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

Something to think about?Transform the way you look at technology

Transformational Leadership in Action

James MacGregor Burns

James MacGregor Burns  was born in 1918 and is  an award-winning writer, a Pulitzer Prize winner and biographer who specializes in the study of leadership. He was the one to embark on a more philosophical approach to understanding and describing leadership, and coined the theory of "transformational leadership" – leadership that delivers true value, integrity, and trust. Burns showed a way to a general theory of leadership. He is best known for his contributions to the transformational, aspirational, and visionary schools of leadership theory. Burn’s Key novelty in leadership theory was shifting from the study of traits in a great leader and transactional management, to focus on the interactions of leaders and those they lead, as collaborators working toward a mutual benefit.

Blanchard Situational Leadership

Situational Leadership theory has many parts to show the different approaches a leader-follower situation has like Directive telling, coaching/selling, participating, and delegating. Looking at all these different approaches, I feel that my manager at the job I have now is very strong in the directive telling approach. She always says that she is up for any opinions and outside input when it comes to solving problems but at the end I always feel like she uses a directive telling approach when she needs something done. Many times she doesn’t even realize that this is the way she handles the situation with me but I believe it’s a natural way for her to distribute tasks to be done without really forming a type of relationship. I think for me as the receiver it hurts my feelings at times because as a boss she isn’t willing to listen to peoples feeling or opinions she is just in her own world where she needs this main task done so she directly tells you, the follower to complete it. On the other hand my assistant manager is very different in her approach. Even though she too assigns tasks to be done, the way she approaches it is , by a delegating way. When she asks you to complete a task, you can always feel that she asks you not commands for the task to be completed. I feel the assistant manager tries to form less task oriented relationships with her followers and more relationship oriented ones.

Contingency Theory Vs. Situational Leadership

The contingency Theory is when a leadership role is divided in two different orientations. There is a task orientation and relationship orientation. Task orientation is when a leader doesn’t really form a relationship with their followers but just has an assign, obey relationship. The leader assigns a task in a directive way and expects it to be completed by the follower without really forming a relationship with them beforehand. Also relationship based is when leaders and followers develop relationships based on social exchanges. Leader has to decide what to share with the follower because of time and resources limited on dyadic relationship. For example when I was seventeen, I worked in Forever 21 and my boss liked to have a tasked oriented relationship with her employees. Half of the time I worked there, she couldn’t even remember my name and referred to me as “you girl” when she needed to assign a task.  Fiedler’s situational leadership took the contingency theory into more depth by explaining more about the different parts of relationship orientation and task orientation like Directive telling approach, coaching/selling approach, participating and delegating. The coaching/selling approach and participating is part of the relationship orientation and the directive telling and delegating approach is part of the task orientation. When I used to work in a catering company my boss always knew if he wanted me to help him achieve a goal he would use the selling approach because I am a big believer in  “you have to give something to get something in return.” 

Task oriented or Relationship Oriented?

Task-oriented leaders focus only on getting the job done. In my opinion, these types of leaders are very introverted. They most of the time are anti-social and hard to be around. I, myself have had both types of leaders already in my life. I found that even though task oriented leaders are hard to get along with and to understand them, the end results are always positive because they make sure their followers reach their goal. Some of the negative aspects of a task oriented leader are communication skills. A task oriented leader doesn’t always realize how they come off to their followers because they are always so worried about achieving the goal, making the relationship between them and their followers a difficult one.  I prefer a relationship oriented leader, because in my opinion, relationship oriented leaders care about their followers and how they come off to the people around them. For example if you are working for a manager who is task oriented, most likely that person will be very standoffish and some might even perceive them as rude, making their followers less enthused when it comes to achieve the goal set. On the other hand a relationship oriented leader will have communication skills and learn how to communicate properly with their workers/followers making them enjoy the environment they are in while working on achieving their goal. 

Saving Private Ryan Leadership discussion

The movie Saving Private Ryan in my opinion is the definition of leadership. In this movie I think I have never seen a better hero as well as leader in a time of crises then Tom Hank’s character. Throughout the movie His character illustrates many great leadership behaviors but one that can be identified all throughout the movie is Leader member exchange theory. Looking at his character through the LMX phases, Tom Hank’s character hits all the steps. At first the soldiers and he are strangers trying to find a common bond (saving Private Ryan). As the movie continues Tom Hanks and the soldiers go to  acquaintances and towards the end, the group forms a partnership between themselves as well as Tom Hanks because of his amazing leadership skills, that teach the soldiers that together they can accomplish anything. 

What is the difference between, me and 

other classmates?

Looking at other classmates’ blogs and reviewing my own blog, I have realized that many others views are similar to mine as well as different in some ways. Some classmates see leadership as “one who has followers” a person who takes charge and takes matter into their own hands to make things happen, change the way people think. After reviewing my own blog, I realized that my view of leadership is a bit different. When I think of a leader, it’s not a person who has followers and tells them how to accomplish their goals but a person who helps their followers achieve a goal, while putting their needs before their own.  In some blogs I did see similar theories of leadership as my own. One classmate wrote a line that really stuck with me “A leader that can keep their team in high spirits even through the good and bad is something very admirable.” This is a great definition of what I see when I think of the word leadership. I love the diversity of our class. And reading these blogs, it shows me that even though we have different vision for the word leadership, everyone’s own  theory makes  a better  understanding of leadership then when class started. 

My Strongest Archetype?

 Ruler?

The Ruler's quest is to create order and structure and hence an effective society in which the subjects of the Ruler can live productive and relatively happy lives. This is not necessarily an easy task, as order and chaos are not far apart, and the Ruler has to commit themself fully to the task. The buck stops with them and they must thus be wholly responsible -- for which they need ultimate authority.

