Reflective Journal: Exploring Leadership Theories and Practices

This reflective journal provides an in-depth analysis of a student's learning experience within a leadership module, utilizing the Gibbs Reflective Cycle to explore various aspects of leadership. The journal begins with an introduction, defining reflective journals and their significance in presenting learning experiences, emphasizing the exploration of leadership styles, and personal experiences. The main body details the student's engagement with the leadership module, the application of Gibbs Reflective Cycle to reflect on completing tasks and modules, including the description of the task, the student's feelings and thoughts, an evaluation of what worked and what didn't, an analysis of the learning process, and finally, conclusions drawn from the experience. The student reflects on their experience, highlighting the importance of leadership, the influence of tutors, and the challenges faced. The journal concludes with recommendations for future modules, focusing on improving presentation and resilience skills, and a proposed action plan to achieve these improvements. References to books and journals used are also included.

Reflective journal

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Reflective journal.........................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Reflective journal is said to the account of work in progress of an individual and an
opportunity for presenting learning experience. It accounts preferred learning style, independent
research focus and personal experience (Bassot, 2016) (Issa and Isaias, 2016). It assist people to
understand what they are learning and the ways they complete tasks. The present project is
reflective journal which discusses the ways in which tasks and modules are completed. All the
information are described through stages of Gibbs Reflective Cycle.
MAIN BODY
Reflective journal
In the module or task, I gained information about leadership and various types of styles
that are used by a business leader. In the module, I learnt that leadership is significant factor to
drive success of company as it motivates and encourages people for higher performances through
maintaining stronger relations. To present my experience in completion of tasks and modules, I
used Gibbs Reflective Cycle which is personal reflection framework which helps in making
sense of experience. It includes six stages that are underneath:
Description: For the task of preparing presentation, I collected information related to
leadership. The class tutor helped me a lot by providing me sources through which I gathered
data about leadership, styles and its importance in business. Leadership is key for organisation as
it inspires, guides and stimulates people to participate for achieving common efforts (O’Halloran,
2016). I also read many books in which detailed description of the business are published and
their styles are defined. Herein, I learned that business leader uses participative leadership style,
democratic leadership style, situational leadership style and so on so to lead subordinates towards
achieving organisational objectives. After collecting relevant information, I scrutinise the data
that was required and used that to make good and attractive presentation. Furthermore, I had to
rewrite most of information for making it coherent piece of work. I have given myself enough
time prior to deadline for completing the assignment, however I did not plan any time to rewrite
the working if something have chance to go wrong. I used my research skill and time
management so that the tasks was completed within defined duration and in proper format. I also
took assistance from my professors about ways to make presentation and they guided me
throughout the module so that I learn to make presentation easily and efficiently. A leader have
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potential to maintain healthy interpersonal relations with all the followers or subordinates.
Moreover, my communication skill also played key role in completing the module.
Feelings and thoughts: When I was allotted the module and tasks, I was happy as from
this I will learn many things about leader, leadership and their styles. In the entire module, I was
feeling satisfied with my professors as they were supporting me in all activities and were
correcting my mistakes when I was showing them my working. The class tutor taught about
leadership and also shares some of their experience which influenced me to compete the module
within time and with good information (Turky, 2016). However, when I was not getting
sufficient information then I got frustrated and thought to leave the module as it is. But, when I
got support from professionals, I made a decision to finish the module with high quality. In this, I
though that other people such as tutor, professionals and so on were thinking that I was making
huge efforts to complete the tasks on time that made me feeling motivated and this leaded to
work harder and get the working complete faster. When I look back, I feel satisfied that I decided
to make efforts in the work.
Evaluation: The things which were good as well as worked well was the fact that I
produced quality work within agreed deadline. The motivation and support that I got from my
tutor and other people in the module also stimulated me to work harder in entire task (Sivapalan
and et. al., 2017). It made me feeling much more positive. All this contributed positively towards
my work ethics. However, the thing which clearly not worked was my assumption to write or
make presentation in the same way that was taught by my tutor. Also, my poor resilience skill
has resulted in failure to recover from the information which was not up to the standards as per
my tutor. The other thing that didn't went well was my poor presentation skill as in my trials, I
