Vision and Leadership - Problem-Based Learning as a Teaching Tool by Douglas - Book Report/Review Example

Leadership Affiliation: Leadership Vision The “Vision and Leadership: Problem-basedLearning as a Teaching Tool’ by Douglas is an article which discusses not only what leadership vision entails but also how to become a visual leader. The author insists the importance of vision in leadership which accompanies management and enables important changes to take place in any organization be it a school, hospital or even a company. He equates the lack of vision in a leader to lack of transformations which mean lack of growth and reduced productivity. In the teaching of how leaders can attain vision, he cautions that not everyone can get it right the first time but constant practice with different visions and perseverance is what makes great leaders in our society and that vision should be embraced by everyone. “While it will always be the case that leaders vary in their capacity to exercise vision, this does not change the fact that everyone can learn and improve and strengthen their capability to exercise vision in appropriate leadership contexts (Douglas, 2013).” The author discusses in great details about the definition of vision and what it entails and even further provides examples. I agree with his explanation that problems in leadership are not as easy to present themselves but with vision, they can be easily handled as soon as they present themselves. Organizations present with many different challenges and problems which ultimately affect its productivity and employee management. A leader that is focused on management only is likely to be unable to handle and solve all these problems. I also agree that despite the vision and management abilities of leaders, it is important for every leader to recognize their strengths and use it to their advantage in conjunction with the vision. The strengths may include skills and confidence. I do not however agree much with the author using the examples of students purely in the whole article in discussing about vision in leadership. Even though leadership skills and confidence start being built up from the foundation and as early as possible, it would have been much better had the author also incorporated a few more examples of visionary leaders, their struggle with their leadership without vision and their eventual success rates. A few of these have been incorporated such as explaining the leadership of Starbucks owner and his success because of having a vision (Douglas, 2013). The article is very educative on the matters of vision, how to attain and maintain it. It also further emphasizes the need to instill the matter of importance of vision in leadership as well as its success in any organization from the time the generation is young. This is so because leaders in schools are told mostly about management but not vision and this is the reason some companies experience high productivity while others stagnate growth wise. The recommendations made indirectly in the article should be taken seriously by leaders of organizations. The most important points of all is “The leader must convince others that current practices fall short of a goal state that is better and possible to achieve (Douglas, 2013).” Leadership Change Hurley & Brown’s article titled “Conversational Leadership: Thinking Together for a Change” discusses the importance of communication in an organization for change to take place. The leader must take the initiative to engage in conversation with other leaders and employees in order to not only cultivate intelligence but create business value as well as change the pattern of thinking and practices. Communication with others fosters the necessary changes needed in organization in terms of organizational structure and practices. The leadership is called conversational leadership and has been proven to foster positive changes in organizations. According to the authors, this type of leadership enables tackling of complex issues as well as provides ways to develop a pattern of thinking important for future decision making of the organization (Hurley & Brown, 2010). What is most interesting about the article and which I agree with is the fact that with this type of leadership where the leader is able to converse about the organization, changes occur in that there is more exploration of the different options being offered by the different people. This provides room for growth of the organization as well as increase in productivity. With this type of leadership, the leaders will be able to learn from the success and failures of others about the best and worse technologies, business models and organizational structures. There is also room to test about importance and success of social media, how to best handle employee trouble and the best motivation for the different types of employees working in an organization. This type of leadership however mean that the leaders in conversing with the leaders or individuals about their organizations might compromise the ethics of confidentiality as well as accidentally spill company’s secrets which might lead to negative consequences. The authors have failed to provide an answer to such eventualities taking place. The leaders are also moving from their comfort zone of being the ones making the decisions and being consulted to having to indirectly consult about making changes in their organizations and this is something not most leaders would be comfortable to engage in. There is need for a guide to the leaders on how to carry out such conversational leadership without compromising their intelligence or the company’s secrets (Hurley & Brown, 2010). All in all, this is a change for the leaders and is bound to change the way the organization is run. The leader is bound to involve more employees or others with more knowledge and success rates of the organization which will in the long run increase the productivity of the company. With more involvement of the community, the company will have expanded their market as well as increased their corporate social responsibility which will be a welcome change to the organization and will put the organization in the lead for CSR. The fact that leaders as well as employees will be getting out of their comfort zones and trying out a new thing for the overall benefit of the organization is what leadership change is all about. References Douglas, A. (2013). Vision and Leadership: Problem-based Learning as a Teaching Tool. Journal of Leadership Education, 12(2): 136-147. Hurley, T. & Brown, J. (2010, March). Conversational Leadership: Thinking Together for a Change. Oxford Leadership Journal, 1(2): 1-9 Read More