Leadership and theoretical concepts
Discuss about the Leadership and Theoretical Concepts for Gibbs Goal.
Leadership may be defined as the art or act of motivating people to act and work towards a certain goal or specific objectives .A leader is a crucial member of a particular team that is in the action of achieving a certain goal since he or she will be the key determinant of whether a goal will be achieved or not. Leadership experience varies from one individual to another .This is because; leadership experience as explained by an individual will be determined by what was good and bad but above all the individuals attitude towards the experience. This paper therefore is a reflective essay based on the Gibb’s (1988) reflective learning to explain my own leadership experience as I relate is to some theoretical concepts in relation to leadership. The areas covered under the discussion will be mainly on; description of what happened during my leadership, my experience in terms of feelings and thinking, an evaluation on what was good and bad and finally my suggestions on what I could have done (GO, 2017).
Leadership can be described as both a practical skill and a research that entails an understanding on the ability of an organization or an individual to be able to direct or lead other individuals or the organization as a whole towards achieving set objective or goals. Leadership is not just a position that guarantees an individual an opportunity to direct and head others towards and the achievement of certain goals. It goes beyond that where a general transformation is required from a leader. A leader in organization for instance may be said to have had a god leadership skill if he or she will eventually be able to transform the organization to a healthy culture for growth, promote cohesion and teamwork in the organization or group( Montuori 2010) There are various theoretical concepts on leadership developed by different scholars in the field of leadership studies. For this assignment, I will choose and focus on the theory of transformational leadership ( Wolfgramm, R., Spiller, C. and Voyageur, C. 2016)
The concepts of the theory were developed by a political sociologist by the name James Macgregor Burns .According to the scholar, there are two types of laesdership.That is; the transactional leadership and transformational leadership. According to the theory, in transactional leadership, the leader influences people depending on what they offer in exchange. On the other hand, Transformational leadership is a form of leadership whereby a leader is able to interact and connect with his or her followers in a way that apart from giving them direction, the leader also offers motivation and raises the level of morality among his or her followers. These two aspects under transformative leadership are very important because morality and motivation are the key elements required for the growth of any institution and the society in general will benefit (Shao, Wang and Tse, 2018).
Discussion of the theory
There are four factors that facilitate activation of this kind of leadership as discussed below (Jacobs, 2016) ; the first aspect is charisma. By this, we mean the ability of a leader to be able to influence people such that people will voluntarily follow the views and the visions of that particular leader (Bloom, 2016) . Secondly, a leader must have inspirational motivation in that he or she is expected to have powerful words which can help motivate his or her followers and inspire them to carry out the required actions. A good leader must be able to utter words to his followers that will trigger zeal and vigor for the followers to work toward achieving set goals. Intellectual stimulation is the aspect that a leader must posses. According to the theory, a leader must be able to stretch the thinking of his or her followers to think beyond their daily limits. In other words, the followers must be motivated to think on what to invent and innovate (Vidic et al., 2016) . The final aspect required from a leader is a concern for individuals. This means that as much as the leader tries to push for a common good, he or she must also have concern for the individuals (van Oord, 2013).
However, as much as the theory tries to give a clear description of who a good leader is and what he or she should posses, there are some critics that have been pointed out of this theory. The claim that this kind of leadership uses the impression of management hence a manifestation of self-promotion by the different leaders. That is, charismatic leaders are in most cases self-built-no one appoints or elects them. Second is the fact that it’s difficult to train on or teach this theory since it is a combination of so many theories. It may be confusing in terms of which aspect should be picked, which one should be emphasized on. Lastly, there is a claim over this theory that the followers of a transformative leader may be manipulated by their leaders and this may be an adverse impact because they may end up losing more than what they gain (Allio, 2015).
Transformative leadership is more of ‘You lead as I follow’. That is, the leaders are the determinants of every step taken as much as the theory claims to promote and stretch thinking of the followers. Therefore, this kind of leadership may match with the saying that religion is opium of the masses since it entails great manipulation.
Growing and activating transformative leadership
Discussion on the questionnaires that were completed
Some questionnaires on leadership had been given out to a sample of people to be filled based on their opinions on leadership. The following are the results obtained and their implications to me or the lessons I can draw from them as a leader.
Results: Most respondents expressed no interest in leadership and the main reasons being that they have seen many corrupt and manipulative leaders .Also, most of them claimed that they fear holding leadership positions because they are not adequately equipped with the necessary skills (Nissley, 2007).
Lesson learnt .First, from the attitude of the respondent that they fear leadership because most of them tend to manipulate people and are corrupt too, I learnt and agree that it is true because most leaders today do not seek for such position with an intention of promoting a common good. Instead, they use the positions to gratify their selfish interest. Therefore as a leader who truly wants to serve people I should by all means try to be transparent and open to my followers. Secondly, the respond that the respondent had no enough skills to lead poses a challenge to me as a leader to go back to ensure that apart from leading my followers, in particular my class, I should do my best to ensure that I cultivate a culture of leadership among them by ensuring that I offer some training to equip them with the necessary skills so that given a chance, anyone can be able to be a leader.
