A concept with its origins in business organization provides an excellent source of information to prevent future adverse events. A properly conducted investigation can prevent future projects and decrease potential problems for organizers of projects. This article will provide an overview of the leadership process through creating a photography contest among students who faced a distance learning and the Covid-19 pandemic situation. The article will help in organizing such events, by taking into consideration some causes that may happen. Our research was done as action research, explained as a group of people who define a problem, take measures to solve it, reflect on the results of their own actions and in case of negative result, try to do something else to solve the problem in the end. According to our results of project we had a failure, different circumstances was affected. Nevertheless, we learned from our mistakes in organizing such project and will use in the future all recommendations. The conclusion of this examination might be very helpful for the managers or leaders in order to improve their organizational and leadership skills through keeping a systematic plan in organization and opportunity to promote that contribute on the way to the achievement of the organization on such projects.
Keywords: leadership, trait approach, behavioral theory.
Концепция, зародившаяся в организации бизнеса, является отличным источником информации для предотвращения неблагоприятных событий в будущем. Правильно проведенное расследование может предотвратить будущие проекты и уменьшить потенциальные проблемы для организаторов проектов. В этой статье будет представлен обзор процесса лидерства путем создания фотоконкурса среди студентов, которые столкнулись с дистанционным обучением и ситуацией с пандемией Covid-19. Статья поможет в организации таких мероприятий, учитывая некоторые возможные причины. Наше исследование было проведено как исследование действия, объясненное как группа людей, которые определяют проблему, принимают меры для ее решения, размышляют о результатах своих действий и в случае отрицательного результата пытаются сделать что-то еще, чтобы решить проблему в конец. По нашим результатам проект у нас был провальный, сказывались разные обстоятельства. Тем не менее, мы извлекли уроки из своих ошибок при организации такого проекта и будем использовать в дальнейшем все рекомендации. Заключение этого экзамена может быть очень полезным для менеджеров или лидеров, чтобы улучшить свои организационные и лидерские навыки за счет ведения систематического плана в организации и возможности продвижения, которые способствуют достижению организацией таких проектов.
Ключевые слова : лидерство, личностный подход, поведенческая теория.
Theoretical part. The aim of the article is to analyze the leadership project by implementing the leadership theories and tools of leadership. The objectives of the study are: to conduct the literature review and carry out the organizational project by using different theories like «Trait theories», «Behavioural theory» which in turn help to analyze our project that was at Suleyman Demirel University. The Trait approach theory has been taken as a theoretical basis of the study. This approach focuses on the personal attributes (or traits) of leaders, such as physical and personality characteristics, competencies, and values. It views leadership solely from the perspective of the individual leader. By using information from «Trait approach» we tried to execute this project on time and on budget.
Behavioral theory. Behavioral leadership theory states that a leader's success is based on his/her behavior, not on his/her natural qualities. Behavioral leadership theory involves observing and evaluating the actions and behavior of a leader when he reacts to a specific situation. This theory holds that leaders are created, not born. During the course of our project, the organizers were divided into equal responsibilities at the beginning, and all participants were active at the beginning, while at the end some people became more active, and vice versa.
The theory of behavioral leadership is very relevant in several areas. Each project manager, CEO, activity coordinator or any other professional leader can be evaluated according to criteria developed by behavioral leadership theory. This theory promotes the idea that all leaders are able to learn and develop by adopting useful behavior and performing it in their workplace. Concluding the project we understand what was incorrect in our actions and what was correct. This is the experience to understand that some 20 % actions gave 80 % of the result and 80 % actions gave only 20 %.
According to theoretical basis as we conducted from theories such «Trait approach» and «Behavioral theory» below shown the process of beginning our project.
Project description. Beforethe Covid-19 pandemic, Kazakhstan's educational institutions had never experienced such a large amount of «online distance learning». In the early days of the transition to distance learning, most students and teachers were faced with different types of challenges. Some of them did not have electronic devices to attend class, some did not have a good internet connection, and some could not concentrate in class due to the noise and crowds at home.
During the distance learning, students experienced a variety of interesting and memorable cases. Fortunately, today's educational institutions are gradually shifting to more traditional forms of education, and everything is improving. However, there are memories of these days in the form of photos taken by students from various angles.
