Reflective Essay on Leadership: Theories, Application and Experience

This essay reflects on the writer's understanding of leadership concepts and their application to real-life situations, drawing from weekly studies and personal experiences. It emphasizes the importance of leadership in various fields, highlighting different leadership models such as transformational and transactional leadership, and their impact on organizational culture, as illustrated by the Burke-Litwin model. The reflection also touches on the influence of leaders on organizational ethics, gender perspectives in leadership, positive leadership approaches, and the significance of leadership development. A personal experience of organizational restructuring further illustrates how a transformational leader can drive ethical change and restore an organization's reputation. The essay concludes by reinforcing the importance of leadership in achieving common goals and the value of reflective learning in practical scenarios. Desklib provides a platform for students to access similar solved assignments and past papers.

Running head: REFLECTION ON LEADERSHIP
REFLECTION ON LEADERSHIP
Name of Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Importance of leadership.................................................................................................................2
Experiences relevant to the concept of leadership...........................................................................2
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................2
References........................................................................................................................................2

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Introduction
Leadership refers to the ability of a person to lead and influence other by guiding and
supervising them properly and sharing the vision with them. Leadership however does not
include any forceful act carried out by a person in order to influence others (Priest & Gass,
2017). Reflection refers to process of understanding and interpreting the experiences, it helps to
convert the experience into learning such that it can be applied practically. By carrying out
reflection, the problem solving capability is improved and it enables people to think in a better
way. Reflection helps in self-development by understanding the strengths and weaknesses and
helps in connecting the practical concepts with the reality (Johnston, 2017). The main aim of the
paper is to reflect on my experience and learning from the various weekly studies and show how
well I have understood the concept of leadership and application if the same into real life
situations.
Importance of leadership
Leadership refers to the ability of the individual to influence others and help an
organization or others in achieving the goals together by avoiding any form of conflicts
(Antonakis & Day, 2017). In simple words it also means the ability to influence others and
supporting others in order to help them accomplish a task. The weekly studies were carried out in
order to improve our understanding about the concept of leadership. For instance: we learned
about the concept of leadership in the first session, the various models of leadership in the
second session, we learnt about the concept of leadership nature and nurture in the third session
and similar many other concepts related to leadership in other sessions.

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In the first week, we were explained the concept if leadership and from what I have learnt
I can say that it needed in all the fields of life whether business, politics, academics and others
because without a proper leader there will be no one to show the direction to the followers and
they will lack the support of the leaders that is very important in achieving the objectives and
accomplishing the tasks. The leaders can act as an idol for the followers and therefore help in
changing the climate and culture of the organization. From the leadership models explained in
the session I can say that there can be different types of leaders depending upon their objectives
but the most effective form of leadership these days is that of the transformational and
transactional leadership. The transactional leaders are the one who know how to get their tasks
done by applying the reward and punishment technique. In other words these leaders either use
rewards system to motivate others to work or punish others so atht they work. On the other hand,
in case of transformational leadership a leader gets his work done by his followers by building
good relationships with them and motivating them (Banks et al.,2016). These leaders can get
better performance than what is expected from the employees because these leaders spiritually
connect with the followers. The burke-litwin models help to understand the concept leadership
and shows how leaders can influence the culture of the organization and can change the same. as
discussed in session in 7, leaders can help in changing of the climate and culture of organization
but for that transformational leadership is requited because the climate can be changed by the
transactional leaders also whose aim is to achieve the objectives.

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Figure 1: Burke Litwin model of leadership
Source: (Stone, 2015)
The above diagram shows how both the types of leaders influence the climate and culture
of the organization. A transformational leader can help in creating a different culture by
practicing the same and through his integrity (Hawkins, 2017). The values and ethics of the
company will be determined by the leaders. If the leaders follow ethical practices and have
values of integrity, honesty and others the same will be followed by employees and the followers
of the leader. This I have understood in the session 5 that the leaders can impact the
organizational values and ethics. Leaders can help in avoiding any form of discrimination

