Reflective Essay: Positive Emotions, Leadership, and Implementation

This reflective essay examines the crucial role of positive emotions in leadership and management, focusing on project implementation and its impact on employee productivity and engagement. The essay begins by defining positive emotions and their benefits in the workplace, including increased efficiency, reduced absenteeism, and improved brain function. It then explores how maintaining positive emotions can enhance a manager's ability to build a committed and productive team, attract followers, and foster creativity. The author reflects on their own experience with a project implementation timeline, highlighting how positive emotions improved their mood, engagement, and skill development. The essay concludes by offering key lessons for managers and employees, emphasizing the importance of modeling positive emotions, understanding the link between emotions and productivity, and recognizing the personal and organizational benefits of a positive mindset. The author also outlines how they would guide employees embarking on a similar journey, emphasizing encouragement, resource provision, and addressing any doubts to ensure successful outcomes.

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REFLECTIVE ESSAY ON POSITIVE EMOTIONS
Name of student
Institution
Course
Date

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B2. Implementation Summary and Reflection
Project implementation is a crucial stage in the project cycle. Project implementation is
the process of turning the plans and visions or a project into reality. Project implementation
could be viewed as the most critical stage in the life cycle of a project. Apart from turning the
visions of a project into reality, project implementation may help in the identification of new
challenges and issues that might not have been anticipated by the project team. Therefore, this
may result in refined processes, products or strategies (Burston, 2015). The implementation of
my timeline provided me with a worthwhile experience. In other words, I can conclude that the
implementation process was successful beyond expectations. First of all, the implementation of
my timeline was characterized the setting of clear and manageable expectations. The fact that I
had ensured that the timeline’s expectations were clear and manageable played a role in ensuring
the implementation was successful. I consider the implementation to have been successful
mainly because the expected outcome was realized at the end. Initial preparation and
consideration of implementation deliverables made the implementation process easy and
rewarding.
B3. Summary and Reflection: Summary and Reflection
Positive emotion may be considered as a feeling without negativity. On the same note,
positive emotions may include love, inspiration, amusement, pride, hope, interest, gratitude, or
joy. Generally, people find it pleasurable to experience positive emotions. Positive emotions in
the workplace may come with multiple benefits to employees. These may include better
engagement, reduced rates of absenteeism, increased efficiency and improved brain functioning.
Positive emotions topic has left me with vital takeaways that will be quite useful in my future
managerial role (Todorova, Bear, and Weingart, 2014). First, as a manager, I will be required to

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maintain a highly productive and committed that can deal with any obstacles to meet
organizational targets. Therefore, I have learnt that by sustaining positive emotions among my
subordinates, I will not only keep their productivity at optimum levels but also make it possible
for them to remain committed to organizational goals.
Secondly, the success of a managerial role depends on the ability of a lead to have a solid
following. A display of positive emotions is, therefore essential for a leader who wants to have
followership. Leadership without a following would be failed leadership. Positive emotions will
thus help me to attract and win the loyalty of the people that I will be leading. This will be key to
enhancing my success as a manager. Additionally, I have also learnt about the negative impact of
negative emotions on the manager. Generally, employees want to follow positive leaders
primarily because of their proactive nature and their ability to encourage and mentor them.
Therefore, positive emotions will help me to win the loyalty of my subordinates without
imposing myself on them or having to pressure them.
Additionally, positive emotions are a vital ingredient of workplace productivity.
Generally, every manager wants to lead an organization that is highly productive (Eikenberry,
2011). I have therefore leant that positive emotions would ideally help me to create and maintain
productivity in my future organization. In this regard, providing an environment characterized by
positive emotions will provide a platform for me as the managers and my subordinates to be
creative and more engaged. An environment founded on positive emotions will, therefore, make
it possible for me and my team to be more productive. This will, however, have to start with.
Generally, in the workplace environment positive or negative emotions are largely contagious.
This means that positivity on my side as the manager will lead to positivity on my team
members. Success for me as a manager will, therefore, depend on my ability to display

