Experience Reflection For Effective Management And Leadership Essay.

A portfolio is a collection of documents, images, and reflections that you assemble in order to demonstrate what you have learnt. You need to show your creativity in constructing your portfolio and the document needs to be professional in appearance. Your portfolio should include a minimum of 12 activities, a reflection from each workshop topic, at least 1 activity from that topic and an overall personal reflection on what you learnt.

The best learning for an individual is through its own experience and could be helpful for others to learn from others experience. For this, reflection through experience would be helpful, which will provide insight into the experience in order to gain learning from the same and understanding the criteria to improve. The course was inclusion of 12-week study or experience, which the report will focus further. Moreover, the understanding of aspects learned from the activities, where the main purpose would be to understand the ability to work in a team, and area to improve for a better experience in future in case the similar situation occurred. For the reflective part, an appropriate structure would be used, which can make the presentation better and easy to understand the learning part out of the same. For this report, the reflection would be presented with the help of model that is Gibb’s reflective model, which include five stages for a better understanding of the learning from experience (Dosser & Nicol, 2016).

Initiating the competition of activities through the first week, it includes the workshop for the understanding of strategic mindset and four capstone skills, which include the theoretical skills, applied skills, practical skills, and reflective skills. This included the theory of knowing, doing and being in order to improve the reflective practice and effective management and ability to manage the competitive advantage. Moreover, this included the study of the major difference between strategic thinking and linear thinking. There were three major components of strategic mindset that is system thinking, reflection, and reframing (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2000).

Week two workshop was the focus over the competitive advantage, this includes a model of competitive advantage, which includes the transformation of resource and individual capabilities through distinctive competencies along with the differentiation or the cost advantage to create the value which is said to be value creation. Moreover, it included the competitive strategy to study, corporate capabilities, distinctive capabilities, and eventually the competitive advantage (Betton, 2017).

The third workshop focused on the strategic knowledge through marketing and operations. From the strategic marketing, the major learning was the creation of product strategy, its portfolio, advantage, and disadvantage to the large portfolio, new product development, branding strategy, differentiation strategy and much more. The relevance of the marketing, and learning new terms and concepts has assisted the knowledge building (Bailey, 2018).

Through week four, the major understanding of the competitive Advantage through growth and innovation was gained. Innovation is key to the competitive advantage, and since the environment change, the need for innovation increases (Ahlin, 2014).

Reflection on experience

Workshop five was more concentrated over the understanding of the problem solving models and the business models. The tools for instance business analytics and business models are applied together in order to increase the ability to take better decisions and in order to become better managers (Cotton, 2016).

From the six weeks, knowledge management concept was understood through the guest speaker, which included the understanding of data, information, and knowledge. This also included the understanding of the modern organization, which are full of complexities, increase the need for knowledge (Birasnav, 2014).

The seventh week was, more about the research methods, data, and analysis. This included the types of data and other theories to tell the relevance of management research and the concept of problem solving. The eighth week was the crucial one because this included the communication and leadership understanding in theoretical and practical, behavior, which could be helpful in being a better leader in the near future. This included the relevance of change and its strategy in the organization, the leadership style to be selected, and the reason for failing change (Brenner, 2015).

From week nine, it was understood the relevance of presentation, that is the creation of business reporting, and presenting the solution to the analysis in the organization. This included types of report, data analytics, and the way to improve the prostration of the work and increase the learning through the reporting. However, the tenth workshop was to discuss the performance and metrics and measuring better practice and performance well (Aravamudhan & Krishnaveni, 2015).

The eleventh workshop focus over the employability and the trends that would be useful to prepare oneself for the work in the future. It included the employees and the skills essential to sustain in the organization. However, the last workshop which only included the review discussion, for revising what have learned from the course (Abdulraheem Sal, 2016).

For the reflection from the activities, this part will include the major areas that I have learned from them and recommendations for improving the learning from the courses. For being an effective manager, there have been much learning through the course and workshops. For instance, through the leadership and communication, when I was understanding theoretically, although I realized that there are major areas in leadership styles, that I need to improve for myself for being an effective manager in future. In my opinion, the things I conducted well were understanding the concepts and tried to apply to team management. For instance, for marketing decision, the various scenarios were considered like understanding of the environmental changes, the dynamicity of the environment. There were the thing that I didn’t take well like solving the problem, and activities were not able to go well related to the idea generation. Moreover, the leadership skill I observe in myself was autocratic leadership style, which I felt would not be helpful in the future, and I need to improve to change the leadership style adopted.

Recommendations for improvement

The major recommendation for the same include:

• Problem-solving technique – the major recommendation for the improvement was understanding the problem solving technique for solving the issue for the team I would be leading
• Creativity and innovation – the need for innovation and creativity has to be understood and must be implied not only in the product development, but through people, and process(Betton, 2017).
• Understanding the practical aspect – more than the theoretical aspect, the practical understanding would be more approachable and helpful for implementing the techniques and model for being better manager and leader in future
• Implementing agility – the agility is necessary, this can be through the team, the smaller the team the more agility can be observed, which would be helpful for the organization and management as a whole
• Decision-making process – the decision has to be taken after thing strategically and well in detail, in order to make a better decision, and the quick decision making has to be improved.
• Improvement in presentation and reporting – the presentation is important, and there is no use of analysis if it is not presented effectively. Therefore, the recommendation would be to improve the writing and reporting skills (Abdulraheem Sal, 2016)

This section would include the self-reflection, from working in a team. As already discussed, the Gibbs reflective cycle would be used for this part. The five stages of the reflective model include

Description – the experience included working in a team for completion of twelve-week workshop, it could be easy working individually, but it is difficult working in the team while maintaining harmony and provide better productivity and complete the project on time.

