Leadership

8 Key excerpts on "Leadership"

• 

  eBook - PDF

  Essentials of Engineering Leadership and Innovation

  • Pamela McCauley(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  77 chapter three Leadership within an organization To be effective as a leader, it is important to understand how to add value in support of the vision and mission of an organization. Thus, an individ- ual must gain some knowledge of organizational Leadership within the environment, the specific organizational culture, and finally the organi- zational structure. Understanding organizational Leadership Part of being able to correctly lead within an organization depends on understanding the functioning of the particular organization. Organizations are far more dynamic than they once were; people no lon- ger stay at the same company for their entire careers. It is essential to quickly adapt to and understand the needs of your organization in order for both you and it to grow. Thus, it is even more important that a clear perspective be gained early in one’s tenure at an organization. Generally, individual leaders are established throughout organizations to support the overall organizational objectives and goals. According to Zaccaro and Klimoski [1], the primary areas of organizational Leadership that have some degree of consensus in the literature can be narrowed down to four principles. These broad principles include the following: 1. Organizational Leadership Involves Processes and Proximal Outcomes (such as Worker Commitment) that Contribute to the Development and Achievement of Organizational Purpose Leadership positions are setup in the work place to enable organi- zational subunits to achieve the reasons for their existence within the larger system. The purpose of an Organizational Leadership is to set a direction for collective actions. The process of Leadership is aimed at defining, identifying, establishing, or translating orga- nizational directions for their followers and aiding or enabling the organizational processes that should result in the accomplishment of this function.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Essentials of Engineering Leadership and Innovation

  • Pamela McCauley(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  chapter three Leadership within an organization

  To be effective as a leader, it is important to understand how to add value in support of the vision and mission of an organization. Thus, an individual must gain some knowledge of organizational Leadership within the environment, the specific organizational culture, and finally the organizational structure.

  Understanding organizational Leadership

  Part of being able to correctly lead within an organization depends on understanding the functioning of the particular organization. Organizations are far more dynamic than they once were; people no longer stay at the same company for their entire careers. It is essential to quickly adapt to and understand the needs of your organization in order for both you and it to grow. Thus, it is even more important that a clear perspective be gained early in one’s tenure at an organization. Generally, individual leaders are established throughout organizations to support the overall organizational objectives and goals. According to Zaccaro and Klimoski [1 ], the primary areas of organizational Leadership that have some degree of consensus in the literature can be narrowed down to four principles. These broad principles include the following:

  1.  Organizational Leadership Involves Processes and Proximal Outcomes (such as Worker Commitment) that Contribute to the Development and Achievement of Organizational Purpose

  Leadership positions are setup in the work place to enable organizational subunits to achieve the reasons for their existence within the larger system. The purpose of an Organizational Leadership is to set a direction for collective actions. The process of Leadership is aimed at defining, identifying, establishing, or translating organizational directions for their followers and aiding or enabling the organizational processes that should result in the accomplishment of this function. Organizational purpose and direction is described in several ways, including through mission, vision, strategy, goals, plans, and tasks. The operation of Leadership is inextricably tied to the constant growth and accomplishment of these organizational goals.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Strategic Leadership Development

  Building World Class Performance

  • Colin Carnall, Chris Roebuck(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  1.2 Leadership: the glue that holds together people, teams and organisations The idea and practice of Leadership has fascinated and impacted on human beings perhaps since time began, and certainly since humans began to hunt, work and live in groups. Almost daily, the media run stories about current political or business lead-ers and how their decisions are good, bad or ineffective, and the impact this has on those they lead and on wider society. These media debates often mix considerations of policy, personality and presentation. In an organisational context, most agree that, at the very least, leaders set the tone for their organisation and therefore questions about their Leadership immediately raise broader questions about the organisation, and potentially the teams that they lead being a reflection of their Leadership. Many people are fascinated by Leadership, mainly because it effects our lives every day in so many ways, and that in some ways it seems to defy analysis – it just ‘happens’. For many who study or write about Leadership there seems to be little agreement about how to identify people with the potential to become leaders, how to develop them, or what distinguishes successful from unsuccessful leaders. But those working in the field of Leadership studies agree on one point, above all: that leader-ship has attracted, and continues to attract, considerable attention and seemingly limitless amounts of research. Tens of thousands of books and articles have been published, some scholarly and based on research, many personal or anecdotal, supplemented with the biographies of those seen as leaders. Many articles and television programmes have been written or made about famous leaders, Leadership failures and the day-to-day practicalities of the way that leaders work. Nevertheless, our understanding of what Leadership is, and our ability to predict who might make a success of Leadership is unclear at best.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Leading People

