After reading this book, evaluate it in a 2-page paper that addresses the follow
ID: 445155 • Letter: A
Question
After reading this book, evaluate it in a 2-page paper that addresses the following:
Burns, J., & MacGregor, J. (2004). Transforming leadership: A new pursuit of happiness. New York: Grove Press.
Summarize the key points of the book.
Identify which of the three main categories of leadership approaches (e.g., leaders, followers, situation) does this perspective fall into, and explain why you think so.
What are the ideas and guidelines in this book that you see as strengths? What do you disagree with?
How does this book resonate with or reflect your own vision of leadership?
Identify and describe principles in this book that help a leader motivate others to participate in collaborative problem-solving.
Explanation / Answer
answer 1
In terms of physical appearance, designated leaders tend to be taller and more attractive than other group members. This could be because we consciously and/or subconsciously associate a larger size (in terms of height and build, but not body fat) with strength and strength with good leadership. As far as communication abilities, leaders speak more fluently, have a more confident tone, and communicate more often than other group members. Leaders are also moderately more intelligent than other group members, which is attractive because leaders need good problem-solving skills. Interestingly, group members are not as likely to designate or recognize an emergent leader that they perceive to be exceedingly more intelligent than them. Last, leaders are usually more extroverted, assertive, and persistent than other group members. These personality traits help get these group members noticed by others, and expressivity is often seen as attractive and as a sign of communication competence.
The trait approach to studying leaders has provided some useful information regarding how people view ideal leaders, but it has not provided much insight into why some people become and are more successful leaders than others. The list of ideal traits is not final, because excellent leaders can have few, if any, of these traits and poor leaders can possess many. Additionally, these traits are difficult to change or control without much time and effort. Because these traits are enduring, there isn’t much room for people to learn and develop leadership skills, which makes this approach less desirable for communication scholars who view leadership as a communication competence. Rather than viewing these traits as a guide for what to look for when choosing your next leader, view them as traits that are made meaningful through context and communication behaviors.
Leaders Emerge Because of the Situation
The emergent approach to studying leadership considers how leaders emerge in groups that are initially leaderless and how situational contexts affect this process.Research has found that leaders with a high task orientation are likely to emerge in both highly structured contexts like a group that works to maintain a completely automated factory unit and highly unstructured contexts like a group that is responding to a crisis. Relational-oriented leaders are more likely to emerge in semistructured contexts that are less formal and in groups composed of people who have specific knowledge and are therefore be trusted to do much of their work independently.
The first stage only covers a brief period, perhaps no longer than a portion of one meeting. During this first stage, about half of the group’s members are eliminated from the possibility of being the group’s leader.
The second stage of leader emergence is where a more or less pronounced struggle for leadership begins. In one scenario, a leader candidate picks up an ally in the group who acts as a supporter or lieutenant, reinforcing the ideas and contributions of the candidate. If there are no other leader candidates or the others fail to pick up a supporter, the candidate with the supporter will likely become the leader.
Leaders Emerge Based on Communication Skill and Competence
This final approach to the study of leadership is considered a functional approach, because it focuses on how particular communication behaviors function to create the conditions of leadership. This last approach is the most useful for communication scholars and for people who want to improve their leadership skills, because leadership behaviors (which are learnable and adaptable) rather than traits or situations (which are often beyond our control) are the primary focus of study. The communication behaviors that facilitate effective leadership encompass three main areas of group communication including task, procedural, and relational functions. Although any group member can perform leadership behaviors, groups usually have patterns of and expectations for behaviors once they get to the norming and performing stages of group development. Many groups only meet one or two times, and in these cases it is likely that a designated leader will perform many of the functions to get the group started and then step in to facilitate as needed.
Leadership how does
Leadership Style:
These leadership styles can be described as follows:
Many things which are coming in traits of leadership that is strenthens the any character in any ways
The Earmarks of Ethical Leadership
Because values play such an important role in our lives, being able to recognize, understand and articulate one’s own values set becomes critical in sound decisionmaking. Additionally, the ability to identify an employer’s corporate values will assist in determining an employee’s job performance and allegiance. Consequently, when an individual discovers genuine and meaningful alignment between his or her own personal values with those of his or her employer, a powerful connection is created. This connection creates numerous possibilities for both individual growth and company productivity, manifested in myriad ways.
(a) Loyalty and Respect:
The fusion of personal values with a company’s expressed work ethic may result in the development of greater employee loyalty and respect for the organization. In today’s world, attrition from the workplace has become increasingly problematic. The need to generate employee enthusiasm and dedication to product produced or service rendered is of utmost concern to retain the employee and infuse passion in those services delivered by the employer. There has been a long held maxim that if an employee truly believes in the work that he or she performs for an employer, that employee will be invigorated to create a necessary, safe and beneficial service or product with pride, dedication and respect to purpose.
(b) History of Fair Dealing:
Prior to accepting employment with a new employer, a certain amount of due diligence is customarily performed: has and will this company emphasize worker appreciation and contribution? Does the organization have a sound historical record in manufacturing a product or providing a service that provides both desired and necessary assistance to the customer? Will the employee’s expectations of fair play and equitable treatment be upheld? Will public image be portrayed in conformance with the actual operations of the business? And will all of the company’s goals be accomplished in a manner to balance the realistic interests of the company’s stakeholders and the consuming public as well as remaining in congruence with growing environmental concerns and widespread calls to conserve resources? Companies need to be able and ready to address questions like these with potential hires in order to ensure the right fit from both the individual and corporation’s perspective.
