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Hi So this is a paper that has to be 3 pages long minimum and need to be in APA format. The attachments which includes the article and the courses textbook and the reading materials for the course. This assignment will assess your ability to apply key course concepts, in a meaningful way, to a situation or scenario where you should exercise effective leadership.While reading this article ( https://diverseeducation.com/article/5766/ ), imagine that you have been hired as a “highly paid” consultant and must help the executive level with new ideas and coaching to improve their leadership both individually and through managing change in the organization. Then, write a three- to four-page paper that identifies the (1) issues presented in the case, (2) your analysis of the identified issues and (3) your approach to leadership utilizing ideas presented in the course to solve the issues you identified. Be sure to follow the guidelines presented in the Standards and Grading for Written Work section of your Course Outline.Click on the Week One Assignment - Effective Leadership Paper link above to submit your essay, as well to get more information regarding the due date and grading rubric. led_603_course_learning_materials.docx the_fifth_discipline_by_peter_senge.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview “An intellectual is something more: a person concerned critically with values, purposes, ends that transcend immediate practical needs. By this definition the person who deals with analytical ideas and data alone is a theorist; the one who works only with normative ideas is a moralist; the person who deals with both and unites them through disciplined imagination is an intellectual (James Burns, 1978). • • Week One Topics Leadership Theories Strategies of leadership Leadership Theory Leadership as a discipline is fairly recent. Examples of leadership as an idea or concept can be found in some of the earliest written documents. More recent works begin with Machiavelli’s The Prince written in Italy in 1532. The work consists of advice to the ruling Medici and is a predominantly political framework for staying in power and ensuring resources. Consider this excerpt found at Wikipedia. Cruelty vs. Mercy In answering the question of whether it is better to be loved than feared, Machiavelli writes, “The answer is of course, that it would be best to be both loved and feared. But since the two rarely come together, anyone compelled to choose will find greater security in being feared than in being loved.” As Machiavelli asserts, commitments made in peace are not always kept in adversity, however commitments made in fear are kept out of fear. However, a prince must ensure that he is not feared to the point of hatred, which is very possible. Above all, Machiavelli argues, do not interfere with the property of the subjects, their women, or the life of somebody without proper justification. Regarding the troops of the prince, fear is absolutely necessary to keep a large garrison united and a prince should not mind the thought of cruelty in that regard. For a prince who leads his own army, it is imperative for him to observe cruelty because that is the only way he can command his soldiers absolute respect. Machiavelli compares two great military leaders: Hannibal and Scipio. Although Hannibals army consisted of men of various races, they were never rebellious because they feared their leader. Scipios men, on the other hand, were known for their mutiny and dissension. Great Man Theory “A leadership perspective that sought to identify the inherited traits leaders possessed that distinguished them from people who were not leaders” (Daft, 2005). Key Authors or Studies The study of leadership progressed to analyzing individuals in positions of authority and power to better understand what they did in order to lead successfully. Many of these earlier studies assumed that leaders possessed certain traits which made them natural leaders such as intelligence, height, attractive appearance, usually Caucasian and a member of the elites within the dominant population. This view of leadership is sometimes referred to as the giant surrounded by pygmies because of its view of the superiority of one individual leader. Trait theory evolved to include dimensions of personality as well as physical attributes such as “a people person” or charisma. Frequently this type of understanding of leadership produced those in positions of authority that created a dependency on their superiority in order to be effective. Because much of the US was immersed in heavy authority laden top down hierarchical organizations, this theory was dominant because of that organizational design and structure. Traits and Behaviors This approach to leadership includes the belief that not only do certain traits create a great leader but also the right behaviors would also cause a leader to be effective. Indeed many management and leadership consultants alike continue to promote an understanding of certain behaviors as the key to making an effective leader. Stogdill in 1948 conducted an extensive review of literature on leadership studies based on trait theory. He looked at over 100 studies and identified those traits that seemed consistent with successful leadership. Stogdill identified traits such as general intelligence, self-confidence, drive for success, responsibility etc. He also indicated that these traits were connected to situational factors and did not ensure success explicitly. Situational Theories Situational leadership theories include a popular model published by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard in the late 1960’s. Situational Leadership includes a model utilized to determine what approach may be effective depending on the readiness of the followers determining the approach needed by the leader. A major criticism of Situational Leadership Theory is if the leader does not interpret the situation adequately, the approach may be flawed. The approach may not fully make use of leadership throughout the organization due to its focus on an individual leader versus development of leadership. See also: • • Situational Leadership Theory situational.com This graphic depiction is from: • Hersey and Blanchards Situational Leadership Transactional Leadership This approach to leadership includes the view that services are exchanged or transacted on behalf of the leader/follower dynamic. Transactional Leadership was written about by both James McGregor Burns and Bernard Bass. Transformational Leadership James McGregor Burns seminal work titled Leadership was published in 1978 and won a Pulitzer Prize for his thorough work on the detailed take on leadership throughout the last few centuries until today. Burns argues that leadership as an influence process. Burns stated: Transforming leadership . . . occurs when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality (Burns, 1978, p. 20). It is this key understanding of influence with motivation and morality that distinguishes Transformational Leadership theory as unique and significant for the understanding of leadership. Joseph Rost in Leadership for the 21st Century (1991), emphasizes that leadership is a relationship between leaders and followers. Rost also commented on Transactional and Transformational approaches to leadership. According to King (1994) “Rost offers a new definition for leadership and explains the four essential elements of his new definition. He defines leadership as ‘an influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend real changes that reflect their mutual purposes.’ He believes the dynamic interaction between leaders and followers has been greatly overlooked. Also crucial to his new definition is the importance of ethics within the process of leadership.” Consider this quote by Rost concerning the work of Burns (1978): “But, again, it becomes quite clear as one reads the 400+ pages of Burns 1978 book that the intended changes also have moral values, for good or for evil, and transforming leadership equates with good moral values. Transactional leadership does not require good moral values, and that is one of the major differences in the two forms of leadership Burns developed.” (Rost, 2005, listserve communication) • • • Noted authors on Leadership as a relationship: Joseph Rost Jean Lipman-Bluman Kouzes and Posner Leadership is A Process Current approaches to leadership theory include the understanding that leadership is a process not a person. Dr. Terrie Monroe frequently states that “There are no good leaders, only good leadership.” The view of leadership as a complex process throughout the organization and the systems of organizations is increasingly relevant as we shift from a post industrial era to a knowledge economy and frequent change. No longer can a top down authoritarian paradigm be successful in times of frequent, rapid change, uncertainly and globalization. Increasingly there is a need to understand issues or adaptive challenges differentiated from technical challenges (Heifetz, 1994). Leaders have long operated in an industrial economy and were successful at adopting management practices that operated with a mechanistic view of organizational structures and culture. Leadership theories evolve in order to become effective in a dynamic and unpredictable world. Heifetz and Laurie’s (1996) work on The Real Work of Leadership provides excellent insight to what leadership does: identifying adaptive issues and mobilizing people to do the work. This view is quite different from the leader identifying a problem and delegating work. Mobilizing people involves both functions of authority (similar to management) and leadership that asks the tough questions that nobody wants to discuss and then creates an environment where people can find the solutions. The leader does not have the answer and would be headed for failure to allow the organization to think he/she does. People may be disappointed that the leader has not provided a solution and has instead turned around only to ask more tough questions. Recommended Reading: This virtual lecture covers the impact of technology on organizational life and therefore on the ways in which leadership is provided and framed. In addition the need for critical thinking skills in order to conduct analysis of data from organizations to determine what is really going on, or at least to develop a hypothesis based upon reason and connected to what may be going on in an organization. The process of leadership is very much like this all the time to state it simply. In the organization those that are trained and educated become more aware of human and social phenomena taking place in real time and begin to formulate a hypothesis based on theory in order to understand something. Once a few hypotheses have emerged, the critical thinker than begins to look for confirming or disconfirming data about the hypothesis in order to act or intervene. For example, a member of an organization observes that morale is low and has a hypothesis that this is a result of an account that was lost. In order to look for confirming or disconfirming data she becomes aware of conflicts and conversations throughout the department. She begins to understand that not only is morale low because of the lost account but the direction of the company is to target a different type of client which no one is sure how to do. Reminder, this person is an employee of a peer group, not a person with formal authority. She decides to intervene based on the data she has collected from both observations and also conversations throughout the department. She has also noticed that when someone talks about this issue, people change the subject which confirms to her how uncomfortable people are with this adaptive work.Her intervention consists of finding a way in meetings to discuss how this approach to a new client base is linked to the organization’s purpose. When someone changes the subject she changes it back and asks why people avoid this topic. She is intervening in a way that may help others to begin to take up the adaptive work of the organization. She includes conversations about how disappointed she felt about losing the client and that the confidence of the team seemed impacted. In this way she began to mention the unmentionable which helped everyone to work through to a better understanding of how to recover their disappointment and their confidence. She provided leadership without formal authority and in doing so increased her own informal authority in the organization. Because she had an understanding of how to gather data, diagnose, gather more data and intervene she was a great help to her department. The department became more unified as a result of working through the difficulty with morale and she was soon promoted. Leadership is a process and includes the need to think critically by looking for data, rationale and a systems view of issues. In addition the ability to constantly reevaluate and intervene in ways that people could stand (not like) but be able to tolerate, enabled the department to adapt. Networked leadership The impact of technology on organizational life has created a new way of working and of providing leadership. Many individuals are working in virtual environments with people they have never met. The idea of networked leadership is not limited to the virtual or technology environment. Networked leadership is based on orientation to an ideology that people share and to formal authority that is given. For example, Sally Helgesen studied female executives to understand how they operated in a book called The Female Advantage. She discovered that many women executives did not depend on their formal authority alone but rather utilized a broad and organic network she called the Web of Inclusion. This example of networked leadership provides a means to target resources where they need to be without the heaviness of an authoritarian structure. Authority is diffuse and