REFLECTIVE LEADERSHIP REPORT

Reflective Leadership Report

Reflective Leadership Report

Introduction

The reflective paper analyses the way that the course developed my thinking in terms of leadership learning. Effective leaders set high standards a good leader sets high standards and ensure their continuation. They have the ability to use empathy and relationship management to convey expectations to team members and establish clear objectives.

Week 1 -What does leadership mean to me? The first requirement of myself was to consider the important aspects of leadership. Due to my continuous sporting background, my mind becomes firstly focused on the experiences I had witnessed during my life. The first word, which I associated as important to leadership, was respect. As a sportsman, coach, academic and individual within society, I believe the word respect can be seen in leaders throughout. My sporting heroes such as Martin Johnson, Terry Butcher and Muhammad Ali were all respected within their chosen sport, either through their ability on or off the field. In view of the sporting examples given these individuals have also shown other aspects of leadership that I considered. It would be accurate to suggest that all three sportsmen have inspired someone to pursue a dream or ambition and have acted as a role model to many different individuals lives.

During this task I was able to derive my experiences from non-specific business examples, thus allowing me to view leadership differently from my peers, who predominately based their judgment on previous working experiences or business individuals who have caught their attention, resulting in some individuals failing to determine the difference between leadership and management. Although this approach enabled me to think outside the box, it also restricted me in understanding some of the key issues involved within leadership in a business environment, due to my lack of specific experience. Theory XY

When considering my initial thoughts of leadership through the work of McGregor, the initial characteristics presented within theory Y connected with my original understanding of leadership qualities, by being able to inspire individuals to a team goal or objective.

Week 2: Culture

The second requirement was to consider the importance of culture in being an effective leader.

During this task, I was able to derive my experiences from my learning in cross cultural issues in management. I learnt that the culture determines what kind of control and power is exercised by the leader and how well the subordinates are influenced by that particular style (Daft, 2007, 16-27). While the scholarship of leadership and authority within a particular culture continues, other research looks for patterns among national cultures or common patterns that may be used to analyze, compare, and differentiate national cultures. Associating countries by cultural affinities permits the creation of clusters, thus reducing the number of units to analyze (Moran, 2007, 63-79).

Some of the issues that I encountered were that of assimilating people of various backgrounds into one group. Efforts are needed to construct dimensions of leadership, measure them within different nations, and then compare those measures nation by nation and by cultural clusters ...