ICON College BUS115: Creative & Ethical Leadership Practice Portfolio

This portfolio evaluates the development of creative and ethical leadership skills in a real-world retail environment, applying a systematic approach to research methodology and demonstrating advanced information skills. It highlights the importance of leadership skills, ethical behavior, and communication in achieving organizational goals. The portfolio discusses methods to improve leadership skills, including critical thinking, problem-solving, and data analysis using secondary research. It emphasizes the role of leaders in fostering collaboration, understanding team dynamics, and utilizing key performance indicators to measure performance. The conclusion underscores the significance of soft skills, continuous improvement, and strategic market analysis for success in the competitive retail industry.

PORTFOLIO OF
PROFESSIONAL
PRACTICE

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
1. Evaluating the development of creative and ethical leadership skills in a real world
environment................................................................................................................................3
2. Applying a systematic approach to research methodology and demonstrating advanced
information skills........................................................................................................................5
3...................................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Skills plays a vital role as it is the ability that comes from proper practice in order to
achieve success. Leadership is a systematic art of encouraging people to work effectively
towards achieving targets. In this business environment, leadership skills is really important for
supervisor to lead their team members or employees with a strategy to accomplish the company’s
goals. Nowadays, retail industry is the market that includes business activities that involve the
sale of services or products by an organisation directly to the clients. The present report will
evaluate the development of creative and ethical leadership skills in this business world.
Furthermore, the study will be applying a systematic approach to research methodology along
with advanced information skills. There are many soft skills that leaders should adopt to make
people motivated and help them to achieve success. At last, the report will give information
about method to use in order to collect and analyse data to make important decisions.
1. Evaluating the development of creative and ethical leadership skills in a real world
environment.
Retail industry
In this business environment, leadership plays an important role as it creates an inspiring
vision of the future success, attract people to work effectively. with the help of direction and
vision statement, leaders motivate employees and sets priorities so that they can achieve success
in their life. Leaders of the retail industry and any other organisations create a vision and focus
on strengths and weaknesses of the company with the help of various tools such as SWOT
analysis, PEST analysis and others too. For example- when a start ups company established their
new projects, leaders and employees will probably have lots of passion for it, so they work
together and managers support their team members at the beginning. An effective leadership skill
will link different expectations together such as hard work and team work leads to good results,
good results will lead to rewards and compensations or other benefits (Kramarski and Heaysman,
2021). This will ultimately motivate employees so that they can work hard to accomplish the
desired goals. Nowadays, employees seek to attention and want to enjoy reward system so
leaders of the company manage delivery of the vision. Every staff member in the company wants
to achieve performance goal that are totally linked to overall company’s vision. Therefore,

leaders of the company provide feedback and measure the individual level performance with the
help of KPIs- Key performance indicators and personal interviews.
Team development is important for team performance in order to achieve team work
goals which is carried out by transformational leaders in the company. In order to develop and
improve team, leaders must first understand information about team dynamics. This can be done
through Belbin’s team roles which is most popular method for team development. With the help
of this method, leaders will ensure that employees have the abilities to work and achieve desired
goals for themselves and company’s productivity. By developing leadership skills and
communication skills which is really important to build collaboration between employees,
leaders can create safe and positive environment at workplace where employees can work.
Critical thinking and problem solving is one of the important skill which is essential for leaders
to maintain positive environment of the firm.
Importance of leadership skills in the company’s success
Leadership skills are important element to make decisions about company’s goals and
mission statement and allocate resources among people working in the firm. So, that they can
achieve those targets properly without any issues. A good leadership skill includes the capability
to delegate task and authority, communicate with staff members on regular basis and motivate
them to complete task on time. There are various leadership traits such as self-confidence,
creativity, honesty, commitment and effective planning.
In today’s era, ethical leaders should demonstrate appropriate behaviour and set high
regard for values. They can provide value to company’s business by encouraging staff members
to be inspired about values of organisation. Most of the experts recommended that ethical
leadership leads to high job satisfaction and high productivity (Hallmark and et.al., 2021).
Honestly and respect both are important key principles of ethical leadership, because it has
created positive environment. Dishonest behaviour is not good for company’s performance and
will create negative environment and mistrust at workplace. Employees will lose faith, respect
and trust which will create conflict between top level management team, employee’s, managers
and others. An effective leader who convey respect to their employee’ is beneficial for
company’s productivity.
There are various types of leadership skills that one should have to manage company and
their employees. Communication skills, active listening skills, managing team work, handle

problems, problem solving skills, demonstrate courage. In retails industry, ethical leadership
development is necessary to improve soft skills in different settings so that it will beneficial.
Leaders should become comfortable speaking with people working in firm, they need to do this
with the help of meetings, workshops and conference (Zeng, 2021). In this way, good leaders
and employees can build effective relationship or bond in order to create trust, fairness and
integrity. Leaders must treat their employees equally; they should make sure ‘do not play
favourites game’. Otherwise it will demotivate employees which is harmful for individual
performance and they will not feel valued. By interacting with people. the company’s leader will
improve growth and success of retail business. Collaboration and coordination will be helpful to
reach a better conclusions or information.
Methods to improve leadership skills and deal with challenges
Leaders of the company must identify potential dilemmas because dealing with them is most
difficult task. They should prepare in advance so that it will be easy to make decisions, so this
kind of techniques can be really helpful. It is necessary to assess the things properly and collect
related data or information based on situation (Zhang, 2021). For example-if there are any issues
related to products or services, managers of company need to collect important data about these
services and assess the evidence properly. After that they need to get advice from experts which
is really helpful to male important ethical decisions within the firm.
2. Applying a systematic approach to research methodology and demonstrating advanced
information skills
Systematic approach is important method to find out answers to questions, thus, it is
known as systematic because it is a clear method provide steps that leads to conclusions.
Information skills- Information skills are method used by people in order to learn during task to
help achieve goals and they can use this any time when one need to use information. It is
essential to enable different range of important information in order to evaluate and use such
information effectively (Sancar, Atal and Deryakulu, 2021). There are other skills which include
problem solving, ways to handle situation and communication. The basic skills which is
important in information skills method is critical thinking this is helpful to understand the logic
and make leaders aware about detailed data. In order to improve information skills a research
skills one need to verify information from several sources so that it be helpful in taking
decisions.

