Reflective Leadership For Business Environment: A Case Study

Overview of Leadership Quality and Challenges

Discuss about the case study Reflective Leadership for Business Environment.

Business environment has become more complex in the age of globalization and advancement of technology. Businesses are trying to expand their reach beyond their home countries so that they can tap into new potential markets. This is the only way to increase profitability for them as well as increase market share. But in order to achieve that there has to be an experienced pool of talent in the organization who has good leadership skills. Leadership from the top management is something which drives the growth of any organization towards achievement of its vision and mission.

This work is an effort towards understanding my leadership traits while working in the hospitality industry. I am in the hospitality industry where people grow through creating relationships and I have been no exception. I have certain qualities which have helped me grow in my organization and this article gives an account of such attributes with special reference to the various theoretical frameworks. The different elements of my leadership traits have been elaborated in the ensuing discussion (Sterling, 2003).

I work in the hospitality industry where one has to have a caring and understanding nature to service their customers. I am presently working as the supervisor in a restaurant wherein I am entrusted to manage all restaurant staff and schedule their activities, assist all guests and provide requirements for all meals. My role involves engaging with the customers and try to pursue a long-term relationship with them in order to drive repeat sales. I also supervise the concierge service for the restaurant and other marketing aspects of the growing brand. My first priority is that they can have a satisfying experience while dining out with friends and family. It is a challenging task since people from different walks of life visit restaurants and they have different tastes as well. For example, once a guest asked that they didn’t like the soup that had been served. I talked to him and asked what kind of taste he wishes to have. I assured him that he will get that and went inside and explained the chef. In the end, I was able to give the customer what he wanted. I understand that people from different cultures have different tastes for the same thing. I have also had to deal with staff problems. Sometimes the customers don’t like the behaviour of the staff, if there is such an issue I apologize to the customer myself and afterwards I counsel the required person. I make him understand that different people have different ethical standards. Some might consider your behaviour nice some might say you were rude, so we have to mould ourselves according to that. My job role demands that all compliance standards are maintained at the restaurant, I also need to supervise the kitchen and ensure optimal quality of all the products. The role also demands that I collaborate with the management to review all employee performance, monitor all guest requests efficiently to achieve all customer objectives and also monitor inventory levels of different items. Overall I have been successful in satisfying my customers with the help of my knowledge and they generally provide a positive feedback about their experience with me (Bono and Judge, 2004). Although it has been a challenging role for me but I have handled it well through distribution of tasks within my colleagues and giving the jobs to persons who are good at it. I have developed this skill of identifying people with particular capability and assign them task accordingly. I believe in my colleagues and support them in every aspect so that they can perform up to the mark. These skills have helped me in achieving success in the job that I do.

Key Aspects of Leadership

In this business one needs to keep the staff motivated, you can’t give them big bonuses and keep them happy. I try to follow a hands-on approach. As I am the supervisor, I encourage everyone that we should celebrate staff birthdays, encourage camaraderie and social events, welcome feedback and allowing mistakes to happen because only through them the staff can learn. I always request the top management to conduct training programs for the employees. Supervising a restaurant is not only about looking that the dishes are properly made and the customer is satisfied. The management depends on me for key insights. I keep track which items in my menu are going into red, i.e. not contributing too much of sales, monitor food wastage. I also try and identify regular customers as ensuring them a good experience would give the restaurant a good word of mouth publicity.  Additionally, regular customers tend to spend 67% more than normal customers. (Dehn, n.d.)

I have mastered the art of absorbing criticism and going back to rectify the problems as per customer needs. This increased level of customization has helped me in retaining customers for the restaurant and also led to increased profitability through repeat customers. My leadership attitude can be considered to be a mix of transactional and transformational one wherein I have grown in my profession through creating meaningful relationship with my customer and colleagues. They in turn have helped me in overcoming any adverse situation during tumultuous times and emerge as the leader that I am today. These reasons lead me to believe that the transformational and transactional leadership is most appropriate to describe my leadership traits since the interaction with other stakeholders of the restaurant have been a win-win deal for them and me too. I wish to build on these capabilities and grow in this industry so that I gain further knowledge and become self-sufficient to start my own business. The self-introspection that has been conducted in this article has gone a long way in understanding the way I work and improve on different aspects of my work. This is a brief note about the reflection I have on my leadership capabilities with respect to the theoretical frameworks already existing in the literature (Neck and Houghton, 2006).

