Leadership Reflective Paper: Reflection on Leadership Theories

This leadership reflective paper explores the author's personal leadership journey, reflecting on the development of leadership skills and understanding of leadership theories. The paper discusses the author's experiences from childhood to adulthood, highlighting key moments that shaped their leadership style. It examines various leadership theories, including trait theory, behavioral theories, and contingency theories, relating them to personal experiences. The author also provides a critical appraisal of their personal leadership, acknowledging both strengths and weaknesses, and outlines plans for future development. The paper concludes by emphasizing the importance of continuous learning and adaptation in becoming an effective leader. This document is available on Desklib, where students can find similar past papers and solved assignments.

Running head: LEADERSHIP REFLECTIVE PAPER
Leadership Reflective Paper
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way” – John Maxwell
(Azhar et al. 2013). The essence of leadership lies in the art of motivating people towards
achieving a common goal. Effective leadership captures the essentials of being able to and
prepared to inspire others (Lituchy, Metwally and Henderson 2017). It is a procedure of social
influence where an individual is capable to provide assistance and support to other people for the
successful achievement of a collective or communal mission (Dinh et al. 2014). It is a skill, an
ability and an influential procedure that is measured by effectiveness and victory. Most people
who start out with a small leadership capability can actually become great leaders. As I reflect
upon my life, I have understood that leadership and learning go hand-in-hand, they are
indispensable to each other.
Personalities impact largely on many platforms of our life. It regulates how we interact
with others in our day to day life. The personality of person plays a major role in the
effectiveness as leaders. Hence, it is important for those in leadership positions to recognize the
impact of their personality on their leadership skills. The concept of leadership widely includes
encouraging and influencing individuals to target and work towards a common achievement
(McCleskey 2014). Leadership constitutes a leader’s tasks, responsibilities, abilities, duties, and
personal skills. Effective leadership qualities include ceaseless working and effective
communication skills so that people around get influenced and motivated.
This paper examines my personal leadership style in the context of some basic theoretical
frameworks of leadership skills. It further reflects some valuable leadership traits that I have
obtained and learned during the course of my life: how to be a group player, to enhance my
listening skills, to be self-confident, to be open to constructive criticism and to be a problem
solver. Even though I have gained a lot, I still have to learn to become more determined, more
sympathetic and a good adapter in various situations.

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Discussion
When I was deciding which course to pursue at Regent’s University. I went through the
modules that were going to be taught to me. That was the first time when I got acquainted with
leadership as a course curriculum module. Leadership was a concept that I could only define.
Before this semester I had zero knowledge about the theories and concepts related to leadership.
As this semester is coming to an end. I believe I have gained enough knowledge to reflect upon
the various leadership theories and concepts. In this paper, I would like to reflect on various
leadership theories and concepts using the different moments that I have experienced in my life,
which I think can be used as an example to reflect on leadership theories and concepts.
The framework of the leadership effectiveness model that I learned from my course
curriculum summarizes the following:
Source: (Nanjundeswaraswamy and Swamy 2014)
Leadership Effectiveness is equivalent to
combined influence of three sets of factors
Characteristics Behavior Style

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During my initial school days, I used to be a child who was an introvert in nature. I was a
child who used to avoid coming in other children’s and teacher’s attention even though I was a
task-oriented child from the start. Since I grew up in a contained environment where the only
exposure that I had with children of my age were my cousins. This gave me a really comfortable
environment. Which resulted in making my personality of an introvert, as I wasn’t comfortable
interacting with other children in my class. Now while reflecting upon the 5 big personality
factors taught during the semester I must say that, I barely displayed any of the five big
personality factors that can be associated with a leader. I never displayed any signs of having an
extrovert personality. Since I was a bright child in terms of academics. I could be associated
with only one factor from big five that is conscientiousness. I used to be a child who used to
finish all his homework right after school so that I could get free time to play the entire day. The
only understanding of leadership at that age for me was being the captain of any sports team, and
the player every other child wants in their team. The child who was the best and had a heroic
figure in fellow mates’ mind. My understanding of leadership evolved from time to time, just
like the shift in paradigm for leadership.
During middle school days, I was a child who used to be the fat kid of the class. At that
age, I used to be teased by my classmates as well as my cousins regarding my bodyweight and
physical appearance. This constantly teasing made me question my self-confidence level. Even
though I used to be teased by my classmates they still used to come up to me for help. During
that time, I have relied upon my fellow mates for help regarding academics and certain
extracurricular activities. I always had the determination to score well in my weekly exams. As I
used to get praises from my father and grandfather in return. Reflecting upon that age I used to
display traits of leadership like determination, intelligence, integrity, and sociability to some

