MAN6304 Personal Learning Portfolio Assignment Sample

• Subject Code : MAN6304
• University : Edith Cowan University My Assignment Services is not sponsored or endorsed by this college or university.
• Subject Name : leadership

Project Leadership

Portfolio Entry 1

Pen Portrait of Myself as A Project Leader

Leadership is the most essential competency that assists me to make effective decisions concerning diverse stages of my life. Leaders are those individuals who inspire numerous of his groups to follow his path. Leadership can be defined as the process of activities focused on goals of groups and it is reliably established an outline of behavior with definite objectives (Paulienė, 2017). This essay is set is reflect on the pen portrait of myself as a project leader. Moreover, I am also applying the theories and concepts of leadership to assess me as a leader. This pen portrait describes my strengths and weaknesses in terms of leadership skills.

During my past experience working in an organization, I was a project leader for two groups who worked under my supervision. I am that type of leader who always motivates the members of the team, competent to share my vision with them and attain commitment. This vision of myself made me achieve success in the accomplishment of the project. I learned numerous things regarding how to handle or manage things, coordinated them, communicate effectively with all others, and many more things. I always try to be a transformational leader who has four aspects namely idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration. Idealized influence means leading by example and being an optimistic role model & influencer for members. Individualized consideration means attending to the needs of every member of a group. Inspirational motivation means the leader who pronounces a clear vision that inspires the group to follow it. Intellectual stimulation means stimulating assumptions and uses the group as a sounding panel (Dickson & Kising’u, 2019).

I believe that these four qualities must be taken into consideration while leading a team or group within the business context. I always demonstrate these skills and make people inspired and motivated all the time. While working with them, I motivated them by giving them those roles and responsibilities that were suitable for them and within their capabilities. With these leadership skills, all the upward and downward communication became active meaning all the employees were committed towards the goals as they can now take part in the decision making of the company. More specifically my team roles were 'plant' as a primary role, and 'coordinator' as the secondary role to play in the team. In the plant role, I incline to be extremely creative, innovative, and analytical in problem-solving in unusual ways. Moreover, the secondary role that I play in the team is of a coordinator who always focuses on the objectives of the team, delegates the work suitably to each and every member of the team. 

While leading a team, I believe that effective communication plays an essential role in establishing a sense of trust and respect between each other. However, there was a situation that happened with my team in which there occurred a conflict of interest among team members and that was due to the miscommunication between them. I solved that situation of conflict with my effective communication skills and guided them to follow the same to be more successful in life. Furthermore, my team members suggested me to be more strategic in terms of leadership. I started following the strategic leadership style in which I demonstrated the potential that defines a strategic outlook for the company and encouraging the members and associates to attain the mission and vision of the organization.

This leadership style helped me gain more creativity in taking the decisions. Moreover, this leadership style enabled me to follow the open door policy for effective communication for discussing the problems of the company in a more effective way than before. Other team members were extremely inspired by these leadership skills of mine as they were enjoying the culture of learning and development within the company (Ma & Seidl, 2018). I personally felt that this leadership style was the best that I want to follow forever in my life career. My company has gained an optimistic performance with the success of my teams worked on its projects. Moreover, my guidance and direction to the team enabled them to come out with the creative ideas and strategies that supported me throughout the project.

To be a project leader, I always value transparency, associations, honesty, hard work, communication, and fun. In addition, I believe that just delegating the roles and responsibilities to team members is not a sufficient thing; however, it is important to provide the opportunities for growth so that all can be involved in the problem-solving activities to bring the effective decision making. I perceive myself to be an effective leader as I have required skill sets, motivations, and personality traits that made me effective. In fact, I believe leadership is a way to generate impact and there are various people around us who keep on inspiring others frequently. Sometimes, I was being slightly controlling over the team in order to keep them engaged all the time for completing the objectives, however, the members of the team did not like and happy with my controlling nature. I usually want other individuals to describe me as a leader who was significant and like them only. I always welcome feedback from the people in terms of describing my strengths and weakness. I felt much proud when one of my team members gave me the best compliment ever. In addition, I want them to respect my authority at the same time that I have within the organization.

