Leadership final-asg

Norton University Leadership Master of Development Management, Batch 28 Compiled by So Sokunthea

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Table of Contents Acknowledgement ............................................................................................................................................. 1

Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................... 1

Overview of Leadership and Management ....................................................................................................... 2

1. Leader’s traits ....................................................................................................................................... 3

2. Behavior, attitude and style ................................................................................................................. 4

3. Group members and situational .......................................................................................................... 4

4. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 6

5. References ............................................................................................................................................. 7


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Acknowledgement This assignment was compiled by Mr. So Sokunthea for submitting to lecturer of Leadership, MDM class. I would like to thank my supervisor Mr. Pin Chanthan and also my colleagues Tep Sokha and Sreymom for their valuable time for reviewing and commenting and emotional support. I would also thanks to lecturer Sokharath for this valuable topic to be compiled. Introduction

Leadership is one of the most complex human behaviors. There is no one single way to

view leadership. If you want to be an effective leader, therefore, you will find it useful to

studby more than one leadership model or theory. That’s a good reason to study history

and military tactics. While sociologists, psychologists, strategists, historians, and business

analysts have made significant progress in learning about leadership, there remains no

single universally accepted formula for creating a great leader. The recent focus on

leadership is an international phenomenon, as is increased investment in leadership and

management development. It really necessary to know leadership and to become good

leader, to be good leader will drive a workplace toward the right goals that an organization

have set it out. And also will be able to manage a workplace well. It depend entirely on

leader’s trait behavior, attitudes and styles, group members (followers) and the situation.

You will find more information in this assignment related to leadership as following.

So Sokunthea Svay Rieng, November 25, 2015


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Why is that managing people effectively in the workplace depends entirely on the leader’s traits, behavior, attitudes and styles, group members (followers) and the situation? Overview of Leadership and Management Leadership and management are very important to keep an institution work to achieve the

goal of it. It has become fashionable over recent years to distinguish leadership from

management however increasing evidence indicates that this distinction may be

misleading. Zalenznik (1977) began the trend of contrasting leadership and management

by presenting an image of the leader as an artist, who uses creativity and intuition to

navigate his/her way through chaos, whilst the manager is seen as a problem solver

dependent on rationality and control. Since then the leadership literature has been littered

with bold statements contrasting the two. Bennis and Nanus (1985, p21), for example,

suggest that managers “do things right” whilst leaders do “the right thing” and Bryman

(1986, p6) argues that the leader is the catalyst focused on strategy whilst the manager is

the operator/technician concerned with the “here-and-now of operational goal

attainment”. Central to most of these distinctions is an orientation towards change. This

concept is well represented in the work of John Kotter (1990) who concluded that

“management is about coping with complexity” whilst “leadership, by contrast, is about

coping with change” (ibid, p104). He proposed that good management brings about a

degree of order and consistency to organizational processes and goals, whilst leadership is

required for dynamic change (see Figure 1 for a summary of his ideas). The distinction of

leadership from management as represented by Kotter and his contemporaries clearly

encourages a shift in emphasis from the relatively inflexible, bureaucratic processes

typified as ‘management’ to the more dynamic and strategic processes classed as

‘leadership’, yet even he concludes that both are equally necessary for the effective

running of an organization:

“Leadership is different from management, but not for the reason most people think.

Leadership isn't mystical and mysterious. It has nothing to do with having charisma or

other exotic personality traits. It's not the province of a chosen few. Nor is leadership

necessarily better than management or a replacement for it: rather, leadership and

management are two distinctive and complementary activities. Both are necessary for

success in an increasingly complex and volatile business environment.” (Kotter, 1990, p103)


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Above are some concepts related to

leadership and Management of researcher and

philosophers. Come up with this, to manage a

workplace effectively, leader’s traits,

behavior, attitude and styles, group members

and situation are entirely needed.

1. Leader’s Traits

What is Leader’s traits or Leadership traits?

Trait theory focusing on qualities of leader.

Leadership trait theory focuses on the leader’s

values and beliefs; personality; need for

achievement or acceptance; orientation to

power; gender; confidence; and mental,

physical, and emotional attributes. Early

leadership trait theory assumed that people

were born with specific traits and that some

traits aligned with strong leadership. People

with the “right” traits would become the best

leaders. But how do you identify the common

traits of good leaders? That was one of the

many questions surrounding the study of

leadership— questions that led to further

research.

Gheselli identified six traits as being important for effective leadership.

1. Need for achievement –being a leader need to seek responsibility; working hard to

succeed among the plan.

2. Intelligence–Being leader need to work smart, using good judgment; having good

reasoning and thinking capacity.

3. Decisiveness–making difficult decisions without undue hesitation.

4. Self-confidence–having a positive self-image as a capable and effective person.

5. Initiative–being a self-starter; getting job done with minimal supervision.

6. Supervisory ability –getting the job done through others, not only wait for the result,

but also involve with the team to achieve the goals.


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As in daily work I can see my direct line manager is an initiative person, he usually get thing

start through the plan. Moreover, he also make a proper decision and support his

subordinate to reach what planned and also intelligence and ability to supervise among

his role. All this thing done have only one reason is needing achievement and to reach the

goals.

2. Behavior, attitude and style

Effective management in a workplace is depend entirely on leader’s behavior, attitude and

style. Behavior theory is focusing on leadership actions or leadership style. Behavior of

leader is really affect to subordinate in an institution. As a question about how to

measuring behavior, While you can’t easily measure confidence or loyalty in a person, they

noted, you can define a behavior or a set of behaviors that seem to embody the trait.

