Reflection Essay Example on Leadership

First of all, what is the meaning behind the word “leadership”? Leadership is the action of leading a group of people or an organization and according to American business executive, C.I. Bernard, “Leadership is the quality behavior of the individuals whereby they guide people of their activities in organized efforts.” Altogether, leadership is important for multiple reasons, such as the fact that it is a vital management function that helps organizations to have improved efficiency and better achievement of goals. Successful leadership creates a sharp vision of what an organization can achieve. An example of when I demonstrated leadership, would in all honesty be at my current job, Building Blocks Preschool & Child Care.  

In terms of how I demonstrate leadership at work, there are quite a few ways. For example, I help with child development and show an incredible amount of guidance every day. I am always seeking new information, new techniques, and new ways to effectively teach the students. Communication is something I use every second with the students at work because it helps teach the kids how to listen carefully and how to respond to others in a calm and respective way. I know that communication is one of the most important skills to possess as a leader, so I use it frequently. 

Although leadership is productive and extremely helpful, it does not stop obstacles from coming my way throughout each day. One obstacle that I as a teacher have to go through is writing incident reports for the students’ parents. This can be an obstacle because there are some cases in which I don’t have a first-hand witness to sum up in exact detail what happened and how the incident occurred. Sadly, this type of thing happens frequently and us teachers have to do our best to figure out exactly what happened to write it out. Though, this is not something we back out of doing or give up on, we work through it to maintain open communication that ensures safety and trust.  

While you might think these obstacles have negative impacts, I believe that taking these obstacles as lessons is most important. I believe this because every obstacle gives me an opportunity to learn from my mistakes and fix them if I am ever to come across something similar. For instance, in cases where we do not know exactly what happened and must write an incident report, the other teachers and I explain to each other every detail of what we know and attempt to ask other students if they saw what happened. From this point, we have enough information to figure out what happened and to write it all out for the parents to have a promising idea of what happened. So, anytime we come across obstacles, the teachers and I, eventually manage to get past them with a success. 

Overall, in my field of work I can achieve great leadership skills and am even given chances to learn from obstacles that I am put through. Nonetheless, these obstacles are never able to stop me from being affected in a bad manner, they instead are great ways to help me learn. Along with being a leader, I hope to become a role model for my students to encourage them to pursue the things they love and believe in. I do also wish that my students will obtain some of their own leadership skills. In the end, regardless of the challenges I face, they continue to shape me into the person I am becoming and I’m incredibly thankful.