Reflective Report on Leadership in Diverse Teams: Case Study Analysis

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Cross Cultural Management
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Table of Contents
Podcast.............................................................................................................................................3
Reflective Report.............................................................................................................................5
Reference list...................................................................................................................................9
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Podcast
The word “leadership” can create a different idea in mind. It is the ability of an individual to
guide and manage a group of members in an organization. Leadership is the term that involves
various aspects including making a decision, creating and evaluating a clear target and the
quality to achieve target providing knowledge and necessary tools to the members in an
organisation. a leader should have the qualities like self-confidence, strong management and
communication skills, innovative and creative thinking, integrity, sincere enthusiasm,
willingness to take the risk, perseverance in the time of failure and spontaneous reactive in crisis
(Antonakis and Day, 2017).
In the given case study, Kalia was leading an experienced team as all the members have work in
any organisation at least for five to ten years. Generally, team members are cordial with each
other. Kalia was tensed about the success and productivity of the organisation. Kalia was tensed
about the youngest staffs, Robert, as he was frustrated with the teammate, Haseena. Hasena was
not agreed on decision and authority with other members of the team. Robert felt that all the
team members should have an equal thought and contribution should be shared among the team.
Margaret mentioned about the cultural factor in the team. She proposed that all the opinions
stated by the members should be respected and should give value to them.
Leadership quality possesses its key trait like communication, strong management, empathy and
assertiveness by which an individual to become a well-prepared leader. In order to become a
leader, the individuals need to be trained to acquire all those qualities. A leader is the key person
in an organisation to increase its work efficiency and expand the business in the market. A leader
builds a target for which the team gives the best performance in their work to achieve that target.
The leader has its importance in the organisation:
Initiates action: A leader initiates to build up actions communicating about the objectives of the
organisation.
Motivation: Leaders set the motivation power to the team encouraging them to put more efforts
in their particular works to create an effective product (Higgs and Dulewicz, 2016).
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Provide guidance: leaders guide and direct a team to perform in a positive way to meet the aim
of the organisation and create a high confidence level among the team to make the things special.
Several issues can influence a leader and the team. One of those is organisational culture.
Organisational culture gives concept beliefs, values, assumption and way of interacting in an
organisation. Leaders should appreciate their roles in maintaining an organisational culture in
the environment of the workplace. The culture illustrates the employees how to behave and
perform and that helps to meet the target. Organisational culture influences the team in the
following ways:
i. Organisational culture conveys to employees about the uniqueness of the organisation
and its target and difference from other organisations.
ii. The culture creates a sense of value and purpose of the activities of the organisation. In
addition to this, culture also provides a commitment to the organisation.
iii. The organisational culture provides stability in the systems of the organisation to that
extent to the development of the organisation.
iv. The culture provides a logical manner to meet the fixed goal of the organisation (Anitha,
2016).
In addition to that, various theories give detailed information about the theme of leadership like
the Trait Theory. Ralph Stodgill proposed the trait theory in 1974. The theory stated that a leader
has certain natural traits that enable the leaders to lead. The traits are persistence, adaptability,
dependability, assertiveness, cooperative, and others (Wyatt and Silvester, 2018).
In that context, the trait theory can be argued that a leader can be made or broken based on the
emotional nature, the capability to admit errors and logical strength.
Limitations of a trait theory:
 The trait theory has mentioned over hundreds of traits of a leader, but the most important trait
is not covered to become an effective leader
 The trait theory has said about the physical traits of a leader. In this context, the physical
traits like height and weight do not affect a person to become a leader
 The theory is complex
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Reflective Report
Professor Graham Gibbs implemented his Reflective Cycle in 1988. The cycle is useful for
helping people to learn from their experiences (Husebø et al., 2015). The cycle consists of five
steps and that are:
Figure 1: Gibb’s Reflective Cycle
(Source: Dressler et al., 2018)
1. Description:
I found it interesting doing this podcast as the topic was on Leadership. In my opinion;
leadership is the quality for which an organisation expands its productivity and business in the
market. Leaders have the capability to create the best employees that can be helpful for the
organisation in terms of increasing productivity, expanding the business. I have found all the
information about the leadership, culture and the Trait Theory from the internet website and
journals. In the case study, Kalia was leading a team of eight members and all of them were
experienced enough to work in her organisation.
