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Each section of this paper is analyzed and detailed to length to elaborate on all assessments, explanations, ND identifications of leaderships. The assessments of my personal leadership include the subjects: orientation and tendencies toward power, leader motives, typical influence tactics, creativity, personality and “Big Five” dimensions, leadership style, personality type – Kerrey Temperament Sorter, key values, and seven characteristics of abundance managers.
Changes to Implement “Covenant Management” Seven Chronic Problems Quality Efforts – Four Principles of TTS Quality Efforts – Concepts of TCL Organizational Transformation Reflections – Leadership Lessons and Understanding Leadership Paper Orientation and Tendencies toward Power Power can be used in either a positive or negative sense. When referring to leadership power, this applies to the positive and effective uses of power for a true leader uses power only to benefit his subordinates. Dictionary. Mom (2010) defines power several ways, but the most applicable definitions to refer to our study material are, ‘the possession of control or command over others; authority, ascendancy… Delegated authority; authority granted to a person or persons in a particular office or capacity. ” Each leader consists of different types of power in order to be successful at his leadership role. Expert power, referent power, estimate power, reward power, and coercive power are all the five bases of power a leader can possess.
Each power is more effective than another based on the leader and work environment surrounding his subordinates. Only certain areas represent me in my current position and placement in my career; referent power and reward power. Hughes, Gannett, and Church (2009) define referent power to be “the potential influence one has due to the strength of the relationship between the leader and the followers. ” Even though I am not quite to my desired job position to which will hold a greater leadership role, I feel as Hough my current relationship with my followers and co-workers provides a healthy solution to a power advantage.
Each of these individuals look to me as a role model and seek my guidance because they feel as though they can trust my judgment and know that any instruction I give them or direction I lead them to will only be what is best for them. Hughes et al. (2009) define reward power as “the potential to influence others due to one’s control over desired resources. ” While I am not in a job position to be able to reward employees with promotions or raises, I do actively reward my followers with approval, attention, and agreement.
Just as I mentioned earlier, my referent power over my followers and co-workers allows them to look to me as a role model; therefore when they ask my opinion or approval on any personal or business matters I provide them with their desired outcome as long as they have taken the steps to earn this reward. As I progress in my career and promote to my desired position in Human Resources, I feel as though I will earn both expert power and legitimate power to add to my current referent and reward powers.
Expert power will come after several years of Human Resources study and training, and legitimate power will automatically be assigned to me due to my position that I will possess. Leader Motives Three leader motives which get the most attention are power, affiliation, and achievement. According to the McClellan Leader Motive Profile provided by Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, my need for power is moderately true, for affiliation is very true, and for achievement is very true.
While the need for power may be measured according to a negative perspective in this profile, I feel as though I do have a leader motive for power in a positive context, such as reward and referent powers as previously mentioned. Currently, I have examined that I am slightly in need of affiliation when it comes to my relationship with my boss. The Spanish Journal of Psychology (2009) explains that ‘The affiliation motive is defined as a desire to establish, maintain and restore personal and emotional relationships with others. As far as leading others, my need for affiliation is minimal because I realize that in order to lead employees cannot be personally affiliated with them to the point of feeling dependent on this to succeed. My results for the need for achievement are rather accurate because when working on projects or daily tasks in the workplace, I tend to rely n myself more than on others to make sure it is completed accurately and impressively.
The Spanish Journal of Psychology (2009) also says that “Individuals with a strong achievement motive are motivated to do things and attain goals for the sake of it, making a personal effort instead of delegating to their co-workers or using other means at the organization’s disposal. ” I do not consider myself as having a strong achievement motive, but I do possess a minor case in the situations where I have the choice of completing a task myself or delegating and relying on others to complete for me.
Typical Influence Tactics Out of the nine types of influence tactics, I tend to naturally gravitate towards the inspirational, exchange, and legitimizing tactics. Hughes et al. (2009) describe inspirational appeals as making “a request or proposal designed to arouse enthusiasm or emotions in targets. ” I use this appeal/tactic as the leader of my Sunday school class; not in the workplace. As previously mentioned, I am one to use referent power which is tied to my tendency to use inspirational appeals to influence others.