Portfolio Entry 2

Project management is the activity that is to be undertaken with others. In this statement, others indicate to the stakeholders, team members, and others. It is due to that fact a project manager is reliant on these others in order to attain the success of the project. However, the projects a manager is trying to prosper at handling entails having these others do, or not do, just what is desirable in an environment where they have far less control or authority than the accountability. Moreover, this restraint of authority that describes the role of project manager drives the most prosperous project manager to establish leadership. This statement means that project managers must evolve themselves at the leader to be more authoritative than responsible. It further means that leadership is the best way to revealing the solution to inspire others with restricted authority. Trust is the most essential thing that a leader must create among the followers that keep them engaged in project activities. In the project I was involved in the organization, I create a sense of trust and ethics throughout the project that was helpful in establishing values like responsibility, respect, fairness, undermine, and honesty (Michael & ACP, 2017). A project manager is the primary leader of the project where he is supported by team members. In addition, project leadership is a subtle balance between authority and inspiration. Effective project leadership needs originality intrinsic in the skill of project management to involve team associates towards cooperative explanations to problems.

Leadership is the most wanted skill for the project manager to achieve the project successfully. In a project, a project manager has to be a project leader for some authoritative personality along with a responsible person. It is due to the fact that motivation is the essential thing that could drive team members to put efforts into activities assigned to them. Regardless of talents like an influencer, and effective communication, a project manager should have the capability to motivate the team members, authorizing the team, to be a supporter for the team, and handling conflicts. In the modern setting, there are individuals who involve in a project as freelance associates and they need to be encouraged by the project manager all of while to keep them engage for achieving success. Since, the present projects are extended in duration and persons incline to lose enthusiasm over the long period. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the project manager to preserve them involved and focused on the project. Additionally, authorizing them is also a vital thing to do in the lead character. It is the notion in which the project manager allocates the right of actions of the project to the team associates. Moreover, leadership also wants the project manager to solve the wars that occur due to reasons like work style, diverse philosophies & characters, diverse experiences, and more. These must be coped properly else they will result in reduced efficiency, depressing of self-esteem of workers, and contentment of aims in an imperfect method.

While leading the members for a project, I have limited authority and control over the members who are responsible for achieving the success of the project. I used to follow the servant leadership concept in that situation as I consider myself as a servant. I used to fulfill the needs of the followers first so that they can reach their full potential. Moreover, transformational leadership is the best theory that one must use for completing the project effectively. I demonstrated these qualities in the project. Due to these transformational leadership skills of mine, my team members have got admired, attain trust, became loyal, and built respect towards me. To be more authoritative, a project leader must have possession of the entire project environment, emphasis on performing for a long period of time, founding & preserving trust, demonstrating ethical behavior, and creating a high-performance group. A project manager must have diverse leadership styles at the same time to effectively manage and lead a team.

These leadership styles may entail directing, facilitating, autocratic, coaching, supporting, consultative, consensus, delegating, charismatic, bureaucratic, democratic, laissez-faire, analytical, and more. As far as my leadership skills are concerned, I have control over my team members, and also I am responsible for motivating them throughout the project. I have all those qualities that a leader must have to drive his team. These qualities are team-building with a focus on enhancing team performance, communication skills, listening, and motivating skills. A leader must help his team associates in every aspect of the project. He must establish a vision, and then constantly communicate that vision among them and working closely with them to achieve goals. He must create a project environment in which team associates can be authentic and open in communication with one another. A project manager can be a great project leader when he understands the impact of his leadership style on others.

Talking about the success of the project, I must say that ethical leadership must the most required characteristic of a project leader. There are four main principles of ethics in leadership namely respect, fairness, honesty, and responsibility (Littman & Littman, 2017). The leaders must have social and ethical power while leading the team. Moreover, ethical leaders demonstrate the qualities of transformational leaders who follow the recognized ethical values, and corporate practices and set a reasonable example of honesty for team members and participants (Aga, Noorderhaven & Vallejo, 2016).

Portfolio Entry 3

According to portfolio 1 and portfolio 2 entries, the leadership that suits me the most is transformational leadership since as a project leader, I can achieve success for a project using this style. In a project, collaboration is an essential thing among all the members of the group. This collaboration can be achieved by using the transformational leadership as it supports the wellness of all team members for achieving the project goals. I believe that transformational leadership is the most effective for project success and it brings positive outcomes throughout the project life. Hence, it suits me best while leading a project. It not only resulted in improves satisfaction of employees but also improves the efficiencies of the company. There are numerous points that demonstrated that this leadership style is effective in bringing positive outcomes in the project. Adhering to the transformational leadership style enables me to focus more on the employees rather than the activities of the project. This results in building a company's culture in which all employees think of the common good rather than just focusing on self-interest. It is true that project success depends on creative and innovative ideas. Transformational leadership allows me to encourage innovation and creativity among team members in accomplishing the project.