The problem occurs when the team has to make a decision regarding the roles of the individual in a team, this arose the conflict in the team, which hampered our performance. It took time, but it was resolved. In one of the workshop, we were unable to manage the time and decide which work is to be done first. Eventually, and gradually we were able to complete the tasks and the workshops

Feeling – before going for the workshops, and performing in the team, I was not sure if I would be able to work in a team better and understand another point of view or able to keep up my point in the team.

As the experience begins, and we star with the first week, it was going with the flow, and we were introduced to each other and initiated to build relations among the team members for better work performance. As the conflict arise, it seemed like it’s a never-ending conflict decision, where everyone was explaining their point of view and were unable to reach to a common solution.

Evaluation – the good part about the experience in a team was the major areas where there could be a problem in a team, and how to solve that problem. The understanding of the team was increased gradually and till the last week, we all were able to perform better and learned the reporting skills well.

The bad part about the experience was the conflicts and the time lag that happen due to poor time management. Moreover, the decision making should be quick and effective, which I felt we lag as a team.

Analysis – from the situation it could be analyzed that there were various points which can be improved to be a better team member or team leader in the future. The mistakes conducted do not have to repeat in the future.  The major learning from the experience was

• Time management – one of the major issue was poor time management, which can be learned and apply well before the initiation of the activity in near future. This includes prioritizing the task to be conducted first and need urgent assistance to manage the work according to the time provided
• Conflict management – the conflict may arise in the groups or team, but they need to be resolved quickly for better productivity and not wasting time over the conflicts. This could be done through using conflict management in the team like cooperation
• Effective communication – communication is very important for better performance in a team. This included expressing the information in the correct way. For instance, my statements could be used for better work done in a group
• Coordination – the coordination is very important to maintain among the team members for better flow of work (Dosser & Nicol, 2016)

Conclusion - This part included the things that could be done for better work. While working in a team, it would be better to adopt a proper decision-making process, which I think we could have implemented and avoid the conflict occurred. This included listening to one another, understanding every point by every member of the team and then decide. Moreover, the effective listing must be included in the team, for more coordinated and better flow of work.

Action plan – in case the similar situation is occurred in the future and for being a better team leader. The major things that I will imply in the group would be the applicability of democratic leadership style while listening every individual and then taking a decision, conflict management techniques, to either avoid the conflict to occur and if it occurs then earlier possible technique must be applied to resolve the same. Moreover, the task would be scheduled well before and time management would be done by me before initiating the activities (Fook, 2018).

Conclusion 

From the report, it can be concluded that reflection through experience would be helpful, which will provide insight into the experience in order to gain learning from the same and understanding the criteria to improve. For the report, the experience from the twelve activities was considered to be understood and reflected using Gibbs reflective model, for better and structure form to understand the experience and gain the major learnings. The activities conducted in each workshop was understood, for instance, the first week included the workshop for the understanding of strategic mindset and four capstone skills, Week two workshop was the focus over the competitive advantage. One of the crucial week which could be helpful in being a better leader or effective manager in future was understanding of leadership and communication in week eight.

While understandings the learning through each activity, the major recommendation for improvement include problem solving technique, creativity, and innovation, the practical aspect

Implementing agility, decision-making process, and improvement in presentation and reporting. Moreover, while working in a team the major learning from the experience include Time management, Conflict management, Effective communication, and Coordination.

References

Abdulraheem Sal, M., 2016. The Impact of Training and Development on Employees Performance and Productivity.. International Journal of Management Sciences and Business Research, 5(7), pp. 2226-8235.

Ahlin, B., 2014. Entrepreneurs’ creativity and firm innovation: the moderating role of entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Small Business Economics, 43(1), p. 101.

Aravamudhan, N. & Krishnaveni, R., 2015. Establishing and reporting content validity evidence of training and development capacity building scale (TDCBS). Management: journal of contemporary management issues, 20(1), pp. 131-158.

Bailey, C., 2018. Strategic human resource management. s.l.:Oxford University Press,.

Betton, P., 2017. Competitive Strategy: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance. Macat Library: s.n.

Birasnav, M., 2014. Knowledge management and organizational performance in the service industry: The role of transformational leadership beyond the effects of transactional leadership.. Journal of Business Research,, 67(8), pp. 1622-1629.

Brenner, S., 2015. Leadership style and the process of organizational change. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, pp. 2-16.

Cotton, D., 2016. The Smart Solution Book: 68 Tools for Brainstorming, Problem Solving and Decision Making. UK: Pearson UK.

Dosser, I. & Nicol, J., 2016. Understanding reflective practice. Nursing Standard, 30(36).

Fook, J., 2018. REFLECTIVE MODELS AND FRAMEWORKS IN PRACTICE. Methodologies for Practice Research: Approaches for Professional Doctorates, Volume 1, p. 57.

mindtools, 2018. Gibbs' Reflective Cycle. [Online]
Available at: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/reflective-cycle.htm

Pfeffer, J. & Sutton, R., 2000. The knowing-doing gap: How smart companies turn knowledge into action. s.l.:Harvard business press.