All 6 entries tagged Leadership

Contingency and Situation

Contingency and Situation study back up my idea in the previous blog. Leadership should change depends on the characteristics of group members. From Fiedler's contingency theory defines Task-oriented leaders perform better in highly favorable and unfavorable situation. Relationship-oriented leader perform better intermediately situation. I think this changes overtime, because relationship takes time to build and trust. This also based upon how much the leader know about their team members, their skills and capability. And the willingness and confident of followers comes from how much do they know about their leader. These directly affect the process of achieving the outcome. Therefore, in real life situation, a new manager would usually start with task-oriented to reaching outcome.

Yi Xiang : 23 Feb 2013 01:17 |  Tags: Leadership |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Leader and follower

Although employees are often dislike managers use their power control over people, to some degree leadership is require people to do the things you wanted them to do. I think a good leadership is control people but don't make them feel been controlled. Most companies are looking for leaders who can inspire the others, but I think inspiration also comes under certain bias. Leaders are also people, they have their own ideas and thoughts, so when they inspire the others they also communicating their own idea across. That's why we often hear "My manager is not happy." It is because things did not move the way he/she expected. Instead of going around circles, managers could tell employee what to do which may also save time and cost. I think it is good to say that leader should inspire employees, but in real life situation unless the employee has come up with a much better idea, they often follow the leader's idea.

Value and attitude shape a person's response to situations, but affect themselves and others. I wonder, what the right attitude to become leader is and especially when we have interview, how the HR judge a person can be a good leader or not. Although we talk about our leadership experience but I don't think this can really show we are a good leader or not, may be just good at organising events.

Yi Xiang : 19 Feb 2013 13:33 |  Tags: Leadership |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Self–assessment and feedback

I have leant so many things through these two weeks, not only on academic leadership theory, also experienced a number of leadership style and how to work as team from both leader and followers view. I think the game it-self is not important, but the process and rules provide opportunities to work with different team and different leaders. We often quite calm and trying to solve questions, but when we had the "Black Swan" and Paul pointed out there is a competition, the environment became serious and I feel more pressure.

I think competition can be both positive and negative as I have mentioned in Performance Appraisal presentation. It can create motivation in short-term view, but in long-term it strikes people confident, no one can always win and someone may never win. And I think competition is not appropriate for all departments within an organization. For example, finance department may not need competition but marketing department team often need competition to increase the sales.

Yi Xiang : 10 Feb 2013 19:06 |  Tags: Leadership |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Leadership team work

We did many exercises during leadership course. The Life Boat exercise is a good example of people considers what best leadership is. Because every group has different answers, this means each group need different leadership style, and they chose the most suitable one. However, in a real life situation, we don't usually have chance to choose leader or people you want to work with. I have experienced these through our mini-project leadership. We have been randomly put in to a team, and there are two new members we haven't worked with before. I did not know their skills, capabilities and attitude, so it was quite difficult to lead the group. As the members also do not know any information about me and each other, so it was untrusted atmosphere between each member. Think back at our first meeting, I think skill assessment should be conducted!!! Or each of us should give an introduction about ourselves and at least we should know basic information such as:

• What subject we have studied before
• Work experience
• What areas particular good at
• May be personality

There are many things I have reflected on through our teamwork. I will continue on another day.

I think leadership is about learning the right attitudes, not learning how to do things right!!

"You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you."

• 6. Take control of your emotions.

"The person who seeks all their applause from outside has their happiness in another's keeping."

• 7. No, they are not holding you back.

"Instead of worrying about what people say of you, why not spend time trying to accomplish something they will admire."

• 8. So, what's in it for me?

"There is only one way to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it."

• 9. How to win an argument.

"The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it."

• 10. It's about more than your words.

"There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it."

Yi Xiang : 07 Feb 2013 23:02 |  Tags: Leadership |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Leadership

Leadership is an activity a leader lead a group of people to carry out certain task or achieve an objective.

Leadership involves

1. Establish a clear vision.

2. Share the vision with group members and make sure they understand and willing to achieve it.

3. Identify methods to realize that vision.

4. Coordinate the process.

5. Balance the conflict interests of group members and stakeholders

I think leadership is a very interesting top to study and there is no exact right answer. Everyone has their own opinion on how leadership should be, and has their own idol of great leader. I think leadership is a very arguable activity. No matter how well you think you can lead there will always be someone dislike the style. That's why we have elections.

Leadership cannot be taught and it may be learned from experience and mentoring. People who are great leaders today has progressed and learned from early failures. I also think leadership should be continues and development process. You can a great leader in today's situation but tomorrow is a new day and different issues will occur. A leader needs to have critical and analytical thinking and fast reaction. Need to think around crisis and the impact it can course to bigger environment instead of focus on the problem it-self.

Yi Xiang : 03 Feb 2013 13:14 |  Tags: Leadership |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

My Dear Group B

From today's lecture I have noticed group B is more active than group A. The reason I think is because we more involved with each other and feel more comfortable. We have the confidence to work with anyone in our group, and have view of each individual's capability, so when comes to choose group member we know who we want to work with. Although we may not get to work with the once we wanted, the atmosphere in Group B is very good.

So I think skill assessment is very important. Although we did not do skill assessment during the exercise, the abilities and skills are carried around with us all the time. Every word we say and everything we do able to show the capability, thinking and personality, this directly affect the amount of contribution that person can bring to the work.

To be a good leader, the most important is to understand the people you work with, and maximise their abilities and skills. The more you know about that person, more efficient work can be delivered and quality outcome. Take Group B as an example, over the past few months we have been worked together and involved as a group, so we have the view of each other's strength and advantages. Anyone in Group B would feel confident to lead the others, as a common sense people usually feel more comfortable to with the people they know.

Overall I think the atmosphere in Group B is very nice!! Love my Group B, everyone has been very helpful and supportive. XOXO joob joob =3=

Yi Xiang : 28 Jan 2013 18:00 |  Tags: Leadership |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem