Leadership Concepts, Skills, Attributes and Styles - Coursework Example

Running Header: Leadership Behavior Name: Institution: Date of Submission: Introduction Leadership behavior is fundamental for the success of any operating organization. Effective leadership involves a lot of activities such as staff motivation and promotion of staff. A leader with a greater behavior and personal character always decides on incentives offered to staff and always maintains a good rapport with juniors and other leaders involved. By their behavior, leaders can tap into a five sources of motivation, in the case where pay-based motivation systems tap into only instrumental and self-based external sources at best (Miner, 2005). Mostly, leadership behavior becomes complicated and a very expansive subject. There are literally many books written on leadership behavior and describes rules, laws, and principles. Each of these laws and principles strive to give advice to aspiring and experienced leaders on how to improve their leadership skills, behavior and attributes for effective management in their various fields and places of work (Miner, 2005). Most scholars do agree that there is no single set of principles or behaviors that leaders must follow or for effective leadership, but rather they all believe that the most effective leadership style in any given situation is a function of the task, the leader's subordinates, organizational culture, and attributes that a leader possesses. The paper also discusses emotional intelligence and how leadership behavior relates to management of conflict and organizational crisis. It also discusses transformational and transactional leadership styles and further expounds that there are advantages and disadvantages of transformational leadership style. It explains that this leadership style is the most effective in the long run because it greatly inculcates a positive attitude and mindset in junior staff to develop leadership styles, which later becomes useful in leadership career (Sinclair, 2002). Introduction to Leadership Concepts, Skills, Attributes and Styles Leadership skills Leadership skill is the learned ability to figure out the pre-determined results that often comes with the minimum outlay of time and energy (Yukl, 2006). In other words the abilities possessed by a leader I more determined by the behavior that one portrays at work place and even beyond there. Leadership skills can often be divided into domain-general and domain-specific skills. For instance, in the domain of work, some skills that appear general would include time management, self-motivation and communication skills (Yukl, 2006). However, domain-specific skills remain useful only for a certain jobs and various fields of leadership. Leadership skills normally require certain kinds of environmental stimuli and circumstances to analyze and asses the very level of leadership skill being shown and applied. Leadership Style By definition, leadership style refers to a leader's form of providing direction in the group or organization, how to implement plans, and motivating junior members of an organization (Woods, 2010). There exist numerous leadership styles exhibited by leaders in the governmental, commercial or other fields. Effective leadership styles comprise the all qualities that are most likely effective in today's world where competition remain a major aspect of any company and organization. Today’s current leadership needs to be both similar to leadership of the past and a bit different from leadership that passed quite some ages before (Miltenberger, 2004). This is because, leadership style comes with different needs and depends on group objectives. Leadership attributes Leadership attributes are qualities that every leaders need to have for effective performance in their respective fields. These attributes include creativity, good communication skills, creativity, proper planning strategies, and good interpersonal skills, proper public relations, sharing opinion with junior members and other fellow leaders and setting as a good example to juniors and having the best evaluation approaches (Miltenberger, 2004). Emotional Intelligence Emotional intelligence scale is a short strategy of self-measurement scale developed by Schoutte et al. (2002). The scale contains 33 items that has 133-item load (Salovey et al., 2004). Its general reliability and validity reported well since its inception (Saklofske et al., 2003; Elizabeth et al., 2005). Although Schoutte et al. (2001) believes that the scales they offered provides a one dimensional measurement of emotional intelligence, other studies (for example: Saklofske et al., 2003) it has been expressed that these scales drawn by Schoutte and his team measures other scales that range between three to four other micro scales. In a study made by Elizabeth et al. (2005) to validate this instrument on a sample of the Canadian students, internal reliability of each one of the three evaluation factors by Schoutte and expressing emotions and applying them ranged from 0.73, 0.72 and 0.71, respectively and internal reliability coefficient for the entire scale was approximately 0.84. In today’s system, using α coefficient of Cronbach reliability of the test remains at 0.76. Question 3 (a) Transformational and transactional leadership Transactional Leadership In this leadership style, a leader may strive to offer something valuable like increased salary, wages, and promotion junior workers under his jurisdiction (Sagan, 2002). The leader’s expectation of these juniors after the favor is to fulfill and accomplish their duties well as stipulated in objectives and group goals. Else, the leader provides his juniors with less future opportunity and motivational incentives or may use demotion and other punishment strategies for subordinates fall short of projecting a sterling performance. Transformational Leadership Transformational leadership model is a case where the leader works as a model and a motivator and in the process encourages the followers to work hard to deliver the expected results. The working hard of the followers is not because of an exchange of value or any reward whatsoever but for the love of their professions and work (Jung, et al, 2008). The transformational leader works hard to encourage his juniors to love their craft and value their own efforts and the output. In the process, the juniors develop a positive a positive change toward being prospective future leaders. This leadership style benevolencesa leader who inspires his juniors and has a prior knowledge that his followers by strengths and weakness. This enables the leader to assign his juniors or followers to the right job and challenges them to work at their best in their field of expertise in order to deliver the highly expected output with efficiency (Jung, et al, 2008). Emotional intelligence Generally, regarding the