The Beginning of the End

The semester is coming to an end and my four years here at San Diego State University are over. I am embarking on the next step in my life and trying out the real world. I have taken away great knowledge from all my classes at SDSU, especially my HTM classes. Leadership classes like this have taught me that you don’t have to be a born leader but can become one through knowledge and hard work. Before this class I saw only one type of leadership theory and thought that definition never could include someone like me. After having HTM management classes, entrepreneurship classes and leadership classes I have confidence in myself to lead others one day in my profession. I never understood why we had so many projects always due in all the HTM classes, but know I understand they were just introducing us for what’s to come. So thank you to all the professors here at HTM for teaching students like me introductory courses to the rest of our lives. Classes like yours have taught me that anything is possible in my career.

My learning space and Map

heroic leadership

The true leader is essentially a hero - someone who does something outstanding. The appointed manager cannot compel hero worship. We admire heroic leaders too much sometimes, thus depending on them and disempowering ourselves. These days, heroic leadership is out and post-heroic is in. Still, one important question remains: Does heroic leadership have a place in organizations? If heroic leadership can add value, then managers need to learn which style to use and when. Lee Iacocca and Jack Welch were heroic leaders, strong characters with firm answers. However, recent financial scandals have cast doubt on the wisdom of granting so much power to any individual. Complexity has made it harder for one person to know it all anyway. The Level 5 leaders described by Jim Collins in Good to Great illustrate the post-heroic style: they possess the humility to involve others in developing new strategic.

Peter Drucker’s views Heroic Leadership interestingly, it was the same James Burns who introduced the concept of Heroic Leadership. But it wasn’t as some think. Perhaps misled by a misunderstanding of what the name represented, some have corrupted Burns’ concept of Heroic Leadership such that it has become the ultimate representative of the less desirable transactional type and for much that has gone wrong within organizations in recent years. Yet Burns introduced Heroic Leadership not as an example of transactional leadership, but as an example of the preferred transforming type.

Resources:

1) http://cbae.nmsu.edu/~dboje/teaching/338/leader_model_boje.htm#heroic

2)http://www.humanresourcesiq.com/business-strategies/columns/drucker-and-heroic-leadership/

3)http://www.newworldofwork.co.uk/2011/03/03/heroic-leadership-%E2%80%93-a-summary/

4)http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/styles/leadership_styles.htm

My Interpretation on leadership Theories

Leaders need to train their eyes to spot opportunities and their hands to seize it. I picked this image because it defines in my mind the way I see leadership theories. It is  ways of thinking that have to be developed for a person to become a great leader. Just like this painting where the different images develop after seeing the overall picture in different ways.  

Relating to the Theories

After doing the midterm and learning about all these great theories, I now try to apply them to my own everyday life. When doing something at work or school, I always stop and kind of reflect back on each of the major theories we talked about and see if they apply to me. In this class each one of us wants to be a type of leader and have our followers, employees be able to apply some of these theories to us so we can realize just how a class about “leadership” has impacted our leadership abilities.  Looking just at the seven major leadership theories we talked about on our midterm I can say “ oh I want  path/ goal theory to represent the way I will be interacting with my followers,” but after being in this class now half of the semester, one thing I have learned is that’s not how these theories work. Yes some of them you can try to consciously implement in the way you lead your followers but mostly many of the leadership theories come subconsciously to leaders without them even realizing they are doing it. One entity I can say I have taken away from the movie, Mona Lisa Smile is just that, seeing that leadership theories come subconsciously and sometimes, its moments in our life that bring them out. Like many characters in the movie, many of them didn’t see themselves as leaders except, maybe Betty but because of periods in their life they became leaders all in their own ways.

My Explanation on Theory

While doing my midterm I realized just how many different leadership theories there are.  After watching Mona Lisa Smile, I understood in a better way these theories and how in a way there can be a leader in each person, depending on the situation. In my midterm I tried to use all the different characters from the movie because they all amazed me, when I saw a different leader theory in each one of them. Not only did I see different leadership theories in each situation through the movie and each character developing leadership skills as the movie continued but also received a better understanding of how each theory impacts a person.  During the class when Professor Sipe  tried to explain theories like transformational leadership or leader/ member exchange theory on the bored I would be a little confused and had to go over the material a few times to understand it. With this midterm on the other hand, through movies, something I believe is the easiest way for our generation to understand things, was a perfect way to have a midterm. Without characters like Joan or Connie,  I would have never understood the theories as well as I did if not for the movie showing me visual examples that can occur in real life. My thinking of leadership theory has evolved a great deal since the beginning of the class. When I first found out that this class was going to be on leadership theories, I thought “how can they make a semester about something like leadership theories when it can be summed up in one class session.” Now I feel like I didn’t know a thing about leadership theories or how deeply they impact the way a person can grow as a leader, and by understanding these theories more profoundly, I see a person can understand themselves in a whole new way, not just as a leader.After learning more about leadership theories, I have learned just how many different theories there are.  For example just for the midterm we used seven different theories; Trait based theories, skills and competencies theories, situational leadership, transformational leadership, behavior based theory, leader /member exchange theory, path/goal theory and there are hundreds of more we haven’t even touched on.

My Midterm