Reflective Writing: Leadership Styles, Skills, and Impact on Business

This reflective writing assignment provides a comprehensive analysis of leadership styles and their impact on business operations. The assignment begins with an introduction emphasizing the importance of effective leadership in today's competitive environment. The main body of the writing explores various leadership styles, including democratic, autocratic, and laissez-faire, and discusses their implications for employee motivation, organizational change, and overall business success. The author reflects on their personal leadership style, identifying strengths and weaknesses through self-assessment questionnaires and real-world examples. The assignment highlights the significance of adapting leadership approaches to different situations, such as the implementation of new technologies or organizational changes. The conclusion summarizes the key findings, emphasizing the importance of democratic leadership and the need for continuous self-assessment to improve leadership skills. The writing is supported by references to academic journals and books, providing a solid foundation for the analysis.

REFLECTIVE WRITING

TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Leadership is very necessary to be inherited among the people because in this
competitive world it is very necessary for the people to have effective leadership style. This is
majorly because of the reason that if the people will not be able to lead other people then they
will not grow and develop. Thus, for this it is very necessary for the people to have effective
leadership styles (Cook-Sather, Abbot and Felten, 2019). The current reflective study will outline
the knowledge of leadership and the different styles. Also, it will focus on the fact that how these
styles assist the business in managing their operation. Along with this the skill to be required in
leadership will be discussed.
MAIN BODY
In this highly competitive world, it is evident that for a person to be successful it is very
important that they possess good leadership style. Leadership is the act of leading and directing
the people so that the group goals can be attained in successful manner. For the managers of
company, it is very necessary for the people to have effective leadership skills. This is majorly
because of the reason that this will help them in developing themselves and also to lead the
people in direction of attaining group goals. Also, in entrepreneurship it is very necessary for the
company to have effective leaders. The major reason underlying this fact is that entrepreneurship
is a business wherein the person takes all the risk on their own. Thus, they need to have effective
leaders who can assist them in managing their own business.
Thus, it is very crucial for people within the company to have effective leadership skills.
Another major reason for having good set of leadership skills is that the competition within the
company for job is very high and the employer prefer those people who have effective leadership
skills. This is majorly because of the reason that the effective leadership skills are necessary for
the success of the company. I personally feel that having leadership in a person is very effective
because this provide a competitive advantage to the person over the other persons. According to
me another major reason for person to have effective leadership skill is that this assist the
company in setting the mission and vision for the company (Ullmann, 2017). This is a crucial
task because this mission and vision only provides a direction to the company and the
employees. This is pertaining to the fact that the vision is the reason for which the company is
existing and the mission are the measures which are taken to accomplish the vision of company.

Thus, leader help in making the vision and mission of the company and provide a way to
employees in which they have to work (Alonderiene and Majauskaite, 2016).
In context of business organization, the company deals in many different types of
situations and brings many changes within the organizational structure. All these changes need to
be necessarily to be adapted by all the employees. thus, this can be effectively be only possible
with help of good leadership style to be used by the leaders of company. This is majorly because
of the fact that this leadership style makes the employees feel comfortable and try to understand
them the importance of accepting the change. This motivates the employees in accepting the
change without any resistance. For this let us take an example of Sainsbury, which is large chain
of supermarket in UK. The company was planning to adapt the new technology of robots in their
supermarkets. But this was resisted by the employees of the store as they thought that if robots
will come in the store then their value will decrease. This was majorly because of the reason that
robots are machines and it will be more efficient as compared to manpower.
Thus, the employees were not ready to accept the change. Now in this situation the leader
of the company made the employees understand in proper manner that their importance will not
be lost if the robots will be implemented. This was because of the reason that these robots will
not replace the human capital rather it will assist the human resource of the company in catering
to the needs of consumers. This was only possible because Sainsbury was using the democratic
style of leadership wherein, they take ad consider views of their employee’s and team members.
Another example is of the company ASDA which is also a retailer and a large company.
Here the company was planning to implement the new technology of artificial intelligence and
virtual reality into the marketing of the company. But the employees were not interested in
adapting to this technology. This was majorly because of the reason that they did not want to
learn new things as this will waste their time and energy. But the leader of ASDA was using the
autocratic style of leadership and this made the employees mandatory to follow the new
technology and if they do not follow it then they can leave the job. This style of leadership
demotivated the employees as their point of view was not even heard and they were forced to
adapt to new technology and if not then leave the job (Popli and Rizvi, 2016). Thus, this style of
leadership was not appropriate in the situation as it led to decrease in employee motivation and it
resulted in high employee turnover within the company.