2. Feelings:
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I feel that leaders have the best qualities among all the staffs in an organisation that they can
lead, manage and control over a team. Leaders can change the workforce in a positive way and
even negative way. The leaders having none of the above-mentioned traits cannot become a best
leader. As a result, the organisation having that leader faces a massive loss in the future. I feel
that Robert was right in his own perspective, as the team should take the decision and authority
equally. Kalia had to maintain the team focusing on all the opinion given by the members.
3. Evaluation:
I evaluate that the management of the organisation must select a best leader to create an effective
team. An effective team is the backbone of the organisation. The trait theory of leadership
proposed various traits that a leader should have in its quality. Kalia should have the traits of the
best leader, and then he could maintain the team significantly. A key characteristic of a leader is
to communicate with other members of the teams. Hence, the leader should have a good
communication skill, Otherwise the team will not build up to an effective level. The leader
should communicate with staffs to know each other and about the concept of the organisation.
Communication creates a better link between team members (Ghaferi and Dimick, 2016). It also
increases the relationship between the employees otherwise, there will not build any mutual
understanding between the employees and the authority. It will create a problem within the team
creating some difference in opinion and that will create altercation among the members. As a
result, the organisation will lag in their productivities and improvement.
4. Conclusions:
I found in the podcast that the trait theory of leadership has few limitations like those that a
leader is selected based on the physical appearances. Hence, the leader should have the capability
to maintain the staffs and direct them to a positive path to achieve the organisation’s target
(Pomery et al., 2016). It can be possible when the staffs will get a proper training with sufficient
training tools. I found that a team becomes effective when the leader gives respect to the opinion
and suggestion and take actions accordingly. Kalia has to take proper step to clear the problems
in the team with Robert and Haseena. In order to create a best team in the organisation, the leader
should have strong communication skill. Communication is the best way to motivate the
members to improve their quality of performance. The leader should always motivate their team
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to increase the level of capability to do the work providing the highest effort (Talley and Temple,
2015).
5. Action:
In order to overcome the problems faced by the organisation, the authority should take proper
actions. The problems may be in terms of weak leadership quality and that is a major issue as I
said a leader is the key person of an organisation. Therefore, to overcome this type of issues, the
organisation must follow the below motioned actions:
i. The management has to select a best leader to maintain the staffs in the workplaces. The
leader should have the qualities like self-confidence, maintenance, guidance, and others.
The leaders should have the ability to motivate the staffs to give their best performance.
ii. The organisation must implement the organisational culture in its workplaces as the
culture gives ideas about the concepts of the organisation. The employees can understand
what the organisation wants from them.
iii. The organisation should select its leaders based on the physical appearances like height
and weight as the qualities of the leader can be measured on the skills and experience and
not on the physical appearances.
iv. The leader must have good communication skill to build up a relation within the
members. As a result, the tea will be more motivated and give more efforts in their
particular works.
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Reference list
Anitha, J., 2016. Role of Organisational Culture and Employee Commitment in Employee
Retention. ASBM Journal of Management, 9(1).
Antonakis, J. and Day, D.V. eds., 2017. The nature of leadership. Sage publications.
Dressler, R., Becker, S., Kawalilak, C. and Arthur, N., 2018. The cross-cultural reflective model
for post-sojourn debriefing. Reflective Practice, 19(4), pp.490-504.
Ghaferi, A.A. and Dimick, J.B., 2016. Importance of teamwork, communication and culture on
failure‐to‐rescue in the elderly. British Journal of Surgery, 103(2), pp.e47-e51.
Higgs, M. and Dulewicz, V., 2016. Developments in leadership thinking. In Leading with
Emotional Intelligence (pp. 75-103). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Husebø, S.E., O'Regan, S. and Nestel, D., 2015. Reflective practice and its role in
simulation. Clinical Simulation in Nursing, 11(8), pp.368-375.
Pomery, A., Schofield, P., Xhilaga, M. and Gough, K., 2016. Skills, knowledge and attributes of
support group leaders: A systematic review. Patient Education and Counseling, 99(5), pp.672-
688.
Talley, L. and Temple, S., 2015. How leaders influence followers through the use of nonverbal
communication. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 36(1), pp.69-80.
Wyatt, M. and Silvester, J., 2018. Do voters get it right? A test of the ascription-actuality trait
theory of leadership with political elites. The Leadership Quarterly, 29(5), pp.609-621.
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