Self-Reflection on Entrepreneurial Skills and Teamwork (BUS101)

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SELF REFLECTION

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................. 3
TEAMWORK................................................................................................................................... 4
BUSINESS CHALLENGES..................................................................................................................6
GIBB’S REFLECTIVE CYCLE..............................................................................................................7
LESSONS LEARNED....................................................................................................................... 10
AREAS TO BE DEVELOPED............................................................................................................11
CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................... 12
REFERENCES.................................................................................................................................13
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List of Figures
Figure 1: Mind Mapping Tool.........................................................................................................6
Figure 2: Gibb’s Reflective Cycle.....................................................................................................7
List of Tables
Table 1: Action Plan..................................................................................................................... 10
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INTRODUCTION
The entrepreneurial skills are related to the innovation and the creativeness of an individual
and for the purpose of improving the creativeness and learning new methods, a person must
undergo the self-reflection process (Boud et al., 2013). The method of analysis of self, regarding
the behaviour and the qualities which a person have or acquired during a period of time is
termed as self-reflection of that person. Self-reflection gives rise to the possibilities of exploring
a person’s capability to learn new things which can help him or her in creating and developing
new and fresh ideas which can further lead to innovation. In this report, the self-analysis will be
carried out in order to confirm the abilities and skills to establish an entrepreneurial venture.
Creativity is the key to the innovation, as it makes a platform for the ideas to realize
(Oosterbeek et al., 2010). The person with a creative mind always keeps thinking and tries to
realize the ideas that came in his/her mind, those ideas may be of any kind such as business
ideas or problem-solving ideas. Creativity and the innovation management is the bridge which
connects the ideas to the reality. The creativity takes place whenever there is a personal need
of discovery which gives rise to the innovation.
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TEAMWORK
As an entrepreneur, I have to work in coordination with my team during which I have faced
many challenges as well as got many opportunities. As I am the entrepreneur and the idea of
innovation was mine, I am the leader of my organization (Amianto et al., 2011). In order to
make the operations of the organisation successful and effective it is essential that I must
manage the relationship with my employees and the relationship among the employees as well,
which will result in efficient teamwork. There are following actions which must be conducted by
me in order to develop the teamwork of my organisation to make the organisation valuable and
effective:
 As the leader of my team, I am making various decisions to strengthen the team
coordination of my employees. Various practices for the interaction management is being
carried out by me such as conduction of extra-curricular activities at the workplace so that
the employees can know each other personally which will create a familiar feeling among
them.
 As far as challenges are concerned I have faced many issues regarding the collision of the
opinions of the employees. It is difficult to give equal importance to the perception of each
and every employee (Nambisan and Baron, 2013). Not every employee is ready to accept
the changes which are made by the leader of the organisation and the tough task is to
manage the decision making and interests of the employees.
 For managing the team it is necessary to maintain the collection of efforts which are made
by the team members of the organization. I have been managing the team since my
assigning to the fundraising project. The effectiveness of the team can be managed only
when each and every member of the team is being satisfied.
 As an entrepreneur and the leader, it is very necessary for me that the employees of the
organization must trust the leader, even if the odds are against the leader. The trust of the
employees toward their leader is the building block of the effective teamwork and
management.
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 Segmentation of the project and its delegation to the selected employees of respective
abilities and skills is also an effective part of the team management. It is important to know
about the capacity of each and every employee as according to that the delegation of the
responsibilities can be done.
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BUSINESS CHALLENGES
The business challenge can be termed as the difficulties and hurdles which are faced during the
operations of the organization. In my case, the main challenge which I faced during the
fundraising project is to convince the investors to invest in my mission vision. There are many
approaches which can be used for idea generation and innovation. For the sake of
understanding, the mind mapping approach is used below:
Mind mapping
The mind mapping technique is used to organize the ideas that are present or gets generated in
one’s mind. The use of mind mapping helps in realizing the idea into an innovation.
Figure 1: Mind Mapping Tool
Source: [Burch et al., 2015]
There are following characteristics of mind mapping given below:
 There is a basic idea around which the concept revolves as a central image.
 The key themes originate from the basic idea as the branches (Burch et al., 2015).
 Every branch has its own keyword from which it can be recognized.
 There are other branches also which are termed as twigs. Twigs are the branches where
less focus is given (Betta et al., 2010).
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 All the branches are connected to each other and create a nodal structure.