The favored team roles of mine are 'plant' as primary and 'coordinator' as secondary roles in a team. The transformational leadership fits these preferred roles of mine due to its characteristics and nature. The role of plant requires one to be creative, ingenious, and untraditional. One must have the ability to solve the difficult problem with his creative solutions. In addition, the role of coordinator in a team requires one to be advanced, self-confident, and a good leader. One must have the ability to promote decision making, elucidates goals, and delegates suitably for each member. The roles of plant and coordinator are to be played when a leader wants to bring change and development in the organization. Transformational leadership fits the plant role of mine as it fosters an individual's creativity within a team. This is due to the fact that transformational leaders have robust relationships with the members and they play an important role in forming a supportive environment and hence promote employee creativity. It has been evident from numerous studies of scholars that transformational leadership is the most significant in generating and determining the settings that assist individual creativity (Çekmecelioğlu & Özbağ, 2016). Furthermore, transformational leadership also has the ability to delegate properly and suitable to the workers by considering their capabilities for doing the work (Yoon, Kim & Shin, 2016).

The roles that I am not good at while leading the team are monitor evaluator, completer finisher, shaper, specialist, resource investigator, and more. I would like to strengthen these weak areas of mine using practicing more and more within the team to develop these qualities. In order to reinforce my monitor evaluator capabilities, I need to employ a philosophical and sensible leadership style that further requires the leader to take time to reach sensible decisions. Sometimes when I was in need of analytical skills to solve a problem in the project, I lacked those skills. Therefore, I need to evolve these analytical, logical skills to be an effective monitor evaluator role in the team. Furthermore, there is something that is missing in my personality and that is professionalism while leading a team. I would like to add on professionalism in my traits to play a more specialist role in the project. The roles that I am not good at can be improved by experiencing more meaning that working for numerous projects can help me gain the skills I am weak (Nestsiarovich & Pons, 2020).

Delegating the tasks is the common practice in the leadership that leads to authorizing the team, builds faith, and helps in the professional development of members. However, it will be tough for me to delegate those tasks that I like the most. Delegating the responsibilities and tasks is essential for the success of the project as it enables me to manage the workloads in an effective manner. If in case I do not delegate the task I like to be involved in, it will be the sign of a weak leader. Thus, in order to become a strong or robust project leader, I have to manage to delegate my most liked activities. Furthermore, I will manage to do this by keeping the members learn about the activities and keep them aware of the techniques of doing the tasks before the delegation. This enables the members to follow my techniques and methods of carrying out the activities. However, I will not mind if they are using their own way of doing the tasks. The main motive is to accomplish the project in an efficient and innovative manner so that the chance of occurrence of failure is less.

I will ensure that the roles I prefer at least in the project are provided the attention that is required for the good project leadership by measuring the effectiveness of the project outcomes. Moreover, I will do this by evaluating the performance of each of my team members in terms of carrying out activities. I will ensure this by checking on the quality work done by the employees and hence check the quality of the desired outcomes. I will use the method of feedback from the employees so that I can ensure that my leaderships are well or lagging somewhere.

References for Project Leadership

Aga, D. A., Noorderhaven, N., & Vallejo, B. (2016). Transformational leadership and project success: The mediating role of team-building. International Journal of Project Management, 34(5), 806-818.

Çekmecelioğlu, H. G., & Özbağ, G. K. (2016). Leadership and creativity: The impact of transformational leadership on individual creativity. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 235, 243-249.

Dickson, G. M., & Kising’u, T. M. (2019). Effect of transformational leadership on change management in Kenya Ports Authority. The Strategic Journal of Business & Change Management, 6(2), 1150-1172.

Littman, M. J., & Littman, E. S. (2017). Six Ethical Leadership Strategies for Project Management Success. Project Management Development–Practice and Perspectives, 153.

Ma, S., & Seidl, D. (2018). New CEOs and their collaborators: Divergence and convergence between the strategic leadership constellation and the top management team. Strategic Management Journal, 39(3), 606-638.

Michael, O. B., & ACP, P. (2017). Why Bad Projects Are So Hard To Kill. PM World Journal, 6(3), 1-14.

Nestsiarovich, K., & Pons, D. (2020). Team role adoption and distribution in engineering project meetings. Behavioral Sciences, 10(2), 57.

Paulienė, R. (2017). Interaction between managerial competencies and leadership in business organizations. Regional Formation and Development Studies, 21(1), 97-107.

Yoon, J., Kim, M., & Shin, J. (2016). Confidence in delegation and leadership of registered nurses in long‐term‐care hospitals. Journal of nursing management, 24(5), 676-685.

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