Leadership reflection

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Leadership Discussion

I was once part of a team working on an innovative project. Our team leader greatly inspired me because he was a revolutionary leader. There is one particular team member who was competent, but the only problem was that he was quite slow in his work. This team member had great expertise in design since this was his specialty. His design skills stood out from the rest of us. He at one time landed our team in trouble with a client as he failed to complete a critical assignment on time. Our leader was very disappointed with the team member, and was tempted to write him off. Before making this grand decision, he thoroughly looked into the performance track record of this team member to unearth his past shortcomings in team projects, and to understand whether the decision to retain him would be a smart one. Our team leader also weighed the positive outcomes versus the negative outcomes of writing off this member. He also referred to the checkpoints and goals attained by this member throughout his involvement with our team.

After gaining a deeper insight into these calculated risks and as difficult as it seemed, our team leader decided to give the team member a second chance. He offered advice to this team member and constantly supervised him with the aim of monitoring his performance. Our team leader's actions reflect the transformational leadership theory which suggests that leaders are thoughtful thinkers who instead of rushing into decisions, take their time to think things through (Kendra, 2019). The other theory that complements our team leader's actions is the transactional leadership theory which emphasizes supervision as a way of ensuring that expectations are met (Kendra,2019). Our team leader took the risk of retaining this team member despite the reputation damage he brought to our team. Our leader believed that leaders ought to give those that they lead the opportunity to learn from mistakes and do things differently.Effective leadership involves looking past the shortcomings of a follower if at all their excellence is evident in other areas of their scope of work (Megan,2017). Our leader said 'yes' to this calculated risk because the consequences of retaining this member outweighed the consequences of letting him go.

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