Reflective Journal on Leadership Styles and Personal Development

This report presents a reflective journal analyzing leadership styles and personal development, focusing on the application of Gibb's Reflective Cycle to assess the author's learning experience from a project on Jeff Bezos's leadership. The journal details the process of collecting information, the author's feelings and evaluations throughout the project, and the conclusions drawn about leadership, communication, and time management skills. The report emphasizes the importance of employability skills and offers insights into the author's strengths and areas for improvement, particularly in time management and communication. The reflective analysis underscores the practical application of leadership theories and the value of self-assessment for professional growth. The author concludes that the experience was informative and helped to connect the learnings with the real world business practices.

Personal and
Professional
Development

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

INTRODUCTION
Employability skills are those abilities which make an individual or a professional
employable (Hildebrand, 2018). These are respective capabilities which every employer look or
search for in potential candidates for their organisation and for those roles and duties which they
will be assigned. Employability skills are some common set of potentials which are essential for
the professional to procure and for the employer to explore in a candidate while recruiting them
in order to bring the best out of them and make human resource most productive. These abilities
enables the individuals most often the students to hired by and find their first job. The skills
represents a continuous nature that is with experience and time in the field the individuals
employability will automatically improve and enhance. The present report is in continuation
which is a Reflective Journal over the learnings form past project. Gibbi's Reflective Cycle is
used for completing the reflection and highlighting the experience and learnings from the past
project.
MAIN BODY
Reflective Journal
Leadership is an act of making people walk in a certain direction and follow it for
effective and potential accomplishment of the prescribed tasks and related motives (Christie and
et. al., 2018). Thus, Leadership can be defined as a skill which is possessed by people and allows
them to inspire and motivate other in respect to follow their path and guidelines. Leaders are the
one who possess the leadership skill through which they influence people in positive manner and
induce their morals to work for the common goal. Leadership is a broad concept which involves
number of characteristics and styles through which a leader becomes successful in their job roles
and while fulfilling their responsibilities. Every organisation has a leader or leaders who
regulates their teams and number of functional units, through application of suitable leadership
styles and motivational or inspirational values and phenomena's (Welp and et. al., 2018).
Leaders are those fundamental units of a business organisation who plays most vital and
critical roles in making the profession body succeed and leads towards growth. The first project
developed by me was over the leadership styles used by the world's leading organisations CEO
of Amazon Inc. Jeff Bezos (Makovec, 2018). He is a leading business owner and placed on top
of the world's richest men list. The first phase of the project is needed to be presented in a

presentation format which required multiple skills and knowledge. As well as the entire topic of
research was also new and practical, where I investigated about the leadership styles and
methods Jeff Bezos a market leader in terms of leadership and organisational success. On the
next note, in this report I am going to reflect upon my learnings, understanding and opinions I
developed while completing the first task. Thus, for the same I will be using Gibb's Reflective
Cycle Model (Howard and Eddy‐Imishue, 2020).
Gibb's Reflective Cycle Model is a tool which is helpful and offers a analytical value to
the user, enabling in the individual to make critical evaluation about their learnings and
effectively present it in-front of others. The Gibb's Reflective Cycle Model was founded by Sir
Graham Gibb's in 1998. According to the model its purpose is to state one's experience, learnings
and knowledge about the discussed topic (Earley, 2020). Gibb's Reflective Cycle Model assist
individuals in gaining higher insight about their personality and the opinions they had or have for
the respective worked topic. In more simpler terms, Gibb's Reflective Cycle Model enables the
user to know about their strengths and weaknesses that is those areas in which they lack
knowledge and needs improvement or those in which they excel and which are their areas of
proficiencies. In the Gibb's Reflective Cycle Model there are five stages which will be used by
me step by step to reflect upon my learnings form the presentation made (Akrivou, Scalzo and
Orón, 2020). These five stages are Description, Feelings, Evaluation, Conclusion and Action
Plan.
The first step of the reflective cycle is Description, that offer a brief introduction about
all those activities I performed while collecting information and changing them into a project.
That is basically those steps which I took for completion of my project and presentation will be
discussed in the initial stage of the reflective cycle. According to Gibb's Reflective Cycle Model
at Description stage the whole scenario of work is discussed. Thus, for completing my project
first collect some relevant information about Jeff Bezos as a leader and as a business owner.
These both are two separate roles which he plays for smooth functioning and running of
operations in Amazon Inc. Thus, during this process I made use of my research skills for
collecting information and most relevant data about Jeff's leadership approaches and ideas he
uses to run Amazon Inc. and keep staff motivated and on right path. Through this I found out that
my research skills are very critical and analytical that is I can make valuable analysis form the
presented data for providing evident conclusions for passing on to others.

