The concept of leadership as defined by Bratton (2020) is the ability to influence others and subordinates to acknowledge, understand, and undertake the needs to be fulfilled and the process to facilitate this fulfillment keeping in view the adoption of collective effort and practices along with maintenance of clear and transparent communication and relationship. Leadership has been viewed as a holistic approach that involves social interaction and the relationship between leaders and followers.
An in-depth analysis of leadership styles at a personal as well as the professional or social level is evident in knowing the individuals’ way of behavioral aspects maintained with the others. The traits of leadership have been identified and divided into various styles of leadership such as democratic, autocratic, consultative, delegative, laisses-faire, etc. (Yurkl 2013).
The reflection has been demonstrated here as a tool to critique and evaluate my style of leadership in the workplace. During my graduation, I was a part of the sports and recreational team with around 20 people as the member students of the department of sports and recreation, managed by a sports head. The sports head was effective in his tasks but could not go extra miles in attracting more population towards the area of sporting and recreation. Since I had a familiar and popular image in the institute, the head designated me as a student's head where my major role was to manage the member students and also promote the events and programs among students.
Sports and recreation become a vital part of accelerated learning among students, and hence promoting the same was a crucial task. Hence, for promoting the same, I made myself responsible for carrying out the routine activities of developing effective participation of member students in the task based on the continuous suggestions and involvement of them in the project.
I was provided by the Sports Head, the responsible opportunity to promote and grab more and more students towards the annual students' meet. I, as a student leader, had to assess the effective handling of issues, concerns, and challenges that come in way of promotional strategy. Hence for effective management of activities, I made sure to convey a routine meet for sharing of thoughts, ideas, opinions, and recommendations by each member student. I made sure that everyone gets equal space and a chance for sharing their opinion and action plans to develop the project as a group effort.
Although, being new into the field of the practicality of management, we could not provide lucrative follow-up on every single process, but made a vision to developing a more secure and united team spirit to get things done easily with no involvement of conflicts.
This developed a sense of unity and harmony among the team members and led to the development of empowered, passionate, and actionable visions and feelings in the work practices.
My experience, as a team leader or Student Head, had helped me then to the importance of a leader and efficient leadership skills for the sake of the overall success of the team and its objective achievements.
The overall efforts taken by each team member brought about successful implementation and accomplishment of the promotional activities of the event.
I experienced that as a leader, I was an influential person for the members of the department. Also, I was appreciated by the Sports Head for maintain and successful accomplishment of the activities in addition to managing the negative and dark-sides aroused midway.
This positive outlook and appreciation made me think about my style of leadership. I overall assessed myself and my way of managing people and tasks and I found that I characterized myself in following.
This provided me with the solution as a possession of a Democratic style of Leadership in myself.
I further came into the derivation of my strengths and weaknesses as a democratic leader in order to assess the reasonable sides as well as the loopholes in the traits and practice that come into force as a democratic leader. Analysis of strengths and weaknesses assists the internal analysis of capabilities and deficiencies (Gurel 2017).
I derived myself on the scale of a personal swot analysis to seek out the plus and minus of my behavior, personality, and leadership patterns and their influence on people. It helps me find the following strength patterns in myself and also to identify the plus and minus of the democratic style.
As defined by Gurel (2017), strengths highlight the advantageous areas of target that assist its value-creation in the specific arena and hence serve as a strategic framework of project planning and management. Targeted the leadership development plan, the reflective incident demonstrated has revealed the following strengths of self.
Strong communication
As a Head, I was able to develop, manage, and maintain effective and affirmative members as workforce leading to the strong and constructive establishment of communication among team members. It further assisted in the framing of a constructive, supportive, and collaborative style of work in the team.
Overall engagement of team members
I was also observed to be responsible for the carrying out of routine meetings, assessments, and also a consultative solution seeking for problems arising in the project management process. This characteristic facilitated the healthy and overall engagement of members within and also provided a transparent guide towards goal approach.
Efficient problem-solving capabilities
I took into the approach, the whole team into consideration while assessing and seeking effective solutions and suggestions for the issues and complexities arising from the project plans. This led to the identification and development of the structure and collaborative problem-solving capabilities of the team even in my absence.
Comprehensive obstinance of results
I was responsible for the successful completion and accomplishment of the promotional plans. The democratic style of leadership helped me in maintaining creative and innovative workarounds and hence the development of master and unique strategies of marketing. This led to achieving the overall outcomes in a successful manner catalyzed by the team members and efforts.
Hence, the democratic style of leadership in me comforted me and the team in empowerment, constructive communication, and engagement, a sense of belongingness and position in the team, supportive decision-making, etc. (Gaffney 2018, ).
Weaknesses define the internal deficiencies and lack of competent standards in the development and management of a target area (Gurel 2017). The plan takes into consideration the self-assessment of individuals in the area of leadership.
I was able to seek out a list of positives of the style of leadership I possess, however at some point, I found that these strengths might turn into dark sides and the foremost benefit can become a drawback.
Lack of potential resources in the team
I was able to find out a difficulty in regular team connectivity and grouping in order to assess the routine meetings on the problems and solutions. IT made me feel the increased efforts in the team to unite. Also, in reality, not all but only a few candidates in the team were resourceful in the provision of meaningful suggestions and opinions.
Time-consuming process
I also analyzed that there was a greater consumption of time in the overall management, routine communication, decision-making processes, and discussions that were inherited in the project and hence took a long way to deliver and function the assessed practices.
Domination for individual goals
I was able to assess that during the management and process tenure, the social decisive patterns utilized raised the bar for groupthink, and hence hampered the focus for individual goals by raising the zone for group goals. In the case, if any member had a self-plan to complete by the time, was observed to be hindering continuously because of the group pressures and goals to be assessed.
These weaknesses the higher utilization of time and efforts in the process management and also creates a dependency on members for the succession of the same (Chukwusa 2019).
The project and event management in the university aided and experience factor in my management and leadership assessment. This helped me to conclude the dos and don’ts in the eventual applicability and practice of leadership management. However, I have experienced that democratic leadership style, though it raises few demerits in the approach, has created the best scope of leadership as compared to the others. The democratic leadership style provides the space to each performing individual towards self-assessment, self-actualization, and also self-development in the field of work and profession. It not only provided me the scope for learning but also to each member student of the team to learn and experience from the same.
This thus reflected me a higher sense of utilization and development of a democratic style of leadership in all possible areas of profession and work properly and flexibly in comparison to any other style of leadership and management in the workplace.
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