Week 7

Week 7: Leadership  Concept/ Mode/ Theory Definition: _Power refers to the capacity of a person to influence work, actions or decisions of another _Type of Power: •

Expert power: The influence a person can exert as a result of his or her expertise, skills, or knowledge

_Leadership is the process of influencing a group toward the achievement of goals. •

Leaders create environments within which follower’s innovative and creative contributions are welcome.

•

Leaders encourage growth and development in their followers.

•

Leaders motivate followers more personally

•

Leaders redefine the parameters of tasks and responsibilities. 

The differences between managers and leaders:

Managers 







Are appointed to their

Leaders 

Are elected or emerge

position

from within a work

Can influence people

group Can influence other



only to the extent of the

people and have

formal authority of their

managerial authority

position Do not necessarily have



Do not necessarily

the attributes, skills and

have the skills and

capabilities to be

capabilities to be

leaders

managers

Do things right

_Trait theories: (1920s-30s)



Do the right things



Research focused on identifying personal characteristics that differentiated leaders from non-leaders was unsuccessful.



Later research on the leadership process identified 7 traits associated with successful leadership:  drive  the desire to lead  honesty and integrity  self-confidence  Intelligence  job-relevant knowledge, and  extraversion

•

Behavioural theory 

Ohio State Studies 

Identified two dimensions of leader behaviour 

Initiating Structure: the role of the leader in defining his or her role and the roles of group members, organizers of work and roles to get the task done



Consideration: the leader’s mutual trust and respect for group members’ ideas and feelings, taking these into account.

•

Contingency / Situational theories of leadership 

Theories that seek to define leadership style and answer: ‘if’ this situation, ‘then’ this is the best style to use. Leaders need to be flexible in the style they use, or different leaders are needed in different situations if it is true that managers have a dominant style

_Path-goal theory is defined as leadership theory that says it is a leader’s job to assist followers and to provide direction and support that are needed to attain goals _Transactional leaders are defined as those who guide or motivate their followers in the direction of established short term goals by clarifying role and task requirements _Team Leadership Characteristics 

Having patience to share information



Being able to trust others and to give up authority

_Team Leader’s Job 

Facilitating the team process •

Coaching, facilitating, handling disciplinary problems, reviewing team and individual performance, communication

 Rich Description of Practice in Group: On 5/08/2007, our group held a final meeting in the front of library to review again about what we would submit for the next day. Although everything was done, our poster was designed completely. But James still wanted everyone in our group look over it again whether this poster was ready to submit. He wanted to take feedbacks from us in order to make this poster better. As dividing responsibilities, I checked again the bibliography, Nick checked all the researches in this poster, and Louiza would review to make sure there was nothing wrong on the poster’s design. James would help us to solve all the problems if there had in our poster. One interesting was that when I had a chat with him, I knew James was working at the airport. That was the reason why he could manage our group so effectively. Finally, our work was absolutely finished without any troubles and we were ready to submit this poster on the next day. Louiza would keep the poster to submit the day after,

and James reminded her to carry it in the box otherwise it would be damaged when falling down. There seemed to be our last work for this poster assessment.  Analysis and Critical Reflection of relationship between Theory and Practice in Group: James, our team leader, which was elected by each team member from the beginning of subject’s assessment to now, did the job very well. He had a power and an ability to make us follow him to act and make decision on our work efficiently. Personally, I think expert power had the strongest long term influence for a leader. And James had enough skills and knowledge to orient us on the right track throughout the assessment, whereby we could get the highest result for this. On every group meeting, he always tried to create a friendly in order to make us more creative and give some interesting idea for our poster. Even each group member had their own abilities and limitations on doing this assessment leading to language barriers, writing academic skills… He also divided responsibilities and tasks according to these limitations that every member could involve into and get our work done together. Moreover, at this stage, these limitations should be excluded and develop each member’s skills on working as a team. For example, in our group, there are 5 people and there has 2 first year international, so language barriers and the way to working as a team effectively were so difficult for me and Jing to follow. But James didn’t matter that, and he still gave tasks for us to do and try to make us involve in group’s discussion. Because of this friendly atmosphere, our team could help each other to do the work fluently and without any problems. Actually, James always did the right thing in the whole process. According to later trait theory, leadership was identified by 7 traits for a successful leader. I agree our group leader took most of traits such as desire to lead- he led the team without any inconvenience; honesty and integrity; self confidence; intelligent and

job-relevant knowledge. That is why our team leader oriented our group very well. And I think intelligent is the most important trait for a team leader to have. Then behavioural theory gave the Ohio State studies in which identified two dimensions of leader behaviour. In the initiating structure dimension, the role of group leader, James and the roles for every member in our group were well-defined at the first time we did this assessment. Hence, we could get every group member’s task on time and in the best way. For the rest dimension is consideration, our team member always respected and noticed every group member’s ideas and pick out which one should be taken into account. Another important team leadership theory is contingency theory, which is defined leadership style and answer: ‘if’ this situation and ‘then’ this is the best style to use. Every time, James makes an important decision for group such as when we chose which company to do, he always thinks and does researches for this decision carefully. In addition, when there had any problem while doing this assessment, he still stayed calm and chose the best way to solve the problem flexibly. After all, our team leader was defined as transactional leader who guides or motivates his team member in the right direction of a short term established goal. It was determined to be achieved the highest marks for our 2 poster assessment in 7 weeks with clarified role and task requirements for each member. James also involved in team leader characteristic in which he always has patience to share information, problems about poster with other group member and we were able to solve this problems or discuss more on how to make our work better. Everyone got an equal authority in group so when some one fought out and discuss with other team member where there needed to be corrected in the poster. Obviously, James allowed us to do so. His job was how to facilitate our group process as less as possible; he was the one who looked after for the whole work process when it was done. He was willing to help other members when they got

a problem or communicate with other team member, held a meeting every week, control our work and so on. On overall, our group assessment was included a leadership issue clearly by performance of James, our group leader.