GIBB’S REFLECTIVE CYCLE
Figure 2: Gibb’s Reflective Cycle
Source: [Thomas, 2018]
Description
As I am working on a project of fundraising for the business program in order to which I need to
form a team of the employees who can help me in projecting the idea of the business in an
effective manner to the investors so that I can get the maximum funding for the operations of
the business venture. The problem is that the team which I have made for this task does not
have any past experience in this regard. Along with that, to convince the investors I need an
effective strategy that must satisfy the expectations of the investors and also the clients’
interests.
Feelings
As I am an entrepreneur I have not dealt with such type of situations before in which I have to
convince someone for doing something for me or the organization, it is kind of a new thing for
me to do so. In addition to this, the team which I have selected also does not have any past
experience in this matter so, this task proved to be a difficult task for me and my teammates.
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Also, this task is beneficial for us in order to deal with such situations in near future. Hence, I
decided to put in my maximum possible efforts for the sake of the organization.
Evaluation
As the preparation of the fundraising project was going on and I was managing the overall
duties and responsibilities, I came to know that I am good at managing the team and the task
assigned to the team. This enabled me in guiding and motivating my teammates throughout the
conduction duration of the project. Also, I faced some problems in the calculation of the
expenses which are required for the management of the organisation. It is also found out that I
need to improve my time management skills. On the contrary, I have effective decision-making
skills.
Analysis
The analysis cleared some points where I failed as well as points where I got succeeded such as
I focused more on myself which is not the right thing to do when working in a team as a leader.
I must have monitored and analysed each and every member of the team in order to get the
effective results of the fundraising. Along with that is also cleared that I am not good at
convincing and marketing, as my main area of interest is creativeness. The findings also clear
that my decision-making skills are sound and I can make effective decisions in opposite and
critical situations.
Conclusions
During this project, I also reached on a conclusion in which I noted that I have some strongholds
as well as some weak points which can be proved to be deciding in the development and
growth of my career. The business challenge which I faced has given me the opportunity to
learn new abilities which I do not possess.
Action plan
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For removing the weak points which I have evaluated I have made an action plan which will
help me in getting rid of my weak points.
Table 1: Action Plan
Qualities
to be
developed
CPD
Activities
Required
Resource
s
Time
duratio
n
Measureme
nt of
Success
Monitori
ng time
period
Communicatio
n skills
It includes
communicatio
n with my co-
workers and
higher
dignitaries
Opportunitie
s to deal with
the clients
and business
partners
1 month The time when I
will be able to
convince the
clients and my
superiors
Once in a
month
Knowledge of
various
languages
Joining classes
of different
languages
Financial
resources and
time
2 months The situation
where I will be
able to
communicate
with people
speaking
different
languages
regularly
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teamwork To know about
the interest of
the team
members
Opportunitie
s to work on
different
projects with
the same
team
3 months The situation
where I will be
able to manage
the different
projects
Once a week
Marketing
strategies
Reading books
and doing
research on
marketing
essentials
Internet,
money and
time
4 months when I will be
successfully
applying the
marketing
strategies
once in a
month
Source: [Author’s Work]
LESSONS LEARNED
During the self-reflection process, I have learned many lessons which can help me in developing
my career as an entrepreneur. The innovation and creativity is the main part of the
entrepreneurship but along with that, there are also some factors which I have learned through
the self-reflection. The account of learning is presented in points below:
Communication techniques
While convincing the investors for the fundraising program I have learned the importance of
the communication skills. As I saw that even if a person has knowledge regarding any subjects
with the evidence and the knowledge, the most important thing is to be able to convey our
thoughts and findings to the concerned people. As convincing is the part where the true
effectiveness of an entrepreneur is being checked and verified. The communication techniques
also include the sound relationship with the coworkers and the higher dignitaries. The
communication must be systematic and the language used while communicating must be easy
to understand and polite as the investors or the clients may be from any background.
Teamwork
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I have also learned the importance of the teamwork as I was to give a presentation to the
investors and I noticed that a single person cannot alone complete the task on an organizational
level, there has to be a support of the teammates. As I am weak in statistics and presenting the
budget of the projects, I must select the teammates with the different skills and the skills that I
do not possess, it reduces the burden from a single person. In my, as I was giving the first
presentation and the teammates I chose were also new to the task, it was quite difficult for us
to convince the investors.
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