  Expert Solutions to Everyday Challenges

  • (Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Harvard Business Review Press

    (Publisher)

  Leading People: The Basics The Challenge of Contemporary Leadership 3 The definition of Leadership is to have inspired, energized followers. —Warren G. Bennis L eadership used to be viewed as innate. Epitomized by heroic, Lone Ranger types, it was seen as a mystical blend of courage, charisma, and even a flair for the dramatic. But beyond those traits, to paraphrase Louis Armstrong, if you had to ask what Leadership was, you’d never know. Fortunately, we’ve all grown wiser—or at least, we’ve had the lesson drummed into us by a business climate that is increasingly competitive and volatile. Yes, Leadership still calls for courage and decisiveness in the face of conflicting demands. For example, the ability to make tradeoffs between people, resources, money, and deadlines—often causing short-term pain for the sake of long-term benefit—remains a vital element of effective Leadership. But the changing structure of organizations, the growth of alliances and joint ventures between organizations, indeed, the changing nature of work itself—all call for more practical and diverse ap-proaches to Leadership. 4 Leading People Expand your Leadership skills There will always be a time and place for charismatic leaders, but few leaders today use formal authority and the power to com-mand and control; rather, they influence and motivate people to achieve clearly defined goals.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Measuring Business Excellence

  • Gopal K. Kanji(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  p. 4 ) conducted an exhaustive literature review on the matter and found five representative definitions of the concept:

  •   Interpersonal influence directed through communication, towards goal achievement •   The influential increment over and above mechanical compliance with directions •   An act that causes others to act or respond in a shared direction •   The art of influencing people by persuasion •   The principal dynamic force that motivates and coordinates the organization in the accomplishment of its objectives. From the proposed definitions, it may be easily argued that Leadership inevitably comprises an influential component. After this review, Du Brin adopted the view that Leadership is the ability to inspire confidence and support among people who are needed to achieve organizational goals.

  Northouse (1997: 3) defines Leadership as ‘a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal’ and emphasizes that viewing Leadership as a process has the advantage of focusing attention on the transactional and interactive event that occurs between the leader and his/her followers.

  If traditionally the study of Leadership was clearly focused on the study of the leader, recently there has been growing evidence that Leadership does not exist separate to follower perceptions (Andrews and Field 1998).

  This reality is reflected in the way Bass (1990, cited in Andrews and Field 1998) sees Leadership as ‘an interaction between two or more members of a group that often involves a structuring and restructuring of the situations and the perceptions and expectations of the members’.

  The way followers regard their leaders will depend upon the Leadership prototypes that they will have in mind. Lord (1985, cited in Andrews and Field 1998) presented a model in which Leadership perceptions derive from two processes: recognition (identification of traits and behaviours in conformance to existing notions of Leadership) and inference (based on particular outcomes).

