Leadership concepts and applications

Leadership is defined as the procedures that individuals use as authority over others to achieve an objective. The action also provides direction in a manner that makes an organization more coherent and cohesive.

Three-Skill Approach

This approach refers to three skills including human, technical, and conceptual, which form the fundamental personal skills required in leadership. Technical skills involve proficiency in and knowledge about some defined activities or work. It includes analytical ability, competence in a specialized area and the ability to use required techniques and tools. The skills play an integral role in the production of the intended products and services. Human skills are related to the ability to work with things and other people. These are commonly referred to as people skills that allow leaders to work effectively with peers, subordinates, and superiors. A leader who has expertise in interacting with others will determine the successful completion of tasks. Conceptual skills refer to the ability to give strategic direction, motivate followers, and create a vision to pursue the goals of an organization.

Team Management

Team management can be defined as the processes, techniques and tools used to organize and coordinate a team of individuals working towards a shared goal.

Situational Leadership

Situational Leadership is the fundamental concept that there is no single best style of leadership. According to this theory, the successive leaders must adapt their leadership style to maturity and leadership must be task-relevant of the group or individual.

LPC Scale

Least preferred co-worker (LPC) scale refers to a tool used to measure a person's leadership orientation. This scale requires that a leader think of all the persons they have worked with and then describe the individual, with whom they worked least well with, using a scale of bipolar objective rating from 1 to 8. A high PLC score indicates that a leader owns human relations orientation while the reverse indicates the leader has task orientation. This scale was designed to identify whether the leadership style of an individual is task orientated or relationship oriented.

Achievement-Oriented Leadership

Achievement-Oriented Leadership is defined as the management style that assists in training, sets challenging goals, expects the highest performance level, and emphasizes improvement.

In-Group vs. Out-Group

In-Group refers to majority team members. It involves a team of individuals feeling that they are good and different from others whom they are prejudiced against. Individuals in the in-group believe in stereotypes that make them sustain certain socialism. They also have a tendency of discriminating other, whom they feel are different from them. Our-group simply refers to people in the minority team. This group is perceived as abnormal and different. In most cases, members of this group are stereotyped by the in-group thus becoming main victims of discrimination and socialism.

Dyadic Relationship

Dyadic relationship refers to a situation where two people are in a relationship: both are able to influence one another. This creates set roles in the relationship, which forms the glue that lets the relationship stick. The emotional relationship can be family, romantic, or coworkers. When the connection is stronger, the impact of influence on others is big.

Transactional vs. Transformational Leadership

Transactional leadership style seeks to maintain the normal flow of work. Leaders using this style tend to engage disciplinary power and incentives to motivate workers to give their best performance. The leader exchanges reward for performance. A transformational leadership style exceeds the management of normal work operations and design strategies to take the company, work team, or department to the next level of success or performance. This leadership style concentrates on motivation, team building, and collaboration with subordinates at different organizational levels to achieve change for the better.

Authentic Leadership

Authentic Leadership is a leadership approach, which insists on establishing the legitimacy of a leader through honest relationships with subordinates, valuing their inputs, and based on ethical foundation.

Systems Thinking (the "Fifth Discipline)

System thinking is the fifth principle that integrates all the four. The integration of these principles is an integral for an organization to unearth shortcomings in its strategies.

Personal Mastery

This discipline focuses on continual clarification and deepening of personal vision, developing patience, thinking objectively and focusing energies.

Mental Models

Mental Models are described as the deeply rooted assumptions, pictures of the images and generalizations, which influence how people understand the world and how they act.

Shared Vision

Shared Vision is a portion of unearthing shared assumptions, generalizations, and pictures of the future that fosters genuine enrollment and commitment than compliance.

Team Learning

Team Learning is the capacity of group members to suspend assumptions by entering into a shared, genuine thinking collectively. It also involves learning how to identify trends of interaction in groups that undermine learning. If these trends are not identified, they can potentially undermine learning in teams, but if they are recognized, they are likely to accelerate learning.

Sarbanes-Oxley

Sarbanes-Oxley refers to a U.S. federal law, which set enhanced, or new standards for all public accounting firms and management boards of public companies. Sarbanes-Oxley requires that top managers certify the accuracy of financial data. The law stipulates severe penalties for fraudulent financial activities. This bill emerged in response to various accounting and corporate scandals such as those affecting Tyco International, Enron, Adelphia and WorldCom.

Worldview

This refers to the basic cognitive orientation of a society or a person comprising of the entirety of the society's or individual's point-of-view and knowledge. A worldview might encompass natural philosophy, values, themes, ethics, and emotions.

HR-Minded Leadership

HR-Minded Leadership is the appropriate awareness of others. It limits highly thinking of self and blending with respect for others that avoid thinking little about others. This approach allows leaders to evaluate their achievements realistically while continuing the pursuit of developing the human element of the organization.

Are leaders born or made?

The issue of whether leaders are born or whether they are transformed into leaders by external factors has continued to rage for decades. This section contends that leaders are made, not born. It costs hard effort to produce a leader, which all people must pay to achieve any worthwhile goal. An effective leader must have both innate talents and the learned skills that come with training, education, and experience. Such a natural balances generate challenges about understanding the definition of an effective leader. Proper leaders can be crafted through appropriate training measures into exceptional and effective leaders. Leadership is present in a range of fields including religion, war, culture, business, technology, politics, education, and sports. Leadership is composed of all manner of practices such as influential, authoritative, intellectual, moral, strong, passive, hands-on, energetic, and weak. It is manifested across different levels of institutions and organizations. It