How to Be a Good Leader - Coursework Example

How to be a good leader? Introduction Leaders have a significant role in creating the of mind that is the society. They can serve as symbols ofthe moral unity of the society. They can express the values that hold the society together. Most important, they can conceive and articulate goals that lift people out of their petty preoccupations, carry them above the conflicts that tear a society apart, and unite them in pursuit of objectives worthy of their best efforts. - John W. Gardner (No Easy Victories) Leadership is a fascinating social phenomenon that occurs in all groups of people regardless of geography, culture, or nationality. Ancient Chinese and Greek leaders looked to philosophers for advice, Egyptians attributed specific godlike traits to their leader–kings, and famous writers such as Homer and Machiavelli documented shrewd and cunning strategies of successful leaders. Much of history is recorded through the lives of famous leaders. Names such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Clara Barton, Mahatma Gandhi, Golda Meir, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela symbolize major eras of social upheaval that have had immense repercussions. Most young people today aspire to become leaders in school, athletics, entertainment, politics, industry, the military, medicine, or some other area of endeavor (Howell, 2005). The stakes for the leaders of our future are rising rapidly and daily. The demands on the role in both public and private sector, the attention from the media to the problems we face, and the increased complexity of the world with globalization and galloping technology make leadership infinitely more difficult. The game has changed -- dramatically. Strange new rules have appeared. The deck has been shuffled and jokers added. Never before have American business, education, medicine, social welfare, and government faced so many challenges. There is a mood out there that must be termed dyspeptic -perhaps even murderous -- toward institutional leaders. Its part of the American paranoid style. But it has been exacerbated by scandals, media attention, and questions about character. Uncertainties and complexities abound. There are too many ironies, polarities, confusions, contradictions, and ambivalences for any organization to understand fully. The only truly predictable thing right now is unpredictability. Most of us grew up in organizations that were dominated by the thoughts and actions of the Fords, Taylors, and Webers, the fathers of the classic bureaucratic system. Bureaucracy was a splendid social invention in the nineteenth century, as the ideal mechanism for harnessing the manpower and resources of the Industrial Revolution. Today many organizations are reconsidering the macho, control-and-command mentality that is intrinsic to that increasingly threadbare model. They are looking to leadership that is empowering, that invites participation, that is flexible and responsive to the realities of life (McShane, & Glinow, 1999). As we begin, we must raise several cautions about leadership. First of all, leadership can be a heady experience. Learning about it, pursuing it, and encouraging it can take one on a dangerous power trip. If the purpose of leadership is, as we posit in this book, to take a stand for what one believes and to bring it forth into reality, then leaders must have a check on their ambition. In the leaders we admire, ambition is always balanced with competence and integrity. This three-legged stool upon which true leadership sits -- ambition, competence, and integrity -- must remain in balance if the leader is to be a constructive force in the organization rather than a destructive achiever of her or his own ends. Effective leaders continually ask questions, probing all levels of the organization for information, testing their own perceptions, and rechecking the facts. They talk to their constituents. They want to know what is working and what is not. They keep an open mind for serendipity to bring them the knowledge they need to know what is true. An important source of information for this sort of leader is knowledge of the failures and mistakes that are being made in their organization (Howell, 2005). Leaders come in every size, shape, and disposition -- short, tall, neat, sloppy, young, old, male, and female. Nevertheless, they all seem to share some, if not all, of the following ingredients: • The first basic ingredient of leadership is a guiding vision. The leader has a clear idea of what he wants to do -professionally and personally -- and the strength to persist in the face of setbacks, even failures. Unless you know where youre going, and why, you cannot possibly get there. That guiding purpose, that vision, was well illustrated by Norman Lear. • The second basic ingredient of leadership is passion -- the underlying passion for the promises of life, combined with a very particular passion for a vocation, a profession, a course of action. The leader loves what he does and loves doing it. Tolstoy said that hopes are the dreams of the waking man. Without hope, we cannot survive, much less progress. The leader who communicates passion gives hope and inspiration to other people. This ingredient tends to come up with different spins on it -sometimes it appears as