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depending upon the gender of the employees if he creates a culture of equality and environment
where everyone get equal opportunities and does not feel that they are being discriminated.
Through the session 6, I understood that the social perspective about the leadership roles is
different for different countries. There are some countries which feel that men are more
favorable for the role of a leader as compared to females due to their leadership approach but
again in other study it has been found that women leaders have better control over linguistic
influence because they know t change their tones and voice alteration in different scenarios. In
session 8, we understood the definition of positive leadership and how it is different from the
other leadership. A positive leader is one who is assertive in has approach and knows how to deal
with conflicts without hurting others in a positive way. International approach to leadership is
relatively new concept and includes the new and wide skills of the leaders. In session 10, we
learnt what is leadership development which implies expanding the knowledge and skills of the
leaders. In session 10, we discussed and learnt about leaders of non-profit organizations. These
leaders adopt an approach of stewardship through which they put the needs and benefits of the
society before their own and they feel that they have a responsibility towards the society and that
all the resources that is being used by them belongs to the society.
Experiences relevant to the concept of leadership
Leadership restructuring in the organization can have a huge impact on the organizational
performance as well as the other employees and they can help in changing the culture of the
organization. I used to work in a company that has seen many leaders change because of the
company’s performance. Our company is one of the top companies in the field of banking and
financial services however, after the retirement of the CEO the entire scenario changed and we

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kept losing our share value and entered into different scandals. The new leader who replace the
CEO used to carry out his work in an unethical manner and as a result of the same my company
got into various scandals such as money laundering and other unethical practices. It was then that
my company decided to change the leader and as a result a new leader was brought. The new
leader changed the board of directors by replacing the people who carried unethical practices
with people of ethical practices because he knew that only the top executives can help in
changing the 9argnizational culture first. This leader helped the organization change regain its
position and also regain the lost goodwill of the organization. The leader who was brought to
change the company was a transformational one and therefore he helped in changing the entire
culture of the organization. He helped to change the unethical culture of the organization and the
people to ethical one. He was a man of integrity as he walked his talk. He carried out all the
activities in an ethical manner and imbibed in us the culture of honesty. He acted as a change
agent as he changed the culture of our organization. By changing the culture of the organization
our culture as an individual also changed because we started admiring him and followed
whatever he did. He changed the culture by not only carrying out his activities in a positive way
but he first developed the practice if open communication among us such that we could share our
opinions and ideas with the top management and such that he could make us adaptable to the
change. He engaged us in all his decision making activities and adopted a participative approach
for us. He changed the financial policies such that the new policies were focused on practices
through which the tax evasion was not possible or money laundering and other unethical
practices were it possible. He adopted many ethical code of conducts so as to ensure that ethical
practices are being followed. By carrying out all these activities the new leader helped to change

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the business environment and culture and he helped to change our culture as well and these
practices led our company to regain its position in the market.
Conclusion
From the above discussion it can be concluded that leadership is important for all the
fields whether it is business or politics or any other. This is so because only the leaders can
influence the group of members and motivate them t work towards the common goals. Moreover
by carrying out this reflection I have learnt about how to convert experience into learning such
that it can be applied in practical scenarios. Through the various session I have learnt about the
concept of leadership, the various models of leadership such as the burke-litwin model in order
to understand how leaders can change the climate of the organization and also the culture. The
session have discussed about leadership and gender that how leadership roles are discriminated
based on the gender of the leaders and the sessions also taught me how leaders can influence the
culture of the organization and abut positive leadership, leadership development and others.

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References
Antonakis, J., & Day, D. V. (Eds.). (2017). The nature of leadership. Sage publications.
Banks, G. C., McCauley, K. D., Gardner, W. L., & Guler, C. E. (2016). A meta-analytic review
of authentic and transformational leadership: A test for redundancy. The Leadership
Quarterly, 27(4), 634-652.
Hawkins, P. (2017). Leadership team coaching: Developing collective transformational
leadership. Kogan Page Publishers.
Johnston, C. (2017). Reflective practice. Teaching Business & Economics, 21(1), 19-21.
Priest, S., & Gass, M. (2017). Effective Leadership in Adventure Programming, 3E. Human
Kinetics.
Stone, K. B. (2015). Burke-Litwin Organizational Assessment Survey: Reliability and
Validity. Organization Development Journal, 33(2).