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Attitude Reflects Leadership
Posted on June 15, 2013 by gk065679
Hey all,
Today, I will talk about my leadership style and some group work experiences. First off, leadership qualities vary from person to person. There is not one leadership style that fits everyone. Each person is different. I would describe my leadership style as an open one. Basically, I welcome ideas and everyone’s opinion, whether right or wrong. I like to incorporate ideas from my team members, so they can feel involved and a level of recognition. I delegate jobs/work based on each member’s strengths and when conflict arises, I will diffuse the situation and make a decision based off my opinion.
During business school, I have been in various groups that were good and bad. The problems I encountered in the bad groups were scheduling issues, bad communication, work inequality, egos, direction conflicts, and other issues. These problems tend to occur in groups where the majorities are indian chiefs with not enough indians. Egos come in and conflicts arise on how the project should be done. This leads to personality conflicts and lack of respect for one another. Since I am the mediator, I try to get everyone on even ground to work together. After all, this project impacts all of use evenly. Communication is always the biggest problem in the groups I had issues with. Bad communication will always lead to a bad result. In my good groups, communication was always the key to success. Constant allowed for easier scheduling and work production. This led to greater efficiency and in the end a good result.
Digital communication is always vital to any group. With such innovations like google docs, my group can work on the project in the comfort of their homes. I can send group emails to let everyone the status of the project and what is left to be done. Digital communication keeps everyone alert and easy to contact. Communications via email also allow members to gather their thoughts instead of on the spot answers.
Overall attitude reflect leadership. If you have constant conflicts within your team, that means you are doing a poor job as the team leader. Depending on your own individual characteristics, you must adopt a style that will salvage the team project and command the respect of your team members. Being a leader is not an easy task, however when assigned the role, you must have confidence in yourself otherwise your members will not respect you enough to listen to your commands. Confidence leads to success.
This is your captain signing out.
-GK
Different people have various leadership styles and even the same person might lead differently depending on the situation. For example: if I were to be leading my sister and younger cousins, it would probably be something along the lines of a dictatorship. If I were leading some of my co-workers or classmates, I would probably rule by consensus. Of course, I lead by example most of the time. I would not go telling others to do what I would not do to get them in trouble, especially in a business environment.
In a business environment, students are often asked to work in teams. Many challenges arise such as time conflicts, differences in opinions, various personalities, etc. For example, in our first group assignment for the BUS9553 class, our group was not able to get start communicating with each other until the later part of the week because everyone in the group was so busy with work. We finally found a little bit of time to communicate with each other during the latter part of the week via e-mail.
E-mail was the only channel that we were able to communicate with each other and it is the most convenient method as well. Meeting face to face was out of the question because that would take hours and none of us had time to do that during the week. If we did not have e-mail, we would probably not be able to complete the group assignment by the deadline. Even with e-mail, we still had limited communication because each of the group members had to wait for the comments of the other group members before they can edit a certain section of the presentation slides. Everyone was so busy that only one or two e-mails were sent out to the group each day by each person. This meant that some of the points that one person pointed out might not be fully understood by other members of the group.
Despite the shortcomings of digital communication, they are still better than no communication between the team members. Digital communication has become a crucial channel within teams. Sometimes teammates might be miles from each other; they might even be in different countries. Without a digital communication, these people would not be able to communicate with each other whatsoever. But with digital communication, at least they would be able to communicate to each other their thoughts and ideas. Also, digital communication has been improving in the past years. E-mails have worked great and are highly used. Instant messaging has allowed people to communicate with each other instantly. Developments such as Skype have allowed people to talk to each other over long distances with their picture on display on the computer for free.
Leaders have found it difficult to communicate with their teams sometimes due to various reasons. Digital communication might not have completely resolved this issue, but it did make it easier for communication between leaders and the rest of the team.
Most of my experiences working with colleagues from work and school have been positive. My colleagues were knowledgeable, cooperative and responsible. I still think fondly about one of my teams. There were five of us and we were all committed to the project. We delegated the responsibilities among ourselves and met on a regular basis to keep updated. Since all the members were pulling their weight and working toward a common goal, our work ethic inspired the team to rule by consensus. Once, when a member of the team had to travel on a presentation day and could not attend, she communicated to the team early on of her schedule and finished her portion of the project weeks in advance. We were so appreciative of her commitment that other members didn’t mind reviewing and presenting her portion of the project. It was awesome to have experienced that. Often, the news does not portray people in business as loyal or honorable, but my experiences have taught me otherwise. People can be responsible, loyal and committed to the success of their team.
