Contemporary Leadership: People, Culture, and HR Strategies Report

This report examines the author's journey in understanding contemporary leadership, focusing on the importance of people, culture, and HR strategies in the business world. The report begins with an introduction to the changing business landscape and the increasing competition in the job market, highlighting the need for candidates to develop their skills and competencies. The author then explores relevant leadership theories, specifically the perspectives on leadership, and how it relates to their own development. The report discusses online resources like journal articles and the insights gained from a guest speaker, Mrs. Alison, on leadership strategies. Additionally, it covers in-class activities, assessment feedback on performance management, and the results of a psychometric test. The author reflects on areas for improvement, particularly in emotional stability and social confidence, and concludes by summarizing the key takeaways and the importance of continuous self-development in the field of leadership.

PEOPLE, CULTURE AND
CONTEMPORARY LEADERSHIP –
983105

Table of Contents
Introduction.......................................................................................................................3
Theories.............................................................................................................................3
Online Resources...............................................................................................................4
Inside Speaker...................................................................................................................5
In-class Activities...............................................................................................................5
Assessment Feedback........................................................................................................6
Psychometric Test..............................................................................................................7
Conclusion.........................................................................................................................8
References.........................................................................................................................9

Introduction
The contemporary business world is changing at a rapid pace and the spread of globalisation
is increasing the level of competition in the market. The level of competition is not just
increasing amongst business organizations but is also increasing amongst candidates, who are
applying for different job positions in the market. With an increase in globalisation,
candidates are able to develop their skills and competencies to such an extent that being
recruited has become a difficult job for new candidates in the market.
To become competitive as an employee or as a potential candidate, I have been trying to gain
more information from secondary sources of data on the qualities that the contemporary
business organizations require from the candidates in a recruitment drive. Based upon my
knowledge, I have also went through a number of different psychometric and psychological
tests, which helped me in assessing some important characteristics and skills. In this report, I
will discuss my personal experience in the field of business and the resources that have
helped me in developing myself and developing my knowledge in the field of leadership.
Theories
One of the leadership theories that caught my attention during the class was the perspectives
on leadership theory that aims at providing a deeper insight into the concept of leadership.
From the theory, I learned that leadership is a partnership between leaders and the group
members, which involves a proper balance of power. An effective leader is the one who has
the ability to make a shift from an authoritative approach to a shared decision making. I also
learned that leadership can matter to a company as it can play a vital role in deciding a firm’s
performance levels. Further, a goof leader is the one who can be held responsible and can
also inspire his followers.
Some of the important role that a leader has to play in an organisation are that of a negotiator,
coach, motivator, team builder, problem solver, strategy planned, executor, risk taker, and
spokesperson. I realised that for a leader to be successful, it is also important that the
followers possess certain qualities, such as the ability to participate and dedicate their efforts
in the strategies developed by their leaders. Further, the type of leadership behaviour and
style followed by a person can also be a factor that can decide the effectiveness of a leader.

Ultimately, the internal and external environment of a company is also a factor that decides
the efficiency of a leader.
Through perspectives on leadership theory, I was able to recognize the importance that the
internal and external environment factors can have on the efficiency of a leader. Further, I
also realised that for a leader to become successful, the followers should themselves have
certain best qualities. Earlier, I was of the impression that it is the skills and competencies of
a person that makes him a successful leader but after going through this theory, I realised that
follower and organisational attributes play an equal role in the success of a leader.
Online Resources
I had access to multiple resources for gaining a deeper insight into the concept of recruitment
and the role that psychometric tests play in it. Out of all the resources, journal articles were
the best resources that helped me in increasing my knowledge in this field. Journal articles
are basically researches or studies carried out by scholars in different fields. They contain
qualitative and quantitative data, which can be used to draw important conclusions on the
topics being researched. I went through a number of journal articles that contained research
carried out in the field of psychometric tests, personality tests, traits and competencies that
are required to become a better leader and also to be able to appeal more to the recruitment
teams. I tried to limit my search area to journal articles that had been published in the last 5
years so that my knowledge could be in accordance with the latest findings and trends. Some
of the journal articles also contained qualitative data, which was compiled by obtaining data
from different resources and processing the data using a number of analytic tools to draw
useful conclusions (CQ Univeristy Library, 2018). The articles provided a deeper insight into
the qualities that had a direct impact on the leadership quality of a person and most of them
had been able to provide a weightage to different qualities (on the basis of the impact that
they had on leadership skill development). I also felt that as journal articles are mostly peer-
reviewed, which implies that they are checked by academic scholars and experts before being
published, the information contained in them is highly reliable and accurate. It offered me to
add depth to my research topics and related them with other factors that were also of some
importance in my field of business and employment. Journal articles also suggested future
areas for research in some fields, which opened up new areas for me to study (APIAR, 2017).

