Reflective Essay Depicting Personal Journey of MBA Course

Question

Task: Your task is to write a reflective essay describing the personal experience on the skills and learning gathered during the MBA course in detail.

Answer

Introduction
The present reflective essayis a depiction of personal journey of learning gathered during Masters of Business Administration (MBA) course. By reflecting upon the host of knowledge dimensions I was exposed to it makes me look back into the vast evolution taken place in me. With each assignment, course curriculum and interactive session I have improved my knowledge depth which I was slightly knowledgeable in prior educational courses. After I received my MBA degree, the internship session made me receive feedbacks which reinforced the trust in me. This not just guides me through MBA programs of reaching professional excellence but also enhances my potentials to secure personal development (Newton, 2019). A large spectrum including team roles to individual decision making, strategic analysis and creative problem solving techniques are learned during this MBA journey. This reflective report helps me integrate my extent of evolution post the degree in obtaining communicative efficiency. The way my achievement in critical thinking skills and cross cultural competence has allowed me to remain flexible and agile are put forth in this depiction.

A brief discussion on the value of reflective practice for managers and leaders
A reflective account equips an individual with ability to evaluate, analyze and integrate about personal potentials. Managers and leaders often look for summarization of skills learned and talents acquired by potential candidates in the course of MBA. Zhang & Nesbit, (2018) states that prospective personnel are self reliant to assess and determine their areas of skill deficiencies or strength aspects, the work of managers become automatically simpler. The gap is addressed with personal understanding which has sufficient practical work information in it. This naturally supports managerial evaluation process with objective and realistic scanning from personalized perspective.

Leaders need to take many subsequent decisions related to workplace professional surroundings. When reflective report provides with past event and course work related evaluation, the critical success point becomes easy to locate for the leader. This enables them to select the most efficient candidates eligible to handle complex tasks and also reviews the time required to reflect. As per Miller, (2020), in the world filled with uncertainty, testing on the basis of mere assumptions becomes quite difficult. Reflection of critical skill sets and practical participation brings better management of behaviors to be utilized by leaders and managers. This assists the leaders to take decisions on practices of day to day basis so that the strengths and shortcomings in personnel behavior can be analyzed.

A personal reflection on learnings from the capstone subject and consultancy research process
During the span of my MBA program I had a vast evolution of knowledge about the world of business. I have noticed huge difference between the professional skill level I possessed before the course and after the accomplishment of MBA degree (Holtham& Dove, 2018). This holistic approach has taken me to a professional sense of security where I find myself at a greater confidence level. I always had keen interest to involve into marketing and advertisement aspects of any prospective business company to endorse and engage greater sales. My personality features were gradually shaped during this course to be compatible with the professional domain.

When we were taught about theoretical perspectives, I drew close association with that of Belbin’s perspective of team building skills. This has helped me throughout the journey of my professional course by which I attained industry specific performance outcome. I used the monitor evaluator role as my personality trait which fell in close relevance with my personal skill sets. I am that coordinating member who is interested in advising their mates in times of any hint of incoherence. Turner, Lucas & Whitaker, (2018) states that the help of serious minded personality I have been able to focus my action into possible solutions. Taking essence from Belbin’s theory I have been able to obtain knowledge about sales and marketing attributes. It made me confident and analytical before framing the functional strategies to connect with the multiple target segments. I have faced multiple odds like coping with conflicting situations with multiple perspectives. However, the MBA knowledge skill sets have allowed me to become vigilant monitor evaluator in personality trait to put across my personal viewpoint. Rather than discarding others’ opinions, I have looked forward to include their viewpoints and established negotiation. As a professional caliber I have developed the sense of balance among various characteristics and strategies. I have never preferred to impose my personal decisions to the team when I got leadership membership. This helped me establish strong professional position as a reliable and patient person who can be easily approached.

This made me keen towards adoption of problem solving skills as many of team decisions needed to be sorted with MBA skills. While stipulating the sales objectives, I learned how product faced theoretical viewpoint was a wrong perception I had in my mind previously. Mules, (2018) illustrates that it is after attending this course that I acquired idea about importance of market survey as a strong indicator of company business success. It is with the help of business management strategies learned during Business School program that proper encouragement towards students was made. I have been able to equip myself to increasing my potential to derive practical success by utilizing my learning from theoretical outcomes. It gives me implementer capacity from theoretical team role understanding that my overall score has got lifted higher. As per Fondahn et al. (2021), Belbin’s team role responsibilities, the use of practical strategies have possibly allowed by which I have accomplished my role as senior leader in the team. This has boosted my confidence level which allowed me to consider the sales negotiation with the suppliers and the marketing efficiency with my ability as marketing professional.

