Reflection - Topic 1 Introduction to Leadership

Topic 1 - Introduction to Leadership

In this lesson, I've been introduced to leadership and leadership theories.

Here's what I've learnt...

Leadership is the influencing process of leaders and their followers, with the aim to achieve organisational objectives through change. A leader is someone who possess leadership skill, therefore can be defined as an individual who influence a group of people towards achievement of goals. Leadership is essential in the 21st century as a leader with good leadership skills is able to lead his team through crisis or any difficult situations. Also, having good leadership skills can enable a leader to excel in organisational performance, fulfil employee job satisfaction and ensure the success of management. An effective leader often set realistic and reliable objectives and influence change for continual improvement. Also, the management of interpersonal relationship is of utmost importance as a good leader should be able to work with people.  As this is an introductory lesson, we were also exposed to the 4 main leadership theories, including the trait theory, behavioural theory, contingency theory and integrative theory. 

Here's what I thought...

    Before the lesson, I have never seen myself as a leader. I don't even like the idea of being a leader. Through reflection, I realised that everyone can be a leader. I am a teacher - I am a leader in my classroom and my followers are my little kids. A mother can be a leader too - she manages the household and co-lead the family with a father, their followers are their children. Everyone, I realised, everyone, can be a leader. 

    While leadership cannot be specifically defined, the keywords that I have grasps today regarding leadership are INFLUENCE, CHANGE, PEOPLE and OBJECTIVES. In my opinion, influence and change are the major component I look into as an English language teacher while being a leader in classrooms. I am the leader and my children are my followers. While organising classroom activities and managing pupils' work, I set SMART objectives and work with my children to discuss and negotiate the achievements and progress. Every class (team) and every children (follower) has different mood and styles. To ensure their learning (objectives), I have to understand them and embrace them to lead them towards achievement objectives. 

What is the best leadership style?

    Since there is no strong definition to what leadership is, there is no say to what is the best leadership style. However, I could describe what kind of leader that I like and what kind of leader that I aspire to be. So, here it is...

    I have a perfectionist personality and I enjoyed working with people who organised roles and responsibility fairly and reasonably. I think, a good leader should be someone who is considerate of member's ability, assign reasonable yet challenging responsibilities and divide leadership duties. I believed that everyone has got a potential to develop into a leader, to understand what they are doing and why they are doing it, so that a team will always do the right things to work towards the same aim. So, I hope that a leader can allow questions and be open-minded to discuss about aims and progress. 

    To sum up the topic, I think I am starting to believe that I can be a leader, or be a good follower with leadership skills. I think this is a great start. 

:)