My close relationship with others allows me to be effective in my teachings in Sunday school class when I use inspirational appeals to inspire hem to contribute to the class fund. They are usually influenced by this because make them realize that their contributions make a tremendous difference in bringing others to our church and growing together as a class while taking trips together. Next, exchange benefits are tied to reward power, which is also another type of power that I use in my leadership role.
Hughes et al. (2009) describe exchange as “influencing a target through the exchange of favors. ” This influence tactic is often used between me and my co-workers in order to make sure we work as a team. Seldom am I out of the office, but when I do take a vacation I ask certain o-workers to cover my desk to make sure that the daily tasks do not get behind. In return for this favor, I do the same for those co-workers when they ask me to cover their desk when they have to be out of the office.
This influences both them and myself because we know that we work well as a team and therefore are motivated to do all we can to be as effective as possible in our career. Lastly, the tactic that do not use too often, but do use at times is legitimizing tactics. A power point prepared by University of Toronto-Scarborough describes legitimating tactics as “persuading subordinates to do what you want because oh have the authority/right to ask him/her to do so because of your position or because it is organizational ‘policy. I use this tactic in order to get assignments turned in to me in a timely fashion. It is often that I tell the engineering department what to turn in by what date because my position entails leading certain monthly meetings that cover those materials. I feel as though will put legitimizing tactics to practice more often and more effectively once I am in a Human Resources position as desired. Creativity The more experience I obtain in the workforce the more creative my mind gets towards innovating ideas into my job tasks.
Chem., Lie, and Tang (2007) explain that “Expertise, creative thinking, and task motivation are three essential components of creativity. Expertise is the foundation for the development of creativity. Creative thinking and task motivation enable individuals to challenge the old ways for getting things done and persevere in spite of difficulties. ” Currently I lack expertise in a special career field, however I do believe that I will develop expertise in Human Resources and once that is established I will develop more creativity to benefit my leadership.
I feel as though creativity is an extraordinary asset to one’s ability to lead. Transformational leaders are the type that consist of “out of the box” creative thinking. This type of leadership “has an effect on creativity via influencing followers’ intrinsic motivation. ” (Chem. et al. , 2007) A leader does not have to be creative to be successful, this type of leader would have other strong features of a charismatic leader; however a transformational leader who has a creative nature can succeed at certain tasks that a charismatic leader might not be able to.
By using creativity to influence my followers, this affects my leadership by allowing my followers to be more flexible and do more than originally expected. This type of leadership influences them to become more creative and influence others to do the same. For example, one of my recent tasks in the workplace is creating the company organizational chart. This was an idea of mine that no one else was taking the initiative to accomplish; therefore I took it upon myself to assign myself the task so that if it is ever needed the organization will have it at their fingertips.
Personality and “Big Five” Dimensions To describe my personality first without referring to my results from the Big Five Personality Test, I am going to have to describe myself as one who thinks ere literally about certain situations, which causes me to take everything to heart. Am one who does not live for the day, I live for the future. This causes me to be strict-minded and constantly working towards a goal to improve myself financially or spiritually, which explains why I chose Literature University as my MBA program; it contains the ability to integrate spirituality into the workforce, and to increase my income in the future.
My preference is to be around smaller groups rather than larger groups because, for some reason, I feel more comfortable, am able to be myself, and am easily distracted. After completing the Big Five Personality Test (2010), I could not agree more to my results. My results contain the following: Openness to Experience/lancelet You are somewhat conventional Conscientiousness – You are very well organized, and can be relied upon Extroversion – You probably enjoy spending quiet time alone Agreeableness – You are good-natured, courteous, and supportive Neurotics – You tend to become anxious or nervous.
