A Reflective Report on My Leadership and Management Development

This individual reflective report delves into the concepts of leadership and management, focusing on the development of leadership skills through practical experience. It provides an analysis of personal leadership styles and entrepreneurial qualities, emphasizing the importance of self-awareness in enhancing leadership capabilities. The report includes examples of successful leaders and organizations, illustrating how effective leadership and management contribute to business value. Self-assessment results are presented, identifying specific quality traits and attributes that influence success. The report concludes that self-reflection is crucial for leadership development, enabling individuals to understand their strengths and weaknesses and bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical experience. Desklib offers a variety of resources to aid students in understanding and mastering similar topics.

Individual Reflective
Report on Leadership
and Management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Effective leadership and management is one of the key considerations to manage human
resources of an organisation in optimum ways. The active and efficient guidance and supervision
of the workforce at business organisations could enhance their productivity which word result in
the achievement of the goals of organisation effectively and efficiently. Moreover, in order to
enhance the performance of the organisation the managerial employees and other people within
an organisation must work in synchronisation as a team for achieving the goals of the business.
The leaders have to play a major role in the process of enabling the employees to work together
and be motivated towards the achievement of organisational goals. The essay will be providing
information about the concepts of leadership and skills that I have developed during the process
of practical experience as a leader at the workplace. Moreover, it will demonstrate analysis,
understanding and insight of my leadership styles and entrepreneurial qualities or characteristics.
It will also demonstrate the accountability of managers as well as leaders to maximize the
efficiency of employees and help the company to grow and develop significantly.
MAIN BODY
Analysis understanding and insight of my leadership styles and entrepreneurship qualities
According to my views, reflection on individual learning can be a very positive, influential or
empowering procedure as it may help to analyses where we stand and what our situation is. This
also helps to make decisions and set an action plan for critical learning and self-development
(Barr and Dowding, 2019). In this rapidly changing world, the role of leaders and managers is
extremely essential for the employee as well as an organizational performance. As per my views,
better leadership skills and abilities are required by a manager for achieving enhanced career
growth in professional and personal life. I think that, when a person has good leadership skills, it
is also required by them to enhance their ability to adapt their leadership style to suit in a specific
environment or situation. The leadership styles must be effective and efficient and should be
entrenched with the courses while educating students to make them best leaders in the future. As
per my learning there are different leadership styles, traits, qualities and theories that may be
adopted by a leader which determines their way to manage effectively. In order to compete with
the global industrial setup which involves a huge amount of workforce, I feel that managers and
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leaders should develop better skills and abilities at their workplace. It is suggested by Meola
(2016), learning process by on-the-job training can help the managers and leaders to learn their
immediate work environment in order to lead the people and employees in successful ways. I
understand that I would want to become a manager with specific leadership qualities, establish a
good work environment for the employees and improve the level of organizational performance
(Coe, Wiley and Bekker, 2019). I think that leaders and managers must demonstrate and possess
certain skills and abilities such as good communication, negotiation, interpersonal skills,
flexibility, problem solving, positive mentality, team building ability, charismatic personality,
confidence and many others, in order to influence and affect people working with them. I believe
that leaders may have inbuilt talent by their birth for managing as well as they can develop their
skills and abilities by learning within their organization or throughout their life.
I have recognized that a good leader helps in developing the skills, abilities and performance
of their colleagues and team members by motivating and encouraging them by providing
adequate knowledge and support to enhance their capabilities. As per my understanding, the
leaders who have good theoretical knowledge must also possess a high level of practical
experience in order to be a successful problem solver or a manager. In my opinion, the learning
process for the leaders plays a very important role for their successful management and
performance of the organization (Gedeon and Valliere, 2018). However, I have learnt that I may
require motivation to help others to accomplish their work and it is the responsibility of an
organization to keep their employees motivated and inspired to work better.
Examples from businesses and organizations showing how leadership and management
attributes add value to the business
I came to know about some of the most famous global organizations and their leaders and
managers such as Tim Cook (the CEO of Apple), Jeff Bezos (chairman of Amazon), Elon Musk
(Founder and developer of Tesla) and Larry Page (the CEO of Google) who demonstrated the
example of various leadership styles and practices to achieve greater heights of success. I learnt
that these people have been successful because of their constant forces of learning from their
failures and an ability to enhance themselves to encourage others towards their organizational
goals. The leaders and managers are able to enhance their actions and performance by
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understanding and critically evaluating their surroundings to learn in better ways and enhance
their performance with all aspects (Guthrie and Jenkins, 2018).
I think that effective management and leadership starts with self-awareness and that must be
considering the strengths and weaknesses of a leader. I have understood that by developing a
culture of respect for myself and for others at the institutions or workplace could help me to
improve my ability towards higher levels and develop professionalism in my work. I understood
about the various effective programs and courses that could help me to develop skills and utilize
them in my working (Kalmanovich-Cohen and et. al., 2018). As a leader a person must have
integrity which determines the authenticity of his word and work at the organization. As a leader
I would like to be more responsible, creative, trustworthy and loyal to the coworkers'
subordinates and superior and lead them effectively towards the organizational goals.