I work in hospitality industry as a supervisor in a restaurant and deal with lots of customer everyday with whom I have been able to forge a healthy relationship. I attribute this success to my leadership qualities which enabled me to achieve such great success in such a short period of time. The various stakeholders with whom I have worked have all given positive feedback and praised the way I try to solve individual issues with care and customize everyone’s needs. These I believe to be certain qualities which resonate with the transactional leadership wherein one’s capabilities or efficacy increase as and when the counterparty feedback is taken and acted accordingly. Partners have always given a good feedback about my work. There has been a bone of contention about my rapid rise in the organisation. My partners feel that the work allocation that I had started doing should be done by my manager. According to them, the Manager should allot work to the supervisors. I concur with them but I have also told my manager that the supervisors should have freedom to take up each other’s task if anyone of them is overladen i.e. there shouldn’t be strict boundaries between supervisors as it would decrease efficiency of the restaurant and bring an atmosphere of non-cooperation.

Stakeholder Review

Overall, I have deliberated upon the feedbacks given by my partners to my manager about me distributing work to other supervisors. My partners have given me a good appraisal which is a testimonial to the empathy shown to them by me. I have decided to work on this aspect of my personality. To be true leader, I need to walk with everyone and inspire them not make them insecure due to my skills. I have decided to mellow down my personality and be approachable by all and stop dividing the work by myself and ask my manager to do so. (Drue et al. 2011).

There has been an earnest effort put in by various researchers throughout the world to analyse the attributes and characteristics of great leaders. These analyses have shaped the way we look at leadership and particularly in this work where I have tried to map those theoretical models into my work practice (Danny, 2005.). Few of the relevant concepts in the existing literature are listed below:

Contingency Theories – The concept is primarily an elaboration of the Trait theory and emphasizes on the point that a single concept is not enough to interpret the attributes and thoughts of an inspirer. Quality traits are developed as and when they face challenging situations and its needs to change as per the demand of the situation. So this theoretical model is more concerned with the environment in which a leader operates and also the kind of people with which he interacts. A common notion in this theory is that the leaders are successful when their subordinates or other stakeholders react to the actions initiated by them or people around them respond promptly to their call for certain actions or activities (Bass and Bass, 2008).

Transactional Leadership Theory – This concept tries to establish the fact that perception and attributes of an inspirer is moulded by the interaction that is established among the person and his disciples. It represents a meaningful interaction among the two and elaborates about a mutually advantageous relationship. Rationality is a concept which is derived from economics and stress on the fact that one should undertake activities that increase one’s usefulness and lower the wasteful actions. This theory is particularly relevant with my job description and the way I go about it in my daily tasks. The type of work that I do is concerned with interacting with a lot of people as well as managing a lot of workers wherein I transact with them in a meaningful way. As I have established good relations with them and also help them in their difficult times, they also reciprocate when I need their help or loyalty (Cooper, Scandura and Schriesheim, 2005).

Justification of Leadership Theories

Transformational Leadership Theory – This is a theory whose bedrock is established on the fact that a good leader has to forge a beneficial relationship with his subordinates and other stakeholders which is the case in my leadership attributes. Understanding others’ emotions and trying to bring out the best out of them have been the major touchpoints for me as a successful leader and a dedicated teamworker. The helpful nature has helped me to forge good and meaningful relationships with both internal and external customers in my organization who eventually enable me in fulfilling the concerned task by overcoming all the hindrances involved in that operation (Abraham, 2002).

Conclusion

The discussion in this work is concerned with my leadership attributes and therefore can be thought of a reflective essay. In this essay I have successfully enumerated my capabilities which are reflective of my leadership initiatives and the growth I have achieved in my work through my personal traits. The essay critically analyses every aspect of my leadership ability particularly through the lens of numerous theoretical framework. At last it is justified to mention that the work has tried to develop a theoretical framework wherein the leadership capability has been mapped which can also be utilised in similar other exercises related to other academic researches.

References

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Bono, Joyce E.; Judge, Timothy A. (2004). Personality and Transformational and Transactional Leadership: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89(5), 901-910.

Cecily D. Cooper, Chester A. Schriesheim and Terri A. Scandura . (2005). Looking forward but learning from our past: Potential challenges to developing authentic leadership theory and authentic leaders. The Leadership Quarterly, 16(1), 475-493.

Cecily D. Cooper, Terri A. Scandura and Chester A. Schriesheim. (2005). Looking forward but learning from our past: Potential challenges to developing authentic leadership theory and authentic leaders. The Leadership Quarterly, 16(1), 475-493.

Christopher P. Neck, Jeffery D. Houghton . (2006). Two decades of selfâ€Âleadership theory and research: Past developments, present trends, and future possibilities. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21(4), 270-295.

Scott Drue, Jennifer D. Nahrgang, Ned Wellman and Stephen E. Humphrey. (2011). Trait And Behavioral Theories Of Leadership: An Integration And Meta-Analytic Test Of Their Relative Validity. Personnel Psychology, 64(1), 7-52.

Dehn, K. (n.d.). 6 Leadership Skills Every Restaurant Manager Must Have. Retrieved from Planday: https://blog.planday.com/6-leadership-skills-every-restaurant-manager-must-have

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