Reflection paper written during my MBA at the University of St. Gallen.
I felt side-tracked and pushed back. I was shocked when I realized that my frustration did not stem from a limited possibility to contribute as a leader, but from my own internal fear to fail and being neglected.
The first 6 weeks of the MBA in St. Gallen have been an intense experience that offered learnings around business design, leadership, goal setting, and interpersonal connection. In this reflection paper, I focus on the learnings I incorporated during my leadership experiences at University St. Gallen and how that impacted the type of leader I want to be, especially in challenging environments.
During our third week at University St. Gallen, our first team assignment kicked off. Over the weekend, each team member had done research and we now had five individual perspectives solving the business case. I asked myself, "How will I be able to provide value to my team? And how can we succeed in combining our talents and findings effectively?" I proposed to organise a quick workshop, and was proud to see that it left us with clear objectives and a common sense of our knowledge. On the next day, the surprise suddenly turned into frustration when I tried to align with a team member who had worked on the same objective. I sensed he was disinterested in the insights I showed him. At the same time, the team showed little interest in my thoughts during team discussions, and I felt isolated and disconnected. Luckily, we regained momentum and delivered an excellent presentation with a cohesive storyline built upon the objectives originated from our workshops.
After our presentation, I wanted to understand what had gone wrong. Talking to team members had revealed that I did have a distorted perception of the situation: The day our communication issues happened, I had arrived late to our group meeting and immediately occupied myself with further research. They had trusted me to continue to lead the process and were disappointed when they saw I had subtracted myself from the given role. Hearing this, I was shocked. I realized that it was me who had alienated myself from the team. And I recognized that the underlying driver had been my own fear: I was afraid of failure in leading the process to success. This fear had turned me into a doer - focused on the tasks and results with limited foresight, responsibility, and reflection.
This valuable teamwork has shown me how important it is to stay in charge once committed to leadership responsibilities. It also reminded me how relevant transparent communication and empathic leadership are in collaborative environments. Looking into the future, I want to remain brave and committed to the leadership responsibilities that a team trusts me to keep. I believe that an outstanding team has not a single lead, but many leadership roles. That's why I want to increase my focus on strengthening others to tap into their unique leadership positions - and continue to practice my role as a connecting, envisioning, and enabling leader in future teamwork in the MBA at University St. Gallen and beyond. To succeed with this goal, I will look for literature, tools, and active practice, and carve out time for reflection during times of intensive group work.