Week Two Team Reflection on Weekly Objectives

Cicely Breland, Elias Mezquita, Jonah Mock, Jean Valerie

LDR/531

December 7, 2015

Mr. Gary Winder

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Week Two Team Reflection on Weekly ObjectivesAs emerging leaders in the field, Team B did a self-reflection to identify the topics we are

comfortable with and opportunities we may have as we enter into our future leadership roles. The

DISC assessment was an excellent tool to expose some facets to our personality and how we can

effectively lead others. The assessment also proves to be a resource for better communication

and how to work with a variety of personality types. The objectives for this week are to identify

who could be identified as a mentor throughout the course and complete a development plan that

will include all the team members DISC assessments. As a team we have a collected group of the

following personality types: interactive, Dominance, Cautious, and Assessor, so there is plenty of

diversity in the group. During group discussion we were able to discover our struggles and topics

we are comfortable with.

Cicely’s part

The topic that had the most impact on me is the various approaches to leadership styles.

Too often managers may have an approach without being aware of it. It became significant for

me because it supports the point that you have multiple ways to lead group. There may be some

external factors that can affect how the leader leads like, culture and the work environment.

Ultimately it is up to the manager to choose how to handle daily situations. A topic that I am

struggling with is the ability to read subordinates to gage which how to best inspire and motivate

them and see my vision. I have done well as a sales person in the past to convince my customer, I

am currently working on translating that skill in to leadership.

Ellias’ Part

I am already having difficulty identifying a mentor as anyone I am close to lives in

California and the one person I would identify as a mentor is the client I work under. As easy and

great the color test was to identify behavior traits, I find it difficult to understand how I could use

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that approach for some of my supervisors. In the field of security it is tough to ensure all officers

are completing their daily tasks as I cannot “babysit” everyone all day. But if one person fails

while on post the manager, which is myself, is held accountable for the short coming. As we

progress in the course I am hoping to rid myself of the doubt and become a better manager and

leader in any field I enter.

Jean’s Part

The topic this week that I enjoyed is the guidelines for being an inspirational leader. The

one specific guideline that stood out the most was to lead by example. Leaders are who

subordinates look up to and want to follow in their footsteps. It is true that actions speak louder

than words so to have a leader who does what is expected and do as he/she expect others to do as

well is a leader who sets great examples to their followers. Leading by example sends a strong

message to individuals who look up to them. It tells followers that this is how it is supposed to be

done and if I can do it, I would expect that you can do it as well. The values supported by leaders

should be demonstrated in their behaviors on a consistent basis.

Jonah

Characteristics of leadership styles and theories of leadership encompass the learning

objectives of our second week of class. Leader versus manager served as a highlighted topic

wherein the question “can a person lead without being a manager” served as basis for much

discussion, including those characteristics of operation both leaders and managers value.

Approaches to leadership and leadership effectiveness surfaced this week also. Discussions of

these topics emphasized many pertinent details, such as:

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Trait – pertains to personality, motives, values, and skills

Behavior – pertains to what managers actually do on the job

Power-influence – pertains to the influence processes used by managers

Situational – pertains to outside factors that influence leadership processes (nature of the

work, type of organization, and so forth)

Integrative – involves more than one approach

Additionally, a leadership theory comparison was part of the discussed material, and covered the

following:

Intra-individual – involves examining roles, behaviors, and decision styles

Dyadic – examines relationship between leader and subordinate

Group processes – focuses on leaders’ influence on team performance

Organizational processes – focuses on how a leader adapts to the environment and

acquires resources necessary to complete tasks

Multilevel – involves application of more than one theory

Leader-centered versus follower-centered – extent to which a theory is focused either on

a leader or a follower

Descriptive – explains leadership processes, describes the typical activities of leaders,

and explains why certain behaviors occur in particular situations

Prescriptive – specifies what leaders must do to become effective and identifies any

necessary conditions for using a particular type of behavior effectively

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Universal or contingency – describes some aspect of leadership that applies to all types of

situations

Lastly, the topics of Charismatic Leaders and Transformational Leaderships came through in the

objectives wherein the rarity and indentifiability of a charasmatic leader, and the empowerement

and inspiration of transformational leaders shined through as the fundamental characteristics of

most interest.

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