On the other hand, it’s easy to understand why people are skeptical of business. In recent years, scandals ranging from poor lending practices to ponzi schemes seem to be rampant. We barely notice when another headline announces a certain executive committing fraud. In this environment, it’s easy to fall prey to constant headlines and follow the sheep-like mindset that all businesses are bad. This is simply not true. Not all businesses are all corrupt, such as not all things are all good or all bad.
The same applies to colleagues and teams. Sometimes, a team can consist of colleagues who are irresponsible: they either don’t pull their weight or are always unavailable and unreachable. Unfortunately, one time I experienced this type of dysfunctional team environment as well. When I was in this group, I was extremely stressed as I had to follow up constantly and keep reminding people of deadlines that were fast approaching. Eventually, after weeks of non-response from the team, I sent out an email, assigning various tasks to members, and I reminded them that I shouldn’t have to constantly follow up with them. My email probably came across as dictatorial and harsh, and it probably wasn’t the best way to boost morale. However, at the time I was mainly concerned with the success of the project. And, as it turned out, it made a difference; the project was successful.
As the above examples of a functioning and nonfunctioning team demonstrate, I have a leadership style that changes depending on the situation. When a group works well together and consists of responsible members, I am more likely to make decisions through team consensus; when a team is dysfunctional, I feel the need to take over and dictate everyone’s roles. As no scenarios are the same, one needs to maintain the flexibility to use different approaches to lead.
Over the course of the past two years in my MBA program, I have learned a lot about myself which I feel would have taken me a lot longer otherwise. Constantly having to work in different groups almost forces you to bring about your true leadership style and to discover your strengths and weaknesses. Not having any experience in the management field, the only assumption I have of my leadership style is through the groups that I have been a part of in the past few years.
I feel that my leadership style has been passive in the group work. I let the group itself take ownership of the issues at hand and work together to the tackle the project that we have. That is in the usual case where all of the group members are on the same page and want to contribute their fair share. So in the general sense I would say that I would lead by not only example but with the general consensus as well. However, if it seems that there are problems that could potentially occur in the group, I assume the role of the delegator and start delegating responsibilities as well as holding those accountable that are responsible for their parts of a project.
I have been fortunate enough not to have faced any issues with the teams that I have worked with throughout my time in the MBA program. Although I can see the potential issues that teams could come across, I feel that a majority of those issues can be resolved with the proper expectations as well as communication. Lastly, digital communication over the past few years has evolved so much that it is not even necessary anymore to meet in person and hold meetings. With programs such as Google docs and Skype, it has become much easier to communicate with your team and work on a project without even leaving the comfort of your home.
I have always believed that a leader should be abstract in his approach. A Leader should be able to take any form at any point of time. A Leader should be approachable yet firm. These are the qualities of a leader that I have learnt since my childhood and have tried to embedded it in myself as much as possible. I do believe a lot in leading by example. Trust and believe is what the leader should impart onto his followers. I think that I should earn the respect of the people that I am leading and thus I feel I should work hard on my believe more than anyone else. Only then can I gain the respect of my followers.
I like to delegate responsibilities if I get an opportunity to lead a team. As the leader of the team, I have the responsibility to bring the best out of the people that I am working with. Thus, it is up-to me to decide that who fits where. I don’t want to make it sound like I am a dictator or something on the similar lines, but if I am the lead of a project then I should be able to know everything that goes on with the project from the start to end. Also, delegating responsibilities helps maintaining focus within the team avoiding confusion.
While working with students in a business school, one of the first things that I look out for is the culture that everyone comes from and get a sense of how they approach things. I have learnt that every group that one works with has different characteristics . Some group members take the project very seriously that they are ready to forget their personal life and health. Some believe that its important to put in a certain number of hours and try doing your best within the given time frame. Communication also plays a huge part during group projects in school. It is very important for group members to communicate what they think and not be shy or lazy to express their opinions. Sometimes, I feel I have to push the group in a very subtle way to make sure that we as a group are on the right track.
In today’s world, Digital communication is almost a necessity. Anything from a simple text message, to sharing something like Google documents, to a video conferencing should be accessible by everyone in a group. People live different kinds of lives which may involve travelling too. Thus, since time waits for no one, it is important to have access to basics digital communication at all time so there is no obstruction and the deadlines are completed on time.