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Leadership is more concerned with people than is management. Do you agree? I firmly believe that leadership demonstrates more concerns about people than management does. Firstly, according to the definition of leadership and management, stated by Daft (201 1), leadership is concerned as mutual relationship between superiors and subordinates who desire substantive changes that reflect the purposes leaders and followers acquire. On the other hand, management is perceived as effective and efficient process across organization in order to achieve company’s goals.
Obviously, based on their definitions, we can clearly state that whereas management heavily focuses on controlling all organization’s activities from bottom line as well as focusing on tasks and procedure, the facets of humanity such as trust, behavior, Inspiration, and attitude tend to be Involved more In leadership. Secondly, in term of relationship, a manager creates his relationship with others through position within company and forces them to perform task based on reward and punishment systems.
Leadership, on the other side, Is more concerned with people as It values “personal Influence” in creating relationship among leaders and followers (Daft, 2011). 2. Why is leadership considered both an art and a science? For the art aspect: many people who achieve comprehensive knowledge about leadership concepts may not become effective leader because when applying leadership theory Into real life, there Is no fixed or single solution for particular problems. This depends on how individuals interpret the situation and how they perceive their leadership type.
Moreover, in order to become effective leader, people have to take practices in real experience instead of Just reading from text books. For the science aspect: there are tremendous reliable scientific researches that describe moon traits and behaviors among effective leaders as well as how leadership affects to outcomes of organization. Through these disciplines, people can clearly understand what characteristics make leader be different from others and which type of leadership they should attain. 3. What is the difference between trait theories and behavioral theories of leadership?
The trait theories stated that some certain personal characteristics that a leader possesses can be inherited and some people are born to naturally become a leader. On the other hand, behavioral theories focus on the behaviors that effective adders conduct and people can achieve successful leadership through proper training. 4. Turn to Exhibit 2. 1. Pick three traits from the list that you think would be most valuable for a leader in an operational role. Pick three that you think would be most valuable for a leader in a collaborative role.
Explain your choices. Three traits from Exhibit 2. 1 that I think would be most valuable for a leader in an operational role are knowledge, drive to excel, and persistence against obstacles. First, as an operational role, a leader’s in-depth knowledge about company’s objectives and activities takes a vital aspect In his success. Actually, the mall task of operational leaders Is to ensure that company’s operations are run effectively and efficiently. FIFO company’s transactions, he probably can control and lead the company operations into right direction.
The drive to excel is another valuable trait for operational leader. Factually, as a leader has the desire to master the firm’s operation, he is willing to takes all of his efforts to discover potential alternatives to achieve highest outcomes. For example, even though company’s production cost is still low and company can earn profit, a leader with drive to excel is likely to examine the production line in order to figure out possible flaws as well as test new techniques to achieve lowest cost as possible. Finally, a leader in an operational role should possess the persistence against obstacles.
Factually, in the operating process of company, the problems do not occur every year, but they happens daily or even every hour. Therefore, a leader has to build the tenacity to deal with difficulties in order to obtain the efficiency of operation. In my opinion, three traits that would be most suitable for a leader in a collaborative role are cooperativeness, ability to enlist cooperation, and interpersonal skills. In fact, as a collaborative role, a leader has ability to create environment or communities that all employees can work together.
Moreover, he also has to inspire others by his cooperativeness. 5. Do you agree or disagree that humility is important for good leadership? Discuss fully. I strongly agree that humility is important for good leadership due to its three main characteristic: valuing idea of others, serving others than self, and willing to improve. First, a leader with humility possible will identify that as human being, he is not the impeccable creature. So, he probably could not master all knowledge in various fields and could omit potential mistakes in their thinking.
As a result, a humble leader is willing to open the discussion with his subordinates about his thoughts as well as value their ideas in decision-making instead of Just giving the orders (Cubicle, 2012). Second, leaders living in humility will concentrate on others and group’s main goals rather than their own interests (Matt, 2012). Actually, they tend to take responsibility for failure and give credit for success to group member. Hence, they could easily gain trust, respect, and loyalty from their followers.
Finally, unlike pride leader, who values myself as best, a humble leader tends to resolve his weaknesses rather than cover them. Thus, he values feedbacks to his performances, and then willing to learn new techniques frequently in order to improve his leadership, instead of Just sticking into a certain method. More importantly, this action also could inspire other subordinates to enhance themselves. As a consequence, the organization will grow constantly as it is led by a leader who is willing to grow and improve. 6. How might the paradigm shift from competition to collaboration make the Job of a leader more difficult?
Could it also make the leader’s Job easier? Discuss. The paradigm shift from competition to collaboration make a leader face more challenge than the old paradigm. Factually, bringing different individuals with distinguish knowledge and background to cooperate together is the difficult task for a leader. Also, a leader has to develop proper skills to solve inevitable conflicts occurred among departments as they collaborate together. More importantly, a leader definitely will face obstacles in creating working environment that promote teamwork and mutual support.
However, this paradigm shift could also make the leader’s Job easier. Actually, collaboration creates independent teams that each member assists others in solving problems as every group’s activities. Furthermore, with collaboration, the knowledge and information are spread across the organization. This makes employees have the chance to learn by themselves to become more skillful. Thus, the leader does not need to spend tremendous efforts to train them. 7. Suggest some personal traits of leaders you have known. Which traits do you believe are most valuable?
Why? Some personal traits of leaders I have known are drive, charisma, ambition, knowledge, and caring about others. From my observation about leaders I have known, I certainly believe that drive is the most valuable trait for effective leaders. In fact, leaders with drive tend to possess high motivation to make their ambition become true. They are willing to work relentless hours to achieve their goals. More importantly, this high energy from the leaders could inspire other followers to work hard, even above their limits to achieve highest outcomes.
In real business, a leader of an organization is frequently assigned for specific goals such as executing new projects or improving organization’s performance. Therefore, with drive, leaders could have tenacity to attain their goals. Clearly, effective leaders have to display drive to be successful. 8. Does it make sense to you that a leader should develop an individualized relationship with each followers? Explain the advantages and disadvantages to this approach. Yes, a leader should build positive relationship with each subordinate. The first advantage of this approach is that it will create the fairness across the company.
Actually, when the positive relationship between a leader and each follower is established, every employee will feel that they are treated equally because they chive efficient supports and cares from the leader. Moreover, rewards and punishments are based on employees ‘performances rather than based on the relationship with the leader. As a result, this could enhance the loyalty and commitments of followers. Besides its disadvantages, one biggest drawback of this method is that in order to achieve an individualized relationship with each employee, a leader has to spend relentless efforts to complete this task.
In fact, every employee is special individual with distinguish characteristics and needs, so finding proper way to treat each person is stressful duty for a leader. . Why would subordinates under a democratic leader perform better in the leader’s absence than would subordinates under an autocratic leader? Under autocratic leadership, the leader tends to keep all authorities and knowledge for himself and Just want to tell his subordinates what to do rather than empower them to complete tasks (Daft, 2011).
Thus, subordinates Just passively follow the orders from the leader and do not fully understand why and how they complete their tasks. Hence, they cannot perform their jobs fully without supervision from a leader. On the other side, a democratic leader inclines to empower followers with knowledge and information (Daft, 2011). Subordinates are trained to increase their confidences in problem-solving and encouraged to participate into conducting their tasks. Therefore, they can act independently and complete their assignments effectively without leader’s presence. 0. Why is an entrepreneurial leader important to an organization? How is this role different from other leader roles? In recent years, several factors that strongly contribute to the success of a business are unstable such as new technology, resources, and customer trends. As a result, in order to compete effectively in the entrepreneurial leader, who is willing to take risks to proactively pursue new opportunities and implement new innovations and changes (Daft, 2011).
The main difference between roles of entrepreneurial leaders with other leader roles is that this type of leader is more responsible with innovations and establishing new operation for organization rather than maintains or improves the current one. 1 1 . What personal capacities should a person develop in order to be a good leader versus those developed to be a good manager? In my opinion, in order to be an effective leader, a person has to build interpersonal skills because, as mention in question one above, leadership involves dealing with people more than management.