Words: 938
Assignment Rhetoric Johnson Bethel University Leadership Angelo Lamar September 4, 2014 Good leaders are made not born. If you have the desire and willpower, you can become an effective leader. Good leaders develop through a never ending process of self-study, education, training, and experience Ago, 1982). Following the leadership theories and concepts guide will help you through that process. To inspire your team or workers into higher levels of teamwork, there are certain things you must be, know, and, do. These do not come naturally, but are acquired through continual work and study.
Good leaders are continually working and studying to improve their leadership skills; they are not resting on their laurels. Leadership is a process by which a person influences others to accomplish an objective and directs the organization in a way that makes it more cohesive and coherent. In the case study “Low Five”, a co-captain on a basketball team named Paula, expresses her feelings about their new coach. Shirley, the new coach of the basketball team, was making very poor decisions regarding the plays that were made during the basketball games.
Paula, the co-captain, was not the only person on the team that expressed great despair. The other players also felt that the new coach, Shirley, was not accepting the input from the team. Shirley only wanted things to be done her way and when confronted by the team about their opinions of the plays, she defended them by saying that everyone was rejecting the possibility of change. The team tried to get her to understand that they were not being resistant to change, but was trying to show her the things that for years, had already been proven effective for the team.
The players felt that they were losing games that they should have been winning, if only the new coach would not have been changing everything round. Players also felt that many of their strongest attributes were not being utilized. Still, even after expressing their feelings and opinions, the new coach, Shirley, had nothing to say but they should have faith in her as a coach and support her decisions. In the end, the entire team felt hopeless because the remaining staff of the school was not exactly supportive of the extracurricular activities that the school had to offer and there was no one else left to turn to.
Paula ended by saying, “No longer does my heart hold the love I once had for this terrific game” (Bethel, 2002, peg. 102). In this situational excerpt, Coach Shirley performed as an autocratic leader. Autocratic leaders centralize power and decision making in only them. They structure the complete work situation for their employees, who are expected to do what they are told and not think for themselves. The leaders take full authority and assume full responsibility. Autocratic leadership is typically negative, based on threats and punishment, but it can appear to be positive in certain situations (Bethel, 2002).
On the other hand, Shirley does possess certain situational factors that influence her effectiveness as a leader. A 1986 meta-analysis by Robert Lord’s research demonstrated that people are perceived as being leaders when they exhibit the traits associated with intelligence, masculinity, and dominance. Although Shirley seemed to exhibit these traits that should deem an effective leader, her inability to cooperate with the entire team proved very ineffective and disastrous for the entire basketball season.
In my opinion, performing a better and more effective leadership style would have been better for Shirley. I would assume that being a participative leader would have yielded the results that Shirley was aiming for. Participative leaders clearly centralize authority. Participative decisions are not unilateral, as with autocrat, because they use inputs from followers and participation by them. The leader and group are acting as a social unit. Employees are informed about conditions affecting their Jobs and encouraged to express their ideas, make suggestions, and take action.
The general trend is toward wider use of participative practices because they are consistent with the supportive, collegial, and systems models of organizational behavior and because they are strongly desired by many younger employees. Because of its importance and increasingly widespread usage, participative management has been very successful among the years (Bethel, 202, peg. 65). Had Coach Shirley been more open to the entire team’s ideas and opinions, maybe the players would have respected her more and therefore been more enthusiastic about playing and the season would have had an outstanding turnaround.
As the audience of the case study, we are educated only from Pula’s perspective. Shirley probably viewed the situation in an entirely different aspect and felt that her perceptions about her role as a leader were Just fine. Shirley comments about her education for the game and all of her studying that she had done regarding certain plays that would be executed during the basketball games clearly express that she felt her decisions were best for the team and that her knowledge or skills as a coach should not be questioned.
I’m almost positive that Shirley felt that if the team would have been more appreciative of change and welcomed her with a positive attitude about the situation then the outcomes would have been better for the team. Shirley had a strong personality and probably did know many things about basketball and the way the game should be played, but the fact that she was stuck on only her views and sections, ultimately caused her to lose her team spiritually and emotionally.