Reflection On People, Culture, And Contemporary Leadership Essay.

By the end of this workshop you will be able to:

• explain the concept of trait based leadership
• describe how leaders are impacted by motives and needs
• describe how emotional intelligence contributes to leadership effectiveness
• identify the issues surrounding the debate as to whether leaders are born or made
• explain the influence of heredity and environment on leadership
 

This reflective journal is based on my experiences during the workshop ‘People, Culture and Contemporary leadership’. I have been exposed to various aspects of people, culture and contemporary leadership hence I am reflecting upon those to extract the real learning from them.  My tutor told me that reflecting upon whatever I have studied, is the important part of undertaking postgraduate study to reflect learning for future development. This reflective practice is an attempt to identify how the acquired learning can be applied in my future professional and personal life (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). Besides, I will reflect on the theories I learnt during the workshop, specifically for recruitment and talent management. I will also analyse the importance of online resources accessed by me. I will narrate my experience with the industry guest during Week-6 who has demonstrated the application of theory in the real world. Moreover, many in-class activities in which I participated like discussions and cognitive exercises provided a life-long learning along with the assessment feedback which I have received following my performance during the assignment-I. Subsequently, I will also reflect upon psychometric tests those I have completed, especially for leadership and interpersonal traits.

In this way, on the basis of (Bolman & Deal, 2017), I will utilise my weekly diary that I have used for chronicling my experiences either positive or negative while attending the entire workshop.  Thus, based on (Greenberg & Baron, 2008), I will convert those diary entries into a reflective journal which will assist me to answer many questions related to my future leadership style.

In this paragraph, based on my knowledge (Huczynski et al., 2013), I will describe about the theories I have learnt during this workshop, especially those for recruitment and talent management. With the help of some case studies about Apple, Westconnex and Telestra, I have learnt recruitment as well as recruitment management theories likes HRM planning, succession planning, creating jobs, employment branding, external talent attraction and many more (Cooren et al., 2011). I have learnt these theories about talent and recruitment management during week-4 and week-5.

Through accessing (Borrego et al., 2013), I learnt that talent management is the process where I can help a person in performing his or her current role as well as allow them to make advancement to their upcoming role in career. Learning theories such as pervasive learning comprising formal, informal and social learning have been discussed in detail during the workshop (Zheng et al., 2010). Besides, on the job learning was the learning which allows all of us to manage our talents while working on an on-going job (Colquitt et al., 2011).

Theories learnt for Recruitment and Talent management

Moreover, for the recruitment I have learnt strategic recruitment theory which links recruiting activities to the organizations’ culture as well as business strategy (Jones, 2013). During this workshop, I learnt that a person can be fit into the recruitment process in three ways like job fit, organization fit and environment fit (Maxewell, 2013). According to my perception based on learning acquired from this workshop, external talent acquisition is also a major way of talent management. It can be achieved through attractive advertisements, educational institutions, recruitment agencies, employee referrals, online talent attraction, outsourcing talent attraction as well as executive leasing (Maxewell, 2007).   

In this paragraph, I will discuss as well as reflect experiences related to the online resources which I have accessed for completing the tasks assigned during the workshop like videos, podcasts and textbook chapters.

During week-I, workshop’s topic was driving organizational performance through their people; hence for an activity Zappos I watched a video on YouTube and integrate learning from that video into my activity. The link of the video was:

Moreover, for another activity based on measuring people’s contribution, I read the textbooks written by Jac-Fitz-Enz and Wiley for gaining the relevant knowledge. Furthermore, YouTube video on employee turnover was watched by me for the activity purpose, the link is given below:

Besides, a video on future of HR available on YouTube helped me to understand the role and responsibilities of HR in an organization. The link is given below:

During week-II, I have accessed the following links for understanding examples of organizational culture: 

Moreover, during an activity based on atlassian espoused values I accessed the video link given below:

Likewise, during workshop, I accessed one video related to deutsche post and the link is as follows:

Hence, from all podcasts, videos and textbooks I learnt that digital technology has an important role in the area of education and it can revolutionise the whole world in order to have a smarter future of global education system (Rothwell, 2010). 

