Part 2: Personal Leadership Assessment

In this project, I reflected back to my leadership experience in learning context. While

reflecting back to most of my actions, I sometimes wished that I could done things differently
that will produce different outcomes to what actually happened during those times. I have
experienced around 5 years in the educational field of work and I can say that I am happy to
work in this industry. To my knowledge, being a leader in the field of education sometimes
required passion and patience in order to make things work the way I want it to.
In my experience of working in the educational field, I felt that the transformational
leadership is the type of leadership that I applied in leading my team. Nowadays, bullying has
been attracted many people’s attention since it can happen anywhere, either in school area
or not. By doing this type of leadership style which focuses more on affecting the follower’s
and influence them with good values so they are motivated to act in ways that supports the
learning environment, I can say that my goal in short term is to elaborate a good team that is
able to create positive social changes. Along with the transformational leadership, I also
believed that skills approach is also required to complete this method into more positive
ways. Northouse (2013) conclude that the skills approach suggested that knowledge and
abilities are needed for effective leadership. Katz (1995) also explained that effective
administration (i.e., leadership) depends on three basics personal skills: technical, human,
and conceptual. I feel that every person in team has the rights to have their own opinion in
teaching. Different people will also have different styles of approach when dealing with
students. Due to the time I spent learning further about leadership style through this course,
it knocked some sense in me that beside skills, reflection is actually an important matter for
us to realise the positive and negative outcomes of the things I did and the long-term goals
that I pursue. Furthermore, I am also able to analyse and make improvements in my job.
Bolton (2010) stated that reflective practise can enable practitioners to learn from experience
about themselves, their work, and the way they relate to home and work. To extend this, the
long-term goal that I try to reach is to improve the process of learning both for students and
teachers by reflecting their actions in the past. Improvement is a never ending story where in
my goals to becoming a better person for any team member including for the one who
experience bully and how to overcome it.
The other leadership style that I adopt for leading my team is the distributed leadership. It is
a leadership style that acknowledges the work of all individuals who contributed to leadership
practice and has a normative power, which reflects current changes in the current changes in
leadership practice in school. This leadership style makes me able to unite the team to work
together, in order to make the learning environment comfortable for students. As sometimes
as a student, bullying tends to happen and as a leader we need to educate students that it
can lead to a violent situation. The term ‘distributed leadership’ also has a representative power
(Harris, 2008) which explained that it represents the alternative approaches to leadership because of
the increased external demands and pressure in schools. By this definition, I expect to become more
aware of this bullying in school, which will raise the feeling of belonging as a member of this institution.
In a short term, my goal is to reduce the numbers of bullying and to increase the feel of belonging by
anyone who are related in learning activity. Causes of bullying can be triggered by some factors, for
example; the strong need of power and control, family context, and deceptive behaviours (Saliceti,
2015), and due to this theory, in a long – term run I really hope that I and my team can manage to
change the bullies into a better person related to their relations with others in the learning
environment and to give support for children by doing practices in leadership which lead to
understanding what their needs.

