Week 7: Leadership

 Concept/ Mode/ Theory Definition:

_Power refers to the capacity of a person to influence work, actions or
decisions of another
_Type of Power:
• Expert power: The influence a person can exert as a result of his
or her expertise, skills, or knowledge
_Leadership is the process of influencing a group toward the
achievement of goals.
• Leaders create environments within which follower’s innovative
and creative contributions are welcome.
• Leaders encourage growth and development in their followers.
• Leaders motivate followers more personally
• Leaders redefine the parameters of tasks and responsibilities.
 The differences between managers and leaders:

Managers Leaders
 Are appointed to their
position
 Can influence people
only to the extent of the
formal authority of their
position
 Do not necessarily have
the attributes, skills and
capabilities to be
leaders
 Do things right
 Are elected or emerge
from within a work
group
 Can influence other
people and have
managerial authority
 Do not necessarily
have the skills and
capabilities to be
managers
 Do the right things

_Trait theories: (1920s-30s)

  Research focused on identifying personal characteristics
that differentiated leaders from non-leaders was
unsuccessful.
 Later research on the leadership process identified 7 traits
associated with successful leadership:
 drive
 the desire to lead
 honesty and integrity
 self-confidence
 Intelligence -
 job-relevant knowledge, and
 extraversion
• Behavioural theory
 Ohio State Studies
 Identified two dimensions of leader behaviour
 Initiating Structure: the role of the leader in
defining his or her role and the roles of group
members, organizers of work and roles to get
the task done
 Consideration: the leader’s mutual trust and
respect for group members’ ideas and feelings,
taking these into account.
• Contingency / Situational theories of leadership
 Theories that seek to define leadership style and
answer: ‘if’ this situation, ‘then’ this is the best style to
use. Leaders need to be flexible in the style they use, or
different leaders are needed in different situations if it is
true that managers have a dominant style
_Path-goal theory is defined as leadership theory that says it is a
leader’s job to assist followers and to provide direction and support
that are needed to attain goals
_Transactional leaders are defined as those who guide or motivate their
followers in the direction of established short term goals by clarifying
role and task requirements
_Team Leadership Characteristics
 Having patience to share information
 Being able to trust others and to give up authority
_Team Leader’s Job
 Facilitating the team process
• Coaching, facilitating, handling disciplinary problems,
reviewing team and individual performance,
communication

 Rich Description of Practice in Group:

On 5/08/2007, our group held a final meeting in the front of library to
review again about what we would submit for the next day. Although
everything was done, our poster was designed completely. But James
still wanted everyone in our group look over it again whether this
poster was ready to submit. He wanted to take feedbacks from us in
order to make this poster better. As dividing responsibilities, I checked
again the bibliography, Nick checked all the researches in this poster,
and Louiza would review to make sure there was nothing wrong on the
poster’s design. James would help us to solve all the problems if there
had in our poster. One interesting was that when I had a chat with him,
I knew James was working at the airport. That was the reason why he
could manage our group so effectively. Finally, our work was absolutely
finished without any troubles and we were ready to submit this poster
on the next day. Louiza would keep the poster to submit the day after,
and James reminded her to carry it in the box otherwise it would be
damaged when falling down. There seemed to be our last work for this
poster assessment.
 Analysis and Critical Reflection of relationship between
Theory and Practice in Group:
James, our team leader, which was elected by each team member from
the beginning of subject’s assessment to now, did the job very well. He
had a power and an ability to make us follow him to act and make
decision on our work efficiently. Personally, I think expert power had
the strongest long term influence for a leader. And James had enough
skills and knowledge to orient us on the right track throughout the
assessment, whereby we could get the highest result for this. On every
group meeting, he always tried to create a friendly in order to make us
more creative and give some interesting idea for our poster. Even each
group member had their own abilities and limitations on doing this
assessment leading to language barriers, writing academic skills… He
also divided responsibilities and tasks according to these limitations
that every member could involve into and get our work done together.
Moreover, at this stage, these limitations should be excluded and
develop each member’s skills on working as a team. For example, in
our group, there are 5 people and there has 2 first year international,
so language barriers and the way to working as a team effectively
were so difficult for me and Jing to follow. But James didn’t matter that,
and he still gave tasks for us to do and try to make us involve in
group’s discussion. Because of this friendly atmosphere, our team
could help each other to do the work fluently and without any
problems. Actually, James always did the right thing in the whole
process. According to later trait theory, leadership was identified by 7
traits for a successful leader. I agree our group leader took most of
traits such as desire to lead- he led the team without any
inconvenience; honesty and integrity; self confidence; intelligent and
job-relevant knowledge. That is why our team leader oriented our
group very well. And I think intelligent is the most important trait for a
team leader to have. Then behavioural theory gave the Ohio State
studies in which identified two dimensions of leader behaviour. In the
initiating structure dimension, the role of group leader, James and the
roles for every member in our group were well-defined at the first time
we did this assessment. Hence, we could get every group member’s
task on time and in the best way. For the rest dimension is
consideration, our team member always respected and noticed every
group member’s ideas and pick out which one should be taken into
account. Another important team leadership theory is contingency
theory, which is defined leadership style and answer: ‘if’ this situation
and ‘then’ this is the best style to use. Every time, James makes an
important decision for group such as when we chose which company to
do, he always thinks and does researches for this decision carefully. In
addition, when there had any problem while doing this assessment, he
still stayed calm and chose the best way to solve the problem flexibly.
After all, our team leader was defined as transactional leader who
guides or motivates his team member in the right direction of a short
term established goal. It was determined to be achieved the highest
marks for our 2 poster assessment in 7 weeks with clarified role and
task requirements for each member. James also involved in team
leader characteristic in which he always has patience to share
information, problems about poster with other group member and we
were able to solve this problems or discuss more on how to make our
work better. Everyone got an equal authority in group so when some
one fought out and discuss with other team member where there
needed to be corrected in the poster. Obviously, James allowed us to
do so. His job was how to facilitate our group process as less as
possible; he was the one who looked after for the whole work process
when it was done. He was willing to help other members when they got
a problem or communicate with other team member, held a meeting
every week, control our work and so on. On overall, our group
assessment was included a leadership issue clearly by performance of
James, our group leader.