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appropriate emotions while interacting and working with my team. My actions at the workplace
will consequently have a positive impact on my team, my managerial work and my organization.
Finally, as a future manager, I understand quite well that I will be the driving force in my
organization. This means that whatever I will bring in is what will be amplified in the
organization. Similarly, the kind of emotion that I will bring in my future organization will be
noticed and replicated. Bringing onboard the right emotions will, therefore, be noticed and
replicated throughout the rest of the organization. A display of positive emotions by me as the
manager will consequently facilitate the adoption of positive emotions throughout the
organization.
My experience in the implementation process resonated quite well with some of the
things that I had learnt in literature. Basically, through the implementation of weekly activities, I
found out that having positive emotions significantly affected my moods and made me more
productive. Additionally, I also noticed that my engagement levels improved considerably
throughout the implementation. The implementation process also provided me with an
opportunity to learn and build my skills. Additionally, I noticed that throughout implementation,
I was able to get along well with my peers, learn better and lead a healthier, happier life. In
simple terms, the impact of the implementation of timeline activities supports the evidence
provided for in literature on the effects of positive emotions.
The implementation process also provided an opportunity for me to learn a few things
about myself that I wasn’t aware of before. As an individual who has always believed that I must
be pushed to deliver, the implementation of my weekly timeline made me realize that I can, I can
achieve anything that I set my mind on without being forced. Additionally, I have also learnt that
I can be a good project manager. I believe this to be true based on the fact that I was able to work

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on the implementation process without any input from my peers. Additionally, I was able to
work on the problems related to the implementation process successfully. After successfully
carrying out the implementation process, I am now convinced that I have the requisite skills to
become a successful manager.
I believe that there are several critical lessons about positive emotions that would be of
much significance to managers and employees. To start with, it would be necessary for managers
to understand emotions displayed by employees are a reflection of emotions displayed by
managers. In this regard, managers must understand the role of their emotions on the rest of the
organization (Armenta, and Lyubomirsky, 2017). By having this understanding, they will be in a
better position of making sure that they maintain positive emotions for the sake of their entire
organization. Additionally, both managers and employees need to understand the relationship
between positive emotions and productivity. A key lesson for employees would therefore that
they can significantly improve their productivity at the workplace by adopting and displaying
positive emotions in the course of their work. For managers, on the other hand, it would be
essential to understand how they can improve the productivity of their employees and
organizations by becoming positive role models to be emulated by their employees (Armenta,
and Lyubomirsky, 2017).
Additionally, it would also be necessary for managers to learn about personal benefits
that can be achieved by having positive emotions. In this regard, it would be advantageous for
them to understand the health benefits associated with positive attitudes. This lesson would help
employees who think that positive emotions would only benefit their organizations to know that
those positive emotions would also have an impact on their health. Finally, it would also be
important for managers and employees to understand the effects of positive emotions on the

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functioning of the brain. An understanding of the mental benefits associated with positive
emotions would be a significant catalyst in ensuring that both managers and their employees
focus on positive emotions to improve the functionality of their brains.
If I were a manager working with employees embarking on a similar journey, I would
first congratulate them for the move and encourage them to work harder to ensure that the
objectives of their journey are met. Additionally, I would also make them understand the
potential benefits likely to come out of their learning journey to enhance their diligence and
commitment to the program. Additionally, I would also seek to clear all doubts related to the
journey to ensure that they remain committed from the start to the end. Finally, because I
understand the impact of such an initiative on individual employees and the entire organization, I
would ensure that the employees are provided with all the resources needed to complete the
learning process successfully.

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References
Armenta, C.N., Fritz, M.M. and Lyubomirsky, S., 2017. Functions of positive emotions:
Gratitude as a motivator of self-improvement and positive change. Emotion Review, 9(3),
pp.183-190.
Burston, J., 2015. Twenty years of MALL project implementation: A meta-analysis of learning
outcomes. ReCALL, 27(1), pp.4-20.
Eikenberry, K. (2011). Three Reasons A Leader Must Have a Positive Attitude. [online] Kevin
Eikenberry on Leadership & Learning. Available at:
https://blog.kevineikenberry.com/leadership-supervisory-skills/three-reasons-leaders-must-have-
a-positive-attitude/ [Accessed 4 Oct. 2019].
Todorova, G., Bear, J.B., and Weingart, L.R., 2014. Can conflict be energizing? A study of task
conflict, positive emotions, and job satisfaction. Journal of Applied Psychology, 99(3), p.451.