Reflective Essay: Leadership and Skill Development in MBA

This reflective essay explores the development of leadership skills and personal growth throughout an MBA program. The essay delves into the value of reflective practices for leaders and managers, highlighting the importance of emotional and cultural intelligence. It discusses various leadership styles, including democratic, strategic, and autocratic approaches, while also examining the application of analytical models such as Porter's Five Forces, SWOT, and PESTLE. The author reflects on personal strengths and weaknesses, the acquisition of new skills, and the practical application of these skills in future career endeavors. The essay also emphasizes the importance of continuous learning and the ability to adapt to changing environments, providing valuable insights for aspiring leaders and managers.

REFLECTIVE ESSAY

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Value of reflective practices for leaders and managers...............................................................1
Personal reflection on learnings with help of research processes................................................2
A personal refection on skills that are build over MBA..............................................................3
Reflection on how all these skills help in future..........................................................................5
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Reflective essay is basically an analytical practice that writer wants to reflect its own self
about imaginary scene, passing thought or event. Learning define an overall process in which an
individual gathers new knowledge, understanding, values, skills and new attitudes. This study is
about reflective practices for leaders and managers and help to identify a particular abilities that
assists me in becoming logical practitioners. This report also elaborate about cultural and
emotional intelligence along with concept of leadership and its various types of styles. Further,
report provide detail about how I improved myself and deal with others to become more efficient
leader. The report further discuss about how my skills enhanced over MBA and I got a chance to
know about various types of models and theories that majorly incudes Porter five forces,
PESTLE and SWOT analysis. The report discuss about how I know my type of leadership styles
and what type of leader I am. Additionally, report elaborate about various essential elements of
emotionally intelligence leader and involve how I actually enhanced my weaker traits and
increase my strong abilities. A further reflection on how my skills assist with my career
endeavours is also discuss.
Value of reflective practices for leaders and managers.
Reflective leader:
Reflective practice is a skill to reflect and think about all those applications in workplace in an
effort to upgrade those experiences. There are situations arises in our day to day life when we
don't get much time reflecting on what we are doing, how we feel and various ways in which one
can make improvements and become more efficient. Lets discuss more in detail about all those
practices that a leader or manager have:
Reflective leader consider learning as a lifetime process. Therefore as a leader, I tend to
collaborate practices like asking and telling and constantly focus on collective intelligence
capacity of teams. Further, I learned that reflective supervision and considered key practices for
creating a relationship-based organisation (Bhaduri, 2019). There are many leadership traits that
were actually generated by a group of professionals and experts that represent capabilities and
skills that as a leader I must have that largely includes motivation, flexible and should motivates
its team member. Moreover, set clear goals and objectives, use humour, shares achievements,
respects staff member and their feedback and opinions, provides encouragement and listen
attentively is also vital for me as an effective leader.
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Reflective management:
On the other hand, a reflective management is a practice in which I used it as a learning to
create self-awareness, interactions and behaviours as key resources. For me, it is common
practices to give more importance to development of emotional performance and intelligence.
With reflective practices and development, it is essential for me to access challenges and to
develop strong alliances and build more opportunities for learning. I also experienced a
maximum sense of satisfaction both personally or professionally. Through reflective practices, I
could identify between great results or good results. I also tried to reduces conflicts or serious
issues, group thinking and determine need for disciplinary processes (Hedberg, 2017). As a
result, this process helped me to identify a culture that is more solution-focused. It also benefited
me to acknowledged conflicting request and get best out of member who report to me.
Personal reflection on learnings with help of research processes.
Throughout my involvement in this project, I involved in many learning processes and
developed my core areas and fuel my curiosity by asking queries related with learning. Firstly, if
I talked about emotional and cultural intelligence that provided me deep understanding of crucial
skills. I become more aware about my abilities, able to control myself and express emotions. It
helped me to become an effective leader as I able to carefully handle my relationships with more
empathy. I able to make better connections with others and its important for my social well
being. A leader with emotional intelligence is tend to be more successful as compare to others
who don't have skills of emotional intelligence. I also involved and got to know about others
essential factors like social-awareness, self-awareness, social management and relationship
management which I usually have no idea before. All these skills helped me to be more calm in
difficult situations and able to recognized others emotions and how they affecting one's
behavioural choice. While a cultural intelligence helped me to work with culturally multiple
situations. I worked with others effectively and with those people who has varied culture.
