Fundamentals of Organizational Behaviour - Coursework Example

The proposition requires a reflective essay that draws itself from a ‘critical’ event or incident that I have experienced throughout the course of this module. It also asks to consider my individual role in the process, and my contribution towards a group or team, with a particular focus on the fact that I should be able to identify areas for my improvement and my personal development. The critical event to which this essay refers will be described in great detail in the reflective log, and I am honoured to be able to report a positive change in my leadership skills and abilities. I have structured this essay in accordance with my own personal experience, and opinions based on it, and have backed it up with and integrated into it academic writing and scholarly research and claims. In doing the above I have been able to rightly link up my own experience with theoretical works, and have thus managed to pinpoint the areas in which I feel I lack personal development. Northouse (2014) has defined leadership as “a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal”. Throughout the course of this essay, I will attempt to make clear to the reader how I did just that during the residential weekend. has defined this as: “the process to influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives”. The two definitions given above tell us about some of the various components of leadership (Bell et al 2002). The main ones include, firstly, the ability to influence people other than yourself, in a way that they will listen to you, take what you say into consideration, and try to do what you ask of them, and secondly, to “facilitate individuals and collective efforts”, and this must be done in accordance with the fact that all individuals in a group possibly share the same objectives as to the outcome of the exercise or task (Palmer et al 2001) I was faced with a situation in which I tried to do just what the above definitions describe, and was faced with a challenging situation of which I took charge to the best of my abilities. I also put into practice what I had learnt through the course of this module (Weick 1995). In exercising my good judgement to the best of my ability, I advised to our team that we should change our outlook on the whole event, and try to widen our approach towards the subject. Bolzano and Frege have asserted that “judgements are nothing but assertoric phychological states or attitudes aimed at mind-independent, abstract propositions or thoughts. (Bolzano 1972; Frege 1979). However, my actions went against what the definition of judgment is according to Bolzano and Frege, who has portrayed it in almost a negative light. I let my thought process as to how we should deal with the situation be known to my fellows, and made a point to communicate my thoughts and opinions coherently (Rost 1998) I believe my judgment formed an integral part of what we did as a team. Even though we were under some stress, I still made it a point to speak clearly, and before doing that, thinking very carefully about how I stated facts and other things (Herman 2011). This perhaps, was the greatest challenge to me in the entire endeavor. This is so because I naturally tend to shy away from coherently voicing my opinions and making them heard. However, I not only managed to scrape through, but managed effective communication (Levin et al 2005). Through effective communication, and good exercise of my judgement, I had to convince my team members that I was most suited to the job, to make them listen to me and believe that my suggestions could in fact help us achieve our desired outcome. Barret (2002) believed that without effective communication, change is impossible and will fail. This is where I came into a conflict with my own self as I realised that I may be possibly be being a bit “bossy” and wasn’t carrying out active listening, which was when I “to interrupt and assert before a speaker has finished” (Bush 2003). This happened because I was ‘thinking of my own agenda’, instead of listening to my group member who was speaking (Sullivan 2010). However, I ventured to rectify this crucial error in my leadership at once, and took into account the views, opinions and strategies of everyone involved. (Kessler 1992) I employed the use of ‘parallel working’ and divided up our group and we employed, on my initiative, the use of the 4 categories of “life” in a group stage, as established by Tuckman (1965), forming, storming, norming, and performing. We got together and starting discussing what we should do. During this time, any dominant or influential members of the group started to emerge, and I am pleased to report that I was one of them, and also those that were easy with taking a back seat in the leadership and management of such things. We then had a little ice breaker session in which we got to better know each other, not just on a professional level but also a bit personally, and this created a friendly working environment between us (Heck et al 2005) My leadership work in this was that I lead the ice breakers session by having everyone sit in a group and discuss what we came to discuss as well (Robbins & Langton 2007). Next, I suggested to everyone that we try to find a common way to approach the task at hand, and then carried out the tasks by “achieving optimum efficiency and getting work done”. This was done by the fact that I, with everyone else’s opinion delegated the pre-decided tasks to my group members, including my own task (Hughes 1993). In our brain storming methods many good ideas came up, and a lot of them were actually quite useful, however, not all of them could be used. This is where I put into practice my vastly superior communication skills and attempted to guide everyone else as to what method or whose idea we should use, and why (Yukl, 1971). The feedback from my team members was definitely a positive one, and this is what in essence, gives me the proof of my leadership skills, and how much I excelled at them. In the end, I decided that my idea should give way to that of one of my team members. I realised that not only was she enthusiastic about her idea, but she actually believed it to be true. I advised the team to take this view into consideration for all of us, and we went ahead with what she suggested (Yukl 1999). In conclusion, I must reassert that my leadership skills and methodology was greatly enhanced and honed as I went along with this process. Throughout the entire time, I was greatly growing as a fellow team member, as a leader, and as a cooperative member of society in general. I helped others with their idea sharing, idea processing, brain storming, and tried to provide for a work friendly and peacefully co-existing work environment for all my team members. As far as my personal development goes more, I have learnt to trust my instincts and take a chance on voicing my opinions more and more. This does not mean that I dismiss or do not take into account the view of others, but as my essay has shows throughout, that I learnt to integrate what they said and used it to resonate what I believed in. Bibliography Yukl, Gary. "Toward a behavioral theory of leadership." Organizational behaviour and human performance 6, no. 4 (1971): 414-440.] Barrett, D.J. (2002) Change communication: using strategic employee communication to facilitate major change. Corporate Communications: An International Journal. Vol 7, No 4. 219-231. Bell, Bradford S., and Steve WJ Kozlowski. "A typology of virtual teams implications for effective leadership." Group & Organization Management 27, no. 1 (2002): 14-49. Bush, Tony. Theories of educational leadership and management. Sage, 2003. Chapter 6, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Fundamentals of Organizational Behaviour, Third Canadian Edition. Copyright © 2007 Pearson Education Canada. Command, Army. "Leadership, and Management." 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