Hedberg, (2017) determines that the course of MBA has given me professional ability to take a decision before launching a new product in a selected market or country. It taught me the relevance of PESTEL analysis where I learned how to build assessment of external factors which can potentially affect my business decision. I took the study process as a field exploratory opportunity by exploiting my ability of research and studies. This has given me the ability of deriving market related knowledge regarding the customer attitudes and interest areas. I have tried to reach for accuracy in my marketing skill through assessment of political factors, economic macro level assessment or social attributes. It made me accurate in gathering data from legal, technological and environment attributes. I have the slow reaction time to respond to the experience. I have not been able to understand how the organizational services change according to issues faced as challenges. Cicmil&Gaggiotti, (2018) feels the final outcome of my learning ability is improved when I had the ability develop strategic thinking proneness.

A personal reflection on skills developed over the MBA
During my MBA sessions, I derived the team working capability which made me conform to external perspectives. With learning, I have developed persistence which made me overcome fear of changes. My attitude towards multiple opinions was resistant and restrictive in nature. I used to close myself from others’ perspectives and solely depend on my personal instincts. It is post the knowledge I acquired in the masters course that assisted me to become patient, accepting and adoptive in nature. I could work in collaboration with the teammates. I agreed with conflicting perspectives even when they were in contrast to my personal interest. According to Ahmed, (2020), working with various suppliers, stakeholders and clients was made extremely easy when I got expertise over communicative skills. Keeping in close relation with human resource management, I have gathered the understanding that motivation, employee engagement and assigning of duties to the right candidate is extremely crucial.

Planning a prospective business decision like advertising about a popular product or introducing a new product were learned after my strategic management approach in MBA course. I learned how to establish individualized conviction in a confident manner. This took me quite some time to realize that use of reference sources and substantial support evidence in justifying my market research is highly significant. Not just my attitude which turned into positive adaptive inclination, but my overall behavior simultaneously turned to enhancing capabilities. Harry-Nana & Bosch, (2020) states that I learned the importance of customer input to business operations, I grew my skills in taking external feedbacks. The process of seeking for validation has helped me to excel my ability to use customer survey procedures. I was unaware of the significance of reviews, ratings, comments and word of mouth. It is this survey assessment process which allowed me to create opened and wider perspective in mind. I not only took help from assessment results but also gathered understanding about my organizational performance. Rowe, Moore &McKie, (2020) proposes that learned how success was measured and how productivity in our contribution can be secured. It gave me momentum to realize customers are central focus of our products and services. It was important forme to align the market requirements with my product designing and modifications.

I had to decide on multiple aspects and create innovative problem solving ability.

A personal reflection on how these will assist in future career endeavors

MBA course has helped me to increase my personal caliber with each professional scope. Previously I was not a team player and preferred working individually. I have eventually shaped my personal ability through confidence level upliftment. I was able to live up to the team expectations and carry through the monitor evaluator trait in personality trait.

Dalton, C. (2018) states that use of strategic approach is created so that I could exercise my skill of brain storming. This facilitates me to improve my potentials as I learned to derive coordination among contradictory opinions of the team members. I learned how to view the big picture and take strategies with long terms perspective in mind. It gave me the professional confidence to build a strong capability to become the leader of the future position in the organization. MBA has made me realize how to differentiate between internal potential analysis and external macro level factor evaluation.

In many cases I used to blame the external factors as fundamental responsible aspects for failure of business attempt.

However, after this course I learned how internal weakness like lack of team integrity or employee engagement or skill deficiency can become strong factors for the downfall of the company. It was important that this professional business learning also helped me to realize internal issues on personal level. I learned to question my potentials and examine my strengths and weaknesses. Reilly, (2018) states that in this learning journey I was capable of growing with the team as I acquired the habit of listening to team mates and accepting my faults. The disregard I had previously about others’ opinions was changed. When I was given internship opportunities, I got the practical idea about using my theoretical skills learned during the course work. It is the learning opportunity which gave me enough exposure to acquire from market and analyze my personal potential. This gave me opportunity to evaluate and evolve myself under personal as well as professional grounds.

Conclusions
In the quest of achieving success in the field of business administration, MBA course is taken up by me. This reflective account has helped me to realize my shortcomings in the perspectives of dealing with complex business situations. It is a critical factor that MBA program has helped me cope with in terms of communication and decision making attributes. There is a huge difference between my previous concepts and my present ideas. The individualistic attitude has transformed into the team building skills. My lack of confidence has eventually transformed into increased leadership approach. My restrictive opinion about marketing analysis with external factors has now widened to include internal faults as potential cause to determine business success and failure as well.

Reference list
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