Cherry (2010) describes each of the Big Five Personality Dimensions as follows: Openness: This trait features characteristics such as imagination and insight, and hose high in this trait also tend to have a broad range of interests. Conscientiousness: Common features of this dimension include high levels of thoughtfulness, with good impulse control and goal-directed behaviors. Those high in conscientiousness tend to be organized and mindful of details. Extroversion: This trait includes characteristics such as excitability, sociability, talkativeness, assertiveness, and high amounts of emotional expressiveness.
Agreeableness: This personality dimension includes attributes such as trust, altruism, kindness, affection, and other proboscis behaviors. Neurotics: Individuals high in this trait tend to experience emotional instability, anxiety, moodiness, irritability, and sadness. As you can gather from the information provided, the areas to which I rate high are conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neurotics. The areas to which I rate low are openness and extroversion. These are my true results that come naturally to me; however I am constantly striving to improve the areas of openness and extroversion.
I feel as though my lack in these two areas create a barrier to any future opportunities; therefore I must either improve in these areas or be extraordinarily strong in the other three areas. Leadership Style After comparing charismatic leadership, transformational leadership, and transactional leadership, I feel as though possess the charismatic leadership style. Hughes et al. (2009) explains that “Charismatic leaders are passionate, driven individuals who are able to paint a compelling vision of the future.
Through this vision they are able to generate high levels of excitement among followers and build particularly strong emotional attachments with them. ” This describes me because I am constantly thinking and working towards the future. During my analysis of future events I am able to provide my vision to my lowers to help motivate them and make them understand where their job tasks fall in to the large picture of our organization and the future; this provides them with a sense of purpose. Wisped (2010) gives two examples of charismatic leaders; Jesus Christ and Hitler.
It is clear, and Christians believe, that Jesus Christ shows the positive attributes of a charismatic leader, and Hitler shows the negative attributes of a charismatic leader. Since I strive to be like Jesus Christ in my actions, thoughts, and words, I feel as though since he is a charismatic leader than I must strive to be one as well. Personality Type – Kerrey Temperament Sorter According the Kerrey Temperament Sorter II (2010), my results indicate that my personality type is that of the ‘Guardian’.
The following details are provided with my results: Guardians are the cornerstone of society, for they are the temperament given to serving and preserving our most important social institutions. Guardians have natural talent in managing goods and services- from supervision to maintenance and supply and they use all their skills to keep things running smoothly in their families, communities, schools, churches, hospitals, and businesses. Guardians can have a lot of fun with their friends, but they are quite serious about their duties and responsibilities.
Guardians take pride in being dependable and trustworthy; if there’s a job to be done, they can be counted on to put their shoulder to the wheel. Guardians also believe in law and order, and sometimes worry that respect for authority, even a fundamental sense of right and wrong, is being lost. Perhaps this is why Guardians honor customs and traditions so strongly they are familiar patterns that help bring stability to our modern, fast- paced world. Practical and down-to-earth, Guardians believe in following the rules and operating with others.
They are not very comfortable winging it or blazing new trails; working steadily within the system is the Guardian way, for in the long run loyalty, discipline, and teamwork get the job done right. Guardians are meticulous about schedules and have a sharp eye for proper procedures. They are cautious about change, even though they know that change can be healthy for an institution. Better to go slowly, they say, and look before you leap. Guardians make up as much as 40 to 45 percent of the population, and a good thing, because they usually end up doing all the indispensable but thankless jobs everyone else takes for granted.
Guardians at Work As a Guardian, you enjoy working as a valued member of a team, whether you are leading it or following a credible leader. You like to work with people who carry their weight. You appreciate having clear-cut responsibilities and being recognized for your dedication and achievements. Your natural traits are those that employers have traditionally valued – and that successful companies still respect. You are responsible and loyal to an organization once you’ve signed on. Establishing and following a familiar daily routine is critical to your well being.
