Leadership Reflection Report: BUMGT5970, Semester 2

This report is a comprehensive reflection on the student's journey through a leadership course, BUMGT5970. Initially, the student's definition of leadership focused on formal positions and authority, but the course and personal experience shifted this perspective towards the exercise of influence, regardless of title. The report explores key themes that influenced the student, including the nature versus nurture debate in leadership, the concept of self-reflection, and the impact of various readings, particularly an article discussing the genetic and environmental factors influencing leadership roles. The student's critical observations highlight the importance of self-reflection in leadership, the idea that everyone possesses leadership potential, and the capacity to improve leadership skills through learning and practice. The report delves into the student's evolving understanding of leadership, distinguishing between managers and leaders, and the role of genes and environment in leadership development. The student discusses the influence of supervisors and managers on the development of their leadership philosophy and how they now view leadership as an inclusive concept, emphasizing the importance of influence over formal authority. The report concludes with an examination of how the student's perspective on leadership has been reshaped by the course, the readings, and personal experiences, offering valuable insights into leadership theory and practice.

Running head: REFLECTION ON LEADERSHIP 1
Reflections on Leadership
Names
Institution Affiliation

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Reflection on Leadership
Leadership Definition
When I first joined the leadership course 12 weeks ago, I defined leadership in terms of
formal positions rather than the practice of having an influencing on the workers irrespective of
their positions. Leadership is a complex concept and exists both as a verb and as a noun.
Leadership may refer to a position or role and not necessarily practice. For instance, a person
may, through some dubious means become a manager with no leadership capacity (Wegner,
2016). Indeed, managers with questionable leadership qualities have informed most of the
discourse like Peter Drucker’s which differentiation between leaders and managers (Chin, 2015).
On the other hand, leadership as an action does not depend on position. For instance, some
ordinary employees are so good at what they that the managers consult them. Such employees
exercise more influence on fellow workers compared with the one applied by the manager, yet
they do not have a leadership role and perks.
Moreover, the issue of nature or nurture in leadership brings forth the concept of
differences in leadership situations requiring different leadership styles. Differing conditions call
for varying leadership and leadership styles (Thompson & Vecchio, 2009).
To be sure, there are naturally good leaders than others, just like there are differences in
the performance of various other tasks. And as Casse & Walravens (2015) put it, not everyone
can become a great leader, but everybody has the innate capacity to become a better leader.
Accepting the fact that everyone has different leadership qualities would enable an individual to
seek for ways to improve his leadership capabilities.
Going through the leadership course and personal experience from my work, I have not
only changed my definition of leadership but my perception as well. I used to define leadership

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concerning formal positions, and the exercise of authority rather than influence. Currently, I find
merit in the description of leadership as exercising control over followers through the application
of formal or informal control (Lawrence & Pirson, 2015). In the story, we can learn a few things.
First, leadership is not a position, and leaders will accomplish a lot through their followers even
when they do not have formal titles such as managers or supervisors (Hannah, Sumanth, Lester,
& Cavarretta, 2014). Getting stuck at the idea of leadership as official positions or roles inhibit
the exercise of influence by people who feel that they do not qualify as it is not in their job
description. In the same vein, it is clear that having a formal position or role does not make an
individual a leader. The offices are littered with managers and supervisors who use legal
authority structures to harass the employees in the name of leadership (Tyssen, Wald, Spieth, &
Project Management Institute, 2013). However, being a manager does not necessarily imply that
such a person cannot be a leader. Instead, it means that he or she has formal structures which he
or she can utilize to lead the employees in his or her department effectively. In other words, Peter
Drucker's differentiation between leaders and managers is a false distinction as leaders can be
managers and vice versa (Drucker, 1998).
Second, everyone is a leader. Each is born with the capacity to lead, meaning that
leadership is genetic (Oliveira & K. A. C., 2016). At the same time, as we interact with our
environment, we develop leadership skills in different ways, meaning that nurture has a part to
play in leadership (Porter, Riesenmy, Fields, Roach, & Burnie, 2016). The type of leader we
chose to become has determined by the environment in which we live. We all exercise leadership
in one form or the other, and none is qualitatively inferior or superior to the other. A teacher and
the president of the United States of America are both leaders exercising their influence in
different ways and over a different number of people. Also, Activists who can convince two of

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his or her friend to protest over an injustice are leaders. The upshot: there are unlimited chances
for a person to exercise leadership. We cannot all be presidents, teachers, activist leaders, but we
can all offer leadership in our unique small way.
Third, leadership skills, like any other skill, can be improved and perfected. Once we are
all agreed that everyone is born a leader, it is essential to realize that formal or informal learning,
coupled with practice, can improve our leadership skills and capabilities (Zaccaro & Klimoski,
2001). There are no classes that teach people skills on how to become presidents. However, a
president can learn to practice leadership skills at his position better than his or her predecessors,
or better than other presidents in the world. Still, training can improve a person's oratory and
organizing skills for him or her to be a frontrunner and thus increase his chances of becoming a
president. Parents exercise leadership over their children, and they can learn better parenting
skills, thereby improving their leadership in their homes.
Significant personal observations about leadership acquired during the course
The critical function of self-reflection lies in its capacity to help the individual to make
sense of his or her life through the retrospective analysis of thought and organizing the same into
a coherent whole to support future decision making. According to Weick (1979), self-reflection
is an essential concept in any effective leadership model as it enables the leader to
compartmentalize experience and at the same time, create connections between them. The mental
processes that take place in during reflection allow the brain to organize current knowledge and
experiences with previous ones and make a comprehensive whole. In that case, without
retrospection, it is hard to benefit from learning as the mind continues being controlled by old
dominant thought patterns (Ilies, Gerhardt, Le, & 2004).