failed to deliver effectively as well as engaging audiences with my presentation. I also some
arguments with some people who were part of my classes as there point of view about leadership
and styles of leaders was different from mine. From the whole situation, I made sense that
desired standards of information about leaders and leadership plays key role in preparing
presentation about business leader.
Analysis: In the module and tasks, I analysed that sources such as books, websites, etc
plays huge role in collecting information. These all saves time of a person to gain understanding
and details about business leader and their styles to lead people. I thought the approach saved my
huge time to have huge collection of information about leader and styles. However, it costs me
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much than expected. It also put huge stress on me as I have to arrange resources more than I
predicted. I searched some literature and this helped me to understand the whole situation. The
whole task improved my knowledge about leadership and its significance for successful
organisations in present century. It is importance that effective business leaders incorporate
suitable leadership skills together with characteristics in their nature or behaviour. The reason for
which my assignment was completed on time was my punctuality to perform actions on time and
support of people that were part of the assignment. It is well said by Vicéns, Zamora and Ojados
(2016) that by not dealing with circumstances immediately as well as personally, the situation
becomes out of control and leads to unexpected results. I managed all the unexpected situations
by myself and didn't depend on others that helped me to complete the tasks on time. However,
dynamic situations and unavailability of resources that were main hurdles or roadblocks in my
path to complete tasks.
Conclusion: From the whole situation, I concluded that true leadership is much more
than recognition along with authority from external world. Rather, it is about developing people
and assisting them to reach towards fuller potential. For everyone that were involved in the
situation or module, it could have been more positive circumstance as proper support and
encouragement of professionals can lead to set a example of leader for me. Moreover, to present
things in future, I need to develop my presentation skills as effective presentation skills are key
for a student to engage its audience. Also, I need to improve my resilience skill because it
enables to develop mechanisms to protect against experiences that can be overwhelming and
assist in maintaining proper balance of live during stressful periods. Moreover, I could have
managed the situation by properly plan what actions must be taken at what time so that the tasks
could have done in better manner. I also learned that proper plan makes things possible to put
into different sections together as well as submitting assignments without much and any type of
rewriting. Lastly, it is also concluded that sometimes challenging decisions is essential as it
stimulates to complete all types of tasks within determined time and appropriate format.
Action plan: In other modules or tasks, I would do things differently by recovering
things quickly and presenting in the manner that gains attention of wider audiences. For this, I
have to improve my presentation skill and resiliency skill. The action plan to improve the skill
set is underneath:
Skill Resources Actions Time
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Presentation skill Resources required to
improve presentation
skill are Toastmasters
International,
networking events,
MindTools and ignite
(Bassot, 2016).
To improve
presentation skill, I
will practice my
presentation more,
transform my nervous
energy into
enthusiasm, adjust
surroundings and use
positive visualisation.
It will be improved in
2 months.
Resilience skill Resources to develop
resilience skill are
positive attitude, diary,
master classes and
videos of resilience.
Th activities in which I
will participate for
developing resilience
skill are learning from
failures, engaging in
positive self- talks,
embracing changes,
developing strong
connections and
maintaining
perspectives.
It will be developed in
duration of 1 month.
CONCLUSION
From the reflective journal, it is concluded that experience makes a person learn many
things. While completing tasks, many things goes well while multiple things or actions do not
give results as expected. Gibbs reflective model is majorly used by people for learning or
presenting situations that is experienced by them, particularly favourable or unfavourable. The
model have six stages within which an individual explores specific event of situation and use
them for others.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Bassot, B., 2016. The reflective journal. Macmillan International Higher Education.
Issa, T. and Isaias, P., 2016. Promoting human-computer interaction and usability guidelines and
principles through reflective journal assessment. In Web Design and Development:
Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 1706-1726). IGI Global.
O’Halloran, P., 2016, April. Reflective learning: understanding the human medic experience.
In BSAVA Congress Proceedings 2016 (pp. 153-153). BSAVA Library.
Sivapalan, S. and et. al., 2017, November. Communicating Sustainability: Context Matters.
In 2017 7th World Engineering Education Forum (WEEF) (pp. 920-924). IEEE.
Turky, M., 2016. Promoting reflective thinking skills by using web 2.0 application. Available at
SSRN 2758239.
Vicéns, J.L., Zamora, B. and Ojados, D., 2016. Improvement of the reflective learning in
engineering education using MATLAB for problems solving. Computer Applications in
Engineering Education. 24(5). pp.755-764.
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