Leadership



Leadership

Leadership Challenge

My leadership challenge deals with lack or no communication. Three months ago, I was transferred to a new position as a Personnel Security Specialist department dealing with background investigation and adjudication. As a Personnel Security Specialist in the FAA, I covered the whole Western Pacific Region including the Pacific Islands. In our team there are four (PSS) and two assistants. I process over 50 employees a week and adjudicate 40 cases a day. Within my team including two assistants we rely on the manager for his authority regarding cases we performed on daily or any disclosure of information that might affect what we do. Most of the time, my manager called in on team member and relay the information and this will not get to everybody in the team. It creates more problems in our team than good. In the past before I transferred to this team the manager was always comfortable with this one person. I am trying to find ways to open the level of effective communication with my manager and team members. To facilitate the understanding, the paper will focus on the leadership theories namely behaviorist theory, situational based approach, and contingency theory.

Leadership Theories

Behaviorist Theory

When trait theory turned out to be insufficient to understand leadership styles as the traits like honesty, loyalty and integrity cannot be measured, prominent studies were conducted by Michigan University and Ohio State University to further evaluate the theories. Both the researches were done with that leadership behavior that can be categorized into two groups: production centered Behavior and Employee centered behavior. These behaviors were identified by Michigan University. It is clear that production centered would be more oriented towards the work procedures and performance while Employee centered is when leader proves to be the one who can produce cohesive work group. Ohio State identified two groups as well which were Initiating Structure and Considering Structure in which initiating structure were work oriented while considering structure were employee oriented (Avolio, 2005). It was found that the behaviorist theory of leadership includes the cultural and sub cultural conditioning that shapes behavior. Therefore, the major difference between the trait and behaviorist theory is that the behaviorist theory is a theory that guided the actions of leaders and not defined by their personalities or the source of their power. On the other hand, the trait theory only relies on the person cognitive development based on the personal values and traits instead of the social and cultural influence. Keeping in view these theories it can be said that my leadership challenge is to ensure that the personal behavior is aligned with the cultural factors so as to understand the cross cultural differences within the working group.

Situational-Based Approaches to Leadership

Leadership, direction, strategies and processes that occur in daily actions are factors that directly influence any organization for successful goal achievement and business projection. A flexible leadership is one that recognizes people as and respects their opinions, listens to their concerns and ...