My Post Motorola from being Team Leader
In terms of expertise and skills, I learnt the importance of gaining peoples attitudes and views, and incorporating these views into my leadership. At first my first appointment as leader was to construct a weekly agenda. My aim was to make this fully inform the group on what was going to happen in the week ahead, so we could ideally have consistency and prior knowledge of what to think about in the meeting. This didn’t work so well, at this stage of the business, as I have a lot of feedback saying that most people didn’t read it. This shocked me, and I had wished that more people said this earlier so then I could have altered or changed it, or possibly scrapped it all together but this was one thing I had learnt from being leader. Another aspect of being leader, taught me the importance of decisiveness. At the time of my election, we were at ‘rock bottom’ and were not moving anywhere, so really I was elected at a point of crisis. This meant that things had to be done quickly and effectively to help build the motivation of the group. I feel personally I did act quickly, but maybe not on the right things. I enacted and constructed the agenda straight away, and within the first week appointed leaders for the departments that we had created before my election. I wanted these leaders to act as a ‘board of directors’ and pathway for communication to the group, as having everyone contact me would be too much. However as we didn’t have a running business at this time, the departments were non existent, and therefore the department leaders were really rendered useless, so I decided to scrap them, and continue on the path that we have now.
On a personal level, being leader showed me some very interesting things about myself that I had not known before becoming leader. I realised that I was very emotionally driven, maybe not so good trait when trying to be decisive at times of crisis, so this may not have helped things for the team company, and did make me in the words of Jonathan, ‘too liberal’, however I feel this also had its benefits. This meant that conflict was avoided at times when conflict was not needed, however I personally feel conflict earlier in the process may have progressed the team further than we have gone now, but this is a view helped by hindsight so something we cannot help, its just a learning outcome. I also discovered what leader I am. After a long hard think, I feel that I am not a an effective leader, when trying to ‘germinate’ the company, and actually create it, or at least need improvement. I can’t answer for everyone, but I found this incredibly stressful, and brought me mentally down at many times, especially when we returned from the Christmas break. I found myself hitting a mental block, that i had hit before in the past and that had worried me, but again it made me think, Im putting my all into being leader, but maybe Im doing too much and need to delegate. This is something else I think I should have done earlier, but more effectively than the department leaders, for example tracking absenteeism. The discipline of the group. My biggest flaw, I know, is my nice nature. At times when stern action is needed, its not my strong point. I feel I have improved slightly just through the process of stress and being under pressure, but still have a long way to go int terms of being the best I can be.
On a personal level, being leader was a great achievement and honour for me. To have people elect me in was a bonus, and having the support from the team was a great boost to my esteem and my confidence as a person. I do not feel I did the right thing all the time, and at times, I feel I could have been better, but this is what this experience is about, learning and finding out how to improve your leadership and entrepreneurial skills. I learnt a great deal from my time as leader, skills and techniques that I will take with me into my future career prospects going forward.
Lastly to conclude, I feel in myself honestly I think I could have done better. I have learnt a lot from being team leader both professionally and personally however I feel with in myself I could have done better, but that in itself is a learning curve. As a whole, I hope and feel that my tenure has stabilised the company in terms of the ‘crisis’ we were in, and even though we may have made some small progress, which is much better than no progress, I want to believe and hope that I have left the next leaders, a better performing team than when we first started. I did throughly enjoy it and wish the next leaders the very best.
