Reflection on course paper

REFLECTION ON PAPER REFLECTION ON PAPER The on leadership and for that matter the chapter on resonance, leadership and the purpose of life came to me more as a professional experience and interaction than an ordinary academic interaction. Generally, I went into this course with a mind set of developing a number of theoretical ideas that were going to be useful in undertaking various examinations and tests in my academic study. However, once the course started, the various readings that were considered, writings that were undertake, and discussions that were had proved that I was going to get more than I expected. Even though my academic ambitions for the course were satisfied, much more were going to be gained for my professional involvement and this is what this reflection paper seeks to bring to bear. As part of the reflection paper therefore, I am going to discuss and scrutinize some new ideas and perspectives that were learned as part of the readings, writings and discussions on the course that was undertaken. Generally, the ideas and perspectives are rooted in the principles of resonance and leadership that was learned. Later, way in which the ideas gained have helped in bringing about a professional transformation to me shall also be treated. The very first new idea that I have learned from the course is rooted in the principle that world-class performers work hard to create their dreams (Tabachnick and Fidell, 2001). Commonly, people tend to have a notion that success comes to people by accident or through luck. They hardly realize that success is a well calculated plan that is executed when key strategies and structures are put in place (Byrne, 2011). As far as structures and strategies are concerned, they must be born out of an abstract notion of positivism. Through the course, it has been learned that this abstract notion of positivism is what world-class successful people manifest as dreams. In order words, I have come to realize that there cannot be success when there is no dream. This is because dreams represent a mental plan that these great achievers work around to realize. The essence of dreaming is therefore to make the abstractions that are developed realities (Fulmer and Conger, 2004). Dreams help in defining a timeline as well as scope of what we want to achieve. This is said because once a person has a dream of what needs to be achieved it helps in determining the length of time that must be invested in the achievement of the dream. What is more, the dreams help in defining the areas around a particular phenomenon that must be achieved. This way, it is easier for the dreamer to measure the achievability of his dreams. The second idea that was learned from the course is based on the principle that leaders who resonant and help others resonate can produce extra ordinary results. What this teaches in a very broader scope is that leadership is a shared responsibility and that for people to succeed as effective leaders, it is important that they become concerned not only with their personal development and welfare but with the development and welfare of all other people within their control (Catalano, 2003). Indeed, from the course, I learned that the only way that a leader can expect excellence from his followers is when the leader puts excellence in the followers. To this end, it should not be sufficient for the leader to be the only one who can resonate but that he should be able to have an urge that transfers his form of resonance to all people within this control. The studies showed that one important reason the leader must be the one who influences his people with his own kind of resonance is that it keeps the leader in control and ensures that the climate and rhythm of the organization is in accordance with the mission and vision of the leader for his organization (Bycio, Hackett and Allen, 2005). Having gained these two key new ideas from the course, there are a number of ways that the ideas gained are going to help in my professional involvement. In the first place, the need for setting goals will be incorporated into my entire professional dealings. This is because at the professional level, dreams can be equated to goals that must be set ahead of any major program or project that the organization seeks to undertake (Galton and Eysenck, 2009). As often as possible, this lesson is going to help me in determining the key determinants of a good organizational goal, where the need to make goals specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound is going to be set. In the second instance, there is going to be a major boost to my professional involvement whereby the need for human capital development is going to be taken as a very serious and important aspect of organizational leadership. As realized in the course, each person is uniquely gifted to undertake some kind of specialized role within the organization. As a form of transfer of knowledge, I am going to ensure that I develop a modality at work with which the independent competencies of workers are identified and subsequently developed through the use of human capital development models. References Bycio P, Hackett RD, Allen JS. (2005). Further assessments of Bass’s (1985) conceptualization of transactional and transformational leadership. Journal of Applied Psychology, 80, 468–478. Byrne DE. (2011). The attraction paradigm: New York, NY: Academic Press. Catalano P. (2003). The relationship between transformational and transactional leadership and job satisfaction in an aerospace environment. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences, 63(7-A), 2612–2711. Fulmer RM, Conger JA. (2004). Growing your company’s leaders: How great organizations use succession management to sustain competitive advantage. New York, NY: AMACOM. Galton F, Eysenck HJ. (2009). Hereditary genius: London, England: Macmillan Tabachnick BG, Fidell LS. (2001). Using multivariate statistics. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon. ABSTRACT ON FINAL PROJECT Leadership continues to remain a very important aspect of any organizational and human development. This is because is it through leadership that a group of people or an organization gets insight and direction as to the path they want to trend unto success (Balkundi and Harrison, 2006). The final project was generally dedicated to identifying the relationship that exists between leadership in theory and leadership in practice. This means that the project admitted that as much as leadership may be a phenomenon that can manifest itself in an everyday situation, there is also an aspect of leadership that can be found in through learning. The project established that the best way to consolidate the learning on leadership that is done is by ensuring that the lessons learnt are exemplified in the actual act of practicing leadership. It was indeed noted that in the day to day execution of duties at the workplace, there are several challenges and successes that we record. As to whether a leader would ensure success or failure with the challenges that come up depends largely on the strategies that the leader puts in place in dealing with the situation. On a personal note, there a leadership story that took place in my organization, based on both a challenging and success story. As presented in the course work, the leadership story had to do with my leadership philosophy and the treatment of employees. This was in the very first months that I took up leadership position in the organization, where I was relatively new. There were employees I had gone to meet but these were supposed to serve under me as followers. I decided to operate a democratic leadership style so as to ensure that there was much openness and involvement in my leadership as possible (Balkundi and Harrison, 2006). However, this was going to be more of a close ended democratic leadership style. This is because as much as I allowed general involvement, there were specific people I selected to be my close confidents who would be part of higher level decision making before disseminating information to others below the organizational chart. Unaware to me, these confidents had created their own niche and cloud of leadership where they abused the opportunity I gave to them. After each round of leadership meeting, these people had their own meeting and disseminated to the others information that was based on their own ideas and perceptions. This situation actually brought about retarded organizational goals because the climate of the organization was not reflected in the central direction of me as the organization’s leader. In effect, I was no longer in charge of my own organization (Gastil, 1994). Based on careful investigations, the cause of the problem was realized. In direct relation to the course lessons, this leadership story shows that a particular leadership style cannot be said to be either right or wrong, unless it is presented within a particular context of issue (Baas, Dreu and Nijstad, 2008). Even though the democratic leadership style has generally been embraced as a very effective leadership style, it turned out not to be effective because of the way and manner in which I was using. After identifying what was going on, I decided to make amends sharply. Basically in relation to lessons in the course, I decided to practice an all inclusive democratic leadership style. This meant that instead of giving attention to only a selected few within the organization, I decided to give all people within the organization equal and undivided attention. Since that bitter experience, I started practicing an all inclusive democratic leadership in which there was constant meeting at the lower rank where all members of the organization were aware of the goals and decisions of the organization. Due to the need for there to be an all inclusive leadership treatment, there was the need to empower all people within the organization and also ensure that my personalized resonance was adopted by all people within the organization (Stogdill, 1963). Eventually, the fruits of generalized empowerment within the organization were ripe and the success was enjoyed by all, leading to organizational growth. Indeed, this is a manifestation of the importance of shared leadership and the impact it can bring the organizations in general. References Baas M, De Dreu CKW, Nijstad BA. (2008). Ameta-analysis of 25 years ofmood-creativity research: Hedonic tone, activation, or regulatory focus? Psychological Bulletin, 134, 779–806. Balkundi P, Harrison DA. (2006). Ties, leaders, and time in teams: Strong inference about network structure’s effects on team viability and performance. Academy of Management Journal, 49, 49–68. . Gastil J. (1994). A meta-analytic review of the productivity and satisfaction of democratic and autocratic leadership. Small Group Research, 25, 384–410. Stogdill RM. (1963). Manual for the leader behavior description questionnaire: Form XII. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Bureau of Business Research, College of Commerce and Administration. First instance Second instance Results