PDR

Assignment 7
MSc18

Xueyue Ding
Light Leadership
At the beginning of the course, the lecture about light leadership and courageous fellowship
were given. The characters of both roles were reflected not on the experience of base camp
but also throughout the whole academic year, on both campus life and various course works.
The base camp gave us a brief concept about the different roles in teamwork. When at the
introduction class, fellow students were asked about whether they think themselves as light
leaders, few of them stood up. Throughout the semesters, there are more people
demonstrated their abilities to be light leaders.

My experience with teamwork has been giving me more and more insights for the various
roles of behaviours that we have through teamwork. My observation of my own role in the
teams is developing as well; start from to the base camp and through the great amount of
team work together with my fellow students, I discovered that it is important to have a light
leader in the team works, but more importantly, the fellows, should also performing at their
best to contribute to the best outcome of the whole team, everyone counts in the final result
of the whole team.

Leadership has been constantly put on the spotlight; there are quite a lot of books write
about leadership and how important leadership is in the business world. Leadership has
been regarded the key factor to determine the success of the whole team performance. The
leadership theory has been taught heavily during course works as well, especially the topics
about transactional and transformational leadership style, it has been stated that the
transformational leadership has been accepted and adopted more by the mass. The
traditional transactional leadership focuses on assigning the tasks and managing people and
supervise team members to perform better at their tasks while transformational leaders,
focus on inspiring people and ideally motivate people outperform their capabilities and
develop themselves to be a light leader themselves. Burns (1978) first argued the concept of
transformation leadership in the context of his descriptive research on political leaderships.
Transforming leadership is a process in which "leaders and followers help each other to
advance to a higher level of morale and motivation" (Burns, 1978).

The transformational leadership has a significant positive influence on the life of people.
There are four elements that sharp the transformational leader, the individualized
consideration, the intellectual stimulation, the inspirational motivation and the idealized
influence (Bass, 1998). The individualized consideration is that the leader act as a mentor to
the follower and listens to them carefully to their needs; intellectual stimulation is that the
leaders challenges the creativity among the followers, they help the individuals in the team
to think independently and differently; inspirational motivation states that the leader

can articulate a vision that inspires the followers and created appealing future goals for the
followers. Idealized influence means that the leaders provide a role model for high ethical
behavior.

Courageous Followership

I perceive myself more of a courageous follower than a light leader in most of the case
works. To be a courageous followership, the role of followership is not that easy as it sounds.
To be a successful courageous followership is also helping to build up the team and sharpen
the leadership within the team. To be a courageous follower, it is not just about following the
leader, in nowadays, we need more courageous followers that dare to challenge, dare to take
on responsibilities and dare to change, it takes more courage for a follower to stand up than
for a leader to do so.

For my own experiences as a courageous follower, I felt sometimes it really take quite a lot of
courage to speak up and stand for my own points. If I have a strong point to express and
have enough facts to support my stance, it still takes some guts to explain to the whole group
and maybe some different reactions from the group. To help the whole group to get to the
right direction and move towards a common goal, need the participation of all the followers.
There is usually only one leader in the group, due to the increasing equality of the team
members, especially when everyone’s participation is encouraged, we need to reach
common goal in a short period time is becoming more critical, during some case works with
strict deadlines, I feel the urgency of achieving common decision with the approval of all the
members can be really difficult, as a follower, I need to help to assist and help the leader to
make a quick and right decision while not lose the insights from everyone in the team. It is
hard to do but I am learning through the whole process to develop my followership skills.

Main insights from personal experiences

The personal experience though IMD courses has been tremendous. The IMD Interview and
Assessment Simulation Day was a valuable learning experience to my job seeking process
and self-evaluating process. The simulation day was a practical experience for me to improve
my interviewing skills and pay attention to the details during the interview that I did not
realize before. I was interviewed by Claire Elise Nijnen from Undutchables agency, it was
quite delightful conversation while she gave me quite a lot of feedback on how to improve
my interviewing skills and how to better prepare my CV and interviews for specific job
position. There are several points and the personal habits that I did not pay attention to that
may bring negative impressions to the interviewer, I was quite grateful that she pointed
these weaknesses for me before I get into the real interviews. The whole session for me is
informative and valuable experience and definitely brings me to a better level of interview
skills.

