Reflective Practice in Leadership Development

Personal and Professional Development Planning (PDP) and reflective practice

Reflective practice on Personal and Professional Development Planning (PDP) is important for the learner to assess own skill and abilities as well as identify the future opportunities and threats for success personal and professional development. The study aims at reflecting my experience and managerial role of leadership where I am able to conduct SWOT analysis for assessing own strengths and weaknesses as well as future opportunities and threats to be a good leader. In addition to this, Kolb’s reflective model is utilised here for representing the reflective practice through which I can share my skill and abilities to be a good leader. Moreover, the theory of leadership skill is also helpful in this study to discuss the skill and practice required for becoming a successful leader and this further helps me to develop action plan and SMART goals and objectives for successful Personal and Professional Development Planning (PDP).

Reflecting personal development

Reflective assessment is important to explore more opportunities after analysing own strengths and weaknesses and in this regard the Kolb’s theory of reflection is necessary for me to reflect upon on understanding and skill to be a successful leader where I can be able to analyse the managerial role of a good leader. As per the Kolb’s reflective model, there are four steps such as concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and active experimentation (Chattopadhyay, 2019).

Concrete experience:

As per my experience, I am able to manage the people with honesty and integrity where I focus on creating positive organisational culture so that it is possible for me to provide suitable environment to work. I have gathered experience to improve my emotional intelligence and cognitive skill where I try to understand the emotion of the people. There are opportunities to make effective decision after utilising my problem-solving skill, so that I can lead all the people towards achieving organisational success. I try to improve my cognitive skill and interpersonal skill for developing strong relationship with the employees and lead the team, towards achieving success.

Reflective observation:

As per the Kolb’s reflective model, reflective observation is necessary where I felt that, it is necessary of rem to improve my problem solving and critical analysis skill so that I would be able to become a good leader by taking active part in the organisational decision making practice and leading the team members towards achieving success (Refer to Appendix 1). I also focus on gathering experience through sharing knowledge and skills with other which give me the scope to improve my understanding as well as develop my leadership skill for future. In this regard, I would have the opportunity to create a suitable place to work with harmony and freedom where I can lead the people with communication and collaboration as well as by managing internal conflict where I will focus on fulfilling the requirements of the staff and creating values for them.

Abstract conceptualisation:

Third step is abstract conceptualisation in which I try to learn from experience, where I felt that I need to identify the opportunity to improve my knowledge and understanding. I focus on attending training program and gathering more experience for managing people with harmony and integrity. I would also like to improve my creativity and innovation for becoming a good leader and in this case, I try to learn from experience and gather more in-depth knowledge through resources and development program. I try to manage all the employees efficiently by taking care all of them and cratering values for them which helps me to lead the people towards the organisational success. In addition to this, it is necessary for me to improve my managerial skill through improving trustworthiness, maintaining the responsibility at the workplace, providing feedback and managing creativity, empowering the staff, utilising organisational resources and capabilities, developing suitable working culture so that I would be able to manage the workforce and lead all the people towards achieving the organisational success.

Active experimentation:

The last stage under Kolb’s reflective model active experimentation where I would like to develop suitable planning for improving my skill and abilities to be a good leader and manage the workforce. I this regard, I develop proper planning of improving communication skill, developing tam wok at the organisation, as well as enhancing problem solving and decision-making skill, so that I can explore more creativity to become a successful leader. However, I am not efficient in building communication with the staff members due to poor interactive ways and lack of activities to express my personal feelings and knowledge in front of others. Due to the lack of communicative skill, the leadership practice can be hampered where the leaders cannot interact with the followers at the organisation. It is necessary for the leaders to interact with the followers in order to share the organisational vision and mission as well as the gaols and the organisational practice so that it is possible to improve understanding among the staff members. It is important for me to improve the communicative skill so that I can interact with others positively and share my experience and knowledge with others for developing my leadership skill.

Discussing current leadership and transferable skills

Through SWOT analysis, it is possible to develop personal skill audit which is important for me to represent my personal strengths, weaknesses, as well as threats and opportunities in my personal development and professional career growth. The SWOT analysis can be represented through the table below.