 In this paragraph, I will describe about the industry guests who came during Week-6 and demonstrated the application of theories described in the real world. There were three guests who visited our workshop venue and told us about the practical implementation of the module’s theories, frameworks and learning. The guests’ names are as follows:

Guest ____, Guest____ and Guest ____. Based on (Zheng et al., 2010), I learnt that guest faculties are those important experts which have contributed a lot to teaching as well as learning critical concepts of any relevant area. Likewise, the guests who have arrived at our place were having enriched knowledge about people, culture and organizations (Jones, 2013). Hence, I learnt how organizations’ performance is governed through their people, how can an organization develop a healthy work culture as well as employee engagement for the overall development of the firm. They demonstrated real talent acquisition through telling about their own experiences related to recruitment drives, interview for jobs and HR activities (Zheng et al., 2010). Moreover, with the help of listening and analysing real incidents of the guests’ life, I learnt the real time implementation of the theories and concepts which we have learnt till week-5 during the workshop.     

Online resources accessed during the workshop

In this paragraph, I will reflect my learning, feelings and evaluation on in-class activities conducted during the workshop. There were many activities from which we have learnt a lot, they are as follows:

Week-I: Zappos, Metrics, Measures, Employee turnover and Operational HRM.

Week-II: Atlassian espoused values, Types of Culture, Deutsche Post, Change, Are You Engaged and Concepts.

Week-III: Minimising Bias in the Workplace, human resource planning in action, Tefal Vacuum Cleaners, Creating Jobs, why work for us and Hiring.

Week-IV: Rating Scales, Ineffective Performance, Reward Preference, Reward Anomalies and Performance Conversations.

Week-V: OTJ Learning, Retention, Talent Matrix, You, Promotion Debate and Journal Reflection

Week-VII: Leadership Roles, Leadership, Types of Followers, Do before Next Week, video and Journal Reflection

Week-VIII: Numi Tea, Emotional Intelligence, Motives, Gender & Leadership and Personality

Week-IX: Leadership styles, Strengths Based Leadership, Reflected Best Self, Standing True or False, Journal Reflection and Dimensions of Leadership.

In this way, from all above mentioned activities I learnt that activities are used to make workshops and sessions interactive as well as engaging for the students and tutors (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). From leadership activities, I found a great leader in myself which I have realized and invent during the workshop’s activities only. Through cognitive exercises I felt that brainstorming is a kind of warm up for our brain to work effectively and efficiently hence cognitive exercises are essential for any workshop for warming up the brains of the learners as well as it keeps us mentally healthy.   

Before this workshop, I used to think that I cannot be a leader and hence I never took initiative to become a leader in my class or any other scenario. Moreover, through HRM activities I identified the importance of HRM in any organization’s success. Overall, I discovered servant and transformational leadership styles suitable for my future career development.

In this paragraph, I will discuss over my assessment feedback which I received after my performance in the assignment-I. Taking feedback is a good practice as it enables one to see him or her in the mirror from the perspective of improving for the future career development. I was very happy to see that I got passed in my assessment-I as I got an overall grade =3/5. I got Performance related initiatives as 2.5/5 and Culture-related initiatives 2.5 /5. Furthermore, in Engagement related initiatives I got 2.5/5 and in recommendations as well. My tutor gave me a feedback that my paper was having the potential of a good paper; however, there were significant gaps in terms of addressing questions. I appreciated myself after getting a good feedback about my English written by me in the assignment. However, there were some minor professional writing mistakes like usage of capital letters at appropriate places. My tutor told me that my paper was having a good flow as well as the concepts were developed effectively as per the requirements. The important comment from all feedback was that an issue with the clarity of the aim of my paper has prevented me from receiving a strong grade. Although I identified a company, which was Nova Systems, and provided their background, yet I failed to describe about their major initiatives. The tutor’s feedback was suggesting me to avoid a generic sense about the concepts. Additionally, an inadequate citation of academic resources also contributed to my bare pass situation. 

