Assignment Instructions/ Description
Answer the following questions
1. What do you think are the important points you would like to discuss from each reading? (Answer this question for each chapter of the reading assignment)
2. Which points are most intriguing or persuasive to you? Why?
3. Which points do you disagree with or find unpersuasive? Why?
4. What questions do you have about the readings? What would you like to discuss further with your classmates?
5. What news articles, stories, or personal experiences have you seen/had this week that relate to the theoretical concepts in the readings? Give at least one example for class discussion.
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Example Below:
a)
b) What do you think are the important points you would like to discuss from each reading? (Answer this question for each chapter of the reading assignment- each chapter that you are answering it for should be a new paragraph.)
1.What do you think are the important points you would like to discuss from each reading?
The reading “Leadership: Theory and Practice” by Peter G.Northouse sheds light on the basis of a leader and the transformation of an evolving leader. Many people seek out to become a leader, but some don’t have the distinguishing qualities to be portrayed as a leader. In order to start as a leader, a person must have a relationship with thexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxmongst a group that the leader is serving. To accomplish this shared desire, a person must rise to a leadership role to form a connection within the group. Without the connection established, it will be challenging to achieve tasks that are sought after. The leader guides the group to a direction of singularity by making key decisions and implementing strategies and roles that are necessary for the followers. The leader can only do this by understanding the role of both the follower and the leader. Once a clear understanding is made, the leader can thoroughly execute their necessary tasks that will result in achievements for all.
2- Traits: Traits provide a model of understanding leadership that can be both helpful and disheartening to those trying to use it. Since traits cannot typically be changed, they can allow individuals to conduct an analysis of their own personal characteristics and focus themselves to develop these traits and position themselves in places where they will be most effective. However, within a fast changing environment, this model fails to describe how a leader can be adaptive in dealing with a wide variety of problem sets. The traits studied are also very diverse and each one could support a separate study to pin down what that trait really entails.
3- Skills: The skills model is a capability model designed to assess problem solving ability that seems largely managerial. Unlike traits, technical, human, and conceptual skills can be learned in order to improve effectiveness. By using social judgement, a leader can change themselves to meet different situations. Although this is undoubtedly useful, I am curious if there are any possible negative effects of changing how you act or are perceived in the eyes of followers.
4- Behavioral: This approach combines a mix of task behaviors and relationship behaviors in order to better understand what leaders prioritize in an organization. Behaviors needed to be placed on two separate spectrums in order to allow for leaders to be able to be oriented towards both results and people. According to this model, every action that a leader takes must fall on the grid between concerns for results and people This method of categorization begs the question of how do we categorize organizational needs so that we may better tailor our actions as leaders to the organization rather than just arbitrarily striving for team management (9,9).
5- Situational: The biggest drawback of the SLII is that it is largely subjective in how it assigns followers into each of the development levels. Because of this ambiguity, it is relevant to discuss what kinds of characteristics we should look for as leader in order to identify where followers may fall on the spectrum. The reading suggests that there are flaws in the testing methodology in that it leads respondents to answer within one of the four predetermined leadership style but we may take this a step further by associating other commonly used leadership descriptors with the SLII continuity. I believe that this additional step may work to overcomplicate the model for mass use but can potentially yield a useful way of understanding various other leadership approaches.
b)Which points do you disagree with
or find unpersuasive? Why
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