BSBLED701A Leadership Experience Report

1. Brief context.

   A group of workers are to make as many paper planes as much as they can within  40 minutes.

 the planes were to be made as per the instructions given. During that time superior managers were able to enter the space of the middles mangers and also access the workers and to communicate with them  at any time, regarding any work-related issues.

Middle management could enter the space of the Workers whenever they desired to. Middle managers had to request permission to enter Upper managements’ designated work space (which the Superiors may refuse).

The Workers are not allowed to engage with the Superior managers in any way, unless they were invited especially, by the Superior managers. The Workers were allowed only to  send one delegate at a time to approach the Middle managers in their workspace and were required to request permission to communicate with them first (which the Middle managers may refuse).

• Observations of your leadership performance in the exercise. What you did, why you did it, what your motivations were, what your level of energy and engagement was and why, what your hoped for, outcomes were, etc…

As my colleague and I were designated as Superior Managers (SMS), it was paramount to work together as a team.  Overall I believe that the approach adopted by my colleague and myself for this exercise  was of a managerial style rather than that of a leadership approach. As outlined on the Swinburn participant manual on Lead Personal and  Strategic Transformation  Pg. 10 , some of the distinct differences between management which is primarily focused on tasks, and the leadership approach focused mainly on people, is that although the leadership approach focuses on achieving task but also making sure to keep the team motivated and empowering them to achieve task assigned. Leadership is about leading by example getting the best out people for the benefit of the team successful achievement of these objectives.. We felt at the time that it was important to take a managerial role as we were both my colleague focused on tasks to be accomplished  (management) rather than  focusing on the long term goals of creating and maintaining team energy levels (leadership). We were focusing on trying to organise support functions and resources for the workers to complete task assigned (management )rather that motivating and empowering the team (leadership). WE WERE trying to ENSURE that the paper aeroplanes were completed according to the standards. As an example when the MMS came to  report to us about the issues that the workers were encountering our primarily focus   was  how can we source items needed for the workers to allow them to complete the task (management) rather that engaging in building strong relationship with the whole team and ensuring that the team was well balanced ( leadership), ensuring an effective resource is used for the task at hand (management ) rather than listening to our people and try to get to the root causes quickly and effectively (leadership) , Our goal was to ensure ( though we did not succeed) that tasks were  conducted within a  correct time frame (management) rather than using excellent leadership skills in  bringing  people along the correct path and so on.. 

I believe that as SMS  we should have discussed our personal strengths and weakness  between ourselves, in order to distribute tasks effectively amongst ourselves and  to help us to   effectively lead our team. However, both myself and my colleague failed to do so perhaps by the excitement of  the  exercise  or by  a lack of professional chemistry between my colleague and I. Additionally there were a lack of  goals and vision’s alignment between  my colleague and I  or simply our lack of experience.

I also believe that the dynamic between my colleague and I was a little awkward, perhaps because this was the first time for both us in this situation where we needed to cooperate and work together with the same responsibilities and position “tittle”, both of us were not familiar with each other’s respective working and leadership style. Additionally, both my colleague and I were afraid of stepping  on each other’s toes, which in Hein site  

We should have discussed and nominated the person who was going to make the final decision related to issues encountered I.e.  task distributions, who should speak  with the team, perhaps this way the exercise could have run smoother, furthermore one of  us could have expressed our intention of taking the role as a leader for the team, as highlighted by Spencer and Spencer  on generic Leadership Competency.  

I believe this was  an excellent  opportunity  for me to demonstrate  my leadership capability  by initiating that conversation with my colleague.  Spencer & Spencer on Generic leadership competencies  define  initiative as “one being self-motivated to do more than is expected or required in the job act before being required to by events to improve job performance, avoid problems or find or create new opportunities.” At this I had opportunity to discuss with my colleague of my intention of taking the role of a leader.

As  SMS we should  have bring our  focus on major strategic issues of the exercise  then  work together as team  rather than delegating  tasks to individual team members,  unfortunately we had adopted that  managerial  approach by delegating to the MMS to overseas the work of the workers ,this in turn had created alliance between the MMS and  the workers  setting us a part as  like “we were untouchable  and unreachable. We  should’ve work together for example by meeting regularly with the whole  team and discuss on every issue the team was encountering then by addressing it  and we could have  spent some time with the workers by carefully  listening  to their needs then to  come up with workable solutions for the whole team.