Industry guests during week-6

In this paragraph, I will discuss about the psychometric tests which I completed during the workshop, especially for leadership as well as interpersonal traits. The test helped me a lot to assess my leadership capabilities and interpersonal skills for the evaluation of my learning effectiveness in near future. Besides, during the test I got to know that leadership is a shared responsibility. An effective leader always exchange purposes and possess the qualities like a right to say no, absolute honesty and joint accountability.  

With the help of psychometric test I could analysed my personality with attributes like reasoning, emotional stability, warmth, dominance, social boldness, liveliness, rule consciousness, sensitivity, vigilance, abstractedness, privateness, apprehension, openness to change, self-reliance, perfectionism and tension. While assessing my leadership attributes, test also provided me a way to analyse my interpersonal traits mentioned above. I got an average score of 2 for the all traits which are mentioned above for the psychometric test parameters. In this way, post test results I was seeing my personality in terms of the scores which I have received after the test. These scores of the test will help in growing my personality from so many aspects so that my overall development can offer limitless career opportunities in future. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, I have successfully written the reflective journal based on learning acquired through the people, culture and organizations workshop. The reflective journal has mainly highlighted the entire learning in six ways include theories, online resources, industry guests, in-class activities and psychometric tests. For writing this reflection, I re-assessed my feedback post submitting the assignment-I, which has gave an enhanced learning about the made mistakes in past. I learnt that how to reflect, practice, evaluate and learn in order to improve for the future career development. Besides, guest lectures provided a life-long learning regarding practical implementation of the theoretical frameworks which I will utilise in my future action plans. Finally, the workshop has been proved an exclusive way of learning for the future career as well as personal development to become a successful leader. 

References

Bolman, L.G. & Deal, T.E., 2017. Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership. London: John Wiley & Sons.

Borrego, M., Karlin, J., McNair, L.D. & Beddoes, K., 2013. Team effectiveness theory from industrial and organizational psychology applied to engineering student project teams: A research review. Journal of Engineering Education, 102(4), pp.472-512.

Clarke, I., 2017. Can You Assess & Manage Your Organizational Risk? [Online] Available at: https://linfordco.com/blog/organizational-risk-assessment-management/.

Colenso, M., 2012. High performing teams in brief. London: Routledge.

Colquitt, J., Lepine, J.A., Wessaon, M.J. & Gellatly, I.R., 2011. Organizational behavior: Improving performance and commitment in the workplace. London: McGraw-Hill Irwin.

Cooren, F., Kuhn, T., Cornelissen, J.P. & Clark, T., 2011. Communication, organizing and organization: An overview and introduction to the special issue. Organization Studies, 32(9), pp.1149-70.

Goetsch, D.L. & Davis, S.B., 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence. New Jersey: Pearson.

Greenberg, J. & Baron, R.A., 2008. Behavior in organizations. London: Pearson.

Huczynski, A., Buchanan, D.A. & Huczynski, A.A., 2013. Organizational behaviour. London: Pearson.

Jones, G.R., 2013. Organizational theory, design, and change. London: Pearson.

Maxewell, J.C., 2007. The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership: Follow them and people will follow you. London: Thomas Nelson.

Maxewell, J.C., 2013. Be a people person: Effective leadership through effective relationships. NY: David C Cook.

Rothwell, W., 2010. Effective succession planning: Ensuring leadership continuity and building talent from within. UK: Amacom.

Zheng, W., Yang, B. & Mclean, G.N., 2010. Linking organizational culture, structure, strategy, and organizational effectiveness: Mediating role of knowledge management. Journal of Business research, 63(7), pp.763-71.