Leadership - reflective essay

Introduction

This reflective essay critically examines my past leadership experience in junior college as the assistant home tutorial councillor. During my leadership journey, I faced several challenges and setbacks which resulted in major changes to my perspective of leadership as well as the development of my leadership style. My experiences propelled my growth as a leader and better my comprehension of the environment a leader operates in. Despite not learning leadership and management as a course previously, I was unconsciously but acutely aware that both the situation and the followers have a tremendous impact on the pedagogy a leader should operate with. However, my learning came after repeated mistakes and upon reflection on them. This essay, hence, reviews my leadership within the respective situations and highlight the different approaches I could have undertaken that may have resulted in more effective and successful outcomes.

Experience-Reflection

Description

After entering Junior College, I was immediately thrown into a class full of complete strangers. As everyone was not from the same school previously, my home tutor gave us two weeks to know more of each other before we elect or nominate our class’ executive committee, which comprised of three main roles, the Home Tutorial Councillor (HTC), the Assistant Home Tutorial Councillor (AHTC) and the treasurer. Within the two weeks, we familiarised ourselves and I found that several of my classmates were extremely reluctant to take up the responsibilities and were introverts who feared to speak up and out in front of a crowd. As I previously held leadership positions in my secondary school and enjoyed my experience then, I was more than willing to step up to lead the class. My extroversion and openness to experience were evident to the class and when the election rolled around, I was assigned the role of the AHTC while the role of HTC went to another male classmate. The role of an AHTC includes the support for the HTC, administrative matters and importantly, being in-charge of the Service-Learning Project (SLP) for the class. Due to my personality, I developed to utilise discourse ethics and I enjoy purposeful argumentation to ensure equality and maximise agreeability of the majority. My approach can, thus, be attributed to following an “ends-based” thinking since it follows Mill’s Principle of Utility.

Evaluation

As Sergiovanni (1996) describes, a leadership practice with “a moral dimension based on purpose, values, and beliefs” can change the relationship and work within the team. For the newly elected committee of three to lead the twenty-four students in class, we were tasked with the establishment of our class’ vision, mission and ground rules; these statements enabled a clear, directive goal for everyone in class to comply to and follow and act as motivators as they are created to encapsulate the values and expectations (Darbi, 2012) of the members of our class. Through open discourse, the class reached a consensus and agreed upon “In Studiorum Et Ludis”, Latin for ‘in studies and in sports’.

To me, my motivation was clear, the role given to me was one of obligation and duty, and I strived to fulfil my duties with excellence. Through my leadership journey, I found that the outcomes of others’ positive opinion mattered greatly to me and their satisfaction and recognition heavily propelled my leadership behaviour. Thus, it would my leadership followed a consequentialist ethical theory and I conducted myself through the normative ethics of duty (Beauchamp, Bowie & Arnold, 2009).

At the start of my two-year leadership journey with them, I observed that the disparity between the grades of my classmates was huge and that I attributed it to the formation of cliques that resulted in lowered the communications level between the classmates. Describing my leadership style then, it followed closely to that of a servant leadership approach. Understanding and wanting my class’ ranking to improve, I took it upon myself to send relay messages, and daily homework reminders to ensure that everyone in the class was clear and aware of what to bring each day. If they needed any help, I always ensured that I would avail myself to aid them with anything within my personal means, provided it does not involve anything illegal or that which goes against my principles and the school rules. My commitment to my role took another extreme step when I started taking over the subject representative roles for my classmates who were very passive and neglected their duties.

Separately for the SLP, we had to form a committee to lead the volunteering event for the class. The committee was self-elected, and to me, they should have felt strongly enough to be willing to take up the role, be it strongly to gain the credentials or to help the organisation we worked with. However, when push came to shove, they were very reluctant to form concrete plans and act on them. They most definitely had the potential to succeed and achieve great results as they were very capable individuals who have had volunteering experiences or have held or been holding leadership roles, however, I felt that their readiness to hold the responsibilities and be more actively engaged were lacking. Often, I found myself unable to delegate work effectively to them and unconsciously, I found myself holding the belief of the Great Man Theory, that leaders are born not developed (Nawaz & Khan, 2016). Being in a junior college and as young adults of 17 to 18 years of age, the teachers largely adopted the hands-off method of guiding us. Hence, I felt alone and helpless. It was then when I realised that a conflict of interests was a huge determining factor of the success of a team. It was challenging to grasp everyone’s motivations and it took several group meetings and discussions to get everyone on task and delegate things efficiently. Instead of waiting for things to happen, I decided to be stricter and forced them to turn up for the meetings and participate in discussions, during which I would ask questions to individuals to ensure that everyone was aware of their own roles and what they were required to accomplish by certain datelines. This resulted in increased showings and more efficient work production. I noted that of my followers, according to the Sternberg’s (1986) Triarchic Theory of Intelligence, exhibited the three different intelligence and utilised them differently when we worked on the event. Some utilised their creative intelligence to come up with the idea of having a fundraiser in conjunction with the volunteering event by organising a carwash in school on the Parents-Teachers Meeting Day, some utilised their practical intelligence to reach out to other classes to form partnerships and as advertisements through postings on social media while others utilised their analytical intelligence through the collection of data and stockpiling information to ensure that contingency plans can be crafted in the event of lacking supplies, support and in the event of wet weather conditions. It was highly motivating for me to observe my followers’ actions and be able to reflect positively on them.