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Moreover, reflection allows a person to reflect on his leadership behaviors and its effects
on the people who look upon him or her for guidance and motivation. According to Ollila
(2000), failure to engage in constant reflection on the part of the leader may have negative
consequences to the individual members and the whole organization. He states that lack of
reflection enforces negative leadership behavior, which in time proves detrimental to an
organization as leads to general business incompetence. The lecture in the leadership course was
categorical of the importance of Self-reflection in leadership. Through reflection on my life
experience, the current training and studying of materials on leadership, my perception of the
concept and practice of leadership has undergone a complete transformation (Gallagher, 2010).
One article and personal leadership experience are shaping my leadership development,
on top of attending the leadership classes in the unit. The article, “Born to lead? A twin design
and genetic association study of leadership role occupancy” by De Neve, Jan-Emmanuel et al.
(2013), has been instrumental in reflecting about the whole concept of leadership and its practice.
It deals with the timeless question of the critical ingredients in leadership, whether it is the genes
or the environment. Researchers have for long before the study been divided over the origin of
leadership, with many behavioral theorists scholars (Zhang, Ilies, Arvey, 2009; Andersen, 2017)
suggesting that the environment has the upper hand.
On the other hand, there were those scholars such as Johnson, Vernon, Harris, Jang,
(2004); Judge, Colbert, Ilies, (2004); McDermott, Tingley, Cowden, Frazetto, Johnson (2009)
who study the effects of genes on an individual’s leadership capability. Before joining the
leadership class, I was of the mold that belied great leaders were born with the innate capacity to
become great leaders eventually, and that one cannot train leadership skills. In my understanding,
you either had leadership skills or did not, and the only skills one could learn was management

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skills to be more effective in the various positions in which one worked. Moreover, in my mind,
there was a difference between leaders and managers with a clear distinction in their roles. I was
inclined to support the categorization by Peter Drucker where he differentiated leaders and
managers regarding their traits and how they worked.
Indeed the appeal of the article was on the fact that it was related to my belief in the
triumph of the genes on determining leadership. However, it came as a shock to me when the
researchers concluded that the gene, rs4950, that they had identified as being related to the
propensity of an individual to occupy a leadership position only accounted for 24%, the
remaining 76% being determined by the environment in which the individual grows (De Neve, et
al., 2013). However, other studies on the same issues have concluded that there are genetic basis
that underlies most if not all, human behavior (Li, Arvey, Zhang, & Song, 2012). A person's
intelligence, oratory skills, personality types (such as aversion and inversion) play a significant
role in the kind of leader a person develops into. At the same time, they determine the type of
environment a person grows in, and in the process influencing his or her leadership. For instance,
a highly intelligent person from a relatively low social, economic background may get a
scholarship to study at one of the prestigious institutions in the world. The leadership exposure in
these institutions would support such a person's endeavors of becoming a great leader.
The article, however, moved my mind in a different direction and led to the conclusion
that both theories are partly right. As a human being, the leadership qualities including oratory
skills, empathy, organization skills, among others have a genetic basis (Lee, Senior, Butler,
Powell, Phillips, Surguladze, 2009). Given the right environment, they flourish, which means
that even the people we see as followers have the leading potential inside them which is

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untapped. I have concluded that learning leadership skills can make latent leadership traits sprout
to life.
Attending the class has exposed my mind to the variety of theories relating to the origins
and practice of leadership. Theorists like (Tyssen, Wald, & Spieth, 2013; Hannah, Sumanth,
Lester, & Cavarretta, 2014) have been very instrumental in supporting my understanding of what
leadership is, and what how it came about. I have learned that managers and other formal
positions are kinds of leadership roles, and I no longer consider them separate entities. The origin
of such a shift in through was still based on my earlier belief that genes had a role to play in the
development of leadership, albeit in a positive way. My stand on the significant roles that genes
play was negatively oriented and tended to be exclusionary instead of promoting inclusion. I was
focused on excluding as many people and their actions from the umbrella of leadership rather
than roping them in. The leading group of people that I wanted to distance from the concept was
the supervisors and managers. Two factors primarily influenced my stance. First, I had worked
under supervisors who were clueless overbearing, believed they had the monopoly of knowledge
and practiced harsh means of enforcing compliance. I had a hard time reconciling what I thought
leadership was and how it worked, with the practices of these superiors.
Secondly, the definitions of the term leadership, which put more emphasis on the idea of
influencing rather than abusing power made me believe that there was a distinction between
leaders and managers. To me, leaders were primarily people who did not have formal positions
of authority with the power to enforce their desires on the followers. In an organization, I would
look for leaders among people who were influencing their colleagues, seniors, or juniors without
formalized means of achieving their ends. And there was no shortage of such individuals. In
most cases, they ended up being team leaders and eventually replaced their managers once the

