Leader is someone who gives commands to the groups, organization or others or a person who guides the group (Kruse 2013). Whereas, follower is someone who takes support and admires a certain person like a leader or may be admires the set of ideas. Bystander is someone who does not involve in an event; he just stays away and absorbs the ideas. There are certain people who have influenced me as a leader and the person whom I admire most is my father and I consider him as my role model. He played his role as a leader in both professional and personal life. One such instance from his life that I would like to share is once he saved lives of ten girls who were being kidnapped by few men for human trafficking. He was travelling in train at night when he found a scared little girl who was shivering in fear, was unable to speak properly and was hiding beneath his seat. He comforted that girl and tried to calm her down. Gradually he came to know from her that some men kidnapped almost ten girls from different cities or places and were about to sell those girls to different people. My father wanted to save all ten girls from those men. Thus, he made a plan to rescue them and with the help of some passengers who were travelling in the same compartment he rescued all those girls and those criminals were caught by the police. After hearing the whole incident I felt that my father is a superhero, he is my role model and from that day onwards I tried harder to be more like him.
There are certain incidents when I played a role of leader in my school and college days. Once, in school I was chosen as a leader of my team where we were given to organize an event for some children who were underprivileged. I gathered all my team members and took everyone’s opinion regarding the procedures to organize the event. I tried to understand and accept each opinion of my team members and then we made a proper chart and distributed it to the members to make the work easier. I divided all the responsibilities so that nobody feels neglected. I supervised each and every work and the responsible team member and tried to help them as much as possible. To my surprise, my first work as a leader was successful and we managed to organize the whole event without many obstacles. However, it is known that success comes with failure and I have failed a lot of times as a leader because sometimes I become over confidence and forget to take other’s opinion. There are some bad qualities that I have such as over confidence, time management problem, sometimes I don’t think strategically and face problems in communicating with people who have different beliefs and thoughts. I am trying really hard to change this kind of attitude, trying hard to overcome my bad qualities so that I eventually become a good leader and people would remember me for my good leadership quality. Through this development course I want to overcome my negative qualities.
I have always liked the concept of transformational leadership because it inspires people to accomplish unexpected results. Transformational leader is someone who inspires his team and encourages their members to develop as an individual and be a part of the team to achieve the goals (Braun et al. 2013). There are various dimensions of transformational leadership like idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration (Braun et al. 2013). Howard Schultz, the chairman of Starbucks is an example of transformational leader who has made an impact on his organization through his leadership quality (Lemus et al. 2015).
Through my past experiences I have realized that sometimes I face problem in time management because I try to do everything perfectly which I think is my plus point but in this course of perfection I forget about the time and ultimately lack behind. Hence, from this course of leadership development I would like to learn how to manage time and also do my work perfectly within the assigned time of my work. The time management helps in increase of working procedures and several strategies can lead to effective time management which includes critical path analysis, well planning and others (Goetsch and Davis 2014). Then there are times when I don’t think strategically and I just do my work in general which leads me to failure. I would also like to improve my capability so that I can see the broader prospective of business or my work so that I don’t only focus on what to do and how to do and can also think about the reasons. I would also like to improve my ability in communicating with others so that I can influence people more and can inspire them in working.
The group consisted of six members Yasmin, John, Sam, Cavin, Hafeez and me. We were doing a presentation about student service at University of Greenwich and we had three face to face meetings in library regarding our presentation. Fortunately in our group nobody is a bystander who just stays aloof from the group and does not even offer help in case of emergency. Each member of the team shares their opinion in establishing the aims of the organization. In case of any problem faced by the team each member shares their strategies to prevail over the problem. Every member tries to recognize, analyze and resolve the problems faced by the team. Each and every member is liable to all other members of the team and everyone is appraised for their work and contribution in the team. While making any decision regarding organization or the project opinions are taken from each member and team members cooperate with each other to prepare the best course of action for the project or organization. Each member gives their outlook in deciding how resources are allocated regarding the priorities of the team. The opinions of each member are given same importance when they share their perceptions regarding any situation faced by the team. Each member shares information with one another on the team so that work becomes easier and all members can work more efficiently.
The Apollo Syndrome is a phenomenon where teams of extremely skilled individuals perform poorly jointly and this phenomenon was discovered by Dr Meredith Belbin (Lowman 2015). This syndrome happens due to certain flaws in the manner the team gets operated (Lowman 2015). The team members spent a huge amount of time in fruitless debate because they try to convince other members of the team to accept their own view and they try to point out other’s weaknesses in others’ arguments which lead the discussion equal to the deadly hold (Gershkov and Schweinzer 2017). The difficulties in decision making also lead to The Apollo Syndrome. Team members tend to act on their own without trying to know what other members are doing and they also lack confrontation leading to The Apollo Syndrome (Gershkov and Schweinzer 2017). In my team there is no sign of The Apollo Syndrome as my team members do not fulfill any criteria of having this syndrome. I have tried to lead my team members and convinced them about my judgment regarding this project and thus negotiated the meeting.