These photo moments can tell a lot about the fun moments, challenges, and everyday life of students during online learning. These pictures can show not only good times and places, but also the creativity, emotions and interesting stories of the students recorded in these pictures.
With all of the above in mind, our team has organized a photography contest called SDU Photo Awards: My Distance Learning Experiences to showcase how students learned during the pandemic. It consists of two parts: a photo contest and a photo exhibition. In the first part, photos of students has been collected according to the requirements and sent to the participants in advance.
In the second part, 'Photo Exhibition' SDU Wifi Zone will be held to announce the winners. The main prize of the competition is 42,500 tenge.
The aim of the project. The project aims to develop creative skills and soft skills of the students throughout the prism of photography. The project is oriented for SDU students of different departments and degrees such as master degree and doctoral degree. Our idea was to show how students experienced distance learning, and how they can show it from the perspective of a creative idea. On the other hand, this project will show our teamwork and leadership skills while completing this project.
Objectives . The contest has several objectives: increasing the interest of students, master’s and doctoral degree students in online learning through the development of student’s creative abilities and creativity; development of an online learning culture; сreating a pool of creative students for better interaction and communication of students; popularization of the art of photography. Thus, by organizing this competition, we will reach more students and help them discover their creative abilities.
Why did we decide to run the project? We decided to run this project to increase SDU students' interest in online learning. Also we wanted to show the process of online learning from the creative perspective of the students. Due to the isolation in the pandemic, we would like to raise the level of student activity through this socio-cultural project.
Focus groups. For the accuracy of our project, we selected all students of Suleyman Demirel University. The age category of students starts from 17 years to 25–35, depending on the student's program. Absolutely all Bachelor, Master and PhD students faced distance education in 2020, even for a short period of time.
Activities. The organization of all activities in the competition consists of three stages. The first was the organization of the photo contest. At this stage, the contest was announced on social media. The second stage is the determination of the best works, the selection of winners and nominees (to be held in January 2022). The final stage of the competition is to hold a photo exhibition at the university (to be held in January 2022).
Resources . The project consisted of two parts: a photo contest and a photo exhibition. For the photo contest we used the social network Instagram: @sdulife, @sdukz, @sdu.bs, @edufaculty_edu. For a photo exhibition, we took the lobby of the university and stood to hang the best works of the participants.
The sponsors of the competition was the organizers of the project represented by undergraduates of the business school of SDU.
Schedule. Initially, when we, represented by the organizers, planned to hold the contest, we planned to hold the contest in October-November 2021. But given the different circumstances that were concerned about social media, the celebration of the anniversary of the university, as well as the period of student exams, we were forced to postpone the dates of acceptance of works until January. Thus, in practice we worked with the changes within the project. Thus, in practice we worked with the changes within the project. The main problem we are facing is a bad PR campaign and a shortage of competitive works. Thus, we extended the acceptance of applications for the competition and began to work hard to promote our competition and were looking for ways out of this situation. We used various promotion platforms, such as Whatsapp, Telegram. The announcement of the competition was also re-published to reach more students. Students and teachers of the university were also involved in the promotion. Thus, we used our leadership qualities — we negotiated with the university administration, found shortcomings in our work and solved the tasks set as a team.
Table 1. shown below demonstrates the plan of Photo Exhibition and describe days and time where and what kind of activities by whom the events were held.
Table 1
The plan of the SDU Photo Exhibition
|
Day and time |
Place |
Activities |
People in charge |
|
October — December |
Kaskelen, SDU |
Photo Contest |
Aygerim Baiken, Talshyn Baimuldanova, Arailym Shakenova, Yernar Aldabergenov |
|
December — January |
Kaskelen, SDU |
Photo Exhibition |
Perizat Yermekbayeva, Arailym Shakenova, Talshyn Baimuldanova, Aida Kairoldanova |
Note: complied by the authors based on internal data of the project
Duties and Responsibilities . For the successful holding of the competition, the responsibilities of the project participants were divided according to their abilities and experience. Thus, Aigerim Baken was responsible for the promotion of the contest in social media, Aida Kayroldanova, Talshyn Baymuldanova and Perizat Yermekbayeva were responsible for organizing the photo exhibitions and preparation of the project report. Yernar Aldabergenov was responsible for the prize fund of the winners and nominees. Below shown is Table 2 which illustrates the whole duties and responsibilities of each organizer in this project.
