Reflective Journal: Leadership, Emotional Intelligence, Communication

This reflective journal explores the student's self-awareness and emotional intelligence within a leadership context. The student reflects on the importance of emotional intelligence, defining it as the ability to manage one's emotions and understand others. The journal highlights the significance of self-awareness for effective leadership, recognizing the need to understand personal strengths and weaknesses. The student discusses communication skills, including lateral, downward, and upward communication, and identifies cultural and linguistic barriers. The student assesses their own communication skills, acknowledging strengths in peer communication and weaknesses in upward communication with supervisors. The journal emphasizes the role of self-awareness and communication in career advancement and outlines plans to address identified shortcomings through feedback and skill development. References to relevant academic sources are also provided.

Running head: REFLECTIVE JOURNAL
REFLECTIVE JOURNAL
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note:

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In order to motivating other employees and remaining self-motivated it is very important
to own a strong “emotional self-awareness”. Self-awareness is the process of understanding the
self and identifying the gaps or skills that the self-carry. One of the top most criterion of
leadership is to be self-aware first, which will give a clear direction to the leader about the path
and goal that he or she desires to attain (Duval, Silvia & Lalwani, 2012). I perceive self-
awareness as the traits which enables me to lead myself, being aware of what is happening
around me, and managing my relationships effectively.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to be in control of one’s own emotional traits in
various directions. Human being is a sentient being and he is emotionally aware about everything
that is happening around him. Emotional Intelligence which is often also termed as Emotional
Quotient, is the aptitude of an individual human being to discern his or her own emotional status
and also of others (Sadri, 2012). The self-assessment tells me that my emotional intelligence is
moderate, and it is improving by the day. I can well contemplate the emotional state of a person
when I have a conversation with someone. In the case of self-assessment of my own emotional
state, I sometimes get confused, or have problem in decision making due to emotional influence.
However, I am working towards management of my own emotional intelligence, and hope to
improve situations soon enough. My management study has taught me the art of being impartial
and objective in decision making process. Emotional intelligence is important in management
because it helps in comprehending the self and the others around in a correct way (Lam &
O'Higgins, 2012)
Communications is one of the most important key skills required to be effective in the
work place. There are various kinds of communications that run parallel, including lateral
communication with the colleagues, downward communication with the subordinates and

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upward communication with the supervisors (Keyton et al. 2013). There may be certain hurdles
to organizational communication including linguistics, and cultural barriers that needs to be
overcome with the help of proper strategies in place. I have chosen the strategy of being
unbiased towards people who do not share the same culture as of mine, and keeping an open
mind towards any new aspects of culture that comes across. According to the assessment
presently the deficiency that I have in my communication is the problem of communicating
freely with my supervisors. However, the advantage that I have in my communication skill is the
ability to freely and closely communicate and mix with my colleagues. This gives me a
professional advantage because I can win confidence of the people who are related to me in the
organizational context. Communication skills and self-awareness are two keys with which one
can achieve success very quickly (Showry & Manasa, 2014). However, I have to work towards
enhancing my skills of upward communication, which will enable me to gain promotions.
The insights that have been received from the online assessment will help me understand
the shortcomings I have and the strengths that I have which will help me to move upwards in my
career. The shortcomings include my inability to communicate freely with certain people, and
some of my biases towards cross cultural communication. The results that I have received will be
shared with some of the very experienced communication strategists at my educational institute
whose feedback will help me in developing my skills further and mitigate my shortcomings in an
effective manner. Already I have received feedbacks from my friends and well-wishers who have
appreciated my skills to communicate freely with my peer group and establish an emotional
connect in a short period of time. However, they have given certain feedbacks which I have
taken as notes to refer in the future and work on them.

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Reference:
Duval, T. S., Silvia, P. J., & Lalwani, N. (2012). Self-awareness & causal attribution: A dual
systems theory. Springer Science & Business Media.
Keyton, J., Caputo, J. M., Ford, E. A., Fu, R., Leibowitz, S. A., Liu, T., ... & Wu, C. (2013).
Investigating verbal workplace communication behaviors. The Journal of Business
Communication (1973), 50(2), 152-169.
Lam, C. S., & O'Higgins, E. R. (2012). Enhancing employee outcomes: The interrelated
influences of managers' emotional intelligence and leadership style. Leadership and
Organization Development Journal, 33(2), 149-174.
Sadri, G. (2012). Emotional intelligence and leadership development. Public Personnel
Management, 41(3), 535-548.
Showry, M., & Manasa, K. V. L. (2014). Self-awareness-key to effective leadership. IUP
Journal of Soft Skills, 8(1), 15.