager of the
organization, had access to the feedback box. It was left to their discretion about which