enthusiasm, especially in chapter eight, "Getting People on Your Side." • The next basic ingredient of leadership is integrity. I think there are three essential parts of integrity: self-knowledge, candor, and maturity. "Know thyself," was the inscription over the Oracle at Delphi. And it is still the most difficult task any of us faces. But until you truly know yourself, strengths and weaknesses, know what you want to do and why you want to do it, you cannot succeed in any but the most superficial sense of the word. The leader never lies to himself, especially about himself, knows his flaws as well as his assets, and deals with them directly. You are your own raw material. When you know what you consist of and what you want to make of it, then you can invent yourself. Organizational Culture and Leadership Organizational culture is the basic pattern of shared assumptions, values and beliefs considered to be the correct way of thinking about and acting on the problems and opportunities facing the organizations. It defines what is important and unimportant for the company. You may think of it as an organization’s DNA—invisible to the naked eye, yet a powerful template that shapes what happens in the workplace. An organization’s cultural beliefs and values are somewhat easier to decipher than assumptions because people are aware of them. Beliefs represent the individual’s perceptions of reality. Values are more stable, long-lasting beliefs about what is important. They help us define what is right and wrong, or good or bad in the world. Organizational Leadership has been a major topic of research in psychology for almost a century and has spawned thousands of empirical and conceptual studies. Despite this level of effort, however, the various parts of this literature still appear disconnected and directionless. In our opinion, a major cause of this state of the field is that many studies of leadership are context free; that is, low consideration is given to organizational variables that influence the nature and impact of leadership. One reason for the lack of progress in developing an integrated understanding of organizational leadership is that theorists of all stripes have sought to offer generic leadership theories and models that use many of the same constructs to explain leadership across different organizational levels. Such an approach assumes that leadership at the top of the organization reflects the same psychological and sociological dynamics as leadership at lower organizational levels. This lack of consideration to organizational level and other structural factors has contributed to a dearth of good empirical research on organizational leadership, particularly at the executive level (McShane, & Glinow, 1999). Some writers have argued for qualitative shifts in the nature of leadership across organizational levels. This view recognizes that dimensions of organizational structure, specifically hierarchical level, degree of differentiation in function, and place in organizational space, moderate the nature of organizational leadership as well as its antecedents and consequences. Thus, performance demands on leaders change across organizational levels. A situated approach that examines the contextualized influences on organizational leadership is more likely to produce accurate, defensible, and ultimately more successful models and midrange theories of this phenomenon. If such an approach were to include a focus on top managers, this would culminate in fuller and more generalizable models of organizational leadership, including a better understanding of how executive leadership differs from lower-level leadership. There would also emerge from such efforts a more integrated conceptual framework for the specification and development of leader assessment, selection, training, and development programs. For being a good leader, it is important for a person that they first know themselves well and for doing so, there are four major points one must always bear in mind. They are 1. You are your own best teacher. 2. Accept responsibility. Blame no one. 3. You can learn anything you want to learn. 4. True understanding comes from reflecting on your experience. Leadership is the activity of influencing people to cooperate toward some goal which they come to find desirable. There are a few areas which a must improve in order to be a good leader. Actions speak louder than words, so take a good, hard look at the example youre setting. Your people notice what time you come in, what time you leave, and how long you take for lunch and coffee. They know whether you take all the credit for what the unit accomplishes and whether you admit mistakes and take responsibility for screw-ups. They know exactly how susceptible you are to flattery and brownnosing. They see whether you take risks or avoid them. They hear if you bad-mouth others. Its unfair, but employees hold their bosses to higher standards than they hold themselves. For better or worse, your example is the strongest management tool you have. Catch your people doing something right. Its easy to focus on flaws and mistakes. Some call it managing by exception. Unfortunately, the message your people get is, "Dont try anything new. Dont suggest anything new. Play safe." Its a recipe for an organization caught in suspended animation. Focus instead