Table 2
Duties and Responsibilities of project organizers of the contest
|
Key persons |
Duties and responsibilities |
|
Aigerim Baiken |
Promotion in social networks (posts, videos, registration form). Member of the commission. |
|
Aida Kairoldanova |
Preparation of the project report. Processing of contestants' applications. Member of the commission. |
|
Talshyn Baimuldanova |
Preparation of the project plan. Processing of contestants' applications. Member of the commission. |
|
Perizat Yermekbayeva |
Organization of the exhibition. Member of the commission. |
|
Arailym Shakenova |
Preparation of the project plan. Organization of the exhibition. Member of the commission. |
|
Yernar Aldabergenov |
Collecting the prize fund. Processing of contestants' applications. Member of the commission. |
Note: compiled by the authors
Evaluation. Experiences. There is a risk regarding the participants of the competition, the quality of their work. We take into account that the number of the participants may not satisfy our competition, and there is also risk considering the quality of their photo regarding our criteria. Even if we fail this project, learning by mistakes is a good challenge for business activities. Mistakes may also end in improvement and new inventions.
Learning processes are crucial aspects of business activities, according to the most recent approaches to business organization (e.g., Argyris 2003, Senge 1994).
More recent literature mainly focuses on globalization and hard competition in the market suggests newly arising challenges for business organizations (Baud & Garrick, 1999). It emphasizes learning as the crucial aspect of business organization to fulfill future demands.
The acknowledgement of the unavoidability of mistakes implies a consideration of the ambiguity of mistakes. On the one hand, the quality of processes should be error-free. On the other hand, as we all know from various areas of life, even good processes may fail. The evaluation of mistakes is thus ambiguous: they are to be avoided, but if they occur, they are to be seen as opportunities for learning and improvement — particularly when it is assumed that they can not be totally avoided.
Budget. The budget of the competition is 67,500 tenge. The author of the best photo will receive 42,500 tenge, the holders of the 2nd and 3rd places will receive 15,000 and 1,000 tenge, respectively. Also, according to the results of the competition, the winners and participants of the competition will receive memorable prizes with the attributes of the university. In this competition, valuable and memorable prizes serve as motivation and reward for the work of students. Thus, by holding a competition, we help to develop both creatively and financially.
Conclusion and lessons learned. Implementing the project «SDU Photo Awards: My Distance Learning Experiences», we studied «Trait approach» and «Behavioral theory». The above-mentioned theories helped us a lot in working on the project, but at the same time, in practice, we revealed new qualities of the organizers. In life, not everything works according to a certain theory: any theory can fail or lead to success.
Initially, we planned to hold the competition until the end of December 2021. But during the first part of the competition, we faced a problem — a large number of students were not aware of the competition or did not want to take competitive photos. As a result, we changed the dates of the first part of the competition to January in 2022. Now the main goal of our team is to work with the coverage of the competition and collect a sufficient number of works.
Based on the results of our project, we can draw several conclusions that may be useful to future organizers. First, not all ideas work at the same level as you plan. Be prepared that everything can work completely differently in practice. The second important conclusion is that it is necessary to properly distribute the responsibilities of all participants, taking into account their best skills. Proper distribution and planning is half the success. The third conclusion that we have learned is to study unsuccessful cases more often and organize brainstorming sessions with the team. After all, any important project is hard teamwork, where each participant can contribute and improve the work.
While working on this project, we realized a very important thing — working on mistakes or failures makes teamwork better. Thus, we, represented by the organizers, have mastered the lessons and are now working hard to improve our results.
We, represented by the organizers, have mastered the lessons and are now working hard to improve our results. Mistakes or failures do not make our work worse or less valuable, they only show the way to solve the problem.
References:
- Baud & Garrick, 1999. Learning from mistakes-still a challenge for research and business practice.
- C. Argyris 2003. A life full of learning. Organizational studies.
- Verlag Barbara Budrich 2012. Learning from errors at work. Berlin & Farmington hills.
