MGT601 Dynamic Leadership: Self-Assessment and Development Plan

This report presents a dynamic leadership assessment and development plan. It includes a self-reflection on leadership traits and abilities, informed by online tests and feedback from colleagues. The report details the author's leadership journey in the communications department of an e-commerce retailer, highlighting the challenges and successes in team building and goal setting. It also covers the application of a participative leadership style and the implementation of a 360-degree feedback system. The author uses Gallup's Strength Finder to identify key strengths and weaknesses and employs the Whittman GROW model to formulate a leadership development plan with specific short-term and long-term goals. The ultimate aim is to enhance team performance, expand the team, and foster a self-sustaining communications department while improving personal leadership skills.

Dynamic Leadership
Assessment 2- Leadership plan

Executive Summary
Leadership is the ability of an individual to lead a team or a group of people towards shared
goals. Leadership has always been an important aspect in my life owing to several leadership
opportunities that I have encountered. At present I am leading a team of four people in the
communications department of an Ecommerce retailer. This report is a reflection analysis of my
own leadership traits and abilities. In order to gain a deeper insight about my leadership skills, I
took online tests as well as received feedback from people in my life. Through the course, I have
been able to identify my strengths and weaknesses. The report also contains an action plan that
has been devised to improve upon my leadership skills. The entire journey of self-reflection has
been largely overwhelming as well as eye-opening. I have been able to identify several
intricacies of my leadership style and I am sure this analysis will help me improve upon the
future leadership roles that I embark upon.

Reflection
Leadership refers to the process of leading a team of people towards accomplishing a specific
goal. Throughout my life I have been fortunate enough to encounter several leadership
opportunities and I strongly believe that these leadership roles have played a significant role in
shaping my life. Through these roles I have been fortunate to work with different kinds of
people. A leader is bestowed upon with several responsibilities that need to be fulfilled
(Mitstifer, 2014). The role played by a leader in any organization or group is critical to the
accomplishment of team goals and objectives. A leader must be able to garner trust and instil
respect among team members in order to ensure effective leadership.
At present I work in the communications department of an Ecommerce retailer. I am leading a
team of four people and we all collectively report to the Senior Manager of Public Relations. A
large part of my job involves making sure that the firm’s positioning in the minds of its
stakeholders is positive. As a team, it is our responsibility to prepare all the communication
material that the business requires. This includes advertisements, taglines, newspaper reports,
blogs, social media posts and any other form of communication with internal as well as external
stakeholders of the firm. I have been leading this particular team since 17 months.
My leadership journey especially with this team is an extensive learning experience. When I was
appointed as a leader, I was coming with a significant number of years in corporate
communication but in an entirely different industry. Owing to this, we had several conflicts in
the beginning but over a period of time, situation changed considerably. Today, we work as a
closely bound team. All of my team members are self-motivated professionals and since the last
five months, we have been exceeding our targets. The first responsibility assigned to me was to
form a team of four people who I believe would be able to take responsibility of the
communications department. Before this, our organization did not have a communications
department and all the PR activities were handled by the marketing team. After an extensive
process, four employees were moved to the communications department and they continue
serving here to this date.

Since they were all coming from different departments, my first responsibility was to bring in a
sense of coordination among these team members. I realized that they all work in strict autonomy
and this is leading to missed deadlines and delays in submission. Moreover they had little sense
of ownership for this team and still related more with their previous departments. They even took
lunch with members of their previous departments. Every team undergoes five stages. These are
forming, storming, and norming, performing and adjourning (Forsyth, 2018). During the
storming stage, I realized that team members are very disconnected from each other. In order to
overcome this, I started conducting more team meetings and involved them in the decision
making process of the firm. This served two purposes, firstly, they were spending more time
together with their own team and secondly, they felt an increased sense of ownership.
During this journey I was also able to reflect upon my leadership abilities and styles. I have
always adopted a participative leadership style. A democratic leader involves subordinates in the
decision making process and creates a participative working atmosphere (Iqbal, Anwar &
Haider, 2015). Such a style has helped me connect better with all my team mates and ensure high
participation from all team members. I realized that as a team, we were able to perform better
because we could identify and acknowledge several new and out of box ideas. In fact all the team
meetings were a source of immense learning, even for myself.
Setting clear goals is an important responsibility of the leader. Goal setting theory also suggests
that having clear goals is a source of motivation for employees (Miner, 2015). As a leader, I set
weekly and monthly goals for the team. Initially, I also divided weekly goals into daily goals but
then I received a feedback that such a practice was creating unnecessary pressure on the team.
Therefore this was discarded. I make sure that the entire team is present while setting the goals
because a lot of their work needs high levels of coordination.
Feedback plays a significant role in the success of any team. As a team, we adopt a 360 degree
feedback system. This recommends that all employees will receive feedback from their seniors,
juniors as well as peers thereby completing a 360 degree feedback mechanism (Karkoulian,
Assaker, & Hallak, 2016). Instead of having meetings specifically for feedback, we devote ten
minutes at the end of every meeting to offer feedback. Any member of the team is free to offer