on finding contributions. Give yourself a quota of thanking at least one of your people each day for something specific they did. Cant find anything? Look harder. And dont forget to recognize people in front of their peers, too (McShane, & Glinow, 1999). Dare to dream about the future you want to create. Who can get excited about processing another invoice? Or making journal entries? People only get fired up when they are part of something larger than themselves. Worried your people wont buy in? Let them share in formulating the vision. Theres no more powerful way. Then be optimistic and enthusiastic in communicating the vision. Enthusiasm is an infectious disease. Be a carrier. And dont worry about repeating yourself. Leaders need to do exactly that. Sometimes it seems there are only two kinds of bosses: the ones people will do only the minimum for and the ones people will do anything for. The biggest single difference between these bosses is what they believe about their people. The first kind believe their people are already in over their heads and treat them accordingly. The second kind assume their people are capable of much more than what they are currently doing. To be the second kind of boss, believe in your people more than they believe in themselves. 5. Celebrate victories. Everybody wants to be part of a winning team. Make sure your team gets a steady diet of victories. Build collaboration as it is the essence of every organization thats greater than the sum of its parts. Many aspects of management foster collaboration, while others inhibit collaboration. Does your performance appraisal process, as many do, create separate goals for each individual that are kept secret from everyone else? Instead, create team goals that are both public and shared. How often does your whole team get together in one room? Whether two people report to you or 2,000, create regular forums for face-to-face interaction. And dont lecture the troops. Promote open communication by spending more time listening than talking. Recognize that how you respond to early feedback will determine how much youll get in the future-- and what kind. Be aware that even healthy teams have disagreements and differences. Work to surface and resolve them, but even if you cant resolve them, get them out into the open. A wound exposed to the open air wont fester. Get out in front; you cant lead by following your people. Get out in front by challenging the status quo. Steal ideas from other fields and industries. Experiment with new methods and approaches. Take risks. And dont forget to reward your subordinates who do the same, even when they fail (McShane, & Glinow, 1999) Given the nature and constancy of change and the challenges we face, the key to making the right choices will come from understanding and embodying the leadership qualities necessary to succeed in an increasingly volatile and mercurial global environment. To survive in the twenty-first century, we are going to need a new generation of leaders -- leaders, not managers. The distinction is an important one. Leaders conquer the context -- the turbulent, ambiguous surroundings that sometimes seem to conspire against us and will surely suffocate us if we let them -- while managers surrender to it. Leaders investigate reality, taking in the pertinent factors and analyzing them carefully. On this basis they produce visions, concepts, plans, and programs. Managers adopt the truth from others and implement it without probing for the facts that reveal reality. There is profound difference -- a chasm -- between leaders and managers. A good manager does things right. A leader does the right things. Doing the right things implies a goal, a direction, an objective, a vision, a dream, a path, a reach. Managing is about efficiency. Leading is about effectiveness. Managing is about how. Leading is about what and why. Management is about systems, controls, procedures, policies, and structure. Leadership is about trust -- about people. Leadership is about innovating and initiating. Management is about copying, about managing the status quo. Leadership is creative, adaptive, and agile. Leadership looks at the horizon, not just the bottom line (Howell, 2005). Leaders base their vision, their appeal to others, and their integrity on reality, on the facts, on a careful estimate of the forces at play, and on the trends and contradictions. They develop the means for changing the original balance of forces so that their vision can be realized. A leader is someone who has the capacity to create a compelling vision that takes people to a new place, and to translate that vision into action. Leaders draw other people to them by enrolling them in their vision. What leaders do is inspire people, empower them. They pull rather than push. This "pull" style of leadership attracts and energizes people to enroll in a vision of the future. It motivates people by helping them identify with the task and the goal rather than by rewarding or punishing them. Reference: Jon P. Howell, 2005. Understanding Behaviors for Effective Leadership, 2/E., New Mexico State University. Dan L. Costley, New Mexico State University, Deceased. Publisher: Prentice Hall. Copyright: 2006. Steven L. McShane, Mary Ann Von Glinow, 1999. Organizational Behavior. Mcgraw-Hill College; Package edition. Read More