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extent. At that age, I used to associate leadership with a person who’s great with everything.
Throughout my middle school life, I used to believe that only limited people are leaders. As I
was taught about a great man and their leadership stories. I was never educated on the traits that
make these great man effective leaders.
During my senior years, my parents sent me to an international boarding school. This was
the first time in my life I stayed away from my family. This was a completely new experience, as
I had to pursue a completely different curriculum and adapt to a different lifestyle. This new
curriculum was nothing like before, as this curriculum had more of a practical approach than the
theoretical, I was used to in my previous school. Living with students from across the world was
a new but wonderful experience for me. By the end of senior school, all my fellow boarding
mates were like families to me. Staying in a boarding school away from family made me a
confident person. But the major skill that I developed during my senior year was of human skill.
During my senior years, I had some moments have I displayed leadership. For example, our
school used to take part in model-united nations (MUN), it was the first time our school was
organizing MUN since the schools' inception, for the event I was made the organizing
committee’s head. For the event, I had the responsibility to manage the event and to make sure
that everything is running smooth. I was leading a group of seven members. After this MUN, I
got special recognition from my school’s principal for my efforts.
This was the first time I gave a thought about leadership. After this module, I could
associate with the skills that I learned at the end of my school life. The skills that I learned
during my senior year were human skill, competencies skills, and technical skills. I was able to
associate the leadership behavior that I displayed during the MUN was of a team leader. As I

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gave importance to both relationships of my fellow group mates as they were my friends and the
task as my school's reputation was on stake, after getting recognition from my school principal
and top-level management It boosted my self-confidence. After my senior year, my outlook
towards a leader changed to a person who is a good adaptor and can adapt to various situations
and yet be efficient in dealing with them.
Some of the basic theories of leadership that I learned throughout my course and can
relate to my leadership characteristics include
Trait Theory: From this theory, I learned how the level of confidence, knowledge and the
qualities of an individual leads them to the path of success and effective leadership (Yukl 2012).
Behavioral Theories: From this theoretical concept, I understood that the behavior of an
individual is a very important factor which leads to the success of one’s leadership skills
(Alvesson and Spicer 2012).
Contingency Theories: From this theory, I learned that the effectiveness of leadership is largely
dependable on the characteristics and nature of a person (Landis, Hill and Harvey 2014).
Critical Appraisal of Personal Leadership
I have strongly believed in yielding the benefits of the relationship between managers and
subordinates in a team. I accomplished while I was working in my family business. I effectively
managed various teams from procurement, designing, inventory management, sales, and
marketing. At work, I tried my best to optimally allocate authority and responsibility amongst
the co-subordinates. Time and again, my seniors appreciated me for my leadership qualities.

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Having grown up in India, I have started to believe that unity lies in diversity. Coming
from a country that has more than 100 actively spoken languages, I realized being empathetic is
imperative to be a good leader. Leadership is the art of getting work done from people. In order
to achieve this, one should be able to see from the perspective of subordinates.
My family business of construction and infrastructure development gave me quite a few
opportunities to meet laborers and contract workers. Since my business is labor oriented. I
needed to have a better understanding of their expectancy towards the organization. This
reaffirmed my faith in the expectancy theory. Employees interpret their leader's behavior based
on their needs, such as the degree of structure they need, affiliation, perceived level of ability,
and desire for control (Latham, 2014). In our organization, there are certain employees who have
been with us for a really long time. They have become an irreplaceable part of the organization.
One of the major reasons for them being a part of our organization for such a long time is that the
company treats them like family. My father is a keen believer in uplifting people and taking them
together. This ideology has created an inseparable bond between him and the employees. This
has yielded benefits for both the employees and the organization with high-level motivation and
employee engagement.
After my master’s degree, my intention is to join my family business. One of the biggest
challenges that I have to face will be to fill my father’s shoes. Looking at my learning from this
module I can easily conclude that my father is a really effective leader. He has all the factors of
being a leader in his personality he is self-confident, intelligent, sociable, determined. Even
though I don’t agree with his leadership style, he has more of an authoritarian style. This style
was effective when he started the business and not now. The biggest quality of him that I admire

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the most is that he adapts with the situation and still work his way out. Since our organization
operates in an environment full of bureaucracy and red tape, he adapted to the situation and cut
his way through and succeeded in making our organization of the biggest in north India.
My journey of learning, personal developments and experiences made me realize how I
interpret situations and what are the skills I need to improve and develop. These skills include
improving the performances, development of personal attributes, boosting up the self-
confidence, capability of better judgments and flexibility in adopting new techniques and traits. I
also need to reduce and target some of my weaknesses like being self-critical, de-motivation and
lack of self-efficacy.
Conclusion
This leadership module has opened doors to achieve much bigger goals and this will add
value in inexplicable ways (Avolio and Yammarino 2013). I believe that I can practically
implement all the leadership concepts that I have formally learned in theory and successfully
develop all the essential skills as soon as possible. Now, leadership is not only about getting
work done from people but also giving back to society and having a lasting impact on the
subordinates working for me. Looking at my father, I now pay more attention to each individual
feedback and try to overcome my shortcomings. To conclude my learning about this module, the
effectiveness of leadership is mainly dependent upon the behavior of the leader. It includes
encouraging the followers towards the energetic effort, obtaining the trust and constancy of the
followers and applying mastery and leadership skills for the achievement of a goal.

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References
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