The above-mentioned SWOT analysis is important or personal skill audit through which I can analyse my strengths and weakness. The major strengths of mine are such as interpersonal skill, cognitive skill, fair treatment in the workplace, leading people toward achieving success, sharing views with others, managing the people at the workplace, managing integrity and honesty, collaborative team building activities, emotional intelligence. I mainly focus on improving my emotional intelligence and respect all the members at the organisation for developing an effective team. I also try to utilise my strength of managing people with honesty and integrity where I aim at building strong relationship with all of the staff members at the organisation so that it is possible for me to lead the people together towards achieving the future success. As per the leadership skill, it is necessary to improve integrity and fair treatment at the organisation for managing the people at the workplace. Without proper management, it is not possible to lead the team members as well as showing respect and building string bond among the team members are also necessary for improving the leadership skill (Daniëls, Hondeghem, and Dochy, 2019). In addition these, under the role of the leaders, it is the crucial role of the leaders to improve communication among the team members so that it is possible to create suitable enviroentnal of working through group discussion and open interaction where the team members also get the opportunity to share their experience and knowledge with each other.

Apart from that, as per the role of the leadership, it is necessary to take active part in the organisational decision-making practice so that it is posisbel for the leaders and the managers to develop suitable strategy for achieving the organisational success (Murase, Roebuck, and Takahashi, 2019). In this regard, problem solving skill and decision-making skill are required for the leaders to develop proper strategy for the organisation. However, I am suffering to have adequate knowledge of problems solving and take active part in the organisational decision-making practice. In this regard, it is necessary to imporve the problem solving and the decision-making skill for making effective organisational decision collaboratively. I also able to improve my knowledge and capabilities to take active part in developing creative strategy through innovation and creativity, so that the organisational success can be achieved successfully. As per the leadership skill, enhancing creativity and innovation is necessary for doing the organisational job more innovatively to establish the organisation creatively at the market (Lees, 2019). In this regard, continuous analysis, active research and development program as well as technological innovation and creativity are necessary skill for the leaders to achieve success in a unique way (Turner, 2019). However, I have the strengths of maintaining fairness and managing transparency and accountability for maintaining harmony and freedom at the organisation. As per the leadership skill, transparency and equal treatment enhance fairness at the organisational where all the members are feeling valued and they get equal opportunities at the organisation (Botelho et al., 2016). Under the leadership skill, it is also necessary for the leaders to manage the workplace by creating values for them through providing monetary and non-monetary rewards and it is necessary to manage all the people at the organisation as they are the main stakeholders to achieve organisational success. Hereby, the it is necessary for the leaders to improve the emotional intelligence, the skill of managing people and fair treatment through managing accountability and transparency at the workplace of the organisation so that it is in turn possible for the leader to improve trust dn loyalty among the employees (Refer to Appendix 2).

The major opportunities are such as, improving communication skill, interactive skill improvement for sharing knowledge and experience, leading people towards achieving success, manage internal conflicts, managing people efficiently, explore creativity and innovation, effective decision making practice through problem solving, through which it is possible for me to improve my leadership skill. Under the managerial role of leaders, it is the duty to manage the internal conflicts so that the leader can manage resistance to change and cultural diversity and provide harmony and freedom to work with more collaboration and communication (Raymer et al., 2018). This is effective for me to achieve future success by utilising the opportunities. Moreover, the opportunity of exploring new ideas with innovation and creativity is good for the leaders where the good leaders can expect the best and recognise the way to achieve success. In addition to these, as per the managerial role of the leaders, it is necessary to encourage the workforce ad motivate their creativity and innovation for achieving future success (Harrison, Burnard and Paul, 2018). In this context, it is important for the leader to understand the needs and interest of the team members and fulfil their requirements to retain them for future. In this regard, I would be able to manage the people in the workplace through meeting their needs and preferences and creating values for them to satisfy them and encourage them for contributing with their full potential to achieve the organisational success (Refer to Appendix 3).

Apart from the opportunities, there are some threats such as, poor leadership, lack of emotional intelligence, poor skill to manage people, lack of advantage to share own understanding for which it would be challenging for me to be a good leader. The threat of poor leadership, poor time management and lack of communication deteriorate my leadership skill and thus it is necessary for me to improve my potential to lead the team members towards achieving success through encouragement, creating working strategy, share experience and developing organisational decision successfully. In this regard transformational leadership style is suitable where the approaches of leadership and management are such as cooperation and communication, empowering the staff members in the organisational decision-making practice as well as encouraging the staff for creativity and innovation (Frich et al., 2015; Griffith, Baur, and Buckley, 2018). Through personal and professional development, it is necessary for me to improve the leadership skill by improving my communicative skill, tactics of managing people and cultural diversity as well as internal conflicts, time management skill and enhancing the problem solving and decision-making skill for achieving future success.

Analysing the leadership and management skills through action plan

The above table is crucial for understanding the action plan through which I try to elaborate the skills which are required to be improved in order to enhance my leadership skill. As per the leadership theory, it is necessary to improve communication so that it is possible for me to interact with the people positively with honesty and integrity as well as share experiences for better achievement (Day, and Dragoni, 2015). In this regard, I would also like to improve my communicative skill by interacting with others without hesitation, expressing my thoughts in front of others, and improving my verbal communication so that it is easy for me to be a good leader and encourage others to work with full potential. Additionally, problem solving skill and managing people are necessary for enhancing the leadership skill and in this regard I focus on attending meeting, conducting in-depth analysis, improving critical analytical skill, taking active part in the organisational decision as well as attending organisational training program in order to improve my problem solving skill, so that I can make effective decision for future. As per the leadership skill, teamwork plays an important role in achieving the organisational target where it is beneficial to develop an effective team with communication and collaborative working practice so that all the members can share their experience and work cooperatively for achieving the shared vision (Blanchard, 2018). In this regard, I also try to achieve success through developing team building skill so that I can be a good leader where I can encourage and motivate the staff to contribute positively for achieving future success.

Smart objectives

The above mentioned SMART goals and objectives as well as action plan are effective for me to improve my leadership skill and abilities to manage the people for future organisational success where I focus on improving my communication skill, problem solving and decision making skill and developing effective team work, so that I can be a good leader through improving cooperation and communication, managing transparency, developing suitable organisational culture and harmony, and enhancing the skill of emotional intelligence, decision making practice and improving problem solving skill.

Reference List

Blanchard, K., 2018. Leading at a higher level: Blanchard on leadership and creating high performing organizations. London: FT Press.

Botelho, W.T., Marietto, M.D.G.B., Ferreira, J.C.D.M. and Pimentel, E.P., 2016. Kolb's experiential learning theory and Belhot's learning cycle guiding the use of computer simulation in engineering education: A pedagogical proposal to shift toward an experiential pedagogy. Computer Applications in Engineering Education, 24(1), pp.79-88.

Chattopadhyay, K.N., 2019. Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle: A new approach for performing any creative task. International Journal of Innovative Knowledge Concepts, 7(5), pp.82-84.

Daniëls, E., Hondeghem, A. and Dochy, F., 2019. A review on leadership and leadership development in educational settings. Educational Research Review.

Day, D.V. and Dragoni, L., 2015. Leadership development: An outcome-oriented review based on time and levels of analyses. Annu. Rev. Organ. Psychol. Organ. Behav., 2(1), pp.133-156.

Frich, J.C., Brewster, A.L., Cherlin, E.J. and Bradley, E.H., 2015. Leadership development programs for physicians: a systematic review. Journal of general internal medicine, 30(5), pp.656-674.

Griffith, J.A., Baur, J.E. and Buckley, M.R., 2018. Creating comprehensive leadership pipelines: Applying the real options approach to organizational leadership development. Human Resource Management Review.

Harrison, C., Burnard, K. and Paul, S., 2018. Entrepreneurial leadership in a developing economy: a skill-based analysis. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 25(3), pp.521-548.

Lees, C.S., 2019. Transforming Leader Change Agency Skills and Abilities Through Emotional Intelligence Focused Executive Coaching. In Evidence-Based Initiatives for Organizational Change and Development (pp. 452-462). IGI Global.

Murase, T., Roebuck, A. and Takahashi, K., 2019. Development and validation of a situational judgement test of Japanese leadership knowledge. Asia Pacific Business Review, 25(2), pp.227-250.

Raymer, S.D., Dobbs, J., Kelley, C.P. and Lindsay, D.R., 2018. Leadership Education and Development: Theory Driven Evolutions. Journal of Leadership Education, 17(2), pp.138-148.

Turner, P., 2019. Leadership Development Practices. In Leadership in Healthcare (pp. 295-324). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Kolb’s Reflective model

Appendix 2: Role of leadership

Appendix 3: Leadership and transferrable skills