Leadership Map

For my leadership map I chose to represent all the theories with a pie chart. I chose the pie chart because even though some theories are more valid than others, it is still critical to take something from all the theories. Because each situation is different and people are not all the same, different leadership theories will lend themselves more successfully in different situations as well. I also included a piece for "To be Discovered" because your journey as a leader is never complete, instead you must constantly be learning new theories.

New Theories of Leadership

While researching leadership theories on my own, I stumbled across a theory that we had not discussed in great depth, and therefore was very interesting to me. This theory was the theory of followership, which has its roots in the theory that without followers there is no such thing as a leader; therefore in order to be a good leader you must listen to your followers. More importantly I chose to study Leader-Exemplary Follower Exchanges (LEFX). According to James McGregor Burns leadership is “. . . inducing followers to act for certain goals that represent the values and the motivations – the wants and needs, the aspirations and expectations- of both leader and followers.” This means that in order for true leadership to be taking place the leader must recognize how important his followers are to his end goal. A very positive thing about this is most scholars today seem to believe that followership can be taught! This is very positive because it means that every leader is capable of displaying good followership as long as he works long enough at it.

Another benefit of followership in the modern workplace is the common goal that it helps to create for all employees within an organization. Because the employees are following the leader, they should all be working towards the leaders goal. However, this does not mean that followers cant become catalysts for change because it is often low-level employees that bring about important changes. And in our followership example, if everyone is working towards a common goal then everyone will be improving the workplace for everyone else.

One of the most important aspects of followership is the relationship between the leader and followers. Obviously the stronger this relationship, the stronger the leader-follower bond is going to be. Good followership builds on motivation not control. However, this is not to say that the leader should not retain the majority of the power, but a balance is ideal. Leaders must actively participate in the followership process if they wish to reap its benefits; Benefits which are very worth while.

FOLLOWERSHIP QUOTES

 

·         “Followers are more important to leaders than leaders are to followers."

— Barbara Kellerman

 

·         “The difference between followers and leaders is that followers need leaders to help them follow what leaders themselves are following. This relationship takes the form of a shared response-ability to a shared calling. Both find each other in a true fellowship to create the world responsibly.”

— James Maroosis

 

·         "Followership does not mean changing the rank of followers but changing their response to their rank, their response to their superiors and to the situation at hand."

— Barbara Kellerman

 

·         “If a man aspires to the highest place, it is no dishonor to him to halt at the second.”

— Cicero

Further Readings:

• This is a fairly long scholarly article about followership: http://www.ibam.com/pubs/jbam/articles/vol7/no3/JBAM_7_3_5_Followership.pdf

  

   
  

Finally....

Recently, my roommate got a job with Cox cable, which means I now get free cable. However, in order to get this cable/internet installed I was without internet at my house for 3 days. This might not seem like a big deal, but imagine going three days with no computer. No facebook, no email, no stumbleupon; its pretty awful. Cox cable has awful service when it comes to installation (they didnt show up twice) so keep that in mind when picking your cable provider.

For my midterm project I chose to study the movie Traffic

Here is the link to my midterm...
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/74641571/midterm

Transformational Leadership in the Movies

Al Pacino's character, , lets the players know he is not perfect but he has learned a lot from his trials. By telling the team the all must "claw with our fingernails" it means the team must work together to achieve their goal, because it takes a lot more than once inch to win a football game.

Meet the real Mr. Burns

Even in his old age Mr. Burns continues to speak on leadership

James MacGregor Burns was born 92 years ago on August 3, 1918 and is still alive to this day! He has received numerous awards for his works including the Pulitzer Prize in 1971 for his work on Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom, 1940-1945 and he was once again awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his work on Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom. However, his key contributions were made in the areas of leadership theory. In fact, the University of Maryland at College Park has the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership on their campus, proving his impact in the field of leadership. His greatest contribution was perhaps the shift of focus from traits of great men to the interactions of leaders and their subordinates. He was a pioneer in the field of transformational leadership and has published numerous books and articles about it. Burns says that transformational leadership “occurs when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality.”

