MBA 401 Strategic Management Assignment Sample

• Subject Code : MBA-401
• Subject Name : Strategic Management

Reflection Report

Introduction

Leaders can their work environment better or worse based on their skills and involvement. Effective leadership skills are essential for success and growth and for taking steps to facilitate improved productivity and culture. In order to facilitate our leadership development we had a guest industry speaker, Kylie Bishop, invited in our class to talk about leadership. She shared her personal and professional experience and shared her take on leadership and the way we can become better leaders. This report presents my reflection on past experiences in respect of the ideas and concepts Mrs Bishop mentioned in her talk. In order to do so, this report uses the Gibbs reflective cycle.

Gibbs Reflective Cycle

Gibbs reflective cycle is one of the most famous models for reflection. It includes 6 stages to explore and analyse an experience and to infer key insights from such experiences. The cycle offers a framework for examining experiences and allows one to learn from past experiences.

Gibbs reflective cycle

My reflection of past leadership experiences is mentioned below.

Description

During one of my group assignments I was having significant trouble with my presentation. I and my group members conducted a group discussion session to help each other and it turned out I was not alone in terms of experiencing problems with my part of group presentation. During the group discussion I was present with 4 of my other team members and we started sharing ideas to brainstorm about group presentation. Unbeknownst to us all, one of the team members had already completed her part of the presentation. She shared how she completed her task and answered our question regarding the same. I conducted similar session several times and we were able to complete out presentation with good grades.

Feelings

I was pretty confused and anxious in the beginning when I was not able to complete my task as the assignment constituted 40% of our total grades. Also, I was not very enthusiastic about the idea of group discussions and similar stuff, as I thought that everyone should complete their assignments themselves. Furthermore, when I contacted my teammates for a group session, most of them showed little or no interest. However, despite our lack of interest we conducted the group discussion session and I am grateful that we did so. Because, first of all, it was reassuring to know that I am not the only one with such problems and that my group members feel the same way. Moreover, as I got to understand the problem and share suggestions to solve it, I started to get less and less anxious and confused.

Evaluation

My experience of the group was mainly positive as I got to work on my problems with the help of my teammates and in the process we learned a new way to communicate our problem and to solve it with the help of others. However, it would have been better if I was able to contribute in the discussion as I think most of the time I was only passively engaged in the discussion. In addition to this, while we were able to complete our assignment, I think that we would have gotten better grades if we had also taken the help of our teacher in the process, rather than solving everything on our own, along with reacting calmly when we were in disagreement.

Analysis

As I reflect upon my experience I think that what helped us in our presentation is what Mrs Bishop mentioned in her leadership talk. Like Mrs Bishop, and Ferdinand & Dwiatmadja (2018) mentioned, knowledge sharing is a vital component of knowledge management and helps to utilize the available cognitive resources. We were able to capitalize on the knowledge of our team mate which helped us to share information, ideas and suggestion relevant to the task at hand. In addition to this, effective communication among team members further improves the entire process. Through communication we were able to state out problem and listen to others and find a point of agreement.

Howarth & Morse-Jones (2019) also expressed similar emotion and suggested that while disagreements and problems are ubiquitous in business; effective communication can solve more or less any problem. Moreover, Mrs Bishop mentioned 3 important leadership skills, namely, simplicity, repeatable and consistency, and I think the same skills also helped us to develop a continuous process of conducting such sessions. While we were not running an organization, we used the same concepts of knowledge sharing, effective communication and other leadership skills to effectively solve our problem. However, I think that my communication skills are not effective as I did not handled disagreements in a positive manner.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I think that given the importance of effective leadership, it is vital for individuals to develop their leadership skills. This insight is every pertinent considering that we used the same principles to solve out small problems that, as Mrs Bishop mentioned, are used by leaders of multinational organizations. We were able to solve our problems by sharing our knowledge with one other and communicating properly. It also helped us to keep the process simple and repeatable to ensure its consistency.

Action plan

Because of my experience of group discussion, I have a template in place for future problems which includes brainstorming with involved individuals to agree upon a solution, and properly communicating while doing so. However, I will take relevant courses to improve my communication skills so that I can actively and more positively contribute to such discussions.

References

Ferdinand, A. T., & Dwiatmadja, C. (2018). Knowledge Sharing in a Critical Moment of Work: A Driver for Success?. International Journal of Knowledge Management, 14(2).

Howarth, C., & Morse-Jones, S. (2019). The Importance of Communication, Collaboration and Co-production. In Resilience to Climate Change (pp. 65-86). Palgrave Pivot, Cham.

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