Reflective Journal: Project Management Learning & Leadership Style

This reflection journal documents a student's learning journey in project management, highlighting both progress and challenges. The student reflects on understanding key concepts like scheduling, monitoring, controlling, and Work Breakdown Structures (WBS), noting initial difficulties and strategies for improvement. They discuss the acquisition of technical knowledge related to project planning, budgeting, and scope management, along with practical experience gained through real project work. The reflection also delves into leadership styles, with the student identifying as a democratic leader who values team input. Areas for further development include stakeholder needs identification and risk analysis, with a commitment to continued learning and experience. The journal concludes with a summary of references used to support the reflection.

Reflection
Project management – Reflection
[Student Name]
[Student Number]
[Course name]

Reflection
A reflection journal gives me an opportunity to record my progress with focus on learning. It
helps me understand if I am able to follow the subject as well as utilize my experiential
learning to build my learning portfolio. Learning journal not just includes recording of the
activities I have completed but also reflection upon my understanding and planning for
improvement for the future. This has helped me understand my strengths as well as
weaknesses and identify areas of improvement such that with every passing week, I am able
to work on them and make improvements in my capabilities (PMI, 2013).
While learning was a healthy experience, it was also challenging as I faced difficulties in
understanding some of the topics in project management such as scheduling, monitoring,
controlling, and WBS. It always confused me on how many levels of hierarchies I should
create, how detailed I should get and how I should distribute time and resources along the
WBS tasks. To overcome this difficulty, I decided to take help from earlier WBS related to
any project I chose and it helped me get an understanding (Wysocki, 2014).
I have learnt a variety of different tools used for project scheduling, planning, budgeting, cost
management, and scope management. These tools are definitely helpful in organizing
projects and getting more clarity on what tasks to be done, how they have to be done and how
time, scope, and costs can be managed with efficiency. It gave me the needed technical
knowledge of the discipline which is a prerequisite for any project manager (Lloyd Walker &
Walker, 2011).
While this gave me a good understanding of project plans work, the knowledge of execution
was only superficial at start. However, when I started working on a real project with a team
involved, I was able to gain some practical knowledge on how the execution is handled as per
the plan. It also exposed me to the needs of having good understanding and management of
people. I have found that I am good at understanding and managing people but when it comes
to understanding the technical aspects and how they are used practically, I find it difficult.
Specially, when it was about identifying needs of stakeholders and risks for analysis, I found
it difficult to come up with ideas. I feel that I can improve upon this area only with more
learning and experience (Yang, et al., 2011).
While studying project management, I found that based on the team structure and the people
at work, a project manager has to assume a certain suitable leadership style as the leader of
the project. These styles include autocratic that is highly directional and controlled,
democratic which involves a leader to take inputs from teams and encourage them to deliver,

Reflection
servant leadership which makes the leader work for the benefit of the team, and situational
leadership which makes a leader flexible enough to change the style based on the project and
team needs. I find myself more of a democratic leader who wants to take decisions only after
taking inputs from the team (Miller & Turner, 2010).
References
Lloyd Walker, B. & Walker, D., 2011. Authentic Leadership for 21st Century Project
Delivery. International Journal of Project Management, 29(4), pp. 383-395.
Miller, R. & Turner, R., 2010. Leadership Competency Profiles of Success Project Managers.
International Journal of Project Management, 28(5), pp. 437-448.
PMI, 2013. A Guide to Project Management Body of Knowledge, s.l.: PMI.
Wysocki, R. K., 2014. Effective Project Management: Traditional, Extreme, Agile, s.l.: Wiley
Publications.
Yang, L. R., Huang, C. & Wu, K., 2011. The Association AMong Project Manager's
Leadership Style, Teamwork, and Project Success. International Journal of Project
Management, 29(3), pp. 258-267.