similarity of some characteristics possessed by any transformational leader with those of individuals that possess high level of emotional intelligence, such as the outstanding ability to recognize and be generally acceptable to others, the ability to establish effective relations with junior staff and fellow leaders, the skill of listening to others intimately are less distinguished. The ability of a leader to be a cooperate leader, coach, guide like a preceptor and the greatest leadership gift to motivate others and negotiate with them are the main relation between these two variables that seem more reasonable (Sinclair, 2002). Question 3 (b) Two leadership styles Authoritarian leadership style The authoritarian leadership style, otherwise known as autocratic leadership style maintains a strict, total and close control over junior workers by keeping close and strict regulation of the general policies and procedures subjected to junior staff. In order to maintain the most important emphasis on the distinction of the authoritarian leaders and their juniors, leaders who employ this leadership style takes keen note to ensure that they only create a distinct professional relationship between them and the followers (Miner, 2005). Authoritarian traits includes individual setting of goals, engaging primarily in one-way, leader employing downward communication, the leader controls opinion sharing and discussion with followers, and donates interaction (Martindale, 2011). Democratic Leadership According to Foster (2002), this type of leadership style involves the democratic leader engaging his juniors in sharing the decision-making abilities by promoting the entire group’s objectives and goals as well as valuing the interests of every individual in the group or organization. The general idea of this style of leadership is that it encompasses discussion, dialogue and sharing of ideas between the followers and the leader. It also entails encouragement of juniors to develop a positive mindset and feel good about their careers and their involvement in group’s activities. The limits of democratic involvement tend to be confined by the group or organization’s needs and the influential value of junior workers’ attributes, skills, attitudes, interests and opinion (Miner, 2005). This type of leadership style demands the leader to have a clear evaluation and decision on who should offer any opinion required within the group and who has the right to participate in, making and voting for decisions arrived at (Woods, 2010). Most researches in the past has found that democratic leadership style is among the most effective leadership styles and results in higher productivity, offers room for better contributions from the organization’s members and succeeds in increasing group morale. Involving group members in decision making can lead to realization of better ideas and more efficient solutions to problems facing the group (Foti&Hauenstein, 2007). This is because group members are constantly encouraged to share their opinion, thoughts and ideas on various issues within the group. Although this type of leadership style is one of the most effective leadership styles in practice today, it also has some potential drawbacks. In the case where roles per individual are unclear or time is a matter, this leadership style can result in communication failures and uncompleted roles. Democratic leadership is more suitable in situations where a good percentage of group members are skilled and eager to share their ideas and knowledge for the betterment of the group. It is even more effective when there is plenty of time to allow members of the group to participate by contributing, come up with a plan and then vote on the best decisions or course of action the best provides solutions to the group’s issues (Martindale, 2011).This type of leadership seems more efficient as it involves almost everyone in the entire group or organization, thus making everyone satisfied. Question 4 Leadership Behavior and Conflict Management In any situation of conflict management, leaders with the ability to reflect before acting and on the best approach to conflict should have the ability to control their emotional expression and remain open to other people’s ideas and suggestions. It is not surprising to note that leaders with tendency toward destructive conflict behaviors are less effective by their seniors, fellow leaders and direct reports. These destructive behaviors include approaching conflict with a manner of "win at all costs" idea, demeaning others involved in the conflict management, and displaying anger. Such behaviors are quite destructive and ineffective in conflict management. The ability of a leader to be and be seen as an effective onehas a great relationship to effective conflict management skill alongside self-management ability and self-control. If an individual aspires to manage conflict within any organizational set up, then it is more obvious that the individual leader need to be effective and efficient in their behavior. The individual leader has to exhibit good leadership behavior in handling a variety of conflict management measures. The most famous strategies an individual can apply include domination, compromise, suppression, avoidance and integration. Surprisingly, scholarly research on leadership behavior and conflict management conclude that women leaders a unique disadvantage in handling conflicts in organizational contexts. This is because female leaders face some salient societal pressures influence of gender roles among other societal barriers (Eagly and Karau, 2002). Leadership Behavior and Crisis Leadership behavior and crisis management is a major factor in leadership behavior. Strategic design, human resource management and the consideration of organizational culture are among the key issues a leader should consider in deciding the strategies for managing a crisis situation in any group or organization. Although these are old models of organizational theory, their application in an organization’s context during a crisis situation is quite helpful. Leaders of effective crisis management need to complement any model deemed to be applicable in the management of crisis in every organization. As a general requirement, leaders need to design an action plan that enables them to bounce back after a crisis situation. The action plan designed should take into consideration the analysis of the organization’s post-crisis situation in the entire market place so as to minimize the organization’s downfalls and improve its strengths (Weick et al., 2005). Furthermore, most executives do understand the negative impacts of organizational crisis. In a move to curb these impacts, executives take a reactive strategy of focusing on communication and improved public relations. However, due to lack of or inadequacy of formal training on how to combat organizational