Leadership Journey In An E-commerce Retailer: Reflections And Development Plan

Leadership experience in an E-commerce retailer

Leadership refers to the process of leading a team of people towards accomplishing a specific goal. Throughout my life I have been fortunate enough to encounter several leadership opportunities and I strongly believe that these leadership roles have played a significant role in shaping my life. Through these roles I have been fortunate to work with different kinds of people. A leader is bestowed upon with several responsibilities that need to be fulfilled (Mitstifer, 2014). The role played by a leader in any organization or group is critical to the accomplishment of team goals and objectives. A leader must be able to garner trust and instil respect among team members in order to ensure effective leadership.

At present I work in the communications department of an Ecommerce retailer. I am leading a team of four people and we all collectively report to the Senior Manager of Public Relations. A large part of my job involves making sure that the firm’s positioning in the minds of its stakeholders is positive. As a team, it is our responsibility to prepare all the communication material that the business requires. This includes advertisements, taglines, newspaper reports, blogs, social media posts and any other form of communication with internal as well as external stakeholders of the firm. I have been leading this particular team since 17 months.

My leadership journey especially with this team is an extensive learning experience. When I was appointed as a leader, I was coming with a significant number of years in corporate communication but in an entirely different industry. Owing to this, we had several conflicts in the beginning but over a period of time, situation changed considerably. Today, we work as a closely bound team. All of my team members are self-motivated professionals and since the last five months, we have been exceeding our targets. The first responsibility assigned to me was to form a team of four people who I believe would be able to take responsibility of the communications department. Before this, our organization did not have a communications department and all the PR activities were handled by the marketing team. After an extensive process, four employees were moved to the communications department and they continue serving here to this date.

Since they were all coming from different departments, my first responsibility was to bring in a sense of coordination among these team members. I realized that they all work in strict autonomy and this is leading to missed deadlines and delays in submission. Moreover they had little sense of ownership for this team and still related more with their previous departments. They even took lunch with members of their previous departments. Every team undergoes five stages. These are forming, storming, and norming, performing and adjourning (Forsyth, 2018). During the storming stage, I realized that team members are very disconnected from each other. In order to overcome this, I started conducting more team meetings and involved them in the decision making process of the firm. This served two purposes, firstly, they were spending more time together with their own team and secondly, they felt an increased sense of ownership.

Challenges faced in leading a communications team

During this journey I was also able to reflect upon my leadership abilities and styles. I have always adopted a participative leadership style. A democratic leader involves subordinates in the decision making process and creates a participative working atmosphere (Iqbal, Anwar & Haider, 2015). Such a style has helped me connect better with all my team mates and ensure high participation from all team members. I realized that as a team, we were able to perform better because we could identify and acknowledge several new and out of box ideas. In fact all the team meetings were a source of immense learning, even for myself.

Setting clear goals is an important responsibility of the leader. Goal setting theory also suggests that having clear goals is a source of motivation for employees (Miner, 2015). As a leader, I set weekly and monthly goals for the team. Initially, I also divided weekly goals into daily goals but then I received a feedback that such a practice was creating unnecessary pressure on the team. Therefore this was discarded. I make sure that the entire team is present while setting the goals because a lot of their work needs high levels of coordination.

Feedback plays a significant role in the success of any team. As a team, we adopt a 360 degree feedback system. This recommends that all employees will receive feedback from their seniors, juniors as well as peers thereby completing a 360 degree feedback mechanism (Karkoulian, Assaker, & Hallak, 2016). Instead of having meetings specifically for feedback, we devote ten minutes at the end of every meeting to offer feedback. Any member of the team is free to offer feedback to any member include myself. Such a mechanism has created a lot of transparency within the team and has significantly improved individual performances.

As a leader of a communications team, I strongly believe that communication between the team members plays a significant role in ensuring the success of the team. As a leader, I propagate open communication and all team members are free to communicate anything. We address issues and conflicts in open meetings and allow transparency within the entire team. This has also led to enhanced trust among all team members. Communication is a backbone which supports the entire team. It is important in order to effectively share information, offer feedback, address grievances or competently coordinate with each other (Men, 2014).

