This paper examines the implementation of leadership approaches through the project «SDU Photo Awards: My online distance learning experience». The project was organized by six students of second-year undergraduates of master's degree with the aim of developing the creativity and aesthetic taste of students and popularising distance learning. Since the project was held at Suleyman Demirel University, all students of the University were selected as participants of the photo contest. At the beginning, it was planned to divide the project into two parts, such as: a «Photo Contest» and a «Photo Exhibition». However, due to the small number of participants, the deadline of the «Photo Contest'' and the date of the «Photo Exhibition» were extended. Even though the project failed the organizers learnt a lot of things and had a chance to implement their knowledge in practice. It is believed that people learn more from failures than from successes. Consequently, this article was written to share its story that can be useful for readers.
Keywords: leadership approaches, leadership and teamwork, trait approach, behavioural approach, adaptive leadership.
В данной статье рассматривается реализация подходов к лидерству в рамках проекта «SDU Photo Awards: My online distance learning experience». Проект был организован шестью студентами второго курса магистратуры с целью развития творческих способностей, эстетического вкуса студентов и популяризации дистанционного вида обучения. Поскольку проект проводился в Университете имени Сулеймана Демиреля, все студенты университета были отобраны в качестве участников фотоконкурса. Вначале планировалось разделить проект на две части, такие как: «Фотоконкурс» и «Фотовыставка». Однако из-за небольшого количества заявок от участников крайний срок проведения «Фотоконкурса» и дата проведения «Фотовыставки» были продлены. Несмотря на то, итог проекта не увенчалось успехом, как ожидалось, организаторы научились многому и получили возможность применить свои знания на практике. Считается, что люди больше учатся на неудачах, чем на успехах. Следовательно, эта статья была написана для того, чтобы поделиться своей историей, которая может быть полезна читателям.
Ключевые слова: подходы к лидерству, лидерство и командная работа, личностный подход, поведенческий подход, адаптивное лидерство.
Leadership approaches are classifications of how a person behaves while leading, directing, motivating, guiding, and managing groups of people. When people start looking at some individuals' behaviors they consider to be great leaders and immediately see that there are often huge differences in how each person leads. Fortunately, researchers have developed various theories and concepts that enable us to better identify and understand these different leadership approaches. During the «Leadership and Teamwork» course we discovered different leadership approaches, the strengths and criticisms of each approach, and learned how each approach can be applied in real-world organizations. Then we applied some of them during our project.
For example, this project applies task execution behavior and relationship behavior to implement the project relying on research concerning the behavioral approach in Ohio State studies, the University of Michigan, and the work of Blake and Mouton on the management grid. These theories postulate that there are no universal sets of behavioral leadership models and in order to find the best way for project management it will be effective to combine tasks and behavior in relationships. For example, we demonstrated our task behavior for getting the job done. Each of us was responsible for different tasks and we tried to do tasks on time. Likewise, we needed to show a high degree of participation and teamwork in our project. Our team leader delegated common tasks based on our strengths and was always eager to help. Moreover, we always asked questions and communicated with each other.
During the organization of the project, the individual traits of each team member played an important factor for its implementation. Stogdill’s (1948) first survey analyzed how individuals’ traits contribute to the leadership process and identified eight traits that differentiate leaders from non leaders: intelligence, alertness, insight, responsibility, initiative, persistence, self-confidence, and sociability. This survey also indicated that the traits that leaders possess must be relevant to situations in which the leader is functioning. For example, we needed more alertness before the launch of our project. We double-checked all grammar and spelling, punctuation in our info letter, posts in instagram.
Undoubtedly, during the organization of any project, it is impossible to foresee all possible outcomes. Accordingly, after the launch of the project, there is some uncertainty about the result. These uncertainties can be considered risks for the project. Depending on this, the manager and all team members should be ready for various changes, be adaptive and flexible for further actions. Originally formulated by Heifetz (1994), adaptive leadership centres on the adaptations required of people in response to changing environments. It is about how leaders encourage people to adapt-to face and deal with problems, challenges, and changes. After the launch of our project, there were challenging situations such as a small number of applications for participation, slow promotion and inconsistency of photos with requirements. We discussed and tried to implement solutions by extending the contest until January 24.
