System04104 - Reflective Essay: Exploring My Leadership Style in Depth

This reflective essay analyzes the student's personal leadership style, drawing on experiences as a college football team captain and applying various leadership theories such as situational and transformational leadership. The essay explores the student's strengths, including trustworthiness, friendliness, and the ability to build relationships, while also identifying weaknesses such as a tendency towards emotional decision-making and an eagerness for success. The student contrasts their style with transactional leadership, favoring a transformational approach that emphasizes motivation and encouragement. The analysis incorporates teamwork theory and behavioral leadership, emphasizing the importance of skill development and continuous improvement. The essay concludes with a self-assessment, highlighting areas for future development and the importance of learning from experiences and academic study.

Running Head: My Leadership Style
My Leadership Style
Reflective Essay
System04104
9/17/2019

My Leadership Style
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Introduction
Leadership is not only necessary to manage or organise people in an organisation rather
leadership skills required in the personality of an individual that force the person to take the
charge of the situation and move forward. According to my opinion, a leader is a person that
should have ability to select between right and wrong choices. Leadership is the ability of a
person to set standards for others and motivate them with the set standards and personality
traits (Brempt, Boone, Witteloostuijn, and Berg, 2017). A successful leader always cares
about the interest of others and guide people in right direction to achieve the individual or
organisational goals. This paper helps me to analyse my leadership style and describes what
the strengths of my leadership styles and about my weaknesses. This paper will also help me
to identify those areas that can help me to grow in future and to become a good leader in the
area of my profession. The paper also includes a self-assessment report that will help me to
use my inner traits and personality traits to achieve success as a leader in future.
Good leadership is required for very organisation to control and manage people in such a way
that encourage and motivate towards the organisational goals (Schein, 2010). It is really
beneficial for an organisation when a leader guiding and directing the behaviour of
organisational people in the work environment. Leadership is an art that enables a person to
influence and guide people in right direction and when required motivate the people to give
their best (Cunliffe and Eriksen, 2011). I believe that a leader must have capabilities to
understand the feelings and needs of people and must have capabilities to deal with any
adverse situation with patience and tactics. As I was the captain of my college football team, I
have observed that leadership is not limited to guiding people rather a leader should also
involve in tactical planning and formulating strategies and ensure participation of all the
people of the team to get victory over competitors. When I analysed my personality with the
reference with various leadership theories and styles, I found some interesting facts about my
leadership skills that I never aware off about these undiscovered skills and personality traits
of myself. As a team captain of my college football team, I have experienced that a leader
should have abilities to lead other team members from the front. For example, during training
practices I usually arrived on time so it can motivate other people and encourage them to
arrive in the training session at scheduled time. Apart from this, a leader must be trustworthy
and honest to its people. If a leader will not hones it will mislead other people in the team or
in any organisation.

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There are various theories and leadership styles has been discussed in past from popular
experts, writers, and researchers on leadership. After reading all the types of leadership style,
I have correlated my leadership style with some famous leadership styles and theories. A
leader is a person that how he influence the people and their performance in the group.
(Source: Banks, McCauley, Gardner and Guler, 2016)
The situational theory which is given by Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard best explains
the role of a leader in an organisation when a leader managing the performance of others. The
situational leadership style analyses the leadership based on two factors that are task
behaviour and relationship behaviour. Under this situational leadership style, a leader adopts
the different leadership style for different situation (Conger, 2015). It generally varies on the
nature and circumstances of work. After analysing, the situational leadership style, I have
found that it does not work in reality where large numbers of people are working together.
Apart from this, the two type of behaviour of a leader in this style creates more conflicts and
confusion in people who follow the leader for the different work or tasks (Hoch, Bommer,
Dulebohn, and Wu, 2018). For example, for some organisational works leader can generally
divide the work among the people and in some cases, the leader encourages, motivates, and
listen the query of employees to perform the jobs. When I asked about my personality to my
friend Mr. A, then he told me that I am very desperate about getting success. He also told me