Opportunity Four Application to Self

For this blog post I chose to talk about the manager at my place of work at the time that the hotel changed management. He was moved in before our old manager was gone and everything seemed to be going well. He seemed nice and mostly he seemed excited to get to work as a team. However, as soon as our old manager left and the hotel officially changed names it became a completely different scenario. In a situation where he should have been “supporting”, because we had a ton of new procedures and a new operating system and really needed the support of management. He decided to go more in the direction of directing. He became the worst micro-manager I have ever seen and would nit-pick at anything possible. His favorite thing was positioning in the lobby; he would tell you to move if you were more than 3 inches from where he wanted you, and as where he wanted you was always changing it was impossible to please the man. He also completely changed our schedule with no regard for seniority, and even worse he scheduled some people with kids in the afternoon. When we switched to let them see their kids, he flipped out and said we were “undermining his authority.” He ended up being fired after a few months and multiple employees under his control quitting.

However, there were definitely a few positives gained from this experience however. I learned that micromanaging is the worst thing any manager can do. It drives employees insane and an upset employee will not provide good guest service. I also learned that it is extremely important to be supportive of your employees. The best way to get anyone to do anything is to have them buy into it. Another thing I learned was the power of the schedule. The easiest way to make someone happy is to give them a good schedule which is an easy thing to do as a manager.

Understanding Theory - Behavior

For this post I have chose to watch a television show that displays leadership qualities and post about it. I have chosen to talk about one of my favorite shows The Office. As the show has gone on the characters have all developed and a few have even been promoted into leadership roles themselves. In a recent episode, Michael hires his best friend, Todd Packer, to be the new salesman in the office. Everyone except Michael sees this as a terrible decision and they all work to make him change his mind. The side plot also provides an example of leadership with the interaction between Andy and Pam. The characters that I will focus on for this are Pam and Holly.

HOLLY

Michael initially exploits his relationship with his girlfriend to get Packer hired, utilizing Phase 3 of  LMX relationship. Michael seeks her opinion in the Packer situation, and she doesn’t really want to give him a straight answer, because she knows her answer will hurt him. Finally she tells Michael that Packer is “Not funny at all…”, which is a big deal to Michael and his decision making process. She knows that Michael really values humor and knowing that his best friend is not funny will truly be a big deal to him. She has the interest of everyone in mind at this point, because she realizes Packer must go for the good of the office, but she also doesn’t want to hurt Michael. She also mentions the fact that he says something negative about his daughter, and because Michael doesn’t have children, but has always wanted him this also means a lot to him. In the end, it is Packer’s betrayal of Holly and Michael’s relationship with her that Packer is ultimately sent to Florida.

Pam

Pam buys Erin a new computer and Andy becomes extremely jealous and approaches Pam whining for a new one. Again, Phase 3 of the LMX relationship is shown here. At first, she tells him he absolutely may not have a new computer. Andy and Erin switch computers, which causes Pam to become angry with Andy. She ends up yelling at him and forcing him to switch the computers back. Andy confronts Pam in private and tells her that she embarrassed him. She says that she doesn’t want to look weak in front of the other employees so as a compromise, she tells him she can only buy him a new one if his old one “breaks.” She buys him a new one, but wont let any of the other employees know in order to maintain balance in the office. They are able to use their quality interactions to negotiate a compromise that works for everyone in the office. Andy is able to get his new computer, Pam is able to maintain order, and no one will know that Andy got preferential treatment. The computer could even serve as an incentive to increase his sales.

Link For Video

Differing Viewpoints

After reading many other students' blogs I noticed that even though we are all basically at the same points in our lives, we have very different view points from each other. This can be very beneficial because we can often learn much more from people who are different than people who are the same as ourselves. That being said, it is also important to compare yourself to someone with similar views as well. To do this I chose someone with a similar blog to mine, Adam, and someone with a different viewpoint than mine, Erin. Adam’s blog is similar to mine in the way that it is laid out simply, using one of the templates provided. That makes his blog look similar to mine, and it has a familiar feel to it. His content is similar to mine in the way that almost all of the examples are work related. It is very easy for me to relate to these because I am also a task oriented person, so real world examples make more sense to me. It is also similar in the sense that most of the posts are short and to the point without much excess story-telling. I chose Erin’s blog because her archetypes where some of the ones that I scored lowest one, meaning I need the most help understanding this viewpoint. I think it is great that someone destined to be a leader says “I worry about other people and how they are feeling” especially because this is not something that I always think about. This will definitely not be the last time that I look at either post because I want to see how different our leadership styles will become.