My Opinion. 

When I received the results of my PMI test, I actually was shocked how accurate it was. I do most of the time feel as a ruler. I feel in my own definition as a ruler; one takes charge of a situation , a person others can come to for advice. One who can come up with a solution when others are lost. In my everyday life I use a lot of the description in the ruler category. Situations for example with friends, I am always the person they come to when they have relationship problems or stress at work. Also my family, I'm always the planner of events like birthdays, family outing or the person whose advise it considered when there is a problem.

My Archetypes

Ruler - 30
You step up to the plate to take control when things are in disarray. Like the good king, queen, president, boss, or parent, you reign for the good of those who follow you, so that your highly developed sense of responsibility and order benefit everyone. You know that healthy social systems do not just happen. Someone needs to shoulder the responsibility to create them. You are not only willing to be that person, you also recruit others and groom or coach them, knowing that the more you are willing to claim your own power, the better you are at empowering others.

Jester - 25
You are happy, playful, funny, and fun to be around. In fact, you bring out the joy in life for everyone around you, showing others how to "be here now," to be playful and inventive, to enjoy the gift of living, even in stressful or difficult times. When everyone else is going crazy with fear and anxiety about how much change is going on in the world, instead of feeling anxious, you experience a rush of excitement. Instead of getting white-knuckled, you cry "Whee!" Like court Jesters and wise fools everywhere, you have a deep wisdom and use humor to say things with impunity that others might not want to hear. Implicitly politically incorrect, you are irreverent and apparently unconcerned with what others think, but really know how to share what you think in ways that provoke laughter, not outrage. In fact, you find nothing more satisfying than making others laugh.
 
Warrior - 24
You model or try to show what it means to have real courage and determination, the kind that allows a hero to face the most fierce antagonist or challenge with skill and determination. You also may have, or desire to have, the fortitude to stand up for your ideals, yourself, or others, and do whatever it takes to succeed, regardless of how scared or tired you may be. You have a code of honor that requires a high level of discipline and a strong sense of pride, so that you feel humiliated if you lose or show cowardice. You enjoy competing and/or spearheading a crusade. You are at your best when you are on a mission.

Seeker - 24
You are wonderfully adventurous, independent, and self sufficient. You refuse to live a cookie-cutter life, always seeking out new experiences, testing the limits of what is possible. Avoiding conformity, you search for your true identity and struggle to fulfill your true potential. Ambitious by nature, but not conventional, you may aspire to climb a mountain or the ladder of success, or to achieve enlightenment. Whatever your goals, you seek to improve yourself, every day becoming more you.

Quotes for inspiration

"People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives." - Theodore Roosevelt, 


"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
Martin Luther King, Jr.


A leader who doesn't hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader. 
Golda Meir 


A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality. 
Winston Churchill 

Leadership Trait based Theory

Pros and Cons of Trait based Theory:

Pros: Some people are born with certain characteristics that gives them an advantage in leadership situations , but I don’t believe there are leadership traits people are born with. If people could be born with leadership traits then I believe we would have baby geniuses. Unfortunately we don’t have that, so in my opinion all people are born equally with a blank slate and develop certain traits, because leadership traits are not like physical characteristics a child is born with like blue eyes, or blond hair.

Cons: I, myself am against leadership trait based theory because I believe certain leadership traits are developed as people grow up. To say a person is born with leadership traits is the same thing as saying a person is born knowing how to ride a bike.

Leadership traits are developed my shadowing a parental figure in our lives, communicating with others, or being put in certain situations.

Like in The Harvard Business Review Article, “Seven Transformations of Leadership “by David Rooke and William R. Torbert. They have different types of leadership  like “the Opportunist” which is a person wants to win anyway possible, or “The Diplomat” which is one who wants to avoid conflict and agree with everyone. These different types of leaders are an exact example of learned leadership traits that are developed trough one’s lifetime.

My Amazing Leaders

These are my three most influential leaders. I believe these leaders were the definition of  great leaders in disguise. They were everyday ordinary people who achieved the extraordinary in history.

Three Important Traits in A Leader

DECISIVENESS

Decisiveness is the ability to make solid decisions quickly. Leaders who Are decisiveness can make decisions faster when it comes to hard situations also when leaders have a strong decisiveness trait they show that they are confident in their decisions .

INTEGRITY

Integrity is essentially honesty, which is crucial to being able to lead people effectively. Leaders who deceive their followers and  misguide them will lose the faith of their followers along the way so to achieve the ending Goal, a leader must always have integrity .

KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge is another important component of good leadership. You must have the experience, training and information necessary to be a good leader. You must know about your goal ahead of time to know how to strategize to achieve your goal. A good leader is knowledgeable  about his target.

What Leadership Means to Me.

Leadership Is a quality every person has within them, but it depend on the situations  that people go through in life that provides opportunities for people to put their skills to the test. People  like Martin Luther  king, Gandhi  or Winston Churchill wouldn’t have been an  inspiration to us in history if it wasn’t for the situations they were put in. I believe that those people wouldn’t  have had  the chance to show the world their incredible leadership skills if events like World War II, Civil Rights Movement, and the Independence movement in India. Also Great leaders are built from their followers, because without followers there is nobody to lead.  On the other hand some people are born with certain skills that put them ahead of others for the leadership position. Some people do  develop characteristics like communications skills, creativity skills or confidence of organization skills a lot faster than others, that doesn’t  mean they are born with them.  No one is born with leadership skills they are just better developed through situations in life. Leadership is not a science. So being a leader is an adventure because you can never be sure whether you will reach your goal.