If I would have ben in that place then I would have patiently explained the importance
and advantages of using the digital marketing and how it can be effectively used in order to
increase the efficiency. This is majorly because of the fact that proper explanation will lead to
developing interest of the employees within the new technology and they will happily accept the
change without any resistance because this will indirectly increase the efficiency of the
employees only.
With help of my knowledge I came to know that there are three different types of
leadership which are prevalent in the business environment. These are democratic, autocratic and
laissez faire leadership style. For better leading the business it is very necessary for the company
and the manager to make use of correct style of leadership. This is necessary as if the leadership
style will not be correct then the result of it will also not be good and effective. Thus, for this is I
took help of leadership style questionnaire to assess that which leadership style is good in me and
which is not. This test was conducted in order to know and style of leadership which is good and
to examine the fact that how my leadership style relates to other style of leadership. In this
questionnaire all the questions are related with the different style of leadership and the answer to
it are in form of a Likert scale giving five options. Among all the questions some are related to
the autocratic style, some with democratic and some with laissez faire leadership style (Maamari
and Majdalani, 2017).
However, with the result of this questionnaire I came to know that I am good at the
democratic style of leadership. This resulted because of the reason that I scored 27 in the
questions which were related to the democratic style of leadership. Also, with help of this test it
was outlined that the laissez faire is the leadership style which is least dominant in me. This is
majorly because of the reasons that I cannot give all the powers to my subordinates of the team
members. It is evident from the result that I scored 13 in the questions related to leadership style
of laissez faire leadership. This result stated that I am not much good in style of laissez faire
because of the reason that this is not good style of leadership because here the decision- making
power rest in the hand of every team member and this may create conflicts among the team
members. This is majorly due to the fact that this will create ego conflicts among the team
member because of the fact that all these employees are at same position and there may be
thinking or perception of the employees.

In the current competitive world, it is very necessary for a person a to have effective
leadership skill because this is part of every business of any activity. Thus, for being in the
competition it is necessary for the people to have effective leadership skills in them. Also, with
the self- assessment and other test I came to know that there are many skills which are good in
me for becoming a good democratic leader. The major reason behind the fact is that I strongly
agreed that yes employees must be taken and considered in the decision- making process of the
company. This is majorly because of the reason that listening to the ideas and views of
employees make them happy as their ideas is being listened. Though the end decision is of the
leader but these ideas assist the leader in deciding what will be best for the development and
growth of the employees and the company as a whole (Manning, 2016).
Also, with the help of self- assessment I learnt that key of becoming a good leader is the
giving effective guidance to the employees without creating any pressure on them. With this fact
I agreed as I also felt the same because if pressure will be created on the employees then they
will not be able to work in effective manner and this will impact on their productivity and
ultimately result in decrease in productivity of company. Also, I agreed to the fact that there must
be effective and supportive communication among the leader and the employees. along with this
leader must assist the subordinates in understanding their responsibility and how to complete the
responsibility in effective manner.
CONCLUSION
With the help of the above study it was evident that effective leadership is very important
for the successful running of the business. This is majorly because of the reason that leadership
help in directing the employees and other people in order to attain the goals of the business.
Thus, the present reflective writing helped in assessing the leadership qualities in the person and
to identify which is the most dominant leadership style within the person and which is the least
dominant style of leadership. With the help of this self- assessment it was concluded that
democratic style of leadership is the most dominant style of leadership and laissez faire is the
least dominated style of leadership.

REFERENCES
Book and Journals
Alonderiene, R. and Majauskaite, M., 2016. Leadership style and job satisfaction in higher
education institutions. International Journal of Educational Management.
Cook-Sather, A., Abbot, S. and Felten, P., 2019. Legitimating reflective writing in
SoTL:“Dysfunctional illusions of rigor” revisited. Teaching & Learning Inquiry. 7(2).
pp.14-27.
Maamari, B.E. and Majdalani, J.F., 2017. Emotional intelligence, leadership style and
organizational climate. International Journal of Organizational Analysis.
Manning, J., 2016. The influence of nurse manager leadership style on staff nurse work
engagement. JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration. 46(9). pp.438-443.
Popli, S. and Rizvi, I.A., 2016. Drivers of employee engagement: The role of leadership
style. Global Business Review. 17(4). pp.965-979.
Ullmann, T.D., 2017, March. Reflective writing analytics: empirically determined keywords of
written reflection. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Learning Analytics &
Knowledge Conference (pp. 163-167).