Reflective Journal on Leadership Approaches at Marks & Spencer

This reflective journal documents a student's experience presenting on leadership in Marks & Spencer. The presentation covered the company's history, the definition of leadership, and the application of contingency and trait theories within the organization. The student reflects on their team's preparation, including rehearsals and division of responsibilities, and analyzes their performance using the Gibbs Reflective Cycle. Key aspects discussed include feelings of nervousness, teamwork dynamics, pronunciation challenges, and the need for improved time management and content depth. The journal concludes with an action plan for future improvements, emphasizing punctuality, clearer pronunciation, and a more detailed understanding of Marks & Spencer's leadership styles. Desklib provides access to similar assignments and resources for students.

[REFLECTIVE JOUNRAL]
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MARKS AND SPENCER

I and my team of four members worked on a presentation and to carry out the entire process of
the presentation we all had a few meetings where we discussed the presentation and prepared
ourselves by rehearsing and dividing the portions in which everyone was comfortable to speak
about. We all together practised well before the presentation during our meetings so that we
could avoid any chances of mistakes. Also, to boost our confidence we practised in front of the
mirror that helped us to speak confidently. The subject chosen for our presentation was
“Leadership in Marks & Spenser” the initial part of our presentation illustrated we were about
to present and before we come to the topic we explained the history of Marks & Spencer that is
the company was founded in the year 1894 when the founder Marks and Thomas Spencer join
hands and thus the name Marks & Spencer was introduced. The very first store of the company
was situated in Leeds and was inaugurated in the year 1904 (Drucker, 2017). Leadership means
the way of leading a team or a group within an organization and the capability to do so. Often
people combine the term leaders and managers but both have different purpose of work the
leaders are one who is expected to perform right things and the manager improves the thing in
the right direction (Northouse, 2018). There are mainly two types of leadership discussed in the
presentation made by me and my team that is Contingency theory that is the type of theory
that is concerned with the ability of the leaders to acknowledge things and ease the risk and
Trait theory is concerned with leaders’ quality that is there personal, social, physical traits
(Fiedler, 2015). In the year 1990 it was found in Marks & Spencer that the leadership style must
be altered due to developing business and so the company adopted both the above-explained
theories to improve the flow of work and the quality of manufacturing in order to achieve
company’s objectives in a set time frame. Leadership has supported a lot of the company as it
acted as fuel to improve the work of the employees and that resulted in the revenue generation
of approximately £10.62 billion in the year 2017.
I and my team members have used the Gibbs Reflective Cycle to understand the different
experiences during the presentation such as Description that is exactly what happened during
presentation at the time of presentation one of our team member was late but I feel I did my
portion well than Feelings I was bit nervous at the time of the presentation, Evaluation that is
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good experience during the presentation was I did my part well that made presentation
effective whereas the bad experience was my inappropriate experience (Husebø, et al. 2015).
Next is analysis we believe that when I was nervous my team helped me a lot to relax that
marks our good teamwork but my pronunciations could be better so that the people listening
could get things in a better way (Potter, 2015). A conclusion is the second last stage of Gibbs
reflective cycle that helped us understand what else could be done to improve the overall
presentation and the individual performance. The last stage is the action plan that the
corrections that we must make if we had to give the presentation again that helped us to
understand an area of improvements such I must practice more on my pronunciation to sound
clear, improve our time management etc.
The strategies used by me and my team are built by a strong team, analyze the audience that to
understand in front of whom we are to speak and then prepare content according to their
understanding level. We tried to clearly explain the objective of the presentation also we tried
to present the presentation in a way that it pleases to the audience when visualizing. But I find
apart of all the efforts made, strategies used there is still need of improvement in many areas
for both me and my team members such as we have to learn to be punctual on time as one of
our team members was late that marks wrong impression on the audience, I should have
expanded my pronunciation so that I could be clearly audible to the audience, we must have
worked more on the content of presentation to make it strong with more details of the
leadership style adopted by Marks & Spenser. Also I must act more confidence at my
nervousness took over as a negative point in the entire presentation.
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REFERENCES
1. Husebø, S.E., O'Regan, S. and Nestel, D., 2015. Reflective practice and its role in simulation.
Clinical Simulation in Nursing, 11(8), pp.368-375.
2. Potter, C., 2015. Leadership development: an applied comparison of Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle
and Scharmer’s Theory U. Industrial and Commercial Training, 47(6), pp.336-342.
3. Drucker, P.F., 2017. The Theory of the Business (Harvard Business Review Classics). Harvard
Business Press.
4. Northouse, P.G., 2018. Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.
5. Fiedler, F.R.E.D., 2015. Contingency theory of leadership. Organizational Behavior 1:
Essential Theories of Motivation and Leadership, 232, pp.01-2015.
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