(c) Building Trust:
It is imperative, especially in the wake of new legislation enacted to curtail the level of reported corruption and to demand individual accountability (e.g., new financial accounting standards required under Sarbanes-Oxley1), to operate a company in a genuine manner that infuses trust into many business-oriented relationships: (1) management and labor concerns (2) shareholder and public expectations (3) desired product and environmental preservation and (4) corporate practices and government scrutiny. While it is unfortunate that the unethical practices of a number of companies have served as the impetus for the passage of new legislation to demand accountability, perhaps such happenings have also served as a catalyst for the individual organization to switch to a model of values-based decision-making over myopically pursuing the “bottom line.” Scandals such as Enron, Arthur Anderson, World Com and Tyco have eroded this trust and the truly values-based leader must be the impetus to restore reliability.
(d) Basing Decisions on Values Rather Than Beliefs:
Well-known values and culture consultant Richard Barrett notes, “When a situation arises that we have to deal with, there are three different ways we can arrive at a decision on what to do: we can use our beliefs to formulate a response, we can use our values to formulate our response, or we can use our intuition to formulate a response.” (Barrett, 2005, p.1). Barrett continues to explain that if you use beliefs to make decisions, those decisions will reflect your past history in dealing with similar situations. Past history is always experienced and context-based, and beliefs are not equipped to handle complex new situations that have not been experienced previously. Beliefs are steeped in our past histories, habits and traditions, and are thus constrained by individual experiences and not as adaptable to new situations. Alternatively, if you use values to make decisions, those decisions will align with the future you want to experience. Values transcend both contexts and experiences. Therefore, they can be used for making tough decisions in complex situations that have not yet been experienced. As a result, values provide a more flexible mode of decision-making than beliefs.
(e) Gain Team Member and Customer Commitment:
When an organization and its team members unite around a shared set of values, they become more flexible, less hierarchical, less bureaucratic, and they develop an enhanced capacity for collective action. When employees not only share similar values – but also a similar vision – the performance of a company is enhanced. Shared values build trust. Trust is the foundation on which relationships are established, both with team members and customers alike. Values-based leadership is a way of making authentic decisions that build the trust and commitment of employees and customers.
(f) Stimulate Vision and Inspire Others:
As a leader, your job is to create a vision and to inspire others to make that vision a reality. In order to get employees passionate about what they are doing, leaders have to possess great energy so that they can spark excitement and achieve results. While this may seem counterintuitive, a great leader sometimes needs to focus less on the numbers, and more on the values of building a team, sharing ideas and exciting others. Successfully operating as a values-based leader benefits your team, your organization and yourself. According to Peter Ernest, CEO of Values Journey, “when a truly values-based leader ensures that his organisation has an engaging process for the people to explore their personal values, as well as their teams’ and the organizations’ values, there are benefits on many levels:
Helps a Leader motivate others to participate in collaborative problem solvings
WHAT IS COLLABORATIVE LEADERSHIP?
Collaborative leadership is really defined by a process, rather than by what leaders do. It has much in common with both servant leadership and transformational leadership. It starts, according to David Chrislip and Carl Larson, in Collaborative Leadership, from the premise that "...if you bring the appropriate people together in constructive ways with good information, they will create authentic visions and strategies for addressing the shared concerns of the organization or community."
Collaborative leadership can be employed in almost any situation, and indeed is practiced in some businesses with great success, but is seen more often in community coalitions and initiatives, in community-based health and human service organizations, or in alternative education. People often find it particularly useful in situations where "no one is in charge," where there are issues or problems so complex that no one person or entity has either the information or the power to change them. (This does't mean that no one has responsibility, but rather that sharing responsibility for the issue is necessary in order to arrive at a successful resolution of it.)
While it can be practiced in a number of ways, good collaborative leadership is almost always characterized by some specific traits. Among the most important:
There are some differences between collaborative leadership within an organization and collaborative leadership among organizations. In the first case, a leader may have to spend much of her time initially trying to coax people to take leadership roles in certain circumstances, or even to participate in collaborative decision-making. In the second instance, a leader's biggest task may be to keep everyone from trying to lead in different directions all at once.
There are really two ways to define collaborative leadership. In this section, we will focus on the first of these situations, though the orienting principles are the same in both cases.
WHY PRACTICE COLLABORATIVE LEADERSHIP?
A coalition or other collaboration will nearly always function best with collaborative leadership. Most other organizations and enterprises may function without collaborative leadership, but there are benefits that collaborative leadership can confer even in situations where there are other possible choices.
Advantages of collaborative leadership include:
Turf issues arise when individuals or organizations feel someone else is invading their "turf," their professional or philosophical or personal territory. In a community, this can mean competition among organizations for prestige, credibility with a target population, or - worst of all - funding, and can result in organizations that should be natural allies working against one another. In an organization, it can mean individuals asserting "ownership" of information, the use of equipment, or administrative procedures, and can cause disastrous splits among staff and ineffective and inefficient operation.