LEADERSHIP AND CHANGE

Leadership and Change

Leadership and Change

Part 1: Leadership models and Personal Reflection

The process of leadership is a reflection of our thoughts and beliefs. These thoughts and beliefs, in addition to a passion to make a difference, result in actions.An understanding of their inner identity, purpose, and vision is critical for persons in leadership positions. Without the ability to identify core values, to achieve balance, one cannot authentically cope with the demands of leadership in the ever-changing fast pace of the world today leadership is the general process of an individual controlling, motivating, and guiding a group of people in order to accomplish pre-set goals. The leader is an individual that possesses characteristics others may not. These characteristics enable the individual to guide and manage the group, and although some individuals are natural born leaders, I believe that most leaders can be created. An ongoing process of teaching individuals how to follow, instilling discipline within the individuals, and sociability achieves the development of leaders. I agree more with Hersey and Blanchard's “Situational Leadership Theory” than House's “Path-goal Theory . Leaders must have the ability to become flexible. Different situations require different measures. Therefore, in order for leaders to become effective, they must be able to adjust to every situation.

A large body of research has been undertaken to search for the best leadership style. The research findings have been inconclusive, with no single style considered superior. There has been no consistent pattern of findings about how leadership style influences performance outcomes, morale, productivity, or job satisfaction. One general conclusion has been that the high task-high relationship style is somewhat better, but there is no conclusive proof that this is so. Leaders, are rarely totally group or task-oriented; group members and the situation itself, all influence a leaders effectiveness. The leader needs to be aware of his own behaviour and influence on others, individual differences of group members, group characteristics, task structure, environmental and situational variables, and adjust his leadership style accordingly. Leadership needs to be adaptive.

According to Nathan F. Iannone, leadership can be defined as the art of influencing, directing, guiding, and controlling others in such a way as to obtain their willing obedience, confidence, respect and loyal cooperation in accomplishment of an objective.

Any reasonably intelligent person with enough forcefulness to develop his/her ability to inspire others to follow him can earn leadership status. Remember that we have both formal and informal leaders….

Transformational leadership theory is all about leadership that creates positive change in the followers whereby they take care of each other's interests and act in the interests of the group as a whole. James MacGregor Burns first brought the concept of transformational leadership to prominence in his extensive research into leadership. "Essentially the leader's task is consciousness-raising on a wide plane. The leader's fundamental act is to induce people to be aware or conscious of what they feel - to feel their true needs so strongly, to define their values so meaningfully, that they can be moved to ...