Strategies adopted to create a cohesive team

Through the duration of this course, I have been able to effectively reflect upon my leadership skills and gain a deeper understanding of my abilities as a leader. I also approached my seniors as well as my team members and too feedback from them regarding my ability as a leader. The feedback received and the time spent on reflecting helped me understanding my strengths as well as weaknesses as a leader. Therefore the next part of this report highlights upon a leadership development plan. In the course of self-reflection, I have also undergone certain online tests which helped me understand my leadership style better. The results and analysis of these tests is also shared in the report.

The purpose of the Gallup’s strength finder test is to identify strengths and weaknesses through answering a series of questions. The result generated helped me identify my five biggest strengths. The results from this test gave me a helping hand in devising my leadership development plan. The primary strength as per the Gallup’s test was my ability to communicate with others. I believe I have always been a good communicator. This stems from my avid book reading. While working in an organization, communication plays a very important role. Communication is the backbone of stakeholder relationship development. Therefore in my team as well, I try to create a culture of open communication and transparency. Such a culture builds trust and enhances the quality of workplace environment (Ramdhani et. al., 2017). Therefore I always ensure to bring in comfort and compassion among team members through open communication.

The second strength as per Gallup’s test is being restorative. This ability suggests that I try to see a solution in every problem. As a leader of the communications team, I understand that crisis does not come post information. A crisis in any organization is always sudden and mostly unexpected. Effective communication is vital for efficient crisis handling (Coombs, 2014). Therefore in the face of crisis, I resort to communication and address the crisis head on. The aim is to always look for a solution rather than cribbing about the problem. This also helps in keeping stakeholders satisfied and gaining their trust in our effectiveness.

Other strengths as identified by the Gallup’s test was having a futuristic outlook, being optimistic and the ability to continue being a learner. The last one is specifically important for me and has helped me immensely in my leadership journey. As the Ecommerce retail is a significantly new industry for me, it is my team members that helped me learn through the basics. There are new things that I continue to learn and grasp regularly and this is helping me in widening my horizons. As a futuristic individual, I try to set short term as well as long term goals for the team and for myself. I have strong aspirations for my own career as well as for those of my team mates. I see a strong future for the organization at large and I will continue to put efforts in fulfilling these long term goals.

Self-reflection and analysis of leadership abilities

This course has given me an opportunity to reflect upon my leadership abilities, strengths and weaknesses. Based upon my analysis and findings, I have curated a leadership development plan in order to improve upon my leadership skills. The plan includes my short term as well as long term goals that are both aimed at assisting me in overcoming my weaknesses. In order to do the same, I have adopted a Whittman GROW model. This model is simple to understand and involves easy ways of goal setting and problem solving (Augestad et. al., 2017). This model has been selected because it not only identifies goals but also helps in devising an action plan towards achieving the same.

Goal setting (G): The first step is to identify goals. This includes both short term and long term goals. Within the next six month, I want to ensure that my team performs 150% of the given target. By the end of one and a half year, the goal is to expand the team by at least six more people making it a team of ten employees. I would also like to enhance jobs for all the team members. They should be able to learn about marketing, public relations, customer relationship management and hard core sales. One very important goal is to make sure that by the end of this year (next three months), communications department becomes self-sustaining.

As a leader, I would like to be more assertive in nature. There are certain times where the leader needs to adopt a more autocratic approach in order to get the work done in a quick manner (Khuong & Hoang, 2015). I would like to work towards being autocratic in such situations. Besides this, I would also take the responsibility of keeping my team motivated by indulging in team building and motivation strategies.

Reality (R): At present, I am leading a team of four people. The communications department is fairly new and therefore our job is not entirely well-defined. There is a lot of learning and growth opportunities within the business for communication. As of the last seven months, we have achieved the target that was given to us but this target will be revised on financial year end. Every year, this organization recruits over 40 to 45 new employees across the entire business. Therefore I need to work hard and prove my mettle as a great leader. I need to also work towards ensuring that my team members are promoted and rewarded.

Leadership development plan

My team members as well as my leaders have offered me a positive feedback regarding my leadership skills. One of my seniors mentioned that I need to adopt an autocratic leadership approach in certain situations in order to deal with them in an effective manner. My team members also mentioned that I should conduct more team activities so that people feel more connected.

Obstacles (O): The primary obstacle is the immense competition for leadership roles and promotions within the organization. Graduates from top business schools are hired who have a great insight and a fresh outlook towards the same situation. Therefore it is essential that I am consistently on my toes and working towards improving my performance.