Reflection

As an individual, I was a far cry from an authentic transformational leader and was unable to delegate any work to others, solely doing my work for everyone. While my intention for the growth as a class bore fruit and our results improved over the two years, their development as good leaders were impeded as a result of my obsessive neuroticism when I decided to intervene and cover for their responsibilities. Adding on, after delegating tasks appropriately to my followers, I should regularly check on their progress to see if they require any “direction or support” (Tichy & Devanna, 1986). If I were a more enabling leader, I would have been more supportive of their growth and given them the opportunity to complete their own responsibilities. However, as I was an action-oriented leader, the urge to constantly micro-manage my followers led me to be unable to maintain a “hands-off approach” (Foster, 1995) to develop leaders amongst my followers. I should have been a mentor rather than a manager to ensure that they were able to learn and develop their potential. During leadership camps, I discovered and observed that while some leaders were meant for standing in the front to lead, there was another kind of leadership, one that was quiet and supportive. I now believe and support regular self-assessment and reflection to hone my leadership development and will utilise the authentic leadership construct to enhance my “self-awareness, relational transparency, internalized moral perspective, and balanced processing”(Day, 2000) to improve my behaviour and thought process to advance the productivity of the collective team.

I found that I personally thoroughly enjoyed doing administrative work and helping to ensure that things operate smoothly and effectively. Through my short years of experience and that being liked and being respected are entirely different entities. Gaining someone’s fondness can be done through simple words and gestures but gaining a deep-seated trust requires actions that build credibility and recognition for them. Additionally, traits such as charisma can be an instrumental and foundational part of leading (Ekvall & Arvonen, 1991; Nawaz & Khan, 2016), while I was a friendly individual, I was unable to effectively steer the class and guide them. In Tichy and Devanna’s (1986) opinion, to succeed, a leader must adopt a transformational leadership approach to task followers to excel, to engage and push them to be “creative and innovative, and to develop their collective leadership capacity”. I should have been more aware and attempted to inspire my followers through empowering them and through ensuring that the individual objectives and goals of the followers are in-line with that of myself, the team and the class.

As the SLP leader, I was unable to actively engage my committee members and obtain their willing participation and looking back, our conflict of responsibilities was a major factor that contributes to our constant procrastination and slow-moving project. Due to the “inter[-]role and interpersonal conflict” (Novicevic, 2005) that resulted in growing tensions in the team, I often got neurotic as I am someone who highly values efficiency and effectiveness since I strongly believe in team productivity. Reflecting on that, I should have taken time off to evaluate whether what I was doing was suitable for the situation and for my followers more conscientiously. Through experience and personal emotions, I found that I was often unwilling to use coercive leadership to push others to work. I should have adopted the approach of “individualised consideration” (Tichy & Devanna, 1986) to encourage two-way communication and recognise their needs and desires and more effectively utilised the situational leadership theory to act more appropriately to my changed situation and followers. McClesky’s (2014) thought-provoking article on seminal leadership theories led me to think that I could have been less task-oriented and been more relation-oriented to “regulate equal participation”. Additionally, I could have considered the follower maturity and adopted a more initiative stance to motivate them as suggested by Yoho (1995).

Conclusion

This essay reviewed my past leadership experiences and detailed the changes in my personality and leadership style. From being an extroverted individual who often stood on the front lines, I made the conscious decision to take a step back to learn from others and their mistakes. Every leader has their own basis for acting the way they do, and it is largely attributed to their past experiences, as mine are. There exist several criticisms for each leadership method and style as well-established for four of such by McClesky (2014), but the importance of learning them still retains due to the relevance for development and learning on how to cover-up the flaws of each. Given the opportunity and the right time, I would most likely continue in a leadership route as I find it intrinsically enjoyable and satisfactory.

Word count: 1980 words

References

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