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that my nature is very friendly and I consider and listen the problems of other people with
great patience that will help me to establish a good relationship with people. This personal
trait helps me to understand people easily and help them in their tough situation or to improve
their issues in both personal and professional life.
When I analysed my leadership behaviours according to the transformational and
transactional leadership style then I found that my leadership style is matching with
transformational leadership style rather than a transactional leadership style. A
transformational leader always encourages and motivates people for the best performance and
set standards for others to encourage them (Aga, Noorderhaven and Vallejo, 2016). As a
leader, I have found that I am really good in persuasion people that is extremely important for
a leader to achieve the team or group success. Transformational leadership is a widely
accepted leadership style that shows the positive traits of people (Mathew and Gupta, 2015).
According to my opinion, a transformational leadership style shows the authentic and
positive perspective of a leader. In contrary to this, the transactional leadership is based on
the ‘carrot and stick’ concept (Hetland, Hetland, Bakker and Demerouti, 2018). When people
perform, their best the leader appreciate the performance with rewards and recognition. When
the employees failed to gives their best the leader punish the employee with demotion, salary
deduction, or other ways of treating people in rough way. However, I am not influence thus
type of leadership style rather I favour the transformational leadership style that encourages
people to give their best in the organisation. The transformational leader gives more emphasis
on the needs and requirements of the employees and backs their weakness as a supporter
(Donohoe and Kelloway, 2016). However, sometimes it proves really dangerous for the
organisation when leader supports a wrong person who even does not want to perform.
As I was a player of football, I understand the importance of team and their contribution in
overall goal or victory of the team. I have experienced that for getting success, it is important
that every people give their best in order to achieve the team goals. The teamwork theory
supports the same concept and explains that when people work faster and perform their task
in efficient manner, team goals will be easily achieved (Thompson and Glasø, 2015). A
leader plays a crucial role in forming and performing of a team (Bloom, 2011). I always
consider myself as a team man and therefore I give more emphasis on the team support and
team contribution, which is not possible if every people of the team, will not understand their
roles and responsibility. As a leader, I feel that a leader must talk to every individual and

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establish a personal relationship that will help the leader to understand the person and his/her
abilities. It is really good for a leader, if the leader is master in developing leadership (Meier,
2016). When I asked about my friend that in which areas I am good and in which areas of
leadership I need to focus to bring improvement to become a successful leader. One of my
best friends Mr B helps me to find out my weakness when he told me that I should focus on
consistent efforts and way politeness factor. He further added that I am very polite and
emotional with people that sometimes misguided me towards the negative things as I always
treat thing or situation in my own ways and with positive mind frame. Sometimes, I need to
observe the situation from second frame that will help me to find the negative thing, which
help me to remove those negativities from the people or from any situation.
The behavioural theory of leadership suggests that effective leadership only possible when
people learned about the way of dealing and guiding other people (Oreg and Berson, 2015).
As I am pursuing my graduation, the management course in which leadership is a crucial
chapter helps me to learn various skills and traits of a leader and also help me to develop
some required skills to become a successful leader in future. As a student of management
courses, I have analysed that a leader must have three types of skills such as technical skills,
human skills, and conceptual skills. The technical skills is related to knowledge, human skills
is related to the behaviour or thinking of the leader that how leader interacts with people, how
well the leader communicate etc. while the conceptual leadership is based on the ideas or
tactics that leader have to run an organisation or guide a group of people (Graaf, 2019). I
have analysed that during my graduation, I am learning these ideas and develop these skills to
become an effective leader in future.
After completing my higher education, I have worked in an MNC companies (pharmaceutical
Company) where I had to deal many clients and people with several issues related to
distribution of products and managing stores who involved in selling the products of the
company. As a leader in that company, I have found that a leader must have skills of problem
solving. The [problem solving skills in a person develop a characteristics in people to make
quick decisions. As I am very desperate about getting success in the early stage of the work, I
always try to find out several ways to complete the task in effective and efficient manner.
This is what my seniors like in me when I was a leader of a small team in the pharmaceutical
company. My skill of searching alternative ways of solving the problem in quick time
appreciated by every top manager and now they can rely on to find out best solution of a

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problem or searching the root cause to fix the problem in the organisation. In such a scenario,
the behaviour of a leader also matters a lot. The behaviour theory of leadership supports the
narrative that leaders are not born rather leader are made. The leadership theory supports the
argument that it is the behaviour and action of leaders that influences the people and
motivates them rather their inner traits (Nawaz, 2016).
Conclusion
In conclusion, leaders play a crucial role in organisational success by motivating and
encouraging people who are working to achieve the organisational goals and objectives. As a
leader, I have found that a leader must have several skills such as trustworthy, honesty,
hardworking, motivator, and communication skills that help a leader to deal with people and
encourage them to achieve great success. Apart from this, I have found that I have many
skills and personality traits that help can help me to become a good leader in future such as
trust and friendly behaviour, easily forming relationship, patience, and cool mind with
intelligent brain. However, I have some problems with my leadership traits such as I am
desperate to get success and sometime I judged people with my emotional thinking that will
lead to wrong decision-makings. To become a good leader, I need to avoid such weakness by
interacting with people and learning leadership skills during the class lectures and following
the advices of professors and my colleagues.

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References
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Bloom, C.M. (2011) Leadership Effectiveness and Instructional Supervision: The Case of the
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