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Management in Social Work

  • Veronica Coulshed, Audrey Mullender, David N. Jones, Neil Thompson(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  Management as vision, strategy and Leadership, or management of uncertainty? Although providing Leadership is only one aspect of what the top manager does, it is the most visible – particularly when it is lacking. In the view of the project director for the Audit Commission/Social Services Inspectorate Joint Reviews: ‘Where authorities are failing, it’s usually down to a lack of a clear steer and grip on the organi-sation by management and a lack of accountability’ (Hirst, 1998, p. 8). He also relates this to the overall culture of an organisation, as we did in Chapter 3. In a later report, the Joint Review Team interviewed directors in departments that had implemented success-ful changes and was ‘struck by how often questions about the crit-ical success factors led directors to reflect not only on their actions, but also on their style and approach’ (DoH/SSI and the Audit Commission, 2002). Consequently, Leadership is often seen as a key element of management. To show how it relates to the whole organisation, we link it to vision and strategy and go on to comment on Leadership roles and styles. It is often asked whether leaders are born or made. Whatever the factors that create inspirational leaders, the skills they employ can be learned and developed. All managers can develop their ability to motivate staff and manage operations. Vision and mission: the link with strategic planning When we are going about our day-to-day work, we have little time to stop and think about the wider purposes we are serving or whether all our efforts are being expended to good effect. For the senior manager, this is an essential part of the job. Like driving a car, managing an organisation is more than operating technical controls; you have to know where you want to go and steer the whole vehicle accordingly, even in the face of traffic that is trying to cut right across your path. 89 4

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Leadership: All You Need To Know 2nd edition

  • David Pendleton, Adrian F. Furnham(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Avery et al. (2004) argue that the future of Leadership is organic—a development away from a single leader of any persuasion and that net- worked organisations might not need a single leader. Leadership will arise in multiple forms, adaptive, multi-talented and problem-solving. Organisations could be structured into cross-functional groups, each self- managing and optimising, based on reciprocal actions and sense-making, engaging in partnerships with customers, suppliers, competitors and contractors. The organic model has its appeal in the twenty-first century in which hierarchies are increasingly mistrusted. We agree that Leadership can be, or even needs to be, a co-operative activity, but ownership and shareholding is still likely to create hierarchy in order to promote sound governance and accountability. In this book, we deliberately blur the distinction between Leadership and manage- ment, especially at higher levels in organisations since both are required for organisations to thrive. Indeed, we argue that Leadership and man- agement are interdependent. We recognise that Leadership requires sen- sitivity to, and appreciation of, context: both internal and external. We recognise the centrality of direction and purpose in Leadership. Visionary Leadership creates movement towards a shared view of a bright future. Focused Leadership creates order. Ethically responsible Leadership tends to generate trust and respect. We understand that Leadership can seldom be imposed: to some extent, it is in the gift of those who are led. We recog- nise that Leadership may be inclusive and certainly needs to be engaging since it can seldom be enforced. We shall come to see the force of involve- ment in building commitment and broader engagement with the aims and goals of organisations. Leadership can seldom be imposed: to some extent, it is in the gift of those who are led.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Fundamentals of Management

  • Ricky Griffin(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Describe the nature of Leadership and relate Leadership to management. • As a process, Leadership is the use of noncoercive influence to shape the group’s or organization’s goals, motivate behavior toward the achievement of those goals, and help define group or organization culture. • As a property, Leadership is the set of characteristics attributed to those who are perceived to be leaders. • Leadership and management are often related but are also different. • Managers and leaders use legitimate, reward, coer-cive, referent, and expert power. 2. Discuss and evaluate the two generic approaches to Leadership. • The trait approach to Leadership assumed that some basic trait or set of traits differentiated leaders from nonleaders. • The Leadership behavior approach to Leadership assumed that the behavior of effective leaders was somehow different from the behavior of nonleaders. • Research at the University of Michigan and Ohio State University identified two basic forms of Leadership behavior—one concentrating on work and performance and the other concentrating on employee welfare and support. • The Managerial Grid attempts to train managers to exhibit high levels of both forms of behavior. 3. Identify and describe the major situational approaches to Leadership. • Situational approaches to Leadership recognize that appropriate forms of Leadership behavior are not universally applicable and attempt to specify situ-ations in which various behaviors are appropriate. • The LPC theory suggests that a leader’s behav-ior should be either task oriented or relationship oriented, depending on the favorableness of the situation. • The path-goal theory suggests that directive, sup-portive, participative, or achievement-oriented leader behaviors may be appropriate, depending on the personal characteristics of subordinates and the environment.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book