Managing People and Organisations: Leadership in a College Event

This essay reflects on a personal experience involving the annual college function, where the author successfully applied the four management functions: planning, controlling, leadership, and organizing. The challenge arose when the college announced final examinations immediately after the annual program, causing significant distress among students, particularly the first-year students. The author initiated a meeting, collaborated with senior students, and arranged a discussion with professors to address the issue. Through effective planning and leadership, the author and their peers negotiated with the higher authorities to postpone the exams by a week, allowing students adequate preparation time. This experience demonstrated the practical application of management principles in resolving a real-world problem and achieving a positive outcome for the student body.

Running head: MANAGING PEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS
Managing People and Organisations
Name of Student:
Name of University:
Author’s Note:

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I have had several experiences in my life which have contributed to my experiences as a
person and have helped in determining the kind of human being I am. In life there are several
situations which command our attention and make us whom we grow to become. There have
been incidents where I could have handled myself better or managed the situation overall but
nevertheless I feel that I have acted with the level of maturity I possessed at that particular
juncture. There is an incident from my college life, which has taught me a lot. I feel that in this
particular incident in my life I have to a large extent successfully employed the four management
functions of planning, controlling, leadership and organising.
The incident is related to the annual college function in our college which was to be
conducted when I was in the first year of my college. There were reparations which were going
on in full swing for the annual program. Every student was excited to contribute to the
programme in some way or the other and even to enjoy it. However a problem cropped up at the
last moment which caused a lot of problems for the students. The teachers announced that the
final examinations would be held from the day after the annual examinations were to get over.
This caused a huge uproar among the students. I belonged to the first year and we were the worst
hit as we did not know how to manage the situation. Majority of the first year students did not
know how to approach the teachers as they were unsure of the repercussions of their
conversation on their grades.
In this situation I called a meeting at first, of all the first year students. I discussed and
charted out a plan where I shared that we would first approach the students of the higher years to
help us. Then I discussed that a meeting needed to be arranged with our professors to discuss our
problems with the situation. The seniors helped us and together a meeting with the teachers was
arranged. It was in this meeting that the teachers stated that it was due to the higher authorities

2MANAGING PEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS
that they were forced to arrange the meeting at such a timeframe without prior notice. After
hearing the issues which we were facing, they agreed to talk with the higher management to give
a week’s time before the exams started and promised that the practical and orals would be
conducted at first to help the students prepare for the written.
Therefore I had successfully planned the situation as approaching the problem helped us
in reaching a solution. I also took control of the entire situation without fearing what the
consequences would be. I leaded my group or class and made sure that our problems were
discussed suitably. I also organised the overall situation to the best of my ability.

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Bibliography:
Certo, S.C., 2018. Supervision: Concepts and skill-building. McGraw-Hill Education.
Griffin, R.W., 2013. Fundamentals of management. Cengage Learning.
Kerzner, H. and Kerzner, H.R., 2017. Project management: a systems approach to planning,
scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.