BSBLED701A Lead personal and strategic transformation - Assignment help In class experiential leadership exercise

Brief context

As part of class exercise, a group of workers are to make as many paper planes as much as they can within 40 minutes. The planes were to be made as per the instructions given. During the time of activity, superior managers were able to enter the space of the middle managers and were also able to access the workers and to communicate with them at any time, regarding any work-related issues.

Moreover, middle management could enter the space of the workers whenever they desire to. Middle managers had to request permission to enter Upper managements’ designated work space (which the Superiors may refuse).

Finally, the workers were not allowed to engage with the Superior managers in any way, unless they were invited especially, by the Superior managers. The workers were allowed only to send one delegate at a time to approach the Middle managers in their workspace and were required to request permission to communicate with them first (which the Middle managers may refuse).

Observations of your leadership performance in the exercise. What you did, why you did it, what your motivations were, what your level of energy and engagement was and why, what you hoped for, outcomes were, etc…

I and my colleague were designated as Superior Managers (SMS) and it was paramount to work together as a team.  Overall, I believe that the approach adopted by us for this exercise was of a managerial style, rather than leadership approach. As outlined on the Swinburn participant manual on Lead Personal and Strategic Transformation Pg. 10, some of the distinct differences between management and leadership pertain to the fact that management primarily focused on tasks, and the leadership approach is focused mainly on people. It is notable that although leadership approach focuses on achieving tasks, but it also makes sure to keep the team motivated and empowering to achieve assigned tasks (Swanwick & Butler, 2017). The leadership focuses on leading people by example and getting the best out of people, for the benefit of the team’s successful achievement of these objectives (Schmitt, Den Hartog & Belschak, 2016). 

We felt at the time that it was important to take a managerial role, as we were both focused on tasks to be accomplished  (management) rather than  focusing on the long term goals of creating and maintaining team energy levels (leadership). We were focusing on organising support functions and resources for the workers to complete tasks assigned to them (management) rather than motivating and empowering the team (leadership). We were further trying to ensure that the paper aeroplanes are made according to the standards. For instance, when the MMS came to report us about the issues that workers were encountering, our primary focus was on sourcing items needed for the workers to allow them to complete the task (management). We have not offered attention on engaging in building strong relationship with the whole team and ensuring that the team was well balanced (leadership) (Puccio et al., 2018). Additionally, we ensured that an effective resource is used for the task at hand (management) rather than listening to our people and identifying the root causes quickly and effectively (leadership). Our goal was to ensure (though we did not succeed) that tasks were conducted within a correct time frame (management), rather than using excellent leadership skills to bring people along the correct path.