Paper Example on Leadership & Management: Reflective Learning & ORGL Courses

Introduction

Leadership and management call for skills, determination, hard work, and cooperation, among other things. If the executive management is not well skilled or keen on the organizational operations, they could lose focus and put the whole operation in jeopardy. In case such happens, one or more reflective learning theories are applied to mitigate the condition. Besides, the knowledge attained in ORGL courses could be applied as a way of bringing a solution to the case at hand. This paper discusses a case study on leadership and management, application of reflective learning theory, and knowledge from ORGL courses to find a solution to the problem at hand.

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Case Study Introduction

Laura works as an associate director in a non-profit firm that gives aid to families and children (University of Minnesota, 2020). She also heads a department that evaluates the skill-building programs given to the families and reports back to the agency's top leadership. Recently, the agency has been cautious in hiring due to increased competition, especially in federal grant funding. The agency has suffered staff turnover whereby two directors, finance staff, and three key researchers have left. Laura travels a lot like a job requirement and also supervises two managers who then attend to five members each. The managers, Kelly and Linda, have been hired within the last six months. Kelly is very useful as she knows research and behavioral health services to the youth. Kelly is very specific to what is right and wrong and is very supportive of her staff. She is also self-driven and motivated and expects the same from her staff. Linda is also very useful as she has knowledge in social science evaluation and research and manages different projects. She is a problem solver, supports her staff, organized and can take too much. The two managers sense that the staff is being overworked especially since the turnover of the other employees. Employees feel that Laura is a glass-half-empty kind of person, especially in conversation. Laura has not shared the budget plan with the managers, although the finance department has given her all the information she needs. Staff is becoming distresses, and managers frustrated as they cannot do much without the budget information.

Application of Kolb Experiential Learning Cycle

This reflective learning theory by Fry and Kolb evaluates constituent parts of reflection and from which they created a learning cycle framework (Perusso, Blankesteijin & Leal, 2019). The theory reflects the problem in two ways; Kolb and Pedler. The theory highlight that individuals often have a preference for performing one part of the learning cycle over others. They either take the ‘so what’ or ‘abstract conceptualization’ models of the theory. However, taking preference on one side is not a problem so long as adequate skills are exercised in other areas. The problem comes in whereby after the preference, one or several areas are neglected and left without enough skills in exercise. This problem causes the learning to be unbalanced and skewed (Azim & Shamim, 2020). Maintaining the level of competence in all areas of the learning cycle is critical for comprehensive learning.

Reviewing the case study, the agency made Laura an associate director because she was skilled enough to handle her duties as well as ensure maximum performance in the company. However has been devastated by the high rate of employee turnover, and based on her pessimistic personality, she expects more to leave the company. This could be one of the reasons why she has become less active as needed. Also, she could be taking caution with the new managers hence not sharing the budget information with them. Laura has paid much attention to her traveling duties and less on the management issues. A solution to the existing problems is for Laura to pay attention to the management areas she supervises. She could do this by sharing the budget information so that her managers could work on hiring new staff to reduce the overworking of the existing staff. Another thing Laura should do is change her pessimistic conversation to the employees who leave them unsatisfied and adopt an optimistic style to encourage them. This way, she will have shared her skills across all her areas of expertise, and no significant problems will be experienced.

Application of ORGL Courses in the Case Study

The acquired knowledge in organizational leadership (ORGL) courses have contributed to a better understanding of the case study and provision of the solution (“Organizational Leadership,” 2020). The course on transforming managers to inspired leaders has taught me that Laura needs to invest trust in the two managers; Linda and Kelly, and provide them with the budget information for them to operate smoothly. Organizational communication course reveals that poor senior to junior communication could cause problems in the operations of the employees as they feel less motivated and discouraged. Senior to junior communication should be more effective and motivating for better production of work within the juniors. Theories of leadership knowledge helped me in analyzing the reflective learning theory and apply it to find a solution in the case study.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Kolb experiential learning cycle advocates for adequate distribution of skills in all areas of learning for better results. Laura has to be focused on her supervision duties to the managers like she is focused on other duties. Also, she must improve on her relationship with the managers and the other employees who reel dejected by her pessimistic conversation. The employees should not be overworked because that will make them demotivated and less productive; hence, more hiring is needed. ORGL courses such as organizational communication and inspiring the managers have equipped me with the knowledge to apply the reflective learning theory and find a solution to the case study.

References

Azim, S. R., & Shamim, M. S. (2020). Educational theories that inform the educational strategies for teaching ethics in undergraduate medical education. JPMA, 2019. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Drrubaba_Azim/publication/338187635_Introduction_Educational_theories_that_inform_the_educational_strategies_for_teaching_ethics_in_undergraduate_medical_education/links/5e059e9a4585159aa49d4770/Introduction-Educational-theories-that-inform-the-educational-strategies-for-teaching-ethics-in-undergraduate-medical-education.pdf

Organizational Leadership (ORGL). (2020). https://bulletin.fordham.edu/courses/orgl/orgl.pdf

Perusso, A., Blankesteijn, M., & Leal, R. (2019). The contribution of reflective learning to experiential learning in business education. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 1-15. https://srhe.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02602938.2019.1705963

University of Minnesota. (2020). Leadership and management case study #1. CYFAR | CYFAR. https://cyfar.org/ilm_8_casestudy1