The project is about the student service in University of Greenwich which would elaborate about the services the University offers to their student. They offer Health and medical services so that student can stay and study happily and healthily and can get treatment directly in case of illness or any medical emergency (Knight and La Placa 2013). Professional counseling is also offered by the University of Greenwich to help the students to deal with their problems or any sort of issues (Knight and La Placa 2013). In case of disabled students or students suffering from dyslexia expert guidance and support are provided (Knight and La Placa 2013). The University also provides ongoing advice, information and guidance to help in development of the future career prospects of the student (Knight and La Placa 2013). I was interested and motivated in this project because I can give my inputs in improving students’ service so that it can help students to prosper more on their career. I do not want to be a bystander in this team and observe what others are doing. I want to be a leader, an influencer who would practice his leadership skills and communicate with people to convince and influence my opinions and thoughts. At the same time I would also like to listen and understand the thoughts and judgments of other members of my time and not forcing my thoughts on them. I am not much aware of everyone’s interests and motivations in this project but after three meeting I can say that all my team members are almost on the same path. There are no conflicts between the team members because nobody wants to emphasize themselves much by ignoring other team members. The members of my team work collectively and support each other’s beliefs and judgments. All members of my team want to achieve a good grade together and not individually.
Through this project I have tried to improve my communication skill but was unable to improve much because the thought process of my team members is not that different from mine. Hence I did not have to give much effort in influencing them and they were easily convinced by my opinions. However my problem regarding time management was solved because in these three meetings we have estimated the time to complete our project and we are confident to complete our project in the estimated time without any failure or imperfection. Although I am in the process of developing my leadership skills by working on my imperfections and improving them I still want to modify my developmental goals. I want to increase my knowledge because a good leader should never stop learning and he or she needs to improve their skills. I can increase my knowledge by attending several industry related conferences or attending some learned sessions with my team members and mentors. Workload management is another aspect of leadership development because it is important for a leader to allot tasks to its team members according to priorities and setting proper deadlines so that nobody stays under huge pressure or nobody feels that they are ignored. Leader should allot tasks according to the skill of an individual member so that the work goes smoothly without any conflicts and obstacles. Through this project I have realized to modify my developmental goals and improve myself to become a better leader.
Through my experience of team project and theory part of the course I want to be more organized and strategized. All the way through interacting with others and working together on the project, presentations and feedback as well as tutorial discussions and lectures I have come to this conclusion that I would definitely like to follow the skills of a transformational leadership and want to be a transformational leader so that I can transform people’s lives and can motivate and inspire them to work more efficiently. In this style of leadership a leader works with his subordinates or team members to recognize required change, inspire them to improve their job performance. The transformational leader becomes a role model for their followers as he or she raise their interest towards their work and understand their strength and weakness and allot the tasks accordingly to boost their performance (Ruggieri and Abbate 2013). There are four components to transformational leadership which are idealized influence, inspirational motivation, individualized consideration and intellectual stimulation (Braun et al. 2013). I want to develop all these components in me to become a transformational leader because I want to be a role model for other people, encourage and motivate people. I would also like to know about the needs of my followers or team members so that they feel more comfortable to share their problems regarding their work and I can help them to work in a well-organized manner. I would like to challenge them to become more imaginative and resourceful which would higher the levels of their performance and would eventually work on my favor. Through my project and course I have observed that I am able to interact with people who do not walk on my shoes which means who does not has the same beliefs and thoughts that I have. I am capable of influencing others and can convince my opinion through sharing each other’s thoughts and understanding it. I am also able to understand the strengths and weaknesses of other members and assign the tasks accordingly. All these experiments through my development course have modified my thought process and hence I want to be a transformational leader.
References
Braun, S., Peus, C., Weisweiler, S. and Frey, D., 2013. Transformational leadership, job satisfaction, and team performance: A multilevel mediation model of trust. The Leadership Quarterly, 24(1), pp.270-283.
Gershkov, A. and Schweinzer, P., 2017. Dream teams and the Apollo effect.
Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B., 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
Knight, A. and La Placa, V., 2013. Healthy universities: taking the university of Greenwich healthy universities initiative forward. International Journal of Health Promotion and Education, 51(1), pp.41-49.
Kruse, K., 2013. What is leadership. Forbes Magazine, 3.
Lemus, E., von Feigenblatt, O., Orta, M. and Rivero, O., 2015. Starbucks Corporation: Leading Innovation in the 21st Century.
Lowman, G.H., 2015. The impact of team social role performance on team cohesion and team performance.
Ruggieri, S. and Abbate, C.S., 2013. Leadership style, self-sacrifice, and team identification. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 41(7), pp.1171-1178.
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