Moreover, I able to lead others with more passionately (GuhrLebek and Breitner, 2019). By
understanding cultural intelligence, I know how culture shapes organisation and how it diverse
between team or departments. I able to deal with others with more honesty and clarity, as there
are leaders who don't communicate clearly and that cause communication gap. I made an effort
to report and informed concisely so that others are free to work without information gaps.
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Further, I learned about various leadership styles. Firstly, democratic leader makes decisions
which is based on inputs of other team members. Democratic leadership is consider as one of the
most effective as it allows everyone to exercise power. It helped me to do team work and take
advice from others when needed. Second is strategic leadership which is commonly effective in
an organisation as it helps in identifies others thinking level and supports various member at
once. This leadership helped me to influence others to make vital decisions and enhanced long
term goals for future success. Last one is autocratic leadership which I mostly found most
effective one and that helped me in my professional life. Autocratic leadership generally did not
take any inputs from others and didn't considered anyone for decision making. Jack Ma is the
best example of autocratic leadership and he used to be an autocratic leader but now he also
changes his thought towards this leadership style as he wants that others also need to be
consulted while making any decisions (Martin,2017). Jack Ma once faces many rejections in life
but now he is successful and become charismatic leader in life. I learned from this theory that its
important to take decisions and giving detailed instructions to others. It also taught me that I
should never give up in life despite of various challenges I faced.
I learned about five essential elements of emotionally intelligent leadership for example,
motivation, self-awareness, self regulation, social skills and empathy. I found that I lack in my
social skills and tried my best so that I make improvements in my weaker areas. I try to focus on
positive thinking and talk about something cheerful or productive that happened in my life.
Moreover, I involved in healthy conversations and always attentive while listen to others as it is
key part of social skills. Conversely, my biggest strength is self-awareness and I developed this
skill with help of practices and try to do things for myself for example, keep a journal and write
down my overall goals, plans and also perform daily self- reflection processes. Further, I found
that it become challenging job for me to perform a role of consultant in Clean-away waste
management company. Being a consultant is tough as it is challenging for me to deal with every
clients because each clients has its own priorities and preferences (Oh, Cho,and Lim,, 2018).
Hence it is difficult to meet requirements of each customers at a time. Lately I overcome this
issues and divide my task properly so that I perform one task at a time and try to satisfy each
clients with full potential. As competition is arises so its important to understand role of
consultant. Another main advantage I found being a consultant is that it give opportunities for
constant learning.
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A personal refection on skills that are build over MBA.
This is important for me whatever I have learnt so far in my MBA course. As it is essential to
develop personality traits for effective leader for future. I learned about various modal like
Porter five models, in which it provides detail analysis of various factors of marketing plan like,
Supplier power – It develop a relationship between buyer or supplier between firms and
industry that supplies raw materials. If supplier power is low then company dependency will
increase on supplier. I learned from this power that its essential to maintain relationship for long
term goals.
Buyer power - Through buyer power I understood that it is affected by number of customers an
organisation actually has, and how potential all customers is with its company.
Entry barriers – Power of company is also largely affected by force of new entrants. I
developed understanding that if less money or time is required for a competitor to enter in
market then it will weakens position of established company.
Substitutes – Power of substitutes is also largely affected by this power. I understood that if
large number of substitutes are available in market then it become threat for another company as
it will unable to increase prices for its products or services.
Rivalry - It refers a number of competitors and their capabilities to undercut a company's
position in market. With rivalry power, I acknowledged that it is crucial to examine overall
market before make any investment so that threat of competitors can be reduced.
With help of porter five forces I able to analysed competitive strategy and proved to be an
effective tool for marketing planning. Another important modal I learned VRIN that helped me
to developed my other skills.
Value - It helped me to know my abilities that are valuable for me for example, I have
leadership qualities, empathy and innovative skills that are consider vital and bring value to my
professional life (Vlados, 2019).
Rare - I have skills that are rare like I know two languages and able to write from both hands.
This type of skills are usually not found in others easily.
Imitable - This skills is present in an individual that is easy for others to imitate or have
resources that others easily copied. I have software's that others might copied and utilized it later.
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Non-substitutable - Lastly, with help of this method I look into all factors like rare, value or
imitable and If found any area of improvisation then I should worked on it. For example, my
leadership style is not well-developed so I must improvised in this area.