The last leadership style that I will discuss is about the team leadership style. It is a leadership
style that focuses in developing effectiveness through interventions in a work together. A
team has specified roles for its members with requisite knowledge and skills to perform these
roles (Levi, 2011). This means that a leader must understand what the team needs, and
focuses more in team’s goal rather than individual’s goal. In performing this style of
leadership, it needs support from the structural of organisation so the team member can
involve as a team leader. A successful team will be able to develop critical abilities that can
help the team leader organising their capabilities about what should be done in leading the
team. To achieve this, a team leader must be able to take actions that can be performed
internally and externally. They must have skills to manage conflict, collaborate well together
and building commitments along the team, and after that the team goal can be achieved. The
short term goal is to train team leaders who will be able to hear the team’s needs, and to
focus more on the team’s goal rather than individual goals. After that, the performance of the
team can be increased. Team performance is the “quality of decision making, the ability to
implement decisions, the outcomes of teamwork in terms of problems solved and work
completed, and finally the quality of institutional leadership provided by the team”
(Nadler,1998, p.24). Based on this knowledge, the long term goal in using this leadership style
is to create capable team leaders which will lead their own team to raise the stability of
learning environment in the institution. Northouse (2013) explained that the team leader that
can assess the current effectiveness of the team and take appropriate action.
Part 3: Action Plan
After we have our goals above, we surely need real actions in order to achieve the goals. I am
using the S.M.A.R.T goals to identify the specific actions to achieve the goals. The first one is
to manage a good team to create social positive changes. The reason why I choose this goal
is because bullying usually happens in school. Without proper knowledge and the right
actions, it can be a habit that we bring until we grow up. Knowing about how to manage a
team can lead to social positive changes can lead to better environment not just in the
learning environment where they are learning about educational subjects and relationship
with others, but also in environment around them. After a student finish their learning, they
will face the world and it is necessary for them to understand about how they will react in
positive ways when they have problems. This goal can be achieved in one-year program. To
achieve this, the leader must become a role model, so that the followers can see the
competence in them. It can be seen where the leader must have visions so that the followers
can see the values in the actions. It is positively can be achieved during the time period
because by working together in at least one year, the quality of a leader can be reflected
through the actions. This goal can be measured with how many team member has changed,
since naturally, people tend to put forward their own interest rather than the team’s goal.
Afterwards, when this habit can be formed in daily activities, team’s goal can be achieved, we
can train a qualities of future leaders since we started from the early stage of learning which
is in school.
Looking from the short-term goal, I conclude that in a long-term area is to improve their
personal behaviour to become active as a team member and how to react properly about
bullying itself. It is necessary since bullying is considered as a violent act and can increase the
level of bullying as we grow up. It is not easy for the students to change the act when they
don’t know about bullying especially because it can come from different factors such as the
needs of power, family context and deceptive behaviour. Since it is a process that occur
between leader and followers, this process can occur for more than a year. In the time-based,
it can be achieved in a two-year programme. This is a realistic setting because by this time,
knowledge will be learnt and the act of behaviour can be changed into a better act to achieve
a better relationship with others. We will able to measure the success of this goal by
evaluating in a continuous activity that relating with peers at school. Moreover, achieving this
goal will need patience and skills. We as a leader need to involve themselves in the culture of
the organisation and help to shape how the team member treat other member. It will be
more effective when they are working with people because trust is gained among them. They
can encourage each other and even celebrating what they have accomplished. In a conclusion
through this goal, improvement is actually always needed, but when we manage to finish it,
we as a team will always remember the activities that has been done, and can lead to
becoming a better person in the future.
Next, my goal is to reduce the numbers of bullying and to increase the feel of belonging in the team.
To get through this goal, the whole member of the team should take part into necessary actions
especially teachers. Reducing numbers of bullying is not easy, since we are dealing with many
students, but it can be achieved during one-year time based. This should be accomplished because by
reducing the number of bullying, then the situation of learning in an educational industry will be
conducive, and it will increase the numbers of students in enrolment and will increase the company’s
profit. However, this should be done in correct ways because according to research from Jevtic (2012),
the expression of violence among children, the abuser usually older than the ones they abuse. This
can be easily measured by the numbers of enrolment for new students in school. To achieve this,
leadership should be distributed along with the prime aim of distribution. The leader delegates the
leadership to a member that they trust in controlling the team because distributed leadership has
empirical power. Most recently research has shown that the patterns of leadership distribution matter
within an organisation and that distributed leadership practice is more likely to equate with improved
organisational performance and outcomes (Leithwood et al., 2004, 2007)

The related long-term goal will be changing the bullies into a different person in the way they act and
to increase a good relationship between peers. This can be measured by using a group project
assignment that require the students working together as a team. We can say that we are success in
this goal by assessing the result of the project. If the score of the project assignment is above several
percentages, for example around 70%, then we can say that we are moving forward through the
progress. In theory, distributed leadership is a frame to understand leadership practise. This theory
needs to engage with teachers, head teachers, supports staffs and other professionals. They will need
to construct programmes to work together with the group project that can be used as a diagnostic
tools and see the difference outcome. Besides, the team need to cooperate to explore the condition
of learning in their schools and show enthusiasm in running this programme. The time needed to
complete this goal will be in three years, because managing students should be done for the whole
years of studying, in this case of study for secondary year is in three years’ time.

The short term goal that aligned with the team leadership is to train team leaders who will be
able to hear the team’s needs more than each individual’s needs. This is set as a goal because
in team leadership, we need to put the team’s goal as a primary goal rather than individual’s
goal. This should be accomplished in order to make an effective team in an organisation.
Effective team is really important because they will share common goal as a vision in doing
their work. The leader will need to monitor the work of their team and can take necessary
actions related to internal and external environment. Internal actions can focus on goals and
compile those goals into a structured plan. This plan then can facilitate the team leaders in
order to take decisions that related with the team’s goal. Hearing team’s need also needs to
be trained among the team leaders so they can make a hypothesis and questions to oneself
and others. External actions can be focus more on networking among the stakeholders of the
organisations and maintain the information available to share with. By doing this, an effective
team will be formed. This is considered a short term actions because it can be achieved just
in a 6 months to 1-year time. Training team leaders are not difficult since they consist of
people who already have qualities to become future leaders.
Reflecting from the short term goal, the long term goal in using this leadership style is to
create capable team leaders which will lead their own team to raise the stability of learning
environment in the institution. As been said in the short term goal, team leaders are not
difficult to train because of the quality of the person. However, a capable team leader is a
long term progress because they need to maintain the competence in themselves as a leader
in continuous actions and relationship between the team-member and among another the
team leaders. They have to be able to manage team’s problems and make strategic actions
to solve this. This long-term goal can be accomplished in the range of 3-year to 5-year
experience of being a leader. They will need a perfect timing whether to interfere into a
situation where the team member. Deciding an exact intervention is not as easy as it sounds
since skills are needed and it can be obtained by continuous practise of leadership. This long
term goal can be supported with the team leadership model that helped to point the way for
constant team analysis and improvement. This goal can be a motivation because being a
capable team leader will enhance themselves as an individual to become more competitive
in an educational industry, and the effort required will be useful for both the leader and the
member because it focus on the real life organizational work group. In the other hand, a
capable team leader will be able to maintain an effective team, which will bring positive social
change.