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Essay / Leadership experience, completion of my group projects and my individual work in class
Table of contentsLeadership and leadership stylesTasks and relationships outside the group membersStrengths and weaknesses of the leaderPersonal decision-making and group climateTeam effectiveness and what I learned I want to share with you the lessons I learned throughout the process of completing my group projects and my individual work in class. I really enjoyed this semester and had the chance to work with some really great people. Without my teammates, I would not have been as successful as I was this semester. I also learned a lot about myself and my leadership style. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayLeadership and Leadership StylesThe V-Leader simulations taught me many concepts that I had previously overlooked during my interactions with team members and subordinates. One of these lessons is to pay close attention to non-verbal communication as it is a major part of communication; he is estimated to be 93% non-verbal. The way I began focusing on nonverbal communication was by paying close attention to someone's body language as I delivered a message. Paying attention to body language allowed me to tell how Oli and the other characters in the V-Leader simulations were feeling, such as whether they were bored or frustrated with the message I was delivering. This allowed me to make necessary adjustments in my delivery to achieve the desired effect, which in the V-Leader simulations consisted of completing the appropriate task. The group project allowed me to truly understand my leadership traits. Throughout this course, I was able to use all of my qualities to help me tackle each task that was given to me and my team. This course is designed in my opinion to force students to use all the leadership traits: intelligence, confidence, charisma, determination, sociability and integrity. This is accomplished by the way the course is designed from group projects and presentations to individual exercises. The entire course pushes you to find your inner leader alongside you. The traits I used the most throughout this course were intelligence, sociability, and charisma. The reason I think these leadership traits are used the most is because we had a group project. The group project really challenged me to use my social skills to complete the tasks at hand. After completing the Leadership Traits Questionnaire, I found that I scored fours and fives in most categories, but I had a few threes. The categories I had three in were: Confident and Conscientious. The reason I scored a three in these categories is because sometimes I have doubts about a decision I am about to make and will seek reassurance before making the decision. Sometimes I speak before I really think seriously about the question. It is in these two categories that I will try to improve as a leader. Basic leadership skills are divided into three main categories: administrative, interpersonal, and conceptual. While taking the leadership skills quiz, I found that I was ranked very high to high in all categories, which I was happy to discover. My strongest category was interpersonal relationships. I scored a 29 in this category, which is considered very high. MyNext highest category was conceptual, for which I scored a 27, which was also on the very high side of the questionnaire. Next, my weakest category was administration, for which I scored a 24. I agree with these scores, I feel like my weakest leadership skill would be on the administrative side . The feedback I received during my group feedback sessions on the projects matched how I rated myself on the questionnaire. I plan to try to work on my administrative skills and I appreciate this course for bringing my attention to my shortcomings. My leadership style is a democratic leadership style, I really strive to treat everyone fairly and allow them to do their job without my interference. I liked allowing my subordinates to work independently. The reason I like this form of management is because it's how I like to be managed. The democratic management style also has many advantages: it leads to higher levels of satisfaction, commitment and cohesion of group members. When I took the leadership styles questionnaire, I ranked the democratic style first, the authoritarian style second, and the laissez-faire style last. What I found interesting in the scores where I got a 25 which is high on democratic issues and a 22 which is also high on authoritarian leadership issues. This discovery proved to me that you may not be one or the other, but a blend of several leadership styles. I think having a good mix will serve you well in different situations. Tasks and Relationships Leadership Tasks and Relationship Styles got me thinking about how your current position within a company can affect the type of leadership style you have. The reason I say this, if you work in manufacturing or logistics, both of which are production environments, it will be difficult not to be task oriented. The reason I feel this way is because, in my professional experience, I really care about building relationships within teams because I feel like it builds camaraderie and trust. The problem is that right now I'm in a very task-oriented environment, which requires me to be task-oriented as a leader. A perfect example of my point is the group project, the real job as a leader was to make sure everyone was clear on what their tasks were and when they needed to be completed. I feel like my group members and I developed good relationships with each other, but that was because everyone completed their tasks and in doing so everyone built trust. A perfect example of creating a vision was when my group and I decided how we were going to construct our presentation. We came together with shared values to implement the plan that would allow us to complete the presentation in a way that would allow us to achieve our vision of getting a good grade for the presentation. I scored very high on the leadership vision questionnaire, I feel like it's one of my strongest attributes. Being able to see where my group in my company can improve is almost second nature to me. Using my vision in V-Leader allowed me to focus on how to make my points to participants. Creating a constructive climate is one of the most important tasks of a leader in a group or company. My group in this project hada great climate, in fact the best climate I have ever experienced in