Exploring Leadership and Group Dynamics: A Reflective Journal

This journal entry reflects on personal experiences related to leadership, group dynamics, and workplace communication. The author recalls a positive experience with a team lead at Amazon who demonstrated effective leadership through open communication and motivational support. Another experience highlights the importance of team commitment during a project, where members overcame personal challenges to meet deadlines. The journal also explores the complexities of friendships with superiors in the workplace and the critical role of surveillance in maintaining a safe and ethical work environment, referencing a situation where a colleague was caught engaging in inappropriate behavior. The reflections are supported by citations from academic sources, enhancing the journal's credibility and analytical depth. Desklib offers similar solved assignments for students.

Running Head: Communication
Communication

Communication P a g e | 1
Table of Content
Chapter 10- Group & Leaders..................................................................................................................... 2
Communication in the Workplace............................................................................................................. 2
References........................................................................................................................................................... 4

Communication P a g e | 2
Chapter 10- Group & Leaders
The module on Group and Leaders helped me connecting the dots backward when I
look at my last professional experience working at Amazon. After the boom of the e-
commerce culture in the US, especially after Amazon started spreading its wings, I
landed a job at Amazon. It was exciting times to be part of such a customer-centric
behemoth organization. I was part of the digital marketing team and was looking at the
Facebook social listening of Amazon. Being part of a 20 member team, things were not
easy for me, it was taking me long to mix up with the existing members, due to which I
wasn’t able to perform at the levels expected and was demotivated. One fine day, My
Team lead, walked up to me and had a discussion with me for over 45 minutes straight.
He talked about sports, Amazon success story, his work life harmony, his professional
experience and asked a lot of question to me as well, towards the end he patted on my
back and said, Welcome Mate, make us proud. I realized that it were the words of
wisdom, openness in communication by my team lead that I realized leadership is
pivotal to every team and group. Leadership in true sense is the practical application of
skills to lead, influence and motivate the team to achieve organizational goals (Mitchell
et. al., 2014).
Another incident, which is an extension of the concepts I learnt in the module of group
and Leaders is “Commitment towards the group”. It was the time of fall, and I was
working with my friends for completion of a project. I was the group leader as I had
good info on the project topic. While we were progressing towards the group deadline,
two of my friends suffered major accident and were hospitalized. We all were in
jeopardy related to the project submission, but my friends assured me that they will not
let the group suffer because of them. The guys, from the hospital managed to finish their
part of report and we were able to submit the project on time. This made me
understand the importance of commitment towards the group; it is commitment of the
team members towards each other and the group which defines the success of a group
(Singh & Gupta, 2015).

Communication P a g e | 3
Communication in the Workplace
Friendship with Boss is something which can be extremely futile in organization. I
myself encountered this in one of my last organization. One of my friend was extremely
good friends with one of his peers. Both the guys performed really well, but at the time
of Appraisal one guy was promoted as the boss and another did not receive any
promotion. This lead to resentment between the friends, and he tried to spread a
negative word of mouth about the new boss, when the management heard of the
grapevine, both the guys were called in front of the board and were given disciplinary
warning about their business conduct. This made me realize that Friendship with boss
can get tricky if it is at different hierarchy (DeOnzono, 2016).
Surveillance in business organization is very crucial to preserve the work
environment and also to keep a track of the employees. I was serving my notice period
in the organization and I realized that one of my colleagues was acting a bit different
and I suspected some foul play in his behaviour. I tried to have a look at his computer; I
saw that he was logged onto Facebook and downloading pictures of office females. He
was doctoring the images by the use of Photoshop to upload them onto some
objectionable websites. I got alarmed by this, and raised the issue with the IT head; he
tracked down his PC and verified what I had told him. He jacked up his connection and
was thrown out of the organization. Ever since the policy of Surveillance in business
organisation garnered importance and the IT team kept a close tab on the employee
working by tracking their IP details (West & Bowman, 2016).

Communication P a g e | 4
References
de Onzoño, S.I., 2016. Creating Learning Communities. In Cosmopolitan Managers (pp.
131-150). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Mitchell, R., Boyle, B., Parker, V., Giles, M., Joyce, P. and Chiang, V., 2014. Transformation
through tension: The moderating impact of negative affect on transformational
leadership in teams. Human Relations, 67(9), pp.1095-1121.
Singh, A. and Gupta, B., 2015. Job involvement, organizational commitment, professional
commitment, and team commitment: A study of generational diversity. Benchmarking:
An International Journal, 22(6), pp.1192-1211.
West, J.P. and Bowman, J.S., 2016. Electronic surveillance at work: An ethical
analysis. Administration & Society, 48(5), pp.628-651.