The next stage of the Gibb's Reflective Cycle Model is Feelings, which showcases my
personal opinions which I developed while completing the tasks and view which is already
possessed for the respective topic. The project is a case study research report which I needed to
be presented over the topic of leadership styles and approaches of one of the successful leaders.
As it is an individual project I did not faced any issues of managing or adjusting with others but I
was little nervous and confused while starting the project as it was something new which I was
going to perform on my own. Moving along with the project I felt more confused which
impacted on my time management skills as I was unable to prescribe a set time period for tasks
and gets to much involved in one particular activity forgetting about the other.
The next phase of the Gibb's Reflective Cycle Model is Evaluation, in which I have to
reflect upon my whole experience which is gained through the project while working on different
tasks and actions. As well as at this stage I will be making critical evaluation of what exact skills
and knowledge I received and enhanced through the whole project. Thus, according to the entire
experience of researching and presenting a report on leadership style and skills of Jeff as a leader
I received a through understanding of the whole concept of Leadership and its usage as well as
importance in the business world. Moreover, through this experience I learned about the how
important and necessary communication and related skills are for an individual to become
employable and to work in professional world. While collecting information over Jeff's
leadership approaches made use of interactive discussion groups form which I analysed that I
need to be more précised while collecting information and asking questions. This can help me in
collecting the most relevant data ignoring all the extra information as well as help me save time
and make more critical analysis of the available resources.
The fourth stage is of Conclusion, through which I am going to summarise my learnings
and knowledge gained in the whole process of completing the project. The entire project gave me
a thorough understanding and knowledge about leadership, the role of leaders in an organisation
and especially about the importance of becoming a successful leader. I can also, conclude that
my overall experience was very informative and knowledgable as it highlighted over my
personal skill sets as well. Moreover, practical approach of completing this project by taking a
current example helped me in being more connected with the real business world and practices.
At last, the final stage is of Action Plan, that looks over developing a future perspective
for dealing with similar type of situations or in this case for completing leadership project.

According to my understandings for better performance in future with the same scenario I need
to work upon my time management skills and also over my communication skills which can help
me in making better and more critical conclusions while collecting evidences.
CONCLUSION
The above report is a reflective journal concluding the needs and importance of
employability skills to be procured by an individual and specifically for the student who's soon
going to enter the professional world. Employability skills makes them employable and assist
them in securing their first job and perform in respective manner while assigned some
responsibilities. For the reflective journal Gibb's Reflective Cycle Model is used a very common
tool which individuals or people use for reflecting upon their opinions and views over certain
topics and ideas. The Gibb's Reflective Cycle Model is also used for self evaluation, for knowing
about personal abilities and expertise. Through application of the model and its different stages
all the expertise gained by the student while preparing the first report are expressed. As well as
those areas in which the student faced issues and lack particular skills are showcased too. Thus, it
is concluded that through this model an individual can make critical examination and can
thoroughly reflect upon it as well.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Akrivou, K., Scalzo, G. and Orón, J. V., 2020. How differing conceptions of integrity and self-
integration influence relationships: Implications for management, personal and
professional development. Archives of Psychology. 4(1).
Christie, H. and et. al., 2018. ‘University opened up so many doors for me’: the personal and
professional development of graduates from non-traditional backgrounds. Studies in
Higher Education. 43(11). pp.1938-1948.
Earley, P., 2020. Surviving, thriving and reviving in leadership: The personal and professional
development needs of educational leaders. Management in Education,
p.0892020620919763.
Hildebrand, J., 2018. Bridging the gap: A training module in personal and professional
development. Routledge.
Howard, V. and Eddy‐Imishue, G. E. K., 2020. Factors influencing adequate and effective
clinical supervision for inpatient mental health nurses' personal and professional
development: An integrative review. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing.
Makovec, D., 2018. The teacher’s role and professional development. International Journal of
Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education. 6(2). p.33.
Welp, A. and et. al., 2018. The importance of reflecting on practice: How personal professional
development activities affect perceived teamwork and performance. Journal of clinical
nursing. 27(21-22). pp.3988-3999.