feedback to any member include myself. Such a mechanism has created a lot of transparency
within the team and has significantly improved individual performances.
As a leader of a communications team, I strongly believe that communication between the team
members plays a significant role in ensuring the success of the team. As a leader, I propagate
open communication and all team members are free to communicate anything. We address issues
and conflicts in open meetings and allow transparency within the entire team. This has also led to
enhanced trust among all team members. Communication is a backbone which supports the
entire team. It is important in order to effectively share information, offer feedback, address
grievances or competently coordinate with each other (Men, 2014).
Through the duration of this course, I have been able to effectively reflect upon my leadership
skills and gain a deeper understanding of my abilities as a leader. I also approached my seniors
as well as my team members and too feedback from them regarding my ability as a leader. The
feedback received and the time spent on reflecting helped me understanding my strengths as well
as weaknesses as a leader. Therefore the next part of this report highlights upon a leadership
development plan. In the course of self-reflection, I have also undergone certain online tests
which helped me understand my leadership style better. The results and analysis of these tests is
also shared in the report.
Gallup’s strength finder
The purpose of the Gallup’s strength finder test is to identify strengths and weaknesses through
answering a series of questions. The result generated helped me identify my five biggest
strengths. The results from this test gave me a helping hand in devising my leadership
development plan. The primary strength as per the Gallup’s test was my ability to communicate
with others. I believe I have always been a good communicator. This stems from my avid book
reading. While working in an organization, communication plays a very important role.
Communication is the backbone of stakeholder relationship development. Therefore in my team
as well, I try to create a culture of open communication and transparency. Such a culture builds
trust and enhances the quality of workplace environment (Ramdhani et. al., 2017). Therefore I
always ensure to bring in comfort and compassion among team members through open
communication.

The second strength as per Gallup’s test is being restorative. This ability suggests that I try to see
a solution in every problem. As a leader of the communications team, I understand that crisis
does not come post information. A crisis in any organization is always sudden and mostly
unexpected. Effective communication is vital for efficient crisis handling (Coombs, 2014).
Therefore in the face of crisis, I resort to communication and address the crisis head on. The aim
is to always look for a solution rather than cribbing about the problem. This also helps in keeping
stakeholders satisfied and gaining their trust in our effectiveness.
Other strengths as identified by the Gallup’s test was having a futuristic outlook, being optimistic
and the ability to continue being a learner. The last one is specifically important for me and has
helped me immensely in my leadership journey. As the Ecommerce retail is a significantly new
industry for me, it is my team members that helped me learn through the basics. There are new
things that I continue to learn and grasp regularly and this is helping me in widening my
horizons. As a futuristic individual, I try to set short term as well as long term goals for the team
and for myself. I have strong aspirations for my own career as well as for those of my team
mates. I see a strong future for the organization at large and I will continue to put efforts in
fulfilling these long term goals.
Leadership development plan
This course has given me an opportunity to reflect upon my leadership abilities, strengths and
weaknesses. Based upon my analysis and findings, I have curated a leadership development plan
in order to improve upon my leadership skills. The plan includes my short term as well as long
term goals that are both aimed at assisting me in overcoming my weaknesses. In order to do the
same, I have adopted a Whittman GROW model. This model is simple to understand and
involves easy ways of goal setting and problem solving (Augestad et. al., 2017). This model has
been selected because it not only identifies goals but also helps in devising an action plan
towards achieving the same.
Goal setting (G): The first step is to identify goals. This includes both short term and long term
goals. Within the next six month, I want to ensure that my team performs 150% of the given
target. By the end of one and a half year, the goal is to expand the team by at least six more
people making it a team of ten employees. I would also like to enhance jobs for all the team

members. They should be able to learn about marketing, public relations, customer relationship
management and hard core sales. One very important goal is to make sure that by the end of this
year (next three months), communications department becomes self-sustaining.
As a leader, I would like to be more assertive in nature. There are certain times where the leader
needs to adopt a more autocratic approach in order to get the work done in a quick manner
(Khuong & Hoang, 2015). I would like to work towards being autocratic in such situations.
Besides this, I would also take the responsibility of keeping my team motivated by indulging in
team building and motivation strategies.
Reality (R): At present, I am leading a team of four people. The communications department is
fairly new and therefore our job is not entirely well-defined. There is a lot of learning and growth
opportunities within the business for communication. As of the last seven months, we have
achieved the target that was given to us but this target will be revised on financial year end.
Every year, this organization recruits over 40 to 45 new employees across the entire business.
Therefore I need to work hard and prove my mettle as a great leader. I need to also work towards
ensuring that my team members are promoted and rewarded.
My team members as well as my leaders have offered me a positive feedback regarding my
leadership skills. One of my seniors mentioned that I need to adopt an autocratic leadership
approach in certain situations in order to deal with them in an effective manner. My team
members also mentioned that I should conduct more team activities so that people feel more
connected.
Obstacles (O): The primary obstacle is the immense competition for leadership roles and
promotions within the organization. Graduates from top business schools are hired who have a
great insight and a fresh outlook towards the same situation. Therefore it is essential that I am
consistently on my toes and working towards improving my performance.
Secondly, because of the fact that communications department is very new, there is a lot of
redundancy in work because sometimes the same work gets done by marketing and PR time. On
other days, work gets delayed because of this lack of clarity.