In your ideal job, you and your coworkers would all share information so that everyone could remain “on the same page” as projects move forward. Because you genuinely care about the people you work with, your colleagues and your customers appreciate your unassuming kindness. As a guardian, my natural response to any tasks delegated to me in the workplace is serious and devoted. This is a good characteristic to have because it will enhance my leadership due to my dedication and taking full responsibility for my job.
When I am assigned a task in the workplace, my boss never has to worry about not receiving it quickly allowing his request. I am persistent and accurate in my work and often take pride in this because it impresses my boss to the point of having a good opinion about my professionalism. In the long run, this attribute of mine will pay off because when the time comes for me to be promoted to more of a leadership role, Human Resources, he will remember this about me and realize that I will be able to handle any task or challenge presented to me.
While this attribute reflects how it will enhance my leadership, there are also other attributes that can hinder my leadership capabilities as a result of being a guardian. Since I prefer the status quo, as a guardian, when there are changes in the organization will not be as open to the idea and may hold my followers back from adapting to the changes. Being a guardian also hinders my leadership capabilities by encouraging my followers to complete their job duties in the routine fashion instead of allowing them to be innovative and use their creative skills.
This results in typical and mundane outcomes. Key Values My key values vary from Christianity to personal values. My most important Christianity values are: value God, Hope, Righteousness, and Love. My personal aloes are family, friends, education, quality of work, loyalty, challenge, and money. First, a core Christian value is having God first in our lives. This means continuously seeking His righteousness and totally relying on Him. As humans we have the freedom of choice to decide what is right and what is wrong, but if we value God we will look to Him for what is right and wrong.
Most of us have the resources and means to take care of ourselves, but if we value God we will rely on Him to take care of our needs. We value God when we acknowledge that He knows better than we do on what we need in our lives. Matthew 6:33 gives s the advice to seek God and value God above all things, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. ” Next, hope is a core Christian value. A Christian’s hope is based on Jesus Chrism’s promises that He can redeem mankind and provide mankind eternal life.
The Christian value of hope enables a Christian to be patient and persevere even though Jesus’ promises of eternal life are unseen and unrealized in this present time. Romans 8:24 advises us to place our hope in God and not in material things, “For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a an seethe, why doth he yet hope for? ” Third, righteousness is a core Christian value. When a Christian accepts Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, he or she is now in right standing with God. They are a “new man”. A Christian is now set- aside for God to be holy and righteous.
Righteousness becomes more and more precious as a Christian grows in his or her love of God. A Christian seeks to do God’s will and do what is right in God’s eyes because he or she desires to strengthen their relationship with God. Ephesians 4:24 give us advice to value righteousness and holiness, “And that ye put on the new man, which after God is rated in righteousness and true holiness. ” Lastly, love is a core Christian value. Christian love is called “agape” love which means unmerited favor. Christians realize this type of love through God.
Because of God’s unmerited favor and grace, He offers all of mankind eternal life through Jesus Christ. This is true love that comes from God. Christians in turn value God’s love and have a desire to provide this Godly love of unmerited favor to others. Jude 21 advises us to value Godly love, “Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. All of these Christianity values of mine are applied to my leadership in the workplace, and will always continue to provide implications for my career.
These fall under what we learned from Alexander Hill’s study text Just Business: holiness, justice, and love. As long as I strive to be Christ-like in the workplace by practicing these key Christianity values, I will succeed without a doubt in my endeavors toward a bright future. My value in family and friends reflects my relationship ability towards individuals who I have something in common with. This allows me to have a stable, healthy personal fife which I can then carry this on into the workplace to treat my co-workers with the mirroring value. UT a lot of time and effort in to my education to which I value deeply because I believe it not only strengthens my tools for the future, but it helps shape me to a more structured, organized, and insightful individual. There is no doubt that my value in education will positively affect my leadership abilities now and in the future and will provide the proper training to apply what learn to my career. Quality of work, loyalty, and challenge all fit in together when it comes to how I value each one of them.
