"[GROUP BEHAVIOR AND LEADERSHIP SKILLS] Table of ContentsProblem and Context .................................................................................................................................... 3Self awareness .............................................................................................................................................. 6Evaluation ..................................................................................................................................................... 7Analysis ....................................................................................................................................................... 10Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 11This was the first time in my life I was attending such a practical oriented course in groupbehavior and leadership skills. I didn’t expect this much exposure to these kind of interactivelearning programs. But this really worked in molding good leaders. This helped me a lot to bringout the real professional from me. From my childhood onwards I wish to act as a leader. Thiscourse gave me plenty of opportunity to be a good leader throughout the program. Humanresource management is an inevitable part of every organization, and I realized that I have abright future in the field of human resource management. This is one of the importantopportunities for me to enhance my ability to deal with people and manage them properlytowards the attainment of organizational objectives. This mode of interactive learning helped meto analyze the group behavior under different situations. Through this essay I try to reflect myexperience in group work, and I would like to discuss the positive changes that happened inbehavior during this module. This module was about organizational transformation in practice.The exercises and games in this module were very interesting and that leads to the inner changein my personality. Here I would like to use Gibbs’ six step frame work in this reflection forexplaining my experience in this course and to discuss about the effectiveness of the groupdiscussions.Problem and Context This course was on OTP (organizational transmission in practice) and leadership skills.The mode of study was very interesting, as it required to form groups, and we had a lot ofdiscussions in the group, on various topics of group behavior and leadership skills. This modulechanged my attitudes and beliefs about the leadership qualities. Earlier I thought this was aninborn talent, that cannot be created, or moulded, and it requires a deep knowledge in all the matters related, to be a good leader. But here I experienced that a leader is not a leader by hisbirth, he is moulded from his education, surrounding. Leaders do not need to know all thequestions and they do need to ask the right questions. The stories (cases) we have discussedduring this module was very impressive to touch the real feeling of a leader, especially the caseof Jack Pritchard and his doctor on adaptive challenges. In this modern world many companiesfaces such challenges of adaptation. So the companies need to frame new adaptive techniquesand strategies, in order to succeed in the competitive environment. These changes force theorganization to form new models of cooperation, and to clarify their values. Getting the realemployees to do adaptive work is primary duty of every leader in the competitive businessenvironment. These duties cannot be performed by a manger. The term manager differs fromleader in many aspects. Manager uses his authoritative expertise is extremely different from aleader. The manager always uses his authority to get the things done, and he focuses on shortrun. But a leader always encourages changes and focuses the benefits of his group.Organizational transformation refers to such activities as reengineering, redesigning andredefining business systems. According to the leadership continuum model of Tannebaum andSchmidt the autocratic leaders (those who create norms and ask the workers to follow it) aremore likely to make their own decisions and not engage their subordinates, while moredemocratic leaders give more participation to their subordinates in the decision making process.This leadership continuum gave me the knowledge to analyse the world leaders in terms of theirstrategies, decisions etc, to decide what kind of leader they are. Various leadership theories provided me the knowledge about various approaches towardsleadership. Some theories like trait theory argues this is an inborn skill, has given from the god. Ithis is an outdated theory now. As everyone knows leadership qualities can be gained from theeducation and training. Some other theories like style theory states the behavioral pattern of anindividual decides upon the leader in him. While other theories like situational theory andtransformational theory argues that this kind of talents is situational, it depends on situations. Butcertain other theories like emerging models states it is only the follower which reveals theleadership quality of a person. A true leadership focuses on maximizing efficiency through controlling efficiently. So it isclear that an efficient leader must be able to control his followers well towards the goals. As Imentioned earlier a leader must be able to encourage the workers to self-actualize through work.So that people come to work to work on them selves’ (N. Rose). That is why it is commonly said that leader should act like a therapist. And another statement is that the leaders should dominatethe mind of his subordinates, so that an utopian ideal of harmony comes in an