Reflective Journal: Leadership Skills and Personal Development

This report is a reflective journal focusing on leadership skills and personal development, based on a project involving a presentation on Bill Gates. The student utilizes Gibb's Reflective Cycle Model to analyze their experience, including research, feelings, and evaluation of the presentation process. The journal details the student's insights into leadership styles, the importance of teamwork, and the development of employability skills. It highlights strengths in research and communication, while also identifying areas for improvement in time management and problem-solving. The conclusion emphasizes the value of the reflective process for enhancing both personal and professional growth, with a plan for future projects to build upon these learnings.

Personal and
Professional
Development

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Reflective Journal...................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Employability skills and abilities refers to the set of capabilities which every employer
look for and search in the professional that makes them employable and potential for the job role
and the company. Employability skills are the common set of abilities which are essential for
individuals to procure and improvise eventually. In context of students, employability skills are
mandatory as on the basis of these skills they are evaluated by the employer and job is assigned
to them that is they get hired (Hinojosa-Pareja and García-Cano, 2020). These abilities enables
the student in developing a positive impression of themselves on others and also ensure efficient
performance in professional setting. The report is a reflective journal stating the learning of the
student form the project and presentation. This reflection is provided with the help of Gibb's
Reflective Cycle Model, which is most commonly used for showcasing their opinions and reflect
upon understanding of the respective topic.
MAIN BODY
Reflective Journal
Leadership skills are those abilities that a person develops over his or her career of
influencing others by their performances and working approaches and direct them towards a new
path for working effectively on their respective job role (Cassada and Kassner, 2018).
Leadership is a managerial position and the individual holding related skills are known as
leaders. Leadership skills and management skills differentiate form one another and are two
separate concepts. Leadership is a task where leaders influence team members and employees to
work towards the end goal of the team and make contribution towards the ultimate objectives of
company. On the other hand, management is a concept through which managers control the
employees and their performances by ascertaining them jobs and restricting their ways to
perform the job and complete it in given time.
The project developed is about leadership, for understanding its concept, different form
and the styles used by a renowned leader. The first part of the project is competed as a
presentation that is over Bill Gates a leading entrepreneur and leaders who played multiple roles
in Microsoft in his career. He worked as CEO, Chairman, President and Chief Software
Architect. While making the presentation, I needed to make use of multiple skills and also to
gain knowledge about some of them for developing a effective presentation and completing my

project on time. This is the second part of my project in which I will showcase my learnings,
experience and in depth insight I received by the presentation. In order to do so I will be using
Gibb's Reflective Cycle Model, a tool which is most commonly used by individuals for
highlighting their knowledge, strengths and weaknesses. There are five stages in the model and I
will every stage to self evaluate and reflect on my overall experiences.
Gibb's Reflective Cycle Model, was discovered by Sir Graham Gibb's in 1998. The
model states that experience, learning and critical insight about any topic is developed after
working over it and rendering particular performance (Neustroev, Fedorchuk and Arinushkina,
2018). The Gibb's Reflective Cycle assist the individual in identifying more in depth and critical
insight about their knowledge which they developed while performing specific task and over
those skills which they already had and while performing the particular task individual have
improved and improvised. Basically, the strengths and weaknesses of a person that is him or her
is determined along with providing them insight about what is needed to be changed by them for
higher results. This is a model which enables in tracking people performances and help them to
learn more and develop. The model has five stages which I am going to use for showcasing and
analysing my overall performance and experience related to the presentation I made over
leadership skills topic.
The first stage is of Description in which I will properly describe all the activities
performed by me for the task and about all the situations I have gone through while completing
my leadership skill assignment. The description stage is foremost, I made a presentation over
leadership skills, different styles, leadership role in success of a company and used Bill Gates as
and example for gaining a through insight. The first task activity which was undertaken by me
for my presentation is of Research and Development. That is I received guidance form my tutors
and conducted a secondary research in which is studied about Bill Gates as a business owners
and then as a leader. During making my presentation and working hard for it to be most
attractive I received an insight about myself that is related to my research skills. I am a keen
learner and my research skills are efficient, I was able to make critical evaluation of the data
collected and able to find minute information from the gathered database. I developed more
research skills while collecting secondary data as I had to make more use of my analytical skills
and be more critical which enabled me to gain higher understanding of the research criteria while