resides with those closer to the issues. Executives retain formal authority but in a way that is interactive and decentralized. Her observation of the frequent interruptions these executives experienced helped her to see that interruptions were also an efficient means to connect in the network in real time when decisions had to be made rather than a gatekeeper to make sure the executive had control. Consider this statement from her web site: “I believe that great companies will all operate as webs of inclusion in the future. Webs allow organizations to draw on the widest possible base of talent, a huge advantage in an economy based on knowledge. They allow resources to flow to where theyre needed. They undermine the tendency to become hierarchical. They put organizations more directly in touch with those they serve, and make partnerships easier to achieve. Perhaps most importantly, they break down the old industrial-era division between the heads of organizations and the hands—those who come up with ideas and those who execute them. In doing so, they return joy, creativity and a firm sense of participation to the work done at every level.” You can read Mrs. Helgesens comments on Recalibrating for The Customer from The Center for Association Leadership web site. Mrs. Helgesen also has an interesting view of the Web of Inclusion linked to technology in this article from the Kappa Omicron Nu Honor Society web site. In The Technology of Participation, as a way of summary, Helgesen (1995) compares the web of inclusion to the web in cyberspace and concludes that participation is the technology expressed by the web of inclusion. Both are grass-roots structures and, as such, give power rather than vesting it in positional leaders--thus decentralizing power. Both diffuse power through networks. Both offer fulfillment of the individual. Both encourage the hands-on imperative--whatever you imagine, you must try to produce. The principles of the computer hacker ethic echo the values and principles that define the web of inclusion, in which information flows freely across levels, teams make their own decisions, work on specific projects evolves in response to needs as they arise, and task is more important than position (p. 280). In summary Networked Leadership is a theory and an approach to the structure and operations of an organization which calls for a new way of leading with an understanding of systems, patterns, and how people are linked by purpose rather than authority. Organizational Frameworks According to Bolman and Deal (1997) many issues in organizations can be understood by framing and also interventions can be created from framing; In other words frameworks give us a way to look at things whether discerning them or deciding what action to take. The use of metaphors creates a feasible way to incorporate multiple approaches and theories to provide leadership to a situation. For example, consider an employee that though he makes an excellent contribution to the organization is chronically late. If you are the supervisor how would you frame your conversation with him about tardiness? If you chose the Symbolic Frame you could inspire him to strive for excellence and perfection as a role model of the company. If you chose the Structural Frame you would ask him to review the policy and sign a warning letter. You could also use the frames to try and understand why he is late. If you choose the Human Resource frame you would talk to him in a way that is inclusive, help him have a sense of belonging in order to determine if he has family issues or other problems that cause him to be late. Its not that one frame is correct for certain situations but more that the authors provide a tool to understand what is really going on and then design your action or intervention. This table indicates the four framesfor reframing organizations: Structural Frame Human Resource Frame Political Frame Symbolic Frame Metaphor for organization Factory or machine Family Jungle Carnival, temple, theatre Central concepts Rules, roles, goals, policies, technology, enviornment Needs, skills, relationships Power, conflict, competition, organizational politics Culture, meaning, metaphor, ritual, ceremony, stories, heroes Image of leadership Social architecture Empowerment Advocacy Inspiration Basic leadership challenge Attune structure to task, technology, environment Align organizational and human needs Develop agenda and power base Create faith, beauty, meaning (Bolman and Deal, 1997) “Authority constrains leadership because in times of distress, people expect too much. They form inappropriate dependencies that isolate their authorities behind a mask of knowing. [The leadership role] is played badly if authorities reinforce dependency and delude themselves into thinking that they have the answers when they do not. Feeling pressured to know, they will surely come up with an answer, even if poorly tested, misleading, and wrong” (Heifetz, 1994). Adaptive Leadership The lecture for this week examines developing capacities for leadership in a post modern organization. As mentioned previously in the background of leadership theory; much that has been research about leadership has been the examination of leaders and how to develop the individual. Theories or approaches that are more recent acknowledge that leadership is a process, not a person. But what constitutes this process and how do we best provide leadership? In Ron Heifetz and Donald Laurie’s article the Real Work of Leadership they suggest leadership has to do with the functions of identifying adaptive work versus technical challenges. Once an adaptive challenge is identified leadership begins to frame the issues and ask the difficult questions to the people that are impacted by the challenge and collectively can create a solution. This approach to leadership includes promoting a culture where leadership can be exercised by anyone that is connected to the purpose of the organization and does not need to come only from those with formal authority. Perhaps because most organizations have long been seen through an understanding of mechanics (a result of a manufacturing economy) or a mechanistic metaphor, technical fixes or solutions are frequently applied to problems that require adaptive work with disastrous results. In other words when an adaptive challenge exists and a technical solution is administered there is no leadership. An adaptive challenge is linked to values in that it identifies the gap between shared values that people hold and the actual realities of their lives. Conflict over values or strategy creates an adaptive challenge as well. The following table can be helpful in determining adaptive challenges and differentiating them from technical ones: Leaders Responsibilities Type of Situation Technical or Routine Direction Define problems and provide solutions Adaptive Identify the adaptive challenge and frame key questions and issues Protection Shield the organization from ... Purchase answer to see full attachment