The other two models are SWOT and PESTLE analysis that I studied :
SWOT analysis is helped to understand my actual strengths and how I overcame with my
weaknesses. I also discovered opportunities for growth and tried to eliminate threats that keep
me looking forward.
Strength - With help of this factor I found my skills, talents and other certifications apart from
my peers. For example, I got my certification in Cisco Certified Technician. I also have good
communication skills that I found useful in my professional course.
Weaknesses – Apart from my strength I have some weaknesses. For example, I found difficulty
in enhancing my social skills. I also have stage fear and lose my confidence when gave
presentation (Gürel and Tat, 2017).
Opportunities - I found that demand for high quality content is increasing and companies needs
more experts in SEO. Hence, I understood about various types of writing skills and tried to
developed as well.
Threats – There are many threats arises in marketing field for example huge number of
marketing professionals makes jobs extremely competitive.
Lastly, PESTLE helps me to understand various essential factors that include following :
Political - I keep on looking and changes over policy in government. Policies issues of other
neighbouring countries also impact on polices of home country. Hence, changes in rules and
regulation can influence my plans for my related job or study.
Economical - This factor helps to understand economy status of my family and also effects my
way of living. Changes in economy status may effect by taxation policies and depends on
inflation or deflation rate (Perera, 2017).
Social - As I have already discovered that I need to improved my social skills, however I'm
honest and trustworthy. I also aware about all social ethics and that helped me to get a better and
long lasting phase in job.
Technological - I was aware about all changes that are made in technological advancements.
Therefore, I always seek for research and innovation.
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Legal – Its essential to look out at current or future regulatory requirements. Laws regarding
health and safety, data protection and tax and discrimination etc.
Environmental - This area includes effect of climate, unpredictable events and weather
conditions. Hence, it is important to cover all aspects of environment before making an plan for
future (Bruijl, 2018).
Reflection on how all these skills help in future.
My aim is to become a successful entrepreneur and also want to enlarge my core area in
technological development. Therefore, I use my entrepreneurial skills that I gained while
working in my family business for few years and provide assistance to those who do not have
enough resources for their business. After done analysation on my overall personality, I have
found that it is essential to build network all over places so that I able to get insights information
. It also helped me to search for good references that also increases my chances of getting
selected for job interview. Corona virus hit economy globally and it is also seen in many
companies as majority of people lost their job. I also experienced same thing while working in
Sydney as a Services Officer for at least nine months but because of Covid I was let go from
company. However, there are great opportunities for MBA aspirants in future as MBA taught me
how digital business work and vital knowledge of business. I also utilized hard skills that I
acquired in my programs, soft skills offering and ability to lead as a team member.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, the above report summarised about how MBA programs helped me to drive
faster and show clear path where I should go in my career. By pursuing this programs, I
developed my language that helps me everyday in effectively manage my work. I communicate
my ideas clearly with others and produce final product as a team with strategies, plans and
processes. This reflective report further discussed about useful model that includes PESTLE,
Porter five forces and SWOT and with help of all these models I identified my overall
personality development like my strength, weaknesses and how I overcome my weaknesses and
threats with necessary skills. PESTLE helped me to understand about essential factors that may
effect my career in future. Lastly, report elaborated how all those skills and abilities help to
shape my future better.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bhaduri, R.M., 2019. Leveraging culture and leadership in crisis management. European
Journal of Training and Development.
Hedberg, P.R., 2017. Guiding moral behavior through a reflective learning practice. Journal of
Management Education. 41(4). pp.514-538.
Guhr, N., Lebek, B. and Breitner, M.H., 2019. The impact of leadership on employees' intended
information security behaviour: An examination of the full‐range leadership
theory. Information Systems Journal. 29(2). pp.340-362.
Oh, J., Cho, D. and Lim, D.H., 2018. Authentic leadership and work engagement: the mediating
effect of practicing core values. Leadership & Organization Development Journal.
Gürel, E. and Tat, M., 2017. SWOT analysis: a theoretical review. Journal of International
Social Research. 10(51).
Vlados, C., 2019. On a correlative and evolutionary SWOT analysis. Journal of Strategy and
Management.
Perera, R., 2017. The PESTLE analysis. Nerdynaut.
Bruijl, G.H.T., 2018. The relevance of Porter's five forces in today's innovative and changing
business environment. Available at SSRN 3192207.
Martin, M., 2017. Porter's Five Forces: analyzing the competition. Business News Daily. 26.
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