Inside Speaker
The inside speaker who delivered a guest lecture and had a great impact on my learning is
Mrs. Alison, who is the general manager at a healthcare organisation. She is actively involved
in logistics, marketing, operations, human resources, business development, etc. and has a
vast knowledge in these fields. The first thing that impressed me about the guest lecturer was
that she had been with her organisation since 17 years. In the modern business world, being
able to stick to a single organisation for such a long time is an achievement in its own. I
would too like to be associated with a company in my life and add value to it.
I got to learn a lot from her life experience. She discussed how her organisation would ensure
team work in the workplace and how she would herself go on to take feedback from patients.
She also emphasized on the importance of celebrating success when a positive result was
achieved. As a leader, she discussed the importance of ensuring that the employees were
following an ethical approach towards the patients. She also helped me in realising the
importance of other stakeholders, such as suppliers. As one of the leaders of the organization,
she also emphasised on the need to focus on the core activities and operations of the
company. I really liked their strategy of hosting a weekly meeting where all the owners are
present as well. From her guest lecture, I could draw a number of useful strategies that can be
used to improve my leadership qualities. I would definitely like to use the same strategies at
my workplace someday, when I would be entitles with roles and responsibilities.
In-class Activities
Every week, my class is required to go through a weekly activity where all students are
expected to contribute something towards student learning. I got the chance to be a part of a
debate, which held as a weekly activity in our class. I was on the side which was supposed to
promote an insider and because of my good communication skills, confidence and ability to
initiate, I was the one who mostly did all the talking from my side.
The weekly activity greatly helped me in learning more about the importance of team work,
communication skills, confidence and initiation. I discovered that as a part of a team, each
person is responsible and accountable for the overall success of the team and should be able
to represent his or her team when others do not feel confident. I also learnt that having good

communication skills, in addition to confidence, can be helpful in representing oneself in
importance activities and occasions (John’s-Ravenscourt, 2016).
During the debate, I also learnt that a good leader should always be a careful listener.
Carefully listening to the team members of the opposite side allowed me to analyse their
arguments in a better way and formulate my own arguments that left an even better impact
when I addressed the audience. Therefore, I learnt that good listening skills can help a person
in analysing a tricky situation in a better way by giving considering the minutest of details.
During the debates, I also learnt that allowing others to speak is as important as presenting
my view points in favour of the topic (Dyer, 2018). It allowed the audience to gain a better
understanding of the topic and make a sound decision on the topic being debated upon.
Assessment Feedback
I successfully completed a project which was related to performance management, culture
and employee engagement. Even though it greatly enhanced my knowledge in the area of
human resource management, the feedback that I received opened up new areas for research
for me. I realised that my recommendations to bring about improvement in the field of
performance, culture and engagement were too generic and needed improvement. As a result,
I started searching for relevant information that could help in making my recommendations
better than before.
I thought of looking into the work style of a real life company and how it had been managing
its human resources in terms of performance, engagement and culture. While searching on
Google, I thought to myself that why not consider Google’s HRM activities for my
knowledge.
Soon I realised that Google is one of the top employers in the world and has very strong
policies related to performance management, employee engagement and workplace culture. I
gained a deeper insight into the concept of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) and goal
setting (Klau, 2012). I even learned the role that employee wellbeing and workplace
incentives can play in keeping the employees engaged and in bringing down their stress
levels. The way Google has been using employee empowerment in keeping their employee
motivated and engaged also added to my knowledge (Fatemi, 2016). Therefore, I would like
to include all my increased knowledge in strengthening my recommendations.

