Leadership Qualities And Skills: A Reflective Learning Journal

The Leader/Taking the Lead

Discuss about the Leadership Qualities and Skills.

Leadership is a very important aspect in work life. There has been increasing attention towards the leadership qualities which is sought in the field of work as well as research. The success of work depends on the leader and how it leads people to accomplish the goals. Success in leadership requires leaders to have the appropriate skill set to become a leader and maintain those leadership qualities within itself. A leader should be competent enough to manage people subordinate to him or even the peers to achieve the target. A leader should have an employeeality which is praised and adored by everyone for which the self-perception of a leader is very essential. If a leader is not sure of him then he will not be able to lead and manage successfully. Self-perception of a leader comprises of the factors as what a leader thinks of himself, confidence, abilities and physical appearance and how an employee looks upto himself.

The following Reflective Learning Journal focuses on the leadership qualities and mainly the self-assessment of a leader which makes him distinct from the others. The following reflective journal comprises of three main characteristics of leadership quality which are how an employee becomes a leader, Honey and Mumford Learning Style which is related to learning and its outcomes in the process of becoming a leader and the last one is the Andragogical learning experience and its evaluation. The discussion will elaborately analyze these three entities related to leadership. 

An employee is always in conflict in his mind about himself. There are many self-doubts inside an employee which restricts him to perform and value himself above others. There is a sense of inferiority which an employee is often prone to which keeps him from doing things which is in his capability (Bolman and Terrence 2017). To assess the potential in an employee it is very important to keep testing the limits. To break these shackles of self-doubt and to do proper self-assessment one can use the tool of Red and Green Negotiation Game. In this game an employee understands the ways and means in which one can interact with himself, interact in a team and assess his capabilities of performing a task by interpreting it and orchestrate an end to it. In this game there comes a situation when an employee has to take the lead and become a leader of the tem which is a tough task filled with responsibilities. An employee often panics in this situation as it has the accountability of him as well as the team in context to a task assigned to him (Calancie et al. 2017).

The Andragogical Learning Experience and Evaluation

Being a team member to do a task is different than leading the team to accomplish a task. It makes an employee more vulnerable to the situation and there exist many variables which need to be taken care of. The moderators of this game have a close eye on the work done by each member which includes the leader and the person who is playing the role of a leader gets scared about the critical analysis of his intelligence and working competence. The leader starts to think that if he is not able to accomplish the task then he may be considered and intellectually inferior and will be rejected (Carpenter 2017). An employee is not always comfortable to address a group of people as whole and a lot of self-doubts creep into the persons mind making him nervous and he comes directly under the purview of public judgement. There is a Boyatzis’ Self-direct Adult Learning Model which helps an employee to understand the psychology of his self-personality and it also takes out the reasons that why an employee feels and thinks that way. If an employee has an acumen to become a leader from the beginning but has not got any exposure in that field this tool can help them to shape their career and help them to grow professionally their entire life (Carter 2017).

In order to lead in this game, an employee needs to have a good understating of the process of the game, its aims and rules. One a leader along with his team understands the process of the game then he can move ahead to know the practicalities of the game and how they can work together to complete the task. If the team is collaborative then it gives immense amount of confidence to the leader as it is the first blood in the game. The game will move ahead as the other teams will try to compete with each other and each team leader along with the game moderator will facilitate the points which they have observed (Cunningham 2011). At the end, leaders will be facilitated with the points of strengths and weaknesses which they have shown in the group dynamics, task delegation and establishing a mutual understanding among its team members. The entire exercise is based on the notion of making leaders aware of their self-perception which is a key factor in getting success in the corporate world. If the learning agenda of the game is considered, the game exposes leader to the process of facilitation and leading of their team which brings out the leadership qualities and identifies the weaknesses of the leader as well (Darling and Victor 2011). This game tries to remove the negative perception which an employee develops for himself in his mind to ensure that it can be mitigated and get over with to make a successful leader with all its qualities of leadership to help in career building.

The Andragogical learning is the science of learning and understanding through a practical approach for adults which they carry it for their entire lives. It is mainly based on the humanistic and self-directed methods of learning which also contains some teachers and facilitators. It is also term as “adult education” in broader perspective (Delegach et al. 2017, pp 724-740). According to the following reflective learning journal an employee is introduced to the Andragogical learning experience which is different from the pedagogical learning methods which is conventionally used for teaching through blackboards, memorization and recitation of course content and then passing a test. Most people fail in their experience of pedagogical method of learning as the real potential of an employee to succeed in life is neither taught nor tested. People who have experienced the pedagogical method believe that it is a passive learning and the retention of knowledge in that system is very less and limited to time (Goleman et al. 2002). As there is not practical application of the learning outcomes of the pedagogical method it seems to be irrelevant in the real world. People believe that the real retention capacity of an employee is developed when there is a participatory object in the studies and discussion which keeps the information learned in practice.

Teachers find it easy to convey their knowledge with more success if the students have participated in learning which is provided in the Andragogical learning method. They also feel confident in their approach as they have also done the same thing practically when they were learning the content, whereas the case would have been different if there was no element of involvement when they have learned it (Green et al. 2017, pp 486-493).With the changes in learning practices an employee can observe change in his behavior which can ensure development in the teaching methods and even in learning by doing the practices of each information and of the content to be learnt. This would highly raise the confidence of an employee and it would make him believe in himself and his abilities to pursue a successful career as a leader.It can be said that there was a mentality in every person that he can do things on the basis of the knowledge acquired by him through studying and passing the exam which was a pedagogical approach (Johnson 2017). But when the learning pyramid approach is taken into consideration it can be realized that it was the wrong way which was taken in the before practices.