crises, most executives ignore or neglect most leadership responsibilities associated with crisis management. Leadership behavior that enables individual leaders to effectively curb crisis and bounce back after its occurrence enjoy their ability and competencies in all of the five phases of crisis management. These phases include crisis signal detection, preparation and prevention measures, controlling damages and containing the crisis, recovery and finally reflection and learning from the crisis. Leadership Behavior and Personality Leadership behaviors vary greatly in line with individual’s personality. Measurements of leadership behavior are based on some developed by various scholars through the trait theory. For example, research improvements of the round robin research methodology enabled academic researchers to establish that individuals can emerge as leaders across a variety of circumstances and tasks. Additionally, during the ancient statistical advances of mid 1980s, researchers were able to conduct meta-analyses, in which they could quantitatively analyze various leadership behaviors from individual personality. This advent gave trait theorists the insight to create a comprehensive picture of ancient leadership research rather than making them rely on the qualitative reviews. New methods of leadership research indicate that leadership behavior vary according to personality traits such as intelligence, adjustment, extraversion, conscientiousness, openness and general self-efficacy (Arvey et al. 2006). Leadership Behavior and Gender Leadership behavior and gender is a subject concerning two main questions on the determinants of male or female differences in who has the general right to assume leadership positions and in leadership behavior and how leadership concept is generally gendered. Most social scientists agree in distinguishing between "gender" and "sex." They posit the definition of sex as the basic, biological and physiological differences between males and females. Gender, on the other hand refers to a culture's social perception of differences between the two sexes. Generally, these gender differences include the different traits, behaviors, roles, attitudes, and aptitudes that the society expects males and females to display. Gender displays highlight the claims of membership in a sex. Common expressions such as "gendered activities," "gendered practices," and "gendered professions or jobs" exists in various contexts to emphasize the ideology that gender comprises a process of social construction. It also makes gender a more central explanation of leadership and organizational behavior occurrences such as leadership. According to Gershenoff, et al (2003), although females' early socialization and other societal obstacles may inhibit them from becoming effective leaders, those who do ascend in their leadership positions do not behave considerably differently from their men counterparts in the same rank of leadership positions. Studies that examined male and female differences in leadership behavior do so in three main types of managerial behavior. The first behavior examined is accomplishment task and projects style, which entails how much the leader pledges, organizes, and how effective he/she defines an organization’ work activities and processes (Gershenoff, et al 2003). The second is leader’s interpersonal style, which is how examines how much the leader can build morale, good relationships with others, and commitment in the organization. The third is decision-making style. This seeks to examine how much the leader can encourage a participative and democratic style of leadership as opposed to an autocratic style. There exists some difference between males' and females' decision making styles. Women tend to embrace a more democratic and participative style of leadership while men tend to take a more directive leadership style. Some scholars argue that women's propensity to negotiation, mediation, and communication is the most efficient and effective leadership approach than men's autocratic approach (Arvey et al. 2006). Conclusion Most leaders need a wide range of skills in so as to contribute to a modern system where companies and institutions remain oriented to targets and goals and take their place in the technological situation where new inventions ad technologies play a vital role. Effective leadership skills involve a situation where leaders and juniors appreciate leadership as fundamental to any company success (Arvey et al. 2006). This paper brings out a clear indicator that various leadership in practice today have their own advantages and disadvantages and needs that all leaders should incorporate keen evaluation in assessing the most efficient and effective leadership style. In this case, a leader will be very effective when he/she blends the necessary leadership skills and personality such as intelligence and assertiveness for effective goal realization. In doing so, a leader will have the ability to adapt to more circumstances such as management of conflict and crisis in workplace. Many issues related to leadership behavior can hinder the effectiveness of an organization, team or group. Problems such poor personality may result in poor relationship between the leader and his followers thus making leadership and result realization a problem. Matters such as social loafing or groupthink need to be avoided by any leader by paying keen attention to every individual member differences and providing predefined and clear definitions for roles, expectations of any given assignment, measurement and evaluation of work done, and how to offer rewards. In today’s world, many tasks are so complex and it is for this reason that proper group management with proper leadership behavior has become an essential component of an organization’s success. The effective goal achievement of any group or organization rests majorly within the successful management of its members by way of displaying an acceptable behavior and making sure all aspects of work and the actual working environment are fair for each member.Good leadership skills combined good leadership behavior will help any group perform at its peak level. The paper also appreciates that, although gender is issue attracting enormous debates on leadership effectiveness, female leaders employ democratic form of leadership as opposed to male autocratic, which is still an efficient leadership style. References Arvey, R.D., Rotundo, M., Johnson, W., Zhang, Z., & McGue, M., 2006, The determinants of leadership role occupancy: Genetic and personality factors, The Leadership Quarterly, 17, p.1-20. Eagly, A., Karau, S. J, 2002. Role Congruity Theory of Prejudice toward Female Leaders. 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Yukl, G 2006, Leadership in Organizations, Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice-Hall. Read More