Because of my desire to search for challenging situations in the workforce, I am a more loyal employee who, as a result, reflect quality work that meets the standards of my boss. Without any of these three values I would not be a SUccessfUl employee and would not have a chance at promotion in to my desired position in the near future. Lastly, I value money because it is what provides me with the ability to help support my family. Money is not my primary value in life; however it is the key to survival in today’s age.
If I were to value money as my priority I would then lack in my Christianity values, which are my top priorities. Seven Characteristics of Abundance Managers Stephen Covey in Dinkier, Dinkier, and Cistern (1996) book titled Leadership by encouragement defines abundance mentality and scarcity mentality as: “Abundance mentality” is defined as a bone-deep belief that there are enough natural and human resources to realize my dream and that my success does not necessarily mean failure for others, just as their success does not preclude my own. “Scarcity mentality” emerges from the belief that resources are limited.
Such a belief results in a win-lose approach to business and interpersonal relationships because there is only so much of anything to go around. I feel as though the abundance mentality is the most healthy for any person to be in and that it is the key to successful relationships and career. Covey goes on to list the seven characteristics of abundance managers via Dinkier et al. (1 996): 1 . They return often to the right sources (that being a sense of internal security), sources that keep them gentle, open, trusting, and genuinely happy for the successes of other people. Eek solitude and enjoy nature. 2. They 3. They “sharpen the saw” regularly, meaning that they continue their education by continually exercising their minds and bodies. Anonymously. 4. They serve others person. 5. They maintain a long-term, intimate relationship with another 6. They forgive themselves and others. 7. They are problem solvers, specifically being able to separate the people from the problem being addressed. I am a work-in-progress when it comes to abundance versus scarcity.
I tend to show both signs of abundance and scarcity mentalities, but my ultimate goal is to solely have an abundance mentality. There are times that I rely solely on my internal security (#1 characteristic) to be happy for the successes of others, but this is only if I am succeeding in my sired situation. If I am not succeeding then I tend to show a scarcity mentality of feeling as though others’ success is my failure. I strongly agree that I do have the abundance mentality when it comes to enjoying my own company and feeling blessed by nature (characteristic #2).
This is an area I have never struggled with; I have always performed my best when by myself to be able to reflect on my own tasks and on God’s beautiful nature. I also must agree that show abundance mentality in relation to characteristic #3, which is evident because am currently continuing my education at Literature University tit the desire to grow in my knowledge and discipline. Exercising my body and teaching myself healthy living is also a lifestyle that I have adopted over time. Serving others anonymously is definitely a characteristic that requires full self-confidence.
I have noticed over time that if I do a good service or deed for another person, I get more satisfaction out of no one else knowing about it because the minute someone knows about it my motive changes to trying to satisfy them instead of God. It is evident that I contain characteristic #5 because my long-term relationship is with my husband. If I had solely a scarcity mentality, his would get in the way of my relationship with my husband because it would be evident that I did not support him in his challenges and successes. M happy and proud for my husband in all he does because I want him to be happy. Often times I prove to myself that I struggle with forgiving myself and others; this is where I lack in characteristic #6. I tend to hold grudges against anyone who treats me wrong, including myself. This is an area to which I strive to improve on so that I can have a healthier mind-frame and not carry any burdens. Lastly, due to my inability to forgive others in serious situations, I sometimes also struggle tit separating the people from the problem being addressed (characteristic #7).
If the problem has little to do with me to which I was not effected in a negative sense, then can separate the people from the problem being addressed; however if I am at all involved with a certain problem and am asked to solve the problem but not consider the person to make my decision I will struggle with this task. Changes to Implement “Covenant Management” In order for my company to change their mind set from contractual justice to covenant relationships, Hill (2008) says that we will all need to think with a
Christian perspective that “focuses on the broader relationship of managers and subordinates, not solely on the legal and economic aspects. ” Hill (2008) says: Covenant management has a much broader base, calling on employers to demonstrate holiness through purity, mutual accountability and humility; justice through rewarding merit, compensating for harm done, recognizing substantive rights and honoring procedural rights; and love through empathy, mercy and sacrifice. Four components particularly characterize covenant management, “Theory C”: dignity, reciprocity, servant leadership and gift recognition.
