Developing Leadership and Management Skills: Reflective Practice & PDP

This report presents an analysis of existing leadership and management skills, focusing on a personal experience and a plan for future development. Utilizing the Gibbs Reflective Model, the report details an experience where the author, a manager at LEVIS, faced criticism regarding their leadership and management abilities during a presentation. The report delves into the feelings, evaluation, and analysis of the situation, culminating in a conclusion and action plan for improvement. Furthermore, a Personal Development Plan (PDP) is outlined, focusing on skill development, team productivity improvement, and active listening techniques. The PDP includes criteria, duration, and methods for achieving these goals, such as taking management courses, improving team communication, and practicing receptive listening. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of continuous development and the practical steps a manager can take to enhance their leadership and management capabilities.

DEVELOPING
LEADERSHIP AND
MANAGEMENT
SKILLS

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Gibbs Reflective Model..............................................................................................................3
PDP.............................................................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Leadership development is a process of activities which includes learning and practising
skills,knowing oneself,helping and working with others to improve efficiency and confidence of leaders.
Management skills refers to as abilities that manager should gain in order to complete tasks in an firm.
This report is presenting existing leadership and management skills of a leader and plan to how develop
them.
MAIN BODY
Gibbs Reflective Model
It is a model developed for continuous improvement for regular experiences,used for reflecting
stand-alone experience. Feelings are considered important in this model of reflection. It also separates
what went good and what not. It uses 6 stages to analyse
(Gregorović,2018).
DESCRIPTION
I am currently working as a manager in LEVIS company in Manchester, UK. I was to give
presentation to senior leadership team, the motive of this presentation was to give board members the
progress on departments working in the previous quarter. I got to slide no. 2 and the whole thing fell
apart. The director asked me to present data on workers who were working on the project and their
efficiency. I got flustered as they did not agree on the efficiency of my working capacity and managing
workers as I was taking more time to complete the project than other managers. I got nervous and was
unable to present my thoughts on my management as I thought my management and leadership skills
were top notch but data was saying some different things. The directors told me to improve my skills and
I left that meeting.
FEELINGS
I felt very miserable at that time and even thought of leaving the organization. I felt embarrassed
and upset by my inability to manage and lead the group for efficient operations of the business. I was also
angry on the directors for their response in the meeting. All this left me distressed and in depressed state
for almost 3 days. Later when I reflected on the occurred experience I thought I must talk to my seniors
and realised that feeling depressed and nervous is a natural thing which made me feel better.
EVALUATION
Later on I got to knew that management was happy with my working but they wanted me to
improve my leadership and management skills. After talking with my fellow colleagues I felt positive as
they told me that these can be improved by consistent efforts. Every person working with me earlier
faced this issue and they put efforts to learn the skills and improve the efficiency. Most of the managers
have gained these abilities in the organization itself.
ANALYSIS
The situation was made worse by own actions as I was not been able to explain the management
why I was unable to effectively manage the project. After the presentation I should have spoken to
seniors about how I was feeling. The management made me feel worse by not able to present my
thoughts. I talked about this with my seniors and they made management believe that I am a good
manager and all I need to garnish my skills. They even told me that I should not take this as personal
comment and work upon improving my skills to become a better leader and manager.

CONCLUSION
On balance I felt these things happens in corporate world and its no the end of the world. I should
have done things in some different manner. I would have been more assertive by voicing my opinions.
However this made me realised the importance of building relationship with management. If I could have
better relationship than it would be easier to explain them. It would have provided me with opportunity to
discuss the situation and deal with it.
ACTION PLAN
In future I will make sure to present myself in a better and composed way. I will maintain fruitful
relationship with management and try to converse with them to time. I will also talk to my fellow
colleagues about the improvement which I want in myself and take their opinions. For learning leadership
and management skills I have find a mentor who will guide me. This whole experience has made me
realise that I need to be more confident while presenting my thoughts and ideas.
PDP
SKILLS SIGNIFICANCE HOW TO
DEVELOP
CRITERIA DURATION
Development
course
It is necessary for the
manager to
understand that if
they want to improve
they must learn from
some mentor or take
a development
course. They can
even attend a
webinar to
improve(King, 2018).
Today there are
many resources
available online to
learn skills like time
management,project
management etc.
In order to
develop the skills
of leadership and
management I
have to join the
classes of
management. By
joining the classes
of management it
will help me to
gain skills faster
and I can even
learn from senior
professionals who
have similar goal.
The development of
leadership and
management skills
can be analysed by
the result of the
exams. At the end of
the course, I have to
appear in the exams
and the result of
those exams will
clarify whether I can
understand the
concept of proper
management or not.
1 year
Improve team
productivity
It has been found that
the managers often
include achieving
goals as their formal
objectives. But for
efficient management
managers should set
For the purpose of
improving team
productivity I will
encourage regular
status meetings
where team can
ask questions and
The result of this
activity will help me
to track the progress
of team members
and mean while it
will improve my
management skills .
3 months

and communicate
goals to team
members and
communicate goals
and track the
progress of each
member(Liu and et,
al., 2018). It will help
in measuring their
development so that
effective steps can be
taken for
improvement.
make sure that
they have all the
necessary tools to
increase
productivity,
It will help in
reviewing
productivity trends.
Practice
active
listening
techniques
For the purpose of
completing all
organisational
operations in an
effective and
efficient manner, the
managers must be
receptive and ask
questions to clarify
doubts(Vandergoot,
Sarris and Kirby,
2019). Managers
who develop their
skills for listening
can better
understand the
company goals.
Any individual
can develop the
skill of active
listening by being
receptive to non
verbal clues and
ask questions. I
also have to build
the skill of active
listening, which
will help me in
gaining the
knowledge related
to the several
important topic of
the organizations.
The result of this can
be known by creating
a list of questions
prepared while in
meeting and it will
help to build trust
among teams.
Constantly.
CONCLUSION
This report has been stating the need of leadership and management skills in a
manager. By the use of Gibbs model assessment of the manager who lacks in these skills was
conveyed. By developing a PDP it was shown how a manager can build these skills and
improve itself to become a better leader and manager by using active listening ,by taking a
course and many more.

REFERENCES
Gregorović, I., 2018. Importance of managerial skills in leadership (Doctoral dissertation,
University of Rijeka. Faculty of Economics and Business).
King, M., 2018. The impact of LTA volunteerism on leadership and management development:
An autoethnographic reflection. In The role of language teacher associations in
professional development (pp. 283-294). Springer, Cham.
Liu, C., and et, al., 2018. E-leadership: an empirical study of organizational leaders’ virtual
communication adoption. Leadership & Organization Development Journal.
Vandergoot, S., Sarris, A. and Kirby, N., 2019. Factors that influence the transfer generalization
and maintenance of managerial‐leadership skills: A retrospective study. Performance
Improvement Quarterly, 32(3), pp.237-263.