Self-Reflection and Evaluation: "Bring the Concept to Life" Project

Introduction

I was responsible for the "Bring the concept to life" project where I was the leader and in charge of a group. The project involved professionally engaging in media-rich presentations regarding the Peninsula of Hong Kong. Therefore, the project demanded a lot of leadership skills such as communication, creativity, humility, active involvement of the group members among others. From the project, therefore, I learned a lot about myself which made me believe that unless I had undertaken the project, there was very little about the leadership skills that I could have ever learned. I learned that I could lead a group with ease with a few improvements to be made with a reflection on skills such as motivation, delegating duties, creativity, giving feedback amply, and positivity.

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Sharma & Jain (2013) believes that good leaders are not just born, they are made by their willpower to become effective and build on a positive line for them to become effective frontrunners. Good leaders are made from a balance of self and the environment. In any case, a leader has to put a lot of their input if they must be successful leaders. In this case, self-evaluation becomes an unequivocal input (Sharma & Jain, 2013). It gives upcoming leaders the abilities to focus on where they are wrong. Rectifications to that matter, therefore, make them build positive energy where they can correct their points of errs (Amagoh, 2009). Self-evaluation also gives a good leader a chance to understand their strong points and build on them more if they must thrive. Self-evaluation is however not just outright since it requires the leader to face up with realities of weaknesses and strength in relation to their skills.

From my self-reflection on the project, I noticed that I am generally, a good leader. I found that I had a good transition of duties while engaging the team which I was responsible for which made me believe that my skills as a leader were vindicated. The task required active media communications in the form of making Logos for different companies as a brand expression technique. It was generally a manner where we could develop some logos that spoke volumes about the peninsula of Hong Kong. Research skills were, therefore, necessary to understand the elements of the Peninsula. Elements of messaging and active communication were also prevalent in the whole project which gave the project a generally good outcome that can be considered a worthwhile end of a project (Sirkis, 2011). I, therefore, feel that my leadership performance for the project was good since the project's outcomes were undoubtedly good.

The project was to be completed within a short period which called for a responsive time management skill. I discovered that I was good at time management since every faction of the project was done in a short period that guaranteed the overall project completion in time. Time management is a necessary skill for any leader (Germain, 2012). It is the skill that gives the leader the ability to run tasks with ease and complete them in time. Time management determines the success of a project immensely since schemes are guided by frames of time which mostly are under constraints due to client requirements. I found this a positive skill since I was able to complete all the tasks on time and not a single delivery of the project was late.

Creativity is another skill that I learned which is deeply ingrained in me. It is the skill that enables leaders to be fast and good. Creativity gives a leader the ability to navigate around problems arising from the project. If a leader is not creative, then they might end up not solving a simple problem arising from the project which could affect the quality of the delivered project or even making the project fail (Johansen, 2012). As a creative leader, I was able to apply different models of work, change my team composition regarding how members are suited to particular duties. I found that creativity gave me a chance to rethink of about various applicable approaches to utilize in a project. Furthermore, this made me believe that with such creativity; I could manage to maneuver around complex matters and make project decisions fast and good. This leadership skill, therefore, remains a pertinent area of strength given my leadership capacity.

The project we had was one that required active communication among the group members. I, therefore, adopted the small group communication approach where communication required to be done amongst all group members each in their turn. I discovered from this communication approach that I could convince the group members to undertake certain decisions where they considered not worthwhile in the very onset without coercion (Chen & Rybak, 2017). Having good communication skills and mostly briefing each group member at their own time allowed me an avenue to convince the members of how essential they were for the project's completion (Shooter, Sibthorp & Paisley, 2009). The members, therefore, felt accrued towards the project's completion. Good communication skills also involved listening to the views of the team members, the problems they faced while undertaking the project and consequently, working on the problems for the members to work with ease.

From the project, I learned that time-management, positivity, trust, and responsiveness in feedback are key milestones for project success. Time management is the overall determinant of a successful project. It is through time management various project constraints such as project deliverables are timely delivered. Therefore, time management means that a leader can manage different instances of their work and end up making a full delivery of the project within the accrued time (Mumford, Campion & Morgeson, 2007). Positivity is the other key thing particularly for projects with various challenges. While instilled in a group leader, positivity can a leader motivate all team members making them believe in the project which ultimately enhances its success.

Trust is yet another core competency that a leader should invest in while working with a team. Trust is the ability for the leader to believe in his team and work together believing that their energies are not in vain (De Meuse, Dai & Wu, 2011). It motivates the group members, and fewer collisions are encountered. Lastly, a leader deserves to be responsive in giving feedback. It equally means that the leader has time for their teams and gives opinions regarding the project delivery inclusive of issues raised by the team members. From the projects encounter, I discovered that it is not just an informal thing to be a leader. This is because it is difficult to understand some things which look materially hard especially when the team members are not cooperative. Deriving cooperation from team members is a hard thing especially when they have divergent opinions (Germain, 2012). Also, engaging changing project requirements is another challenging component which requires a leader to change the project's approach which equally means that the delivery of the project could be affected.

If I were given a chance of being a leader of the group again, I would do at least three things differently. I would build more trust amongst my team members, make sure I fully comprehend the project's goals during its initiation, and lastly, make sure that I am more actively involved in its implementation. This is due to the discovery that even when there was trust within the team, the team members were not very open to me which sometimes led them to engage in difficult tasks alone (Johansen, 2012). Again, I had issues with understanding the entire requirements of the project and as such, changing approaches had to be engaged from time to time. I would also be more actively engaged with the team members such that I did not look like an oversight authority.

To be a better leader, I wish to develop the skill of giving feedback responsively and listening to the team members views more immensely. I additionally discovered that even when I was responsive to the queries raised by the team members, the feedback was often not adequate. Furthermore, assuming most of team members' views, I discovered it helpful upon self-evaluation. I would, therefore, build more on the two skills for future projects.

Statement of Authorship

I wrote this self-evaluation essay upon evaluating the project that was undertaken by a team where I was the core team leader duped as "Bring the concept to life." I, therefore, take all responsibility for the content written herein with due diligence as true self-reflection after the termination of the project.

References

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