After completing this course on scholarly inquiry, would I make decisions differently?

History is replete with examples of nations, empires, societies, and organizations that collapsed primarily because, leadership at the time, took decisions that failed to achieve expected outcomes (Eaton, 2014). I believe the reverse is also true, and, this underscores the importance of decision-making as a key leadership function.

Within my professional practice as a leader, the basis of my decisions had varied from my personal convictions or intuition, to others like, my past experiences, and expert opinion, among others already stated in Unit 1 of this course.

This course has helped me become better informed about how ones’ worldview influences ones’ approach towards a subject, and also provides a source of individual bias; I have learnt that a leaders’ worldview could negatively influence their decision-making if it prevents them from carefully evaluating the views of others, especially their followers!

In addition, through this course, I have had opportunities to explore, learn, criticize, and gain insights from different studies about very interesting topics like servant leadership, emotional intelligence, and several others which have all enriched my understanding of leadership.

Prior to taking this course, I had shared in the view that research could aid practitioners like myself, with solving practical problems in their profession; thankfully, I now see how this could be actualized using action research strategies.

Summing it all up, by taking this course, I now have a deeper and richer understanding of the research process, and how it provides the foundations upon which evidence-based leadership can be actualized.

I believe that although factors like intuition, past experiences, values, company policy, expert opinion, and others will continue to exert influences in a leaders’ decision-making process, where practicable, leaders should endeavour to consider the use of credible research to provide insights and evidences to guide or support the decisions they eventually take. Therefore, as a result of this course, I would make decisions differently by carefully evaluating credible research-based evidences, and applying the insights gained towards taking more effective decisions as a leader.

I would like to conclude by expressing my sincere appreciation to Dr. Strong for her guidance and insightful feedback all through this course. Thanks also to my colleagues for comments on blog posts and the helpful feedback I received from the peer reviewed tasks.

 

References

Eaton, G. (2014, May 14). Why empires fall. Retrieved from https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2018/03/meaning-corbynism