Psychometric Test
To test my skills and competencies, I took a test that was available at
opnepsychometrics.com, which rendered fruitful results on the basis of my answers to
different questions. There were a number of traits that came out as a result of the answers that
I provided to different questions asked in the test ( Psychometric Tests, 2019). Out of the
traits, the ones that caught my attention because of their high attachment to leadership
effectiveness were:
Warmth  a measure of how nice am I to people. For a leader it is always important to be
nice to the followers to keep them motivated and positive. On a scale of 4, I scored 2.6 in
warmth.
Emotional stability  a measure of my ability to control my emotions. Controlling ones
emotions and understanding the emotions of the others is an important part of leadership. My
score in this trait was 2.5. I would like to improve my emotional stability score by any means
because emotional stability is one of the most important traits that helps a leader in managing
his employees.
Dominance  dominance is the extent to which a person can be assertive while dealing with
others. My score of 2.6 in this trait was higher than I thought, which implies that I need to
control my assertiveness because the changing business environment requires leaders to
promote participation and not dominate others.
Social boldness  social boldness is the level of confidence that a person demonstrates
socially. My score in this trait is 2.4, which is lower than I thought. I would like to improve
my confidence while being in a social circle. A leader can only be successful if he or she is
confident enough around other people.
Privateness  privateness is the extent to which a person is honest about himself. My score
in this trait is 2.2, which is a low score. I want to increase my score on this trait because
leaders need to foster a culture of transparency to be successful. Further, a leader can only be
successful if a culture of honesty prevails in the workplace.

Conclusion
The course has really helped me in increasing my knowledge in the field of human resource
management and leadership. It has helped me in widening my knowledge and skills that
would be beneficial for me in the future when I would join an organisation. Through the
learnings of this course, I would be able to analyse situations around me in a better way and
would also be able to perform better in the roles and responsibilities that would be assigned to
me.

References
APIAR, 2017. Top 10 Benefits of Using Academic Journals Online for Scholarly Research.
[Online] Available at: https://apiar.org.au/blog/top-10-benefits-of-using-academic-journals-
online-for-scholarly-research/[Accessed 11 May 2019].
CQ Univeristy Library, 2018. WHY USE BOOKS, JOURNALS/JOURNAL ARTICLES AND
WEBSITES?. [Online] Available at: https://libguides.library.cqu.edu.au/evaluating-resources
[Accessed 11 May 2019].
Dyer, S., 2018. The benefits of debate can help you succeed in all areas of life, not just
competitions. [Online] Available at:
https://yp.scmp.com/education/debating/article/109478/benefits-debate-can-help-you-
succeed-all-areas-life-not-just[Accessed 11 May 2019].
Fatemi, F., 2016. Want To Set Goals Like Google? Use OKRs. [Online]
Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/falonfatemi/2016/08/31/want-to-set-goals-like-
google-use-okrs/#222d3ada2b8e[Accessed 11 May 2019].
John’s-Ravenscourt, S., 2016. 12 Ways Debating Will Help You for the Rest of Your Life.
[Online] Available at: https://www.studyinternational.com/news/12-ways-debating-will-help-
you-for-the-rest-of-your-life/[Accessed 11 May 2019].
Klau, R., 2012. How Google sets goals: OKRs. [Online] Available at:
https://library.gv.com/how-google-sets-goals-okrs-a1f69b0b72c7[Accessed 11 May 2019].
Psychometric Tests, 2019. Psychometric Tests. [Online] Available at:
https://www.psychometrictest.org.uk/big-five-personality/[Accessed 11 May 2019].