Presentation
The first impression I made to the interviewer was not quite nice according to my feedback
given. I learnt through the feedback paper that first impression including dress code,
handshake, introduction and eye contact etc. I scored lowest with this section among other
criteria’s. I was walking in without spitting my gum out; I realized it after I sat down but the
interviewer pointed out in the later conversation that I should have spit it out before I walked
in the room. I was quite friendly but I was not quite well prepared with everything ready, I
started searching for my CV and notebook in my handbag after I sat down and it was quite
unprofessional according to Claire and she told me that everything should be prepared and
organized beforehand.

Preparation
I prepared a bit for the interview but not thoroughly since I was not appointed a specific
company and position to prepare for. I learnt from the conversation that research before the
interview is always come to handy that I can get more knowledge about the company and
the position then to be more targeting at what I am aiming for and putting emphasis on.
Furthermore, preparation for the interview consists of bringing along a copy of CV and
research to the company and interviewer. I did a bit research about Claire and I see that was
quite beneficial to me when having the conversation with her, it can bring friendlier
atmosphere during the conversation and sometimes it can generate instant bond between
us.

STAR method
When I was asked about my past experiences for example the biggest achievement I had
during one of my internships I applied the Situation-Tasks-Action-Result method I learnt from
the IMD courses to explain the whole situation. I started with the situation that I was asked
to analyse the different marketing approaches among the countries by gathering and
categorizing the marketing materials across the countries, I collected them and made a nice
powerpoint presentation to the management and took some examples from our industry
competitors as well. The result turned out to be good and I gave some suggestions how the
marketing actions can be aligned across the countries. I got compliments from my manager.
STAR methods worked quite well when I was asked these kinds of questions when required
to give some concrete examples. Clarie pointed out that sometimes I intended to give too
many details when talking about past experience, she stressed that short and concise would
be better when describing a certain situation, there is no need to dig into details, just right to
the point would be good.

Assessment Simulation
The simulation went smoothly according to my feedback but there are several points I still
need to work on based on the feedback I got from the interviewer, for example I should not
have watched out the windows too often since it can be distracting to the interviewer and I
should not have clicked my pen too much when thinking about the answers although I was
doing it unconsciously but it shows that I was quite nervous and it could not have made a
positive impression to the interviewer. I did not notice these physical actions at all during my
previous experiences with interviews, it was valuable for me to learn that I have these habits
may cause negative impression that should be taken care of.

Overall Communication
Overall communication was quite well according to the feedback but I still have some room
for improvements. There are some drawbacks such as I did not spit out my gum before I
entered the room and I was constantly clicking my pen when talking to the interviewer, the
content of my answers was quite satisfying but sometimes I can be more concise and shorten
my answers a bit to be more precisely targeting to the questions.
After the simulation session I learnt that there are several unrealized negative habits while I
was doing the interviews. I should pay more attention to the impression my physical
expression may bring to the interviewer. Also, preparation is the key, I should be more
familiar with the content of my CV to come up with more quick and concise answer to the
questions proposed to me.

Personal SWOT

 Strengths

 I'm very creative. I like inspiring artwork and keep stimulate my creative
thoughts.
 I communicate well with people.
  Weaknesses

 I have a strong, compulsive need to do things quickly and remove them from
my "to do" list, and sometimes the quality of my work suffers as a result.
 I get nervous when presenting ideas, this fear of public speaking often takes
the passion out of my presentations.

 Opportunities

 There are plenty of opportunities out there for my personal development and
especially for my current almost-graduate status.
 The economy is promising after the downturn.

 Threats

 The current economic climate has resulted in slow growth for the marketing
industry.
 There are plenty of native Dutch speakers compete with me in the same
fields of interests.

Conclusion

Overall, the courses were valuable learning experience to my interview skills and prepare me
to the real interviews I may face in the very near future, and the courses help me to get more
reflection on my personal development and potential for the future career. I truly appreciate
the effort the effort that IMD courses and PDR assignments that I am able to apply to my life
ahead and career.

Biblography

James MacGregor Burns and Susan Dunn ,January 5, 2006. "No More Second-Term Blues". The New York Times:
Op-Ed. Retrieved 2009-12-18.
Bass, B. M. 1998. Transformational leadership: Industrial, military, and educational impact. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Chaleff, Ira. The Courageous Follower: Standing Up to and for Our Leaders. 3 ed. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-
Koehler Publishers, 2009. Print.
Jossey-Bass, 2008. The Art of Followership: How Great Followers Create Great Leaders and Organizations (J-B
Warren Bennis Series). San Francisco: Print.