Reflective Writing (Entrepreneurship And Leadership Of Business Venture)

Reflective Writing
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Reflective Writing
Write a reflective report demonstrating analysis, understanding, and insight of both, your leadership style and entrepreneurial qualities and characteristics. Evidence your report with research in the key topic areas giving examples from business and business organizations showing how those styles and attributes might add value to business.
In life, it is crucial to know who one is and what they are bringing to the table. This means that people need to know their abilities, inclinations, characteristics, and leadership style. Aside from knowing these, people need to go a step further and know how their personalities could influence their businesses or their commitment to an organization’s goals. With this in mind, I set out to study myself and took two tests: one of them tested my leadership style, while the other tested my entrepreneurial qualities and characteristics. Knowing these, I believe, will help me make better decisions while factoring in my biases. In business, it is indeed possible to make decisions based on one’s biased qualities and style of conducting business. Acknowledging this is the first step to becoming independent or free of one’s biased views and personal insecurities. In knowing what my leadership style is and which qualities make up my entrepreneurial qualities and characteristics, I am in a better position to know how best I can use my knowledge of myself to influence performance. Thus, in this article, my aim is to document how my understanding of my leadership style and entrepreneurial qualities and characteristics can be of importance in business.
Leadership Style
Authoritarian = 17 – moderate range
Democratic = 28 – very high range
Laissez-faire = 24 – high range
Leadership style entails the type of leadership one decides to become. As a leader, one could either be an authoritarian leader, a democratic leader, or a laissez-faire leader. These different styles of leadership yield different results. The end goal or target for any business is to attain some level of success and in business, success is measured in terms of how much profit an organization makes. If a business consistently makes profits and appears adaptable to changes in the markets, the leaders of such an organization are applauded and their style of leadership is considered effective. However, when a business consistently posts loses, the leaders of such an organization will be considered as ineffective and their style of leadership will be found wanting.
As per the results of my leadership style, I appear to be more democratic, share certain strong tendencies of laissez-faire leadership, and average authoritarian tendencies. Well, from the above, I can strongly say that my leadership style is varied but, on any scale, I will appear democratic. GO and Odivwri (2015, pg. 2) note that a “democratic leader allows for decision making to be shared by the leader and the group.” They continue to indicate that “criticism and praises are objectively given and a feeling of responsibility is developed within the group.” What this means is that a democratic leader understands that he could be wrong and that involving or absorbing other people’s ideas could be healthy for the survival and success of a business.
The first advantage of this type of leadership in business is that it is great especially when trying to solve major problems or issues within the organization. Khan (2015, pg. 88) notes that a democratic leader shares information with his/her subordinates and expects them to share their thoughts. Additionally, the researchers note that problem-solving responsibilities are shared and this means that everyone takes part in looking for answers and solutions. While supporting Khan’s idea of how effective a democratic style of leadership is, Jakhar (2017) notes that in a democratic style of leadership, “everyone is given the opportunity to participate, ideas are exchanged freely, and discussion is encouraged.” A good example of how democratic leadership can lead to great success is Apple Inc. Apple Inc took time to take off and for some time, it posted losses. The former and late CEO Steve Jobs was not considered democratic but the moment he adopted this style of leadership and allowed people to think freely, the company started its ascent. Tim Cook, the current CEO, has continued with the same trend and not long ago, Apple reached a market capitalization of $1 trillion (Randewich, 2018, np). This made history and because Apple became the first company to hit a market capitalization of $1 trillion. While this growth is coupled with several factors, the company’s leadership is indeed one of the chief factors and thus needs to be applauded.
Aside from the above, democratic leadership or participative leadership as it is also known also helps to foster creativity in a team. A democratic leader is not one to micro-manage meaning that as a leader, I will leave my team to get into problems and find ways to get themselves or the company out of the same problems. Well, adopting such a stand positively affects a team as their productivity levels rise and their insightful inputs grow as well as they are encouraged to think on their own. This is also evident in a laissez-faire type of leadership which I got a high range in as well. Linge, Shikalieh, and Asiimwe (2016, pg. 244) note that the laissez-faire type of leadership “allows full freedom and power to employees.” This they say allows “other low-level management to be creative and approach work in a manner that is best for them without the leaders’ micromanaging them.” A good example of a CEO who used the laissez-faire style of leadership is Herb Kelleher. Kelleher is the former CEO and chairman of Southwest Airlines. As a leader, he sought ways to help his employees and through his style of leadership, he managed to drive the company forward. In a 2006 interview at Stanford, Kelleher told his audience that he always referred to his slogan which states: “manage in good times so that you do well in bad times” (Johnston 2006.) His merger of a democratic and laissez-faire styles of leadership helped to make sure th...