Leadership Styles - Blog Four

Summary notes

Differences between management and leadership

Leadership is the term given to an individual who influences a person’s or people’s attitudes and behaviours to reach a desired goal, whereas management, is a Job role or title for which an individual or management team, identify, and create tasks while guiding and providing support to complete a goal, usually based in corporate circumstances(Ivancevich, et al.).

What makes a good leader?

(link, 2011) A Good leader is some for which has the following character traits, Trust worthy, enthusiastic,, good public speaker, have a presence, calm and composed, committed to their course, know the wishes and desires of their followers, there are many more.

What makes a bad leader?

 (link, 2011)A bad leader is someone who is self-centred, over powering, and who loses the respect of his/her followers by becoming too dedicated to the cause there are many more traits that could also be used to describe a leader.

What makes a good manager?

(Sunrise, 2012)A good manager is someone for which has the following character traits, Organised, good listener, good at passing on information, determined, friendly, confident and more.

What makes a bad manager?

(Sunrise, 2012)A bad Manager is someone who can have some of the following character traits, Lazy, unapproachable, unclear of set goals, not knowledgeable, not friendly as well as many other character traits that could be used to describe a bad manager.

Goleman

Goleman reported the findings of research undertaken by Hay/McBar and drew upon its findings to identify six main ways of leadership and looked at which types of leadership had positive and negative effects(mullins, 2002).. The six main type of leadership are:

·         Coercive leaders, who are individuals who expect, complete compliance from their workers.

·       An Authoritative leader is an individual who will do everything in their power to reach a goal or vision.

·       An Affiliative leader is someone who wants to be friendly and from good relationships with their follows.

·       A Democratic leader is someone who allows their followers to take an active role in what they feel is best to achieve the task.

·       A Pacesetting leader is an individual who expect the absolute best from their followers, and expect people to have a form of self-direction.

·       Finally, a Coaching leader is someone who sees potential in people, and allows them to reach their full potential by providing training etc.

To take the example of a school, you can identify key leaders within that environment. Schools are environments for which there is a large diversity of leaders. Teachers are clearly the main leaders, but these are usually in a hierarchy of who the top leader is and who is not. A headmaster/headmistress should in theory be the best leader within a school environment, by they often take on the role of being a coercive and pacesetting leader, where is most commonly a deputy head teacher takes on these in smaller proportions but had a input of being an Affiliative leader, making them seem more approachable and friendly, thus giving pupils the idea that they are a better role model leader. However that is if you are looking at who is a leader to students; a role model leader figure from a head teacher could be a very effective one for other teachers, as they may aspire to one day have a similar career.

Teachers themselves to students can also have a hierarchy as to who they believe is the best leader for them. Individuality lays a large part in peoples personal choice as to whether they think someone is a good leader or not, in some cases one person may like a teacher to be a coaching leader, and to help them develop for the future, where as other students may with their teachers to be more authority and thus revolve their actions more around the idea of instant goals.

You can also have leaders within the students, whether this be academically revolving around a leader in knowledge, by being the most intelligent or within a social group there may be one particular group leader, who chooses what games to play, or for who can be or cannot be in that group or not. A leader therefore is someone who is ideally looked up to. And their followers aspire to be, or be like them.

Some students may not see any type of teacher as a leader; they may see other types of individuals, such as celebrities in the media, or people they see on TV.

In my personal experience, I felt as if my head of house was the best leader in my school. She adapted herself slightly to a small part of each aspect of leadership, she was firm but not bossy, she was knowledgeable and had a clear goal, but was not obsessed, she was friendly and kind, and approachable. But the most important thing to me was that she achieved what she said she would achieve. Which I think is a very important factor in whether you are a good leader. You can be the best public speaker, and be knowledgeable and kind, but if your actions do not have your followers desired effects, you will no longer be seen as a good leader, you will be seen as a bad one.

Overall I think it is clear to see that whether or not you are a good leader or not can be very individualistic. But overall, people prefer leaders who complete actions that give them something back in their best interest, and so, if a leader is not very democratic and does not listen to their followers, they will most like not be followers any more. There is a very fine line when you are in a position of power as to whether you are a strong good leader or if you are a poor one, but for me the perfect combination for a leader would be a mix between all but two of Goleman’s leader styles. All apart from Pacesetting and Coercive leaders (Mckee, 2002-2011).


Leaders are very important within society, and if they were not apparent many things would become more time consuming and difficult, so with a leader people have someone to look and find their desired actions. Leaders can be followed like a religion such as can be seen when looking upon Hitler during Nazi Germany , but as quick as a leader can be followed they can be disliked as well, as was also found out by peoples now attitudes towards Nazi Germany time, this means that if you are in a position of power there are many things that are needed to be done to remain popular with your followers.  

Bibliography

Ivancevich, J., Konopaske, R., Matteson, M. (2007). Organizational Behaviour and Management. New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin.

link (2011) bog dog & little dog's performance juxtaposition [online]. nwlink. Available from: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadcon.html [Accessed: 6th jan 2012].

Mckee, A. (2002-2011) Six emotional leadership styles [online]. changingminds.org. Available from: http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/styles/six_emotional_styles.htm [Accessed: 1st Jan 2012].

mullins (2002) managment and organisations. 6th ed.

Sunrise (2012) Reqiired skills of a manager [online]. sunrisepage. Available from: http://www.sunrisepage.com/manage/skilmana.htm [Accessed: 6h jan 2012].