Reflection : Week 1

Name : Aidil-Nur Bin Zainal

Assessor : Prof. Madya Dr. Yusof Boon
Date : 12 Februari 2014
Topic : Introduction

Leadership - Introduction
There are many ways of looking at leadership and interpretations about what it means.
Leadership means different things to different people. It is often taken to represent:
Getting others to follow
The use of authority in decision-making
A personal characteristic
An ability to achieve effective performance in others
A general interpretation of leadership (source: Mullins) would be:
A relationship through which one person influences the behavior or actions of other people
The above definition is important, because it shows that any consideration of what makes for
effective leadership cannot be done in isolation from concepts such as teamwork,
organizational structure and motivation.
The traditional view sees leadership as about:
Command & Control
Decision-making
However, a more modern view has leadership having a wider role, including
Inspiration
Creating a vision
Building effective teams
Leadership has become particularly important in modern business as a result of:
Changing organizational
structures
Flatter structures require greater delegation Greater use of
teamwork + focus on quality assurance Coaching, support &
empowerment
Rapid environmental
change
Change as a constant feature of business life Soft skills of leadership
& management increasingly important
In these notes we are mainly concerned with leadership from the top of a business
organization. However, it is important to remember that leadership can be exercised by people
at different levels of the organizational hierarchy.


What do leaders do?
The key tasks of top leadership in a business include:
Being clear about what change is required
Turning ideas into action points and motivate others to act on them
Winning commitment based on honest, realistic, two-way discussion
Creating a climate of learning, so people know it is safe to make mistakes
Keeping going persistence is vital
Learning from experiences and mistakes
A key leadership role in any business is that of the MD (Managing Director) or CEO (Chief
Executive Officer). In addition to the above, the leadership tasks of the MD/CEO include:
Creating the vision, based on an understanding of SWOT
Forming the team and a structure that will help achieve business goals
Deciding key business and personnel policies
Managing rewards and discipline
Strategic leadership
Strategic leaders are the people who influence or control the corporate strategy of a business
Often personally identified with the strategy
Occurs both in small firms (e.g. the founder) and large corporates