Final Project of “Leadership and Organizational Behavior” course by TecdeMonterreyX

Topic: An attempt to challenge yourself as a leader, or implement a unique strength. This can be an
event or situation that happened during the class or recently. Ideally, use the concepts from class
to challenge yourself in some way, and then write about the outcome.

1. What happened? (Background, brief description of events, specific leadership actions)

What were the results? (Real or potential. Try to include both positive and negative possibilities.
Even if the event seemed clearly good or bad, consider unintended consequences.)

I recently faced a situation in which I implemented something I got from the second-week course of this
training. I am a portfolio management manager in a bank and I lead a team of three. It is my team’s duty
to do the planning and forecast of the portfolio of the bank’s products. My team consists of 3 fresh-
graduate, straight out of college, workers. All of them have little knowledge about banking industry, but I
realized that technical abilities are not a problem for them. During the end of year of 2023, my team had
to monitor the achievement’s progress. We need to report the portfolio movement every day, even when
it should be a holiday for all of us. I understood the importance of our role for the bank, and I knew that I
could not change the demand from the management. For senior employees who had worked for many
years in this particular sector, doing this should be fine. But since all of my 3 team members are new to
the industry, even to working environment, I thought I would face difficulties to manage them.

To overcome this situation, I used 2 things that I have learned from the course. First, I asked them nicely
to discuss the possibility of working every day until first of January. I tried to do behavioral approach to
discuss the task. It is a mixed of both task-oriented behavior and people-oriented behavior. I wanted the
team to deliver the task but at the same time I do not want them to feel burnout. I began asking what is
their preferable time to do the task when it came to holiday and I that I did not want to disturb everyone’s
holiday. It went great. Everyone agreed to do the monitoring process in the morning.

Second, I implemented the situational leadership theory of coaching, directing, supporting, and
delegating. I divide the three of them based on Commitment and Competence. I got 1 team member who
has high competence and high commitment, 1 team member who has high competence and low
commitment, and 1 team member who has high commitment and low competence. Based on what I have
learned, I did the following: delegating, supporting, and directing. Of course, the loads of the tasks were
not the same among the workers, but they did understand on why I did that.

I was afraid that all of our discussed plan would turn into disaster. It was possible for them to feel
exhausted and burned out that they missed a day making the report. I already thought that my supervisor
and the management would be disappointed with us. I am prepared for that and will take responsibility to
do the report by myself. It turned out to be a well-executed plan. We delivered the report on time, even
 manage to add extra details to the report. The management were happy that they were informed even
when it was a holiday season. My direct supervisor, a Vice President of the bank, even personally told
me that He was so proud of the team’s work, given that this was their first time working in a bank and
facing end of year situation. I thanked all of my team for all of their hard work. I think I need to thank this
course as well, since my calculated steps were based on knowledge that I gained from doing the training.

2. Why did this happen? (Consider all possible factors, including the people and the situation)

This happened because three factors. First, the demand of the management to have a daily report at the
end of year, including during the holidays. Second, the situation in which all of my team members are
newcomers to the banking industry, and this is their first time to work during the holidays at the end of the
year. Third, my ability to deal and manage the team with limited experiences and resources. I believe if I
had team full with experienced people, I would have no trouble on how to approach them to ask for
working on holidays. But, since the team was different, I also need to upgrade myself on how to manage
unexperienced team members.

3. What class concepts are relevant to this situation? (Mention at least one concept from class and
how they can be used to interpret the situation.)

It is the Leadership Style lesson. To be more specific, two approaches that I used to tackle the situation
were Behavioral Approach and Contingency Approach, in which I learned about Situational Leadership
Theory. These approaches were really important as my basis of interacting with team members and
making plans.

4. What did you learn from this? (Broader lessons that might apply to other situations or
problems.)

I believe that if a leader implement what we have already learned from the course, it will make the leader’s
duty easier. I know that implementing all of the lessons will be impossible, but we can start by doing small
changes in approaching our team. I am currently implementing other important lesson, how to influence,
to my team. I believe by implementing the theory one step at a time, people will slowly see the leader
improving to be a better one.