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CRITICAL REFLECTION OF LEADERSHIP EFFECTIVENESS AND THEORIES

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Leadership is the process of persuasion and the example by which a team or an individual

portrays as they lead a group towards achieving specific objectives and goals based on their

influences on them. Leadership, therefore, is the ability to influence people towards achieving a

set of goals or vision. It could be in various aspects such as the social influence that requires

followers or people under a particular person or leadership, leader's directions, rules, and

regulations that require compliance. Eventually, the followers' behavior has a purpose and goal-

directed. It is mainly shown in governance and in businesses or workplaces, among other

scenarios like leading a small group of people (Bratton 2020).

As a leader, I am keen on the leadership styles where I note the relationship with other

people within and outside the jurisdiction point: the organization and the various factors that

would ensure my leadership and improvement of every individual under me. The critical

consideration is the show of balanced power to avoid excess power execution inducing criticism

and undermining my leadership skills. The use of force, domination, and control causes fear to

the people under a particular leadership and is a show of power over; power to is the best form of

leadership since it checks on the unique ability of every person to undertake a particular activity

or duty depending on their potential hence ensures participation and the feeling of inclusion

along with the combination of my charisma and enthusiasm.

Over the last two years, I have experienced different leadership phases of success

combined with some failures. I am looking at my ambitions and goals along with my values and

perspectives. Personally, leadership is an attribute from my heart, and I have a deep passion for

servanthood and the focus on a particular vision. The main lesson from the experiences is that I

should understand others better. My desire is consistently achieving a specific objective as a

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team and the inclusion of every team member and high team-oriented goals and not individual

objectives.

Being a leader came about with high lots of happiness and responsibility, and

determination in focus to the specific objectives. The study was looking at my leadership style,

strengths, and weakness as the team leader and the impact I had on the team and the society, in

general, using the Reflective cycle by Gibbs,1988 by looking at the events and incidents over my

leadership. I also used team members' views and those who have watched closely on my

leadership and mentors. Controlling the team was a big issue since I felt some members brought

up irrelevant ideas and unrealistic goals. The scenario would make me feel a sense of not

accommodating some team members since I deemed them a rag behind factor.

Upon reflection, I found out from the team that the leadership style I used was mainly

transformational. Everyone saw me as a transformative leader, influential, self-motivated, and

effective leader who leads by example (Butera 2020). Here I would allow the team to learn from

other participants with courage and the performance as per the member's potential. I, however,

was sometimes situational or transactional depending on the emotional control where I needed

particular tasks to be carried out in one specific way and definite time. The reflective cycle was a

learning moment. I now realize my capabilities and appreciate my personality as a leader

concerning my qualities to achieve the team's aims and prepare for my future leadership

mandate.

The team noted that I had a weakness in the delegation of duties since I always wanted a

person to choose what he or she can attend to effectively. Hence, some people could not select

any task, which was an influence since I did not employ force in the delegation. The action

influenced the productivity and inclusiveness in the activities of the organization team (Nielsen
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2021). However, I understood that I was not entirely convinced that allocating a particular

activity to a specific member would result in high standards and performance from the

participants and feared failure from a member with no capability of working out the task. I

agreed with their view and hence worked on it eventually.

An important aspect I also learned is that I would rule out issues in the meeting and bring

up rulings with no member's content. This influenced teamwork since some members felt that

their views were not respected, and hence they did not easily comply with my suggestions and

directives. It also influenced the leadership skills of some members of the team. They suggested

that the meetings be chaired by a team member, which would help them explore their leadership

qualities that I warmly accepted, and they all appreciated my decision.

The reflection helped me understand that change is a requirement and a good take since

the global economy and technology. However, some members disagreed with me since they

feared that a change would lead to extensive capital inducement into the organization, resulting

in a financial crisis of the business. My basis was only the competitive advantages but did not

base on the availability of capital. As a leader, I agreed with them, and the capital investment

was made in stages considering the organization's revenues. Given the weaknesses I noted, I

came up with a personal development plan to work on them and improve my skills and employ

the leadership traits that I did not use, especially emotion control (minimal stress and anxiety)

and improving my strengths in the team's focus's dreams and desires. If the situation occurs again

over a particular leadership, I will accommodate the challenges by integrating the advice and

encouragement I received from the individuals' views.