By improving and developing information skills people will be able to identify the
different ranges of data available in the firm. They will be able to understand the need of relevant
data with the help of search tools and strategies people can adopt these methods. Secondary
research is an effective method used by people to increase overall effectiveness of research. The
researcher here collects all the important materials through various types of sources such as
social media, internet, public library and others. These data collection techniques require some
sort of relationship with the related subjects in order to find out important information. People
needs to identify database with the help of secondary research which includes local councils,
government, industries body, libraries and public surveys. For example- In the retail company,
leader of the firm collect data with the help of feedback forms, surveys, direct interviews to
collect satisfaction level or other relevant data. This will ultimately provide idea about
satisfaction level of customer which is helpful for employees to understand the needs of
audience.
They can use desk research method which means with the help of existing information or
previous data one can gather new information to increase the overall research about related
things in the firm. By empowering people to improve these skills, one can contribute to their
business success (Personal and professional development, 2021). People use this skill to think
critically and make good balance judgements about any retail business related data or
information.
In order to improve information skills, leaders need to make connections and focus on social
networking with others. It is necessary to make connections between various sources of
information in order to collect and analyse data to identify solutions and make important decision
for retail sector. To achieve success in information skills, employees and managers needs to
utilize critical thinking skills. Employees need to be able to evaluate and analyse things, observe
important things and helpful for problem solving.
In order to conduct secondary research and other methods to collect data leaders need to
identify the important topic which they need to research on. Second step is to identify which
sources is better for collecting information (Traylor and et.al., 2021). With the help of existing
data, they can check on relevant details available to related topic. This can be done through
newspaper, surveys and government or agencies. By comparing data one can find out if the

information is correct or not otherwise it will impact the business situation and hamper research
method.
It is noted that not all the resources provide accurate or latest reports which will be helpful to
make decisions. Sometimes the data is not that much accurate, so the success of research will
only depend on research quality which is already conducted by primary research in the firm.
3.
Covered in PPT

CONCLUSION
To conclude, it is important to have basic soft skills to achieve success in leadership so that
leaders can motivate the employees in the firm to work effectively and achieve common goals
with the help of team work. This can be done through various method such as focusing on
communication skills, active listening skills, ability to take risk, problem solving skills and time
management. In retail industry, most the leaders are using Belbin’s model of team roles so that
they can create collaboration between team members.
By evaluating the report, it is also concluded that leaders need to use secondary research
and other method to understand the satisfaction of employees and customers. They can also use
key performance indicator to measure the overall productivity and performance of the company.
Moreover, there is an increasing trend of using various strategies and method has been noted in
this competitive market of retail industry. So leaders need to make sure to focus on market
strategies and collect existing data to conduct secondary research. They need to analyse data in
order to find out the solution if necessary. The organisation can evaluate cost of conducting
research and decide which is best suited for them in order to achieve desired goals. An
employees need to focus on self-management and self-reflection so that they can understand
their weaknesses and strengths which is helpful for them to improve professional career.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Kramarski, B. and Heaysman, O., 2021. A conceptual framework and a professional
development model for supporting teachers’“triple SRL–SRT processes” and promoting
students’ academic outcomes. Educational Psychologist, pp.1-14.
Zhang, L. J., 2021. Curriculum Innovation in Language Teacher Education: Reflections on the
PGDELT Program’s Contributions to EFL Teachers’ Continuing Professional
Development. Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics. 44(4). pp.435-450.
Sancar, R., Atal, D. and Deryakulu, D., 2021. A new framework for teachers’ professional
development. Teaching and Teacher Education. 101. p.103305.
Hallmark, B. and et.al., 2021. Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best PracticeTM Professional
Development. Clinical Simulation in Nursing. 58. pp.5-8.
Zeng, X., 2021, August. Research on the Professional Development of College Teachers Based
on Computer Network. In Journal of Physics: Conference Series (Vol. 1992, No. 3, p.
032030). IOP Publishing.
Williams, M., 2021. 360-Degree Feedback for Leadership Development (Doctoral dissertation,
The College of St. Scholastica).
Kopsidas, O., 2021. The 360-Degree Feedback Model as a Tool of Total Quality
Management. Economics. 9(1). pp.1-11.
Traylor, A. and et.al., 2021. Leaders’ Reactions to 360° Feedback: Examining Individual
Attributes and Format Effects. International Journal of Management, Knowledge and
Learning. 10.
Online
360-degree appraisal system. 2021. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.hrhelpboard.com/performance-management/360-degree-performance-
appraisal.htm>
Personal and professional development. 2021. [Online]. Available through:
<https://blog.rapportleadership.com/why-is-personal-and-professional-development-
important>
How to writes a self-appraisal. 2021. [Online]. Available through: <https://in.indeed.com/career-
advice/career-development/self-appraisal>