a group project for any educational course I have ever taken. The reason is that we were all working towards the same goal, getting a good grade in this course and growing as future leaders and I hope we achieved that. Additionally, I think my group members were good at clarifying norms and providing structure and through this we were able to build cohesion. The project itself also allowed us to feel rewarded throughout the experience because instead of receiving a single grade for the entire project, we had to submit multiple pieces at different times. This allowed us to be rewarded throughout the process because we could see the grades and know we were doing well, which pushed us to strive for more success. At V-Leader, I feel like creating a constructive climate was crucial, you had to know when to green or red click on an idea or a person to get the desired results. This is a lesson that took me a while to learn and is why I feel like my scores on the mocks have slowly increased. If I were to continue doing V-Leader mocks, I think I would constantly improve on building and the climate I would need for my key goals to be supported. Outside of Band Members This is one area where I believe as a band we have had no issues with anyone. was on board and working towards the same goals. In V-Leader, the team didn't agree with some changes at first, but it seemed like with each mock, the team was more receptive to the ideas I presented. If there had been an out-of-group member on my team, we would have tried to allow them to contribute their ideas and listened to them. This would have made them feel like we were receptive to their ideas and hopefully made them feel included. Once they felt included, it would have empowered them to take action, making them a productive member of the group and allowing the group to be stronger and move forward. A group or company will face many obstacles, as a group leader or leader within a company you should not create your own obstacles. My group faced a few obstacles in our efforts to complete this project. One of these obstacles was sometimes the uneven workload, my group handled this very well in my opinion. An example of this is we didn't have an even number of chapters to cover, so I decided to take on the extra chapter and it wasn't a problem. But I want the one who did this, at one point or another, every member of the group stepped up and did a little extra and that's why we succeeded. In V-Leader I saw Oli do this, he took on extra assignments because he thought it would help the company succeed. Every group or business will sometimes need people to step up and do a little extra to get the job done. The way you make sure everyone is motivated to do a little more is to have clear goals and instructions. These crucial elements will keep everyone motivated, allowing the company to avoid obstacles. How a leader handles conflict is very important because every group or organization will face some sort of conflict, and how leaders handle it will be vital to the success of the company. In my group, we had minor conflicts about how we wanted to handle a task or what we wanted to focus on, but it never had a negative effect on the group. The reason why conflictsnever had a negative effect on the group is that we practiced a collaborative style of conflict management. This allowed us to come together to find the best way forward. We have always been able to manage conflicts professionally. My Conflict Styles Questionnaire reinforced my thoughts on conflict management. I was strong in this style of conflict mediation. V-Leader gave me great examples of how to handle conflict between group members. Sometimes you have to understand what is happening in a conflict. I think I gained good experience performing the V-Leader simulations. Throughout this project, I believe I have demonstrated ethical leadership. Every decision I made was based on good character, good values and honesty. I truly feel that all of my batchmates would agree that I demonstrated ethical behavior. If a leader doesn't have good ethics, I don't believe they will be successful because it will be difficult to get people to follow you if you are unethical. You must have strong character to lead a team. After completing the ethics chapter questionnaire, I discovered that my two core values are: family and happiness and that suits me. I think these two values will drive me to succeed because I want my family to be comfortable. Leader Strengths and Weaknesses Let’s start with my weaknesses. After reviewing the leadership strengths questionnaire, I scored poorly on the question about being the glue that holds people together. . This issue has not been addressed in any feedback sessions, but I feel that sometimes I can focus on my tasks and not engage as much as I could with my group members. This is something that I will try to work on in the future in my professional career and in my academic career. My lowest score was Doer, which is probably true; I came in as a moderate in this area. Sometimes I can be slow to start, but once I get started, I always push tasks and projects across the finish line. The feedback my group received during my leadership phase was pretty good. We received a high rating on the presentation and plan. So the fact that I was one of the co-leaders of this phase is a good reflection on my leadership. However, I would still like to work on communicating better in a group and also on being more organized. The reason I feel like I need to work more on communication is because I might go a few days without checking in on where my groupmates were at with their tasks and if maybe they needed help. This could potentially lead to discovering there is a problem too late to fix it. Luckily this wasn't the case, but it could have been if I had been in a weaker group. Additionally, organizational skills are not my strong point and I continue to work on these skills to improve. Now my strengths in leadership, I scored very high on the leadership questionnaire for being an innovator and an analytical mind. I agree with those who feel that I consider myself a strategic thinker and able to find ways to solve problems and change processes. The only compliment I continued to receive from my group during the feedback session was how I always managed to complete tasks and how positive I always was in our dialogue sessions. This group project was very rewarding for me because I was able to use my strengths to help my group get a very good grade, and I also met three wonderful people all.