To succeed as a leader the Andragogical approach is more appropriate and efficient learning technique which takes the practical way to make things learn in an adult. There is a Kolbs experimental learning cycle which states that every week is a new beginning to the learning experience which can be facilitated through workshops.In this particular approach an employee is exposed to new learning experience in which he learns about the strengths and weaknesses about himself and he can draw conclusions on the basis of the learning outcomes (Jones 1996). An employee can also apply the feedback received from this approach to improve its working capabilities. An employee who starts learning makes mistakes in the beginning but the point is to convert those mistakes into their strengths by learning from those mistakes. If an employee is weak in coordinating a team or he is not capable of managing a team and its members the Andragogical approach can help them to identify the mistakes and the lacunar which they are facing and to mitigate them in real real-time so that a learning process can be accomplished (Kurvitsand Marina 2013). Evaluation of the previous mistakes and their application to improve the performance of an employee can be very instrumental in developing leadership qualities which will be to self-assessment technique.In the beginning an employee will face serious implications as he will be open to public justification but that same problem will develop a sense of confidence in the person if the weak areas are stressed upon (Massagli et al. 2017, pp 154-158).

Another learning style which includes the self-assessment of an employee is honey and Mumford style of learning which is based on the theory of Kolb. These particular learning styles have certain preferences which are activist theorist pragmatist and reflector styles. This learning style is a natural preference of an employee who wants to enhance its personality to become a leader. Using the Honey and Mumford style of learning an employee can become smart as he can understand better learning opportunities (Northouse 2017). Best learning style makes learning very easier more effective and very enjoyable. The basis of this learning style is hit and misses. An employee adopting this style can choose between the hits and the misses which he encounters during the learning process. This learning style also facilitates the expansion of learning bandwidth which is made from the experiences which an employee derives for his own benefit (Sarabdeen2013). The advantages which an employee can accomplish is that he can become an all-rounder can increase his versatility which is the result of an all-round experience. Some of the environments of learning to which an employee can be exposed to using this learning tool are formal spontaneous planned and informal (Shaw 2008).

Using the Honey and Mumford learning method an employee can enhance his skills of learning and processes. Does learning method increases awareness as to how an employee can learn and it also paves the way for the method of self-scrutiny and development. Since the capacity to learn is the Gateway to every success factor this method provides the exact same system of learning with the help of which an employee can develop his character and personality holistically (Shutak et al. 2017).Now coming back to the definitions of the learning styles and their attributes the first style is of the activist. Activist people are those who believe in learning by doing things which day want to learn. They have an open minded approach two words learning in which they do not mind to get their hands and feet dirty if the outcome of which install on something. The activities which are involved in this theory are brainstorming, problem solving, group discussions, puzzles, competitions and role play (Smith 2011).Another style is of the theorist which are more inclined towards learning the theory behind every action. This is style contains concepts models and facts which are relevant to the learning process. The following style contains synthesis of information and drawing logicalconclusions to the things which are learnt. The tools used in this learning style are models, statistics, stories, quotations and background information.

The learning style of the pragmatist revolves around to put the information which is learnt into practice. This is style is more concerned about the real world implementations of the knowledge which is acquired (Wang et al. 2017, pp 34-48). This style believes that the Abstract concepts and games which are used for learning are useless if there is no way to put those ideas into implementation. This style advocates experimentation trying new methods techniques and theories to check if they really make a difference. This is style includes case studies discussions problem solving sessions and it needs time to make sure that learning can be applied or not. Reflectors are those who learn buy thinking and observing. They use paired discussions, personality questionnaires, feedback, interviews and coaching to make sure that things are learnt. They also collect data to make their own perspective about the learning outcomes (Wlodkowski et al. 2017).Reflectors approach is used to build up rules and guidelines with the help of some question as which are related to one’s personality or can even be for self-assessment of an employee. The answers or the results of these questionnaires are measured through different perspectives until an appropriate conclusion is not reached. These perceptions and conclusions are used to establish factual experiences which are further used for the development of an employee’s personality. Using these styles of learning cumulatively an employee can gain a lot as he can get a holistic idea about personality development in context becoming a leader.

Conclusion

It can be concluded from the above reflective learning journal that self-assessment in making a leader is the key. Having a successful career in the corporate world requires high level of competence in an employee especially when he has to play the role of a leader. Managing oneself and team a member collectively at the same time requires a certain skill set in an employee which makes him the leader and a distinguished personality from rest of the world. There is a huge requirement for self-assessment and self-proclamation for an employee to become a leader as everyone is filled with lots of doubts and uncertainties about oneself. There is a need of confidence building inside an employee which may be developed through certain learning styles. In the above reflective journal the learning styles of honey and Mumford as discussed in details. It can further be concluded that using Andragogical learning experience and its evaluation in synchronization with other learning styles can make an employee competent enough to become a leader. As, the need of leadership qualities has increased over the years these learning styles can be very handy for an employee in a comprehensive career development. Thus, it can be said that adult learning techniques play a very important role in shaping up careers of many working professionals in a positive and comprehensive way. It can be established that cognitive learning with the use of practical modes of information gathering is more appropriate than pedagogical methods of learning.

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