Thirdly, as a leader, my style and approach is very different from others in the organization. I
somehow find it difficult to say no and end up doing a lot of work for the team. I also leave a lot
of decision making to the team and this sometimes causes internal conflicts.
Way forward (W): This is the most important step of the GROW model. This step helps in
identifying the way forward to achieving the goals defined above by overcoming the stated
obstacles. The foremost thing that I must do I ensure that the team has all the necessary resources
to perform to the best of their ability. My goal is to ensure that within the next six month, my
team delivers 150% of the target. I would do so by dividing this new target into weekly and
monthly goals. Employee motivation also has a significant impact on employee performance
(Lazaroiu, 2015). I would also strive towards consistently motivating my team members.
Also I would work towards creating a culture of open communication by adopting open door
policy. Open door policy suggests that the leaders of the organization must leave their doors
open in order to signify that they are available for conversation (Hodges, 2018). This would
allow my team members to immediately reach out to me in case of an issue. In terms of
performance, I would start leading by example. Rather than delegating work, I would get down
to the business and start working with team members as a part of my team. I would also ensure
that team members are can learn from my example and I can do the same.
As a leader, I would surely work towards becoming more autocratic but only when the situation
demands it. I would put more efforts in ensuring that the decision making is centralized and there
is no delay in decision making. I would continue to read books but I would surely read more on
leadership. I would also like to follow the life of certain popular leaders like Elon Musk and Jeff
Bezos and learn from their experience as well.
As a leader, I would also focus more on the growth of my team members. I would work towards
finding learning opportunities in different departments so that they can also polish themselves
and enhance their skills set. I feel very responsible for my team’s performance and I would try
my best that they all continue to perform to the best of their abilities.
Workshops, both online and offline, are an interesting way of developing one’s own skills. I
would like to enrol myself in at least two leadership development workshops in the coming six

months. I would try to find workshops or online certified courses with the aim that they would
improve upon my leadership skills and abilities.
As far as the competition within the organization is concerned, I believe that it is only my
performance that can help me in overcoming that obstacle. I will therefore continue to ensure
improvement in mine as well as my team’s performance. I will consistently seek feedback from
my seniors as well as peers and identify areas that I need to improve upon. This would help me
sustain the competition and be eligible for more leadership opportunities in the future.
Lastly, I need to make sure that communications department is self-sustaining on its own. I
would sit with the leaders of marketing and PR department and work towards establishing clear
roles and responsibilities of all the departments. With that clarity, I would be in a better position
to set targets and goals for my team. I need to ensure that the organization at large understand the
importance of communication department as well as recognizes the efforts put by this team. With
that understanding, I would also work towards getting monetary appraisals for myself as well as
my team within a span of one year.
Therefore, I have defined several goals for myself and for my team. In order to achieve those
goals, as per this leadership development plan, I would consistently work towards improving my
performance, establishing a culture of openness and transparency of communication, motivate
my team members to consistently strive for better performance, draw clear boundaries of the job
responsibilities among all departments, read more books on leadership, follow great leaders and
learn from their experience as well as bring in an overall improvement in my leadership skills by
attending workshops.
Conclusion
Leadership is the ability of an individual to lead, motivate, direct, guide, control and mentor.
Leaders can be found anywhere. Some people can be a leader owing to their designation while
some people can be leaders owing to their performance, personality and charisma. A leader is
bestowed upon with several responsibilities. A great leader takes those responsibilities and works
towards the growth of self along with the growth of team.

This course has helped me in reflecting upon my leadership skills, identify my strengths as well
as my weaknesses. In order to gain a better understanding of my abilities as a leader, I took
feedback from several people in my organization including my seniors and peers. Based upon the
same, I have developed a leadership development plan. The plan clearly states my goals of
expanding my team size to ten members, delivering 150% of the target given, setting clear
responsibilities of the communication department as well as ensure growth of department as well
as all the members associated with it.
In order to achieve these goals, I would ensure I focus on my performance, continue being a
learner, take workshops, read books and put extra efforts in being more assertive and improving
my leadership style so that I am more productive. Such efforts will ensure the growth of my team
members along with myself.

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