The 21st century is characterized by complexity, volatility, opportunities, and challenges,

all of which are determinants of current leadership success. They all influence the efficiency and
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practicability of a particular leadership. They require diverse approaches to the difficulties and

the excellent performance and explore the opportunities concerning the changes and disruptions

encountered. Thomas Friedman term the 21st century as the era of globalization where

technology, especially the internet, plays a significant role and impact on business organization

and practices. Modern leaders in the organizations require competency in guiding the

organizations through the changing global economic landscape, which results from technology-

driven globalization and innovations. Looking at the Kondak Company, which was eliminated

from the market due to leadership's inability to manage disruption and changes in the market

economy, I learn the critical importance of the need to have effective leadership through a

proactive approach that would ensure long-term organizational growth and stability. This,

therefore, encourages me to employ the decision-making skills in choosing strategies that

produce positive outcomes given the various options of reasoning.

Three theories have profoundly dominated the leadership research on the skills required

depending on the times. They are trait leadership, behavior leadership, and contingency

leadership. The trait leadership theory focuses on leaders' personal attributes, including

personality and physical characteristics, competencies, values, and primary focus on the

individual leader (Sturm, Vera and Crossan2017). Many past kinds of research viewed leadership

as a unidimensional personality trait that could be reliably measured and is a different variable

among the populations or group of people. Leaders tend to have a greater level of intelligence,

self-confidence, extraversion, adjustment, and dominance than the non-leaders or their followers,

where a set of characteristics makes a leader successful (Furtner, Maran and Rauthmann 2017).

According to John W. Gardner, after studying a large number of leaders, he concluded that some

attributes appear to make a leader successful in any situation, which makes my basis of
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leadership skills exercise. The features are flexibility or adaptability to the recent changes in the

world and organizational settings, trustworthiness, courage, resolution, eagerness to accept

responsibility, decisiveness, followers' motivation and dealing with them, and the spirit of

achievement. Success requires the attributes along with the integration of situational variables

(Perkins 2017). However, the traits are mainly perceived to be attributes of the male gender. This

constituted the classical scientific leadership theories.

Recommendation

Each leader should emulate Robbins, the four essential leadership qualities: individual

capability, managerial skills, team competence, and ability to make others have high

performance. The Big Five traits that they should emulate in this century are emotional stability,

openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extraversion, employing better listening and

communication techniques (Baptiste 2018). The factors affect the art of virtual leadership, which

has become a new normal in terms of communication and supervision, especially when the

employees are distant from the organization. The art dictates the leadership style where it should

not be command and control since it would affect the team’s motivation and trust issues

(Fleming 2018).

With reference to the five factors, I took a self-assessment where I noted that I am

affected by natural reactions where I tend to be upset, especially when things do not go well as I

expected (James and Tunison 2020). I consider this as a weakness that I need to work on and try

various ways of coping with anxiety and employing relaxation even in discouraging situations

under my leadership. I should also use strong listening and communication techniques to help me

deal with different cultures and give directions to my team and future leadership.
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References

Baptiste, B. (2018). The relationship between the big five personality traits and authentic

leadership.Bratton, J. (Ed.). (2020). Organizational leadership. Sage.

Butera, M. R. (2020). The Effect of Transformational Leadership on Organizational Performance in

Rwanda. A Study of Selected Government Ministries (Doctoral dissertation, United States

International University-Africa).

Fleming, R. (2018). A Grounded Theory of Emergent Leadership in Nonhierarchical Virtual

Teams.

Furtner, M. R., Maran, T., & Rauthmann, J. F. (2017). Dark leadership: The role of leaders’ dark triad

personality traits. In Leader development deconstructed (pp. 75-99). Springer, Cham.

James, W., & Tunison, S. (2020). Beyond unexamined professional learning: understanding the

opportunities in the self-assessment processes of K-12 professional developers. Professional

Development in Education, 1-15.

Nielsen, T. C. (2021). How to Work More Inclusively with ‘The People It’s About’to Foster

More Inclusive Outcomes: A Behavioural Insight and Behavioural Design Perspective on

Co-production. In The Palgrave Handbook of Co-Production of Public Services and

Outcomes (pp. 95-113). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Perkins, V. (2017). Resource and Empower: The Constructs and Influence of Effective Leadership on

Follower Wellbeing (Doctoral dissertation, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology).

Sturm, R. E., Vera, D., & Crossan, M. (2017). The entanglement of leader character and leader

competence and its impact on performance. The Leadership Quarterly, 28(3), 349-366.

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