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position became vacant. For some reason, most of the newly minted managers ended up
behaving just like their predecessors, and in the process lost the goodwill from their erstwhile
followers. Instead of making their work more comfortable as they had the position to provide
even better leadership, they took the whip and scattered the followers. It did not occur to me that
the managers were merely practicing the Authoritarian style of leadership.
Furthermore, the roles I could associate with leadership were outside the confines of
formal jobs. Activists, politicians, politicians, volunteer social workers, church leaders were
some of the positions with which I could associate the concept of leadership. These roles did not
depend on formal positions to get their followers to do their bidding. Instead, they used their
inherent leadership traits like charisma and superior oratory power, coupled with a specific
vision to rally followers to their cause. The traits theory, as proposed by (Sumanth, Lester, &
Cavarretta, 2014) informed much of the conceptualization of leadership in this case. Traits
theory has some roots in genetic determinism, which made it quite appealing to me.
Going through the course has opened my eyes to the extent of the concept of leadership,
and rather than excluding people, I am inclusive. Currently, I analyze any superior-subordinate
relationship between people in the frame of leadership. Previously, any such connection with the
superior holding a formal position of power would have automatically fallen outside the concept
of leadership, and into categories I considered management. Currently, I believe management as
a type of leadership rather than placing it in a completely different group of workplace
relationship between seniors and managers. The changed perception of formal position with their
trappings of power as leadership has freed my mind to consider the possibility of improving the
leadership skills of managers though learning (Burnette, Pollack, & Hoyt, 2011).
Implications

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Throughout the study on leadership, I have learned a lot which has changed my outlook
on life and what it means to be a leader. At my workplace, any person I come across is a
leadership specimen, from which I learn a lot. Even the hated supervisors and managers have
changed form from monsters to people who need support to make them more effective leaders.
One of the surprising moments in my life in the company involved the promotion to the
management of a colleague who has stayed with the company for many years without a
meaningful promotion. He worked diligently, but most of the top management did not believe he
had leadership qualities to serve as a manager. New employees would come in the department
and either get promoted or leave for higher positions elsewhere, but he remained. He never
complained, and he was satisfied with his work and his position. Once our company got
unionized, he was automatically considered for promotion due to seniority. As far as anyone in
the company knows, he has turned out to be one of the best managers the department has ever
had. He has turned a department that was always full of conflicts and lousy blood into one of the
best-performing in the company, even scooping various awards. Closely observing him has
reinforced my belief that every employee in the company has leadership qualities which need the
right environment to flourish.
He listens to the employee's concerns empathetically, involves us in decision making, and
makes one feel valued as a member of the team. He does not use the official powers to bulldoze
us to do his bidding, and we find ourselves doing the things he wants as they align with our
values. As a senior supervisor in his department, I have had firsthand experience of his
leadership and coaching style. He is always open to improvement ideas from his subordinates,
and we are currently working on a leadership and mentorship training policy for the department

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10
which I had proposed. We are hoping that it will eventually be taken up by the company as a
standard for improved performance in the company.
I am learning a lot from his leadership style, especially on delegation. I have always had a
weakness delegating a task in the belief that I was the only person who could carry out the tasks
to the level of perfection needed. And whenever I was forced by the circumstances to delegate, I
micromanaged the people performing the tasks. In essence, I exhibited the qualities of a leader
who do not trust the followers. I thought I was doing them a favor by not burdening them with
my work, but I have come to realize that I was destroying trust between us and at the same time
hampering their growth. The new manager does not have a problem delegating tasks even ones
he knows you have never encountered before. However, by words and actions, he has made it
clear to everyone in the department that he will always be available in case we need him. He
stays in his office until the last person leaves, and he is among the first people to get to the office.
He is not a manager; he is a leader. The leadership training and the on the job training from our
department manager will be instrumental in my transformation as an effective leader.
Conclusion
Self-reflection’s value lies in its capacity to help the individual to make sense of his or
her life through deeply analyzing his or her thoughts and organizing them into a coherent whole
to support future decision making. Self-reflection is an essential concept in any effective
leadership model as it enables the leader to compartmentalize experience and at the same time,
create connections between them. The mental processes that take place in during reflection allow
the brain to organize current knowledge and experiences with previous ones and make a
comprehensive whole. In that case, without retrospection, it is hard to benefit from learning as
the mind continues being controlled by old dominant thought patterns. Going through the

REFLECTION ON LEADERSHIP
11
leadership course and personal experience from my work, I have not only changed my definition
of leadership but my perception as well. I used to define leadership concerning formal positions,
and the exercise of authority rather than influence. Currently, I find merit in the description of
leadership as exercising control over followers through the application of formal or informal
control structures. At the same time, viewing all the people around me as leaders gives me
confidence in delegating tasks knowing that they capable to get the work done. All they need is
support and encouragement to gain the necessary skills and experiences.

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12
References
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