In order or my company to practice covenant management, we must all treat each other with dignity. The Free Dictionary by Farley (2009) defines ‘dignity’ as “the quality or state of being worthy of esteem or respect. ” A lot of companies, including mine, are guilty of treating their co-workers as just a number or object when they really should value their relationship with their co-workers because they have the right to and should be honored and respected as a brother or sister in Christ.
For example, a lot of gossip goes around in the office, but if each employee treated their co-workers, and were treated, with dignity, then all the employees would work as one team and not waste their time talking about what Alice said on Monday about Sheila. Reciprocity flows with the concept of dignity, but focuses on the expectation to respect workers’ intrinsic value, providing due process and behaving with integrity. My own experience, along with several other contract employees, with my current employer provides an excellent example of the lack of reciprocity in my company in order to practice covenant management.
My company hired me as a contractor with the promise that I would be hired on permanent with the company after a year. I accepted this and began my employment with the motivation of them fulfilling this promise. It has now been two years and I have noticed my motivation lacking a bit since the New Year came about. Right now the company is using the excuse of the economic conditions; however I see the company hiring operators, engineers, and mechanics on a continual basis.
Their mindset is that they have to fill those positions because there is no one in those positions, and their mindset is that since there is someone in my position (me working contract) that they are not desperate to hire someone on permanent in order to fill it. This makes me feel as though my rights to be hired have been violated and that they are starting to take advantage of my contractual employment. This is a perfect example of contractual justice that needs to be changed in order to implement covenant management. Servant leadership is another important component necessary in order for my company to implement covenant management.
Matthew 20:16 (NIB) “So the last will be first, and the first will be last” should be my company’s slogan in order for them to be accountable for their actions. This is the verse that all the employees should live by in order to succeed at servant leadership. A leader who believes and lives out this verse is considered to implement servant leadership because he is always considering everyone else before himself; therefore covenant management is implemented in the business practices and decisions. My company needs to improve in its servant leadership practices.
Sometimes when we are all under tremendous pressure to provide corporate or our Japan- based parent company with details regarding information on a recent fire or off- spec rubber, we are all guilty of pointing the finger at others in order to make ourselves look good. This attitude has to change before we can be successful at covenant management. The only way to implement servant leadership in this type of situation is to accept the blame and make the necessary decisions to fix the problem; instead of looking for a way out of the challenging situation.
Lastly, gift recognition is an important component that allows the employees of a company to feel as if they are part of the team and are actually cared for. My company falls short in providing gift recognition to its employees. One way to implement gift recognition is to provide annual bonuses to the employees based n the profit of the organization. This motivates the employees to work their absolute best towards the annual goal so that they can be recognized for their efforts.
Since my company does not implement this practice, I get the feeling that many of the employees feel that their efforts do not make a significant difference in the profit of the organization; therefore they lack a little bit in their work efforts. Seven Chronic Problems Covey (1991) of Principle-Centered Leadership says that the first chronic problem is that there is “No shared vision and values: either the organization has o mission statement or there is no deep understanding of and commitment to the mission at all levels of the organization. As you can see below, my organization does have a mission statement, shared vision, and values; however do not believe that employees of all levels in this organization have a strong sense of understanding or are involved in the meaning of this statement. This is information that is shared on the company intranet; however I do not see this statement being shared among all the hourly employees, which means that only the salary employees who have internet access can view this statement.
Covey (1991) says that the second chronic problem is “No strategic path: either the strategy is not well developed or it ineffectively expresses the mission statement and/or fails to meet the wants and needs and realities of the stream. ” My organization has an overall understanding of the strategic path which we work towards, but often times it may lack following the mission statement provided above. The path we follow is sometimes not the same as that of, for example, the ‘We… Treat all people with dignity and respect” statement under ‘Values’. This reverts back to the lack of covenant management discussed in the ROR section.