María Sabina López Lujano A00812968

FINAL PROJECT
Leadership and Organizational Behavior

1. What happened? A few years ago, while doing the most important final
project of my career, me and my team mates were involved in a leadership
situation. We all wanted to be leader in certain period of time during the
whole project and in the most difficult situations nobody wanted to be the head
responsible. For example, if we had to resolve a technical problem regarding
machinery, the person who had more knowledge or experience in that field
would immediately take full action in guiding the group, but when something
difficult or wrong happened, for example wrong numbers or wrong pieces, this
person would point out the team member who was the responsible for that
mistake.

2. What were the results?

Specifically in this situation the real results were not that harmful, because we
had good communication between everyone. But I think some potential
results of this behavior can lead to a power problem, of who wants to take all
the power itself, or misunderstandings of who is the head responsible.

3. Why did this happen?

Looking back to this problem and with the lectures presented in this course, I
believe there are two main root causes for this to happened. The first one was
the personality of each of us. Certain characteristics of our personality were
suited for different aspects of this final project that in the end help us to deliver
successfully the project. And in the other hand, the time pressure of delivering
the project affected the performance.

4. What class concepts are relevant to this situation? Leadership and

power. Because the full commitment as team leader wasn’t present, we were
informal leaders, and the expert power of each of us was being used.

5. What did you learn from this? The most valuable lessons from this
experience are both positive and negative. The positive side is that we saw in
each other how to highlight those personal characteristics that make us
unique and took advantage of them. And in the negative side, the concept of
leadership wasn’t taken at full commitment. And I strongly believe that when
you become a leader, you have to accept and take full responsibility of good
and bad consequences.