Secondly, because of the fact that communications department is very new, there is a lot of redundancy in work because sometimes the same work gets done by marketing and PR time. On other days, work gets delayed because of this lack of clarity.

Thirdly, as a leader, my style and approach is very different from others in the organization. I somehow find it difficult to say no and end up doing a lot of work for the team. I also leave a lot of decision making to the team and this sometimes causes internal conflicts.

Way forward (W): This is the most important step of the GROW model. This step helps in identifying the way forward to achieving the goals defined above by overcoming the stated obstacles. The foremost thing that I must do I ensure that the team has all the necessary resources to perform to the best of their ability. My goal is to ensure that within the next six month, my team delivers 150% of the target. I would do so by dividing this new target into weekly and monthly goals. Employee motivation also has a significant impact on employee performance (Lazaroiu, 2015). I would also strive towards consistently motivating my team members.

Also I would work towards creating a culture of open communication by adopting open door policy. Open door policy suggests that the leaders of the organization must leave their doors open in order to signify that they are available for conversation (Hodges, 2018). This would allow my team members to immediately reach out to me in case of an issue. In terms of performance, I would start leading by example. Rather than delegating work, I would get down to the business and start working with team members as a part of my team. I would also ensure that team members are can learn from my example and I can do the same.

Whittman GROW model for goal setting

As a leader, I would surely work towards becoming more autocratic but only when the situation demands it. I would put more efforts in ensuring that the decision making is centralized and there is no delay in decision making. I would continue to read books but I would surely read more on leadership. I would also like to follow the life of certain popular leaders like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and learn from their experience as well.

As a leader, I would also focus more on the growth of my team members. I would work towards finding learning opportunities in different departments so that they can also polish themselves and enhance their skills set. I feel very responsible for my team’s performance and I would try my best that they all continue to perform to the best of their abilities.

Workshops, both online and offline, are an interesting way of developing one’s own skills. I would like to enrol myself in at least two leadership development workshops in the coming six months. I would try to find workshops or online certified courses with the aim that they would improve upon my leadership skills and abilities.

As far as the competition within the organization is concerned, I believe that it is only my performance that can help me in overcoming that obstacle. I will therefore continue to ensure improvement in mine as well as my team’s performance. I will consistently seek feedback from my seniors as well as peers and identify areas that I need to improve upon. This would help me sustain the competition and be eligible for more leadership opportunities in the future.

Lastly, I need to make sure that communications department is self-sustaining on its own. I would sit with the leaders of marketing and PR department and work towards establishing clear roles and responsibilities of all the departments. With that clarity, I would be in a better position to set targets and goals for my team. I need to ensure that the organization at large understand the importance of communication department as well as recognizes the efforts put by this team. With that understanding, I would also work towards getting monetary appraisals for myself as well as my team within a span of one year.

Therefore, I have defined several goals for myself and for my team. In order to achieve those goals, as per this leadership development plan, I would consistently work towards improving my performance, establishing a culture of openness and transparency of communication, motivate my team members to consistently strive for better performance, draw clear boundaries of the job responsibilities among all departments, read more books on leadership, follow great leaders and learn from their experience as well as bring in an overall improvement in my leadership skills by attending workshops.

Conclusion

Conclusion

Leadership is the ability of an individual to lead, motivate, direct, guide, control and mentor. Leaders can be found anywhere. Some people can be a leader owing to their designation while some people can be leaders owing to their performance, personality and charisma. A leader is bestowed upon with several responsibilities. A great leader takes those responsibilities and works towards the growth of self along with the growth of team.

This course has helped me in reflecting upon my leadership skills, identify my strengths as well as my weaknesses. In order to gain a better understanding of my abilities as a leader, I took feedback from several people in my organization including my seniors and peers. Based upon the same, I have developed a leadership development plan. The plan clearly states my goals of expanding my team size to ten members, delivering 150% of the target given, setting clear responsibilities of the communication department as well as ensure growth of department as well as all the members associated with it.

In order to achieve these goals, I would ensure I focus on my performance, continue being a learner, take workshops, read books and put extra efforts in being more assertive and improving my leadership style so that I am more productive. Such efforts will ensure the growth of my team members along with myself.

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