Leadership and Professional Practice Journal: Module 8 Reflection

This journal entry reflects on the concept of leadership and the essential skills required for future leaders, using the Sutherland's (2014) cycle from the SCRUM structure. The author explores leadership in academic and organizational contexts, emphasizing the importance of skills such as communication and problem-solving. The entry details the author's journey in developing leadership qualities, including the challenges of group activities and the adoption of different leadership styles. It highlights the importance of continuous learning and reflection, referencing concepts like Guy Claxton's approach to setting learning goals and resources like the Duhigg Standford Management Style Research Study. The journal entry also includes a list of references used to support the reflection.

Leadership and Professional
Practice

Journal Module 8 –Leadership
The present journal entry is going to reflect the concept of leadership and the skills which
are essential for a learner to develop, in order to become the successful leader in future (Fields,
Kenny and Mueller, 2019). For showing the progressive development of leadership skills and
how I have grabbed the same, I will use the Sutherland’s (2014) cycle which is taken from
SCRUM structure.
Inspect
The term ‘leadership’ defines as a way to manage the potential changes and support
people to adopt changes, by inspiring and motivating them for the same. Leadership abilities are
essential at all aspects of life, i.e. whether an individual is an academic learner or works in an
organisation, for leading a team, they must possess the specific skills, values as well as attitudes.
In context with academic learners, as they work on number of projects especially in a group,
therefore, many situations occur where they need effective leadership qualities to manage the
same (Fiore, 2014). For project completion in specified time, they must require to learn how to
manage changes within tasks or role of each other, with number of theories for goal setting and
action planning. Furthermore, as leaders encounter with various types of characters and skills
while implementing changes, such as persistence, resilience, motivation, ability to communicate
and more, therefore, developing these abilities will help them to shape and nurture the learning
environment.
Reflect
After understanding the importance of leadership in every aspect of life, I have focused
more on developing skills that aid me to become a successful leader. In this regard, through
attending a number of lectures, the first thing that arise confusion was – how leadership and
management concepts are differ from each other, because both aspects are mainly focused on
influencing others for achievement of a common goal. Therefore, through support of tutors, I
have evaluated that management skills are generally applied for planning, building and directing
the organisational systems, for accomplishment of goals. On contrast, leadership skills are used
for implementation of planned activities and potential changes by aligning, inspiring and
motivating people for the same. Through understanding importance about these concepts, I have
worked on learning leadership abilities, in order to gain an effective position in an established
organisation in future.
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Adapt
At initial stage, I was thought that for developing leadership qualities, engagement in
learning course is enough, where by taking a degree course will help me for the same. But during
studies, I have found that engaging in professional practice can only be possible if a person
nurtures the learning environment in most appropriate way. For this purpose, adopting the
concept of Guy Claxton proves helpful for me, to set the learning goals. Through this concept, I
have focused on every lecture at my university, to grab knowledge about leadership qualities.
Hereby, one of the lectures has explored that among various leadership styles, a person needs to
work on own ability of communication first. This quality is essential to influence positively the
followers for achievement of a common goal. In order to provide a deep insight about different
leadership qualities like problem solving skills, persistence and more, my tutors have performed
a number of group – activities, which prove helpful for me to understand that a leader needs to
be more flexible at workplace to adopt different styles of leadership for dealing with business
problems (Waterhouse, 2019). I have found that although learning in group activities is helpful
for gaining an insight of topic, but yet I have found difficulties in engaging with the same.
Therefore, I have given priority to enhance this skill first which is essential to become a
successful leader.
Act:
The foremost thing which I need to do is to identify the resources that are available to
understand the leadership concept, like Duhigg Standford Management Style Research Study.
This concept provides all data related to EDU2210 lectures on Unihub, which entails the manner
in which reflective model needs to be utilised for reflecting how a learner has achieved its
learning goals (Fields, Kenny and Mueller, 2019). On this site, a number of lecture notes on
leadership and professional practices by expert teachers, have given that will help in exploring
the concept of leadership more efficiently.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Williams, S. A., 2019. The appearance of voice: EAP and academic literacies approaches to
teaching reflective writing. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education,
(15), pp.1-30.
Waterhouse, A., 2019. Skills for Effective Learning in School: Supporting Emotional Health and
Wellbeing. Routledge.
Fiore, D., 2014. Creating connections for better schools: How leaders enhance school culture.
Routledge.
Fields, J., Kenny, N. A. and Mueller, R. A., 2019. Conceptualizing educational leadership in an
academic development program. International Journal for Academic Development,
pp.1-14.
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