Researchers define behaviors as observable actions, which makes measuring them more

scientifically valid than trying to measure a human personality trait. Behavioral theory, on

the other hand, assumes that you can learn to become a good leader because you are not

drawing on personality traits. Your actions—what you do—define your leadership ability.

Kurt Lewin and his associates in 1939 indicated in their study of leadership behavior that

there are three leadership styles: autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire. For autocratic

style, the leader is tightly control of group activities and only leader who can make

decision. Democratic style is focus on group participation and majority rule. In contrast,

laissez-faire is give the group much more freedom and leader involved very low level of

any kind of activity of leader. As mention about this three styles we can see that

democratic style is much better than others and more beneficial to followers’

performance. Instantly, behavior is really affect to the followers because good behavior of

leader can make subordinate feel comfort and respect him or her as his manager and they

would use their full potential to perform well in the company or organization. Another

example is that if a leader make an important decision that would affect to an organization

and he did not discuss with his subordinate and one other is discuss with all of his

subordinate to raise up their ideas about those issue, so this two style or behavior of these

two leaders is really important to manage effectively in an institution.

3. Group members and situational

To manage a workplace effectively it’s not depend only on leader, but instead it need all

group member to participate and use all their potential to work among the given task.

Group member or follower are playing such important role for leader because leader alone

cannot work through the goal of company or organization. Employees is the main part of

institution so if leader can catch follower’s attention, their respect for leader will be make


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leader and follower are integrated as on self. In an organization there only one vision that

use as the most important thing for the mission toward the goal.

As we can see nowadays there are some garment factory that the some workers do

demonstration for better salary and so on. We can regard the worker as the followers and

factory as leader, so if worker has no wish to work and to collaborate with the others to

achieve the goal even leader are the best leader, but we can see that his/her management

is not well.

Through this example we can see that only leader style, behavior cannot manage a

workplace effectively if followers has no wish to make the workplace run well. Followers

also important for leading a workplace, it depend on the circumstance that are in. Most

researchers today conclude that no one leadership style is right for every manager under

all circumstances. Instead, situational theories were developed to indicate that the style to

be used is dependent upon such factors as the situation, the people, the task, the

organization, and other environmental variables.

Fiedler (1964, 1967) proposed that there is no single best way to lead; instead the leaders’

style should be selected according to the situation. He distinguished between managers

who are task or relationship oriented. Task oriented managers focus on the task-in-hand

tend to do better in situations that have good leader-member relationships, structured

tasks, and either weak or strong position power. They also do well when the task is

unstructured but position power is strong, and at the other end of the spectrum when the

leader member relations are moderate to poor and the task is unstructured. Such leaders

tend to display a more directive leadership style. Relationship oriented managers do better

in all other situations and exhibit a more participative style of leadership.

According to Leadership Contingency Theory it express that this theory holds that the most

appropriate leadership qualities and actions vary from situation to situation. The

effectiveness depends on leader, follower, and situational factors. Leadership results when

the ideas and deeds of the leader match the needs and expectation of the followers in a

particular situation.

Finally, the leader, the followers, and the situation must match for leadership to take

place. One without the other two, and two without the third, will abort the leadership

process.


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Figure 2: Relationship Among Leadership Variables Taken from Yukl, 2006

4. Conclusion To conclude, we would like to challenge to conceive of alternative ways of going about leadership within any organization with which you are involved. We also need to encourage to consider the wider implications of the involvement in leadership practice and any way in which it could be modified for the wider good. Thus, if we consider ourselves a leader – pay attention to how we go about it; if we work within an organization – consider how the process of leadership occurs and the role within it; and if we an observer/advisor – then consider how leadership interacts with social and organizational cultures. There’s no one fixed view of what makes for a successful leader. As we’ve seen about it as mention above that effective leader need leader’s traits,

behavior, attitude and styles, group members and situation and other leadership

theories, researchers have learned a great deal about leadership. Some common factors

stand out: the approach (task versus people) that select; followers’ ability, maturity, and

willingness; the situational requirements; and our own skills, abilities, and values. Still, no

one has discovered a secret formula for creating great leaders. As in Figure 2 also express

about relationship among leadership variable, so all that factors can make an effective

leader within an institution.


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References

Retrieve from websites:

https://us.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/62670_Chapter_7.pdf

(CH7: Leadership)

https://new.edu/resources/understanding-people-at-work-individual-differences-and-

perception--3 (Organizational Behavior)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership (Leadership)

http://www.pdfsdocuments.com/out.php?q=Art+Of+Leadership+By+George+Manning

Books:

1. The Arts of Leadership (An Executive Book Summary), March 27, 2012

2. Leadership South West (Research Report 1) by Richard Bolden, July 2004 3. Leadership Track, Section 2: Leadership Traits and Behaviors, by GEN Omar Bradley,

year: unknown. 4. Lead and manage people, by Department of Education of south Africa, 2008

https://us.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/62670_Chapter_7.pdf

https://new.edu/resources/understanding-people-at-work-individual-differences-and-perception--3

https://new.edu/resources/understanding-people-at-work-individual-differences-and-perception--3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership

http://www.pdfsdocuments.com/out.php?q=Art+Of+Leadership+By+George+Manning


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