Results: Most of them expressed some dissatisfaction on the kind of leadership they had in particular the fact that the respondent cannot reach their leaders with ease
Lesson: This response as a leader challenged me to realize that being a leader should not create a barrier between the leader and the followers .Unnecessary bureaucracies should be avoided because a leader is the voice of the followers and therefore if a barrier exists between the two parties, the ultimate goal will not be achieved. Also, it taints a negative image on the leaders and may lead to the development of a negative attitude by the followers to their leaders (Reichard and Walker, 2016).
Results. Though not clearly, but most of them advocated for a bottom-up and participatory leadership
Lesson: I learnt that being a leader does not guarantee me a complete authority over my followers. Exercising a complete authority over them may lead to dictatorship kind of leadership. Therefore, a good leader should ensure that the followers are taken in to give their ideas and views. The best kind of leadership therefore is a participatory leadership.
My own opinions on the theory
As a class, we had a debate over corruption in the government and I acted as a moderator of the debate. The fact that my opinions were in line with the proposers did not guarantee me to give too much support to the proposers. I ensured by all means that I never promote any biasness in time of time and chance given to the opposers to express their views. This meant to me as a leader therefore to be non-partisan and be neutral.
As a leader, sometimes I mistake dictatorship with having firm stand as a leader. This is what mean; most of the time I find myself being carried too much by the opinions of my followers and failing to stand on my grounds as a leader. At the end of it, I fail to guide and direct my followers in the right direction. Therefore, I need to adjust on this and learn to be always firm on my opinions so as to be able to lead my followers towards the realization of the goals set because if every idea is accommodated, there will be a failure to achieve what is required of me as a leader and at the same time a wastage of time (Mifsud, 2015).
Conclusion
Leadership is a very crucial aspect that requires both in-born knowledge as well as well acquired skills. My kind of leadership is transformative because it has been my desire and ambition always as I head my classmates to ensure that a culture of togetherness, interdependence and love is developed among my fellow students .I have boosted this by coming up with activities that promotes unity such as class sports and a common tree planting day in the school. After such events ,I noted some difference in the relationship of the students . A leader should have a firm stand to ensure that he or she articulates for what is right and beneficial to the group (Rao, 2017) . At the same time, a leader should not only lead people but also cultivate a culture of leadership among them to ensure that the followers benefit from his or her leadership. In other words, a transformative leadership is advocated for .This will be able to promote development culture in the society and help eradicate any backward or primitive culture. In conclusion therefore, development of a certain group is mostly determined by the kind of leader they have (Peck, 2018).
References
Allio, R. (2015). Good strategy makes good leaders. Strategy & Leadership, 43(5), pp.3-9.
Bloom, R. (2016). Neither Charisma nor LeadershipNeither Charisma nor Leadership.PsycCRITIQUES, 6161(3737).
GO, S. (2017). LDP and Bureauctratic Control of Abe Prime Minister and Policy Making in Japan.Journal of Japanology, 44, pp.53-76.
Jacobs, S. (2016). Reflective learning, reflective practice. Nursing, 46(5), pp.62-64.
Mifsud, D. (2015). Book review: Educational Leadership and Michel FoucaultGilliesDonald, Educational Leadership and Michel Foucault. Routledge, 2013, 144 pp., hardback £90, ISBN 9780415633123. Improving Schools, 18(1), pp.102-105.
Montuori, A. (2010). Transformative Leadership for the 21st Century: Reflections on the Design of a Graduate Leadership Curriculum. ReVision, 30(3), pp.4-14.
Nissley, N. (2007). In Focus/creativity and innovation-Good leadership demands a combination of the two. Leadership in Action, 27(2), pp.21-22.
Peck, A. (2018). Mapping Career-Ready Skills Through Student Leadership Programs. New Directions for Student Leadership, 2018(157), pp.71-83.
Rao, M. (2017). Soft Leadership: An Innovative Leadership Perspective. Journal of Values-Based Leadership, 10(1).
Reichard, R. and Walker, D. (2016). In Pursuit: Mastering Leadership Through Leader Developmental Readiness. New Directions for Student Leadership, 2016(149), pp.15-25.
Shao, B., Wang, L. and Tse, H. (2018). Motivational or dispositional? The type of inference shapes the effectiveness of leader anger expressions. The Leadership Quarterly.
van Oord, L. (2013). Towards transformative leadership in education. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 16(4), pp.419-434.
Vidic, Z., Burton, D., South, G., Pickering, A. and Start, A. (2016). Emotional and Motivational Correlates of Leadership Styles: A Comprehensive Framework for Understanding Effective Leaders. Journal of Leadership Studies, 10(3), pp.22-40.
Wolfgramm, R., Spiller, C. and Voyageur, C. (2016). Special issue: Indigenous leadership – Editors’ introduction. Leadership, 12(3), pp.263-269.
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