organization. Itbrings unity towards the organization, and also make the subordinates to follow the leaderswithout using authoritative commands.As a group we got a chance to understand how, whenand why the group behaves in a particular manner. Group dynamics is the overall interactionbetween the members of groups. I realized while doing this course, the behavioral pattern and thefactors which determine these patterns of behavior in a group. We had analyzed the teamperformance model and the steps in team performance model.Self awarenessIn this module I really experienced the concept of synergy. This is the energy of workingtogether for a specified objective. That is one plus one is not two, but something greater thantwo. This is a kind of feeling while doing this module in a group work basis. These group effortschanged me both in communicational and behavioral aspects while dealing with the KurtLewin’s three style of Leadership. I have decided that I would be a democratic leader inthroughout the course and also in my life. As a leader in the group I was a democratic leader, Idiscussed the plans and strategies with my followers and assigned different task to the differentpersons based on their capabilities. Before coming to this course I was a person with a lot ofshyness, and I offer fear to speak before a group. Now I really experience a change in mybehavior that I can easily deal with people and can motivate them to work for me. I think mydream to be a human resource manager in a well reputed firm has come very closer to me. Icould learn more about the problem solving techniques commonly used in the organizations. Thetypes of problems a manager need to face in his managerial life is now very familiar to me. It can be of three types tame problems (the cause of the problem is known), critical problems (threatenthe very survival of the organization), and wicked problems (involve complex, messy and oftenintractable challenges that cannot be totally eliminated). There are no knowing solutions forthese kinds of wicked problems. The aim in solving such problems is to reduce the magnitude tothe maximum. To a leader in the modern business organization, I will have to face a lot ofwicked problems, so I realized that I should be competent enough to handle these kind ofproblems. The only way to handle such problems is collective knowledge. It emerges fromcollaboration of many individuals. That this new learning created by people sharing theirknowledge to solve the problems. So it requires a good understanding and a good organizationalclimate to handle the wicked problems. So definitely I should be a democratic leader to makethis possible. Then only I can be able to communicate with subordinates so as to share theinformation and hence to gain the collective intelligence. The set of behaviours that an emergentleader adopts include establishing shared goals, building trust, exchanging information and otherresources, and embracing emergence, exploring new territories, creating new knowledge aboutvarious factors that affect the behavioural pattern of individuals and as enablers, facilitators andcoaches etc. This all adds up to the simple observation of a leader. This is that the key role ofevery leader to ask challenging questions, including “what ifs”EvaluationInitially I didn’t have so much belief in this course, because I never thought that this would bea successful event. I thought it was just a kind of ordinary learning process. So I didn’t cooperatewith it very well. Then I was beginning to realize that this is the effective way to understandthose related to day to day life. Then I acted as a leader to a group of people. I dominated their will, even though I discussed all the matters with my group mates. Some of my group mateswere not that much cooperative. They didn’t work hard even though they are capable of doingthe tasks assigned to them. They didn’t interact with all others in a proper manner. This wastroubling factor for me as a leader. That might be because of personal problems or might be ofsome kind of attitudes towards this kind of interactive learning. Some people really wonderedme. They were so much during discussions and interaction with in the group that I have neverexpected. Before coming to this program I never expected a practical scope to the subject oforganizational behavior and leadership. But in fact after the course I realized that I wasabsolutely wrong, and my beliefs and views were similar to that of a frog in the well. Earlier Ithought what I had learned in the subject of organizational behavior and leadership has only theusage in the examination papers to score good marks. But this was a new knowledge that how toapply all these principles in the organizational set up. I got a clear idea about how to mould aprofessional leader from an ordinary individual. In order to be a successful manager in the field of ever changing business environmenta leader should be a change agent to the organization. That means he should bring changes to theorganization for the betterment of the organization. So he must have the competencies to bringthese changes to the organization. These competencies can be classified into three, politicalcompetencies, generic traits, and generic competencies.There are certain factors to understand aparticular leader they are, who makes them leaders?, what ?, how? And where they operate asleaders?. Then another tool that describes the leadership is six box models by Marvin Weisboard.These six boxes deals with purpose (what business), structure (how we divide work), rewards(incentives) and helpful mechanisms (technological capabilities), relationships (conflict "