Evidence of self-assessment results in identification of specific quality traits and attributes
that can be seen influencing success in a business
For the purpose of developing good leadership and entrepreneurial quality, our facilitator
provided us with open ended questions in order to understand our knowledge on leadership and
its importance (Rohn and Evens, 2020). I came to know about various activities and definitions
of individuals about leadership and its importance in an organization. I also determined that my
connection ability was less as compared to other people and I had problems connecting with each
other at the initial state. With the help of this creativity test I understood that my ability to
influence or affect the perspective of other people in a given situation was medium, therefore I
can influence people with their work. The session of my course work also conducted quick
brainstorming where the opinions, probable ideas, critical problems and its solutions can be
understood with the help of group discussion activities. During the activity of discovering the
challenges faced by the organization I understood that I need to be curious in order to develop
new ideas and overcome the challenges faced by leaders in that organization (Kroning, 2021). I
am determined that my curiosity level was quite higher than others that could help me to be a
better leader or manager at the workplace. With the help of this learning everyone was able to
gain higher insights and opinions of each other in a very coordinated way to enhance the
upcoming activities.
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The role plays with my group members, I learn to be creative and interesting to attract
people and influence them. The role plays involved identification of a problem and assuming that
what would be the potential risks related to it and what solutions can be drawn (Kuechler and
Stedham, 2018). For instance, I would like to bring up a situation where a tutor asked us to
identify a particular organization which has already faced a leadership issue and how its
performance had been affected and what would be the potential solutions to overcome it. I
identified Kingsman, US that faces problems of internal management due to negligence of their
leaders. I identified relevant solutions and understanding of leadership that must be opted by the
organization to overcome the challenges within that organization. In the team activity I learnt
that we also have contradictions in the thoughts of other people but I realized that it is important
to identify where our shortcomings are and how they can be improved. I identified that role play
act can be a most effective activity to identify the strength and weakness of handling the situation
to improve the skills and knowledge of the leader to understand the situation and act accordingly.
I also came across hear and share activity in which everyone was required to share their
opinion with their partner on a particular topic and vice versa (Lent and et. al., 2019). The
activity was designed for the group of people where we need to share our leadership experiences
with each other and this made me very happy because I got a chance to affirm my experience as
a leader. I shared my experiences with many individuals and I was able to tell them about the
activity of managing 25 people all together in my previous institution by applying sound
leadership skills to achieve a given target within one month's duration.
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Figure 1(Self Analysis of various leadership criteria with the help of creativity test)
Apart from this, I also came across various field and analytical exercises where we could
choose one organization to visit for a day and understand the work culture of their employees
and how they are managed in day to day activities. One activity was related to understanding my
own leadership areas and abilities with the help of an online creativity test in which I gained 76.6
percent in total which was more than 62.89 % of the total average. I found that my abstract
thinking was comparatively medium therefore I would require working on my ability to be able
to extract concepts from ideas. I understood during my group activity that people can be
influenced in their thoughts to change their perspectives according to mine in order to achieve
the objectives. I also determined that I was confident enough to take part in the conversations and
be open about my ideas and thoughts on a specific topic that helped me to interact better with
others. I also understood that I can take complex decisions and create positive solutions to
overcome challenging situations. This also showed that I have higher abilities to develop
stronger solutions during the time of challenges or problems within an organization (Lanaj,
Foulk and Erez, 2019).
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CONCLUSION
The above report had mentioned that self-reflection is the key for or and has leadership and
management that helps an individual to improve their skills and become self-aware of strength
and weaknesses, our practices, traits and ability to influence others and their activities to get the
work done effectively and efficiently. From the above report it has been concluded that self-
awareness and reflection help us to understand our basic traits that help to determine what kind
of leadership qualities a person possesses. Moreover, from the above report reflection of the
learning of an individual in their behaviour and day-to-day operations is also considered equally
important as training and development to lead people towards a positive direction. Therefore it
can be also concluded that an act of reflection is important as a student or a professional to
become a foresighted leader who bridges the gap between their theoretical knowledge and
experience.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Barr, J. and Dowding, L., 2019. Leadership in health care. Sage.
Coe, I. R., Wiley, R. and Bekker, L. G., 2019. Organisational best practices towards gender
equality in science and medicine. The Lancet, 393(10171). pp.587-593.
Gedeon, S.A. and Valliere, D., 2018. Closing the loop: Measuring entrepreneurial self-efficacy to
assess student learning outcomes. Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy, 1(4).
pp.272-303.
Guthrie, K. L. and Jenkins, D. M., 2018. The role of leadership educators: Transforming
learning. IAP.
Kalmanovich-Cohen, H. and et. al., 2018. The effects of leadership change on team escalation of
commitment. The Leadership Quarterly, 29(5). pp.597-608.
Kroning, M., 2021. Reflecting on two distinct leadership roles during the
pandemic. Nursing2021, 51(7). pp.43-46.
Kuechler, W. and Stedham, Y., 2018. Management education and transformational learning: The
integration of mindfulness in an MBA course. Journal of Management Education, 42(1).
pp.8-33.
Lanaj, K., Foulk, T. A. and Erez, A., 2019. Energizing leaders via self-reflection: A within-
person field experiment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 104(1). p.1.
Lent, R. W. and et. al., 2019. Social–cognitive predictors of career exploration and decision-
making: Longitudinal test of the career self-management model. Journal of Counseling
Psychology, 66(2). p.184.
Rohn, U. and Evens, T., 2020. Media management as an engaged scholarship. In Media
Management Matters (pp. 9-28). Routledge.
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