collecting data about the brand Microsoft and the man behind it Bill Gates great leader and
business owner.
The second stage is of Feelings that will refer to my opinions and views which is had and
gone through while completing the task and preparing the presentation. In the initial stage of the
project when I was understanding the requirement of tasks and presentation I felt nervous and
excited at the same time. I had mixed feelings about the assignment as it was my first attempt of
developing a presentation. But with the passage of time I realised the hustle and multiple tasks
involved and for which a team is required. Team work is a new lesson which is learned through
this task as I learnt its importance and requirement. The expertise of others once integrated can
bring better and timely results. I also gathered an idea about my self management skills at this
stage as I felt more managed then before as I had a huge responsibility to make the best
assignment on the given topic.
The third phase of the reflection model of Gibb's is of Evaluation where I will be
reflecting upon the whole experience I acquired while I was developing my project and finishing
the presentation. As I reflected that this is a new experience for me to work on a presentation and
to take examples from practical environment and business world, my overall experience was
great. I received an opportunity to learn new things develop an understanding of leadership
concept by learning form practical and real scenarios. I may have faced some issues as well such
as I was facing problems in completing respective tasks in the assigned time frame and my time
management abilities were lacking. This gave me a learning that team work is a potential way of
working were expertise of members enable in conducting all activities in appropriate time and
ensure new learnings and skill development by grasping from others and their expertise. This
team work understanding and insight will definitely enable me to work more efficiently in future
if I get an opportunity to work in a team in my academic period as well as in my professional
setting too. Despite of some issues I was able to complete my presentation on time and this
shows that my self and time management skills needs to be improved for future efficiency but in
present situation I handled things appropriately if not efficiently.
The next stage of the Gibb's Reflective Cycle is Conclusion in which I will be
summarising my learnings, new knowledge and developments and those aspects which needs
betterment. Thus, form the presentation project it is clear that is learnt a lot in all aspects that is
personally and professionally. I developed understanding about myself and my abilities that I

have efficient research skills and my self and time management skills need improvisations and
development. In addition to it I have made improvement in my communication skills in both
written and verbal aspects while completing the assignment while making the report and drafting
the research in my words with fulfilling all the criteria of the project. Moreover, I can conclude
that if this presentation was prepared by a team which means if I had more members with me
working on the presentation it would have resulted better. But as known that to work in
professional world I need to have better proficiency to handle thing both ways in a team and as
an individual too.
The final step is to develop a Action Plan according to the Gibb's Reflective Cycle where
a future perspective is looked forwards and plans are developed for betterment in future if I face
the same or similar kind of situation. If in future this type of project will be assigned to me I am
confident that I can do better and I will be requesting my tutor to assign me a team and make me
the leader so that I can use my learning form the real example and leadership concept and
implement my employability skills to make a better project or a presentation with my whole
team. As well as I need to develop problem solving skills as it is one of the basic requirement or
competency of a leader that is needed while working with number of people over common goals
and for completing tasks efficiently.
CONCLUSION
The report above is a reflective journal and from the discussion conducted above it is
summarised that the Gibb's Reflective Cycle Model is a potential and appropriate tool enabling
people to gain better insight. It showcases and elaborates about the learnings, strengths and those
aspects which needs improvement and improvisation of the respective individual. The model is
used by the person for reflecting over their experience and self evaluating their performance by
knowing about their capabilities and those aspects which needs betterment. With the help of the
model, those skills which the student learned while performing tasks related to the project are
determined and which highlighted the employability skills and influence individual can have
over the employer while pursuing for a job.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Amaro-Jimenez, C. and et. al., 2020. “Feel Like More than a Number in the Classroom:” Faculty
Perceptions of Professional Development for Student Success. Journal of Hispanic
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Cassada, K. and Kassner, L., 2018. Seeing is believing: Peer video coaching as professional
development done with me and for me. Contemporary Issues in Technology and
Teacher Education. 18(2). pp.416-441.
Hinojosa-Pareja, E. F. and García-Cano, M., 2020. Excellence is not an island: team-based
professional development in Higher Education. Professional Development in Education,
pp.1-19.
Neustroev, S., Fedorchuk, Y. and Arinushkina, A., 2018. Identification of the directions of
professional development of heads of schools in the Russian Federation. In SHS Web of
Conferences (Vol. 55, p. 03013). EDP Sciences.
Nguyen, H. C., 2019. An investigation of professional development among educational policy-
makers, institutional leaders and teachers. Management in education. 33(1). pp.32-36.
Payne, E. C. and Smith, M. J., 2018. Refusing relevance: School administrator resistance to
offering professional development addressing LGBTQ issues in schools. Educational
Administration Quarterly. 54(2). pp.183-215.
Reid, H. and Soan, S., 2019. Providing support to senior managers in schools via
‘clinical’supervision: a purposeful, restorative professional and personal developmental
space. Professional Development in Education. 45(1). pp.59-72.