All in all, the project «SDU Photo Awards: my distance learning experience» cannot be considered a successful project. Due to the smaller number of participants, the organizers of the project had to change the deadline of the project, and they did not meet their initial timing requirements. Consequently, the second part of the project, which was a «Photo exhibition», was not held. However, with the help of this project team members of the project learned a lot of things, such as working remotely in one team, being able to collaborate with other people, working in different areas, getting out of difficult situations and always having a plan «B«, etc.
Main part
At first, we came up with several ideas for the project such as charity projects, TED Talks, SDU Brand merch, collaboration with QR (LTD Qazaq Republic), interviews with BS teachers, etc. Then we discussed and analysed all these options, and as a result, we came to a decision to take the project «SDU Photo Awards: my distance learning experience». Exactly this project corresponded to the finances and scale and was of interest to all the organizing participants. Due to the isolation in the pandemic, we wanted to raise the level of student activity through this socio-cultural project. We decided to run this project to increase SDU students' interest in online learning and to show the process of online learning from the students’ side in a creative aspect.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the educational organizations in Kazakhstan did not experience «online distance learning» in such a great volume. At the beginning of the transition to «online distance learning» the majority of students, as well as instructors faced different types of problems. Some of them did not have electronic devices to attend the classes, some of them had bad internet access, some of them could not focus on the lesson due to noise and crowd of people at home, etc. During these 1,5 years of online education, students experienced different types of interesting and memorable cases.
Fortunately, now educational organizations are gradually switching to the traditional education format and everything is getting better. But there are memories from these days in the form of photographs that students captured from different angles. These shots can tell a lot about pleasant moments, about problems, and about the everyday life of students during online learning. These photos can show not only good times and places but also the creativity of students, feelings, and interesting stories experienced in those pictures, which are worth sharing and awarding.
Considering all of the above, our team organised a photo contest called «SDU Photo Awards: my distance learning experience» about how students studied during the pandemic. The aim of this project is to develop the creativity and aesthetic taste of students and popularize distance learning. It was planned to consist of two parts: a «Photo Contest» and a «Photo Exhibition». In the first part, we collected photos from students according to the requirements, which will be sent to participants in advance. Then, in the second part, we had to organize a «Photo Exhibition» at SDU Wifi Zone and announce a winner. The main prize of this competition was 42 500 tenge. Only students, undergraduates, and doctoral students of the Suleyman Demirel University could take part in the photo contest.
In order to work effectively, it was decided to distribute responsibilities among team members and to make a time schedule for the project. According to the schedule (Table 1), the project had to consist of two periods: the «Photo Contest» period (October and November of 2021) and the «Photo Exhibition» period (November and December of 2021). During the first part, team members had to start the announcement of the «Photo Contest» and had to collect submitted works of the students. Consequently, in the second part of the project, members were required to organize a «Photo Exhibition» from the accepted photos of participants, and award winners.
Table 1
Project schedule and people in charge
|
Day and time |
Place |
Activities |
People in charge |
|
October - November |
Kaskelen, SDU |
Photo Contest |
Aigerim Baiken, Talshyn Baimuldanova, Arailym Shakenova, Yernar Aldabergenov |
|
November — December |
Kaskelen, SDU |
Photo Exhibition |
Perizat Yermekbayeva, Arailym Shakenova, Talshyn Baimuldanova, Aida Kairoldanova |
The team members, who were responsible for this project, consisted of six students of second-year undergraduates of master's degree. They were: Perizat Yermekbayeva, Aigerim Baiken, Arailym Shakenova, Talshyn Baimuldanova, Yernar Aldabergenov, and Aida Kairoldanova. In Table 1, it is shown who was responsible for what. Each part of the project had its announcement, organization, implementation part, which is distributed among students who were responsible for that part.
Since it was set to award winners of first, second and third places with money in the amount of 42 500 KZT, 15 000 KZT, and 10 000 KZT respectively, organizers of the project had to collect in total 67 000 KZT to run this project. Finally, it was decided that 42 500 KZT will be equally assembled from the six members of the team. 25 000 KZT was retrieved from the dean’s office and one of the assistant professors of business school as a help and support to organizers. Additionally, the dean's office provided 5 mugs branded with the SDU logo as a prize for winners of nominations.
The main risk of this project was a very small number of participants. After the launch of the project, only 3–4 students sent an application for participation. Moreover, their works did not meet all requirements of our project. More specifically, the quality of their photos, the content of the photos was different from what we expected from them. Due to that reason, the deadline of the project has been extended.
Additionally, since there were no specific instagram accounts and email of this project, it was difficult to make an announcement to the whole university students. Every time, organizers of the project had to speak with people, who are responsible for different instagram accounts of Suleyman Demirel University and ask for their help. Because each account had its own content plan, design, and structure it was challenging to make a deal with them.
According to the results of applications, it was found that the project was a failure. The fact is that projects can fail and may even go through a number of periods of failure during implementation, regardless of whether they are ultimately successful or not. In their study, the «Project Failure Theory», Lindahl and Rehn (2007) indicated project failure either as a pathological condition that should be avoided, or as a logical problem of determining the goal. In a study Discenza and Forman (2007), the general reasons for the failure of the project were identified and grouped into three main categories. They are: personnel factors, project process factors; and project communication factors. Based on the survey results, 43 % of the surveyed project managers said that project communication factors are a key factor in the failure of projects, while 42 % said that process factors are important, and only 32 % said that people are a main factor in the failure of projects in which they participated. Summing up the indicators of the project and the outcomes of the above studies, we conclude that the failure in the organization of this project was caused by these aspects. These failures gave us a lot of experience and opportunities to make insights. From the height of our experience now, we would compare our project with other similar projects and/or organise feedback processes by asking students to give meaningful input during every phase of the project by that time. Furthermore, we learned that we needed to assess the project’s situation on time and develop a recovery plan to accomplish what is required to get the project back on track. In many cases, we solved problems only after we met them. Even when we faced issues we didn't fix it immediately. In addition, we did not take into account external factors and did not provide additional options. We didn’t define and record possible risks. On the other hand, we could prevent total failure. As Discenza and Forman (2007) said: «Project failure can happen in any organization and to any project. There are an infinite number of reasons for failure».
Conclusion and lessons learned
Despite the fact that many leadership approaches were effectively used, the photo contest and photo exhibition project about online distance learning were not successful as they were expected. During the project, it was found that besides this photo contest project there were some other contests at Suleyman Demirel University at the same time. Since Suleyman Demirel University celebrated its 25th anniversary this year, there were different video and photo contests organized for this event. Moreover, the timeline that was chosen for this project came up with the exam dates of university students. Due to that reason, students had less focus and time for the project «SDU Photo Awards: My online distance learning experience». Given that, project organizers recommend for further project organizations to make an analysis of the external environment, before the start of making a plan of the project. More specifically, in the case of «SDU Photo Awards: My online distance learning experience» students’ interests and opportunities that they will have during the project had to be measured and taken into account.
After the identification of the failure, it was found that if the duration of the project was at the beginning of the semester, when students were free, full of energy, and when there were not any contests, this project could have different results. Consequently, considering all of the above-stated failure reasons and lessons learned the deadline of the project was extended to the beginning of the 2021–2021 academic year’s second semester, as a solution to the failure of the project.
Even though the organizers of the photo contest and photo exhibition faced failure with the project, they retrieved valuable lessons from it. One of the aims of this article was to share the experience of students, such as what kind of leadership approaches they have used, what typed problems and challenged they have faced, and finally what they have learned and how they have dealt with problems.
References:
- Discenza, R. & Forman, J. B. 2007. Seven causes of project failure: how to recognize them and how to initiate project recovery.
- Northouse, Peter Guy. Leadership: Theory and Practice. Eighth Edition. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, 2019.
- Towards a theory of project failure, Marcus Lindahl and Alf Rehn, International Journal of Management Concepts and Philosophy, 2007
