Leadership experience

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Leadership circumstance is simply the situation where a person is leading, or is in charge of a group of people. It can be the situation of someone who has been appointed to lead something, or the situation that that person is working for an authority figure. What I led was a or rather group with whom I was entrusted to lead. I became the leader of this group through the circumstances of being a higher class than the other group members (Suryani, 2021). For that reason, I had a new born mentality of leading something towards a certain direction, as in either way, it was for the better or for the worse.

I motivated or encouraged them to do their very best in many ways. Among these things were instilling a sense of responsibility and duty to one’s self and others on fulfilling goals within my group. As an example: If my group was supposed to be responsible for taking care of the school grounds then we were supposed to take care of it well with little effort on our part, but at the same time we would have to work hard on maintaining it well. How I felt about being a leader was I really did not know. I just knew that I was supposed to do it. It was an undisputed fact that I had to lead the group, this being so because it simply came down to the fact that I was a higher class than the other members and therefore had control over them.

I can say for sure that our leaders were oriented towards making sure we were all doing well in school, because our school work became easier under those conditions. In doing so, we were successful in our studies at school. It came down to the fact that we worked together as one united group in a much more effective way than if any of us did their own thing alone.

The task/ goals that were to be accomplished were to: Build the team for survival, organize supplies and equipment for efficiency and, create a workable schedule that matches up with the needs of the group. Along with this, I would have to tell each member their role and their timeframes for completing it. The procedure that we used was to read and discuss the individual roles. Because every member of the team would have two different roles, they had to take in order for their jobs to be completed.

The process that I employed was to: First, have a meeting of what I called “Announcement Meeting” in which everyone would get an idea of what they were going to do and how long it was going to take them. Secondly, set up job descriptions on Mondays so everyone knew what they were doing on Tuesday. And finally, we would meet every Friday to go over each week’s schedule.

I observed people I led became more open to me and did not hesitate to share their thoughts with me. It was a good change in the people’s responses, until one day I noticed the change. I was confused about the sudden change of my relationship with my subordinates. They were treating me differently and seemed to be avoiding eye contact until they had to, when they know that something needed to be done immediately.

I carefully observed them through their behaviors and found that once I became their leader, I no longer had control over what they did or said. They didn’t seem like they wanted anything from me anymore which was sad because it saddened me as well.

The primary ways I used to communicate with my subordinates were emails and meetings. I would say, on average, I communicated with my subordinates on a weekly basis. The communication channel I used was written channel.

In terms of effectiveness, I believe that the communication channel I used was effective. It was effective for a number of reasons. One, my subordinates and I knew how to communicate effectively in the written form. We were able to understand each other’s ideas and write an equally good reply. Second, the written channel allowed us to achieve something through interaction. I received feedback from my subordinates in a way that made me think differently about things as opposed to solely relying on my own thoughts and reflection. To improve the effectiveness of the communication channel, I could have implemented a forum which allows for better discussion and brainstorming since not everyone is comfortable with writing or speaking (Suryani, 2021).

The outcome from my leadership was positive and success. My team developed critical thinking skills. We achieved the objectives we had set for ourselves and enabled team members to reach their full potential. With the right intention and leadership, I helped my team grow. The team’s success has allowed me to surpass my personal expectations in the workplace. The reason for this success is because my team and I set out a goal and broke it down into achievable tasks. We used constant communication and individualized coaching to help reach our objective.

What I have learnt about myself being a leader basically is that being a leader is hard work and rewarding. It’s also hard to know what your leadership style should be or which type of leader you should be. But as I’ve gone through my journey in leadership and have learnt more about myself, I can now better understand why I am the type of leader that I am and know how to improve my leadership skills both at home and at school.

Leadership is an important attribute that makes up a person. I have learnt being a leader isn’t easy and shouldn’t be taken lightly. It’s also looked down on if you aren’t willing to take the extra step in making sure others are aware of your capabilities in leadership which sometimes it can get annoying because people assume that when someone younger than them doesn’t want to be a leader then they’re not capable of it. I’ve also learnt you should never judge people by their appearance or if they are older or younger than you that doesn’t mean they can’t do the same thing as what you can (Soria,Werner, & Nath, 2019).

It was a good experience for certain, and to me it was amazing. I learned many valuable lessons that I will take with me through this life. One of the most crucial lessons I learned was how to deal with people in power and how to work with them. Personally, leadership is being able to inspire people towards a better future or in my case, towards a better outcome than they would have had if you were not their leader (Deng, Li, Wu, & Xu, 2020). There are two types of leaders there are; leaders who lead by fear and leaders who lead by example. Fear is a significant factor in the success of the person fact that they become successful in what they do because they want to avoid punishment or harm from whatever might be involved within the situation at hand.

In conclusion, the most important thing I have come to realize is that a leader must be able to involve his/her team, listen to them and try to improve from there. I think it’s also very important that a leader should be able to communicate his thoughts and ideas clearly and that this communication should be done in an organized way as well as chart out clear objectives of the team which is only achievable if leaders are honest with themselves in terms of their ability to do so. It is important that leaders’ focus on those who are truly willing to contribute and not just rattle off the job titles of their more senior members.

As for this leadership experience, I learned about myself and about aspects of leadership. As a leader, I was in control of everyone in the group, but only as long as they were willing to follow my orders and ideas. It is important that you remember that your group members are their own people (Deng, Li, Wu, & Xu, 2020). Leaders are only responsible for making sure their group members do what they plan to do by giving them goals and instructions on how to accomplish those goals because if you don’t give your team members clear instructions then it will be hard for them to perform well.

References

Deng, W., Li, X., Wu, H., & Xu, G. (2020). Student leadership and academic performance. China Economic Review, 60, 101389.

Soria, K. M., Werner, L., & Nath, C. (2019). Leadership experiences and perspective taking among college students. Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice, 56(2), 138-152.

Suryani, A.(2021).Being Students, Being Leaders Student Leadership Experiences and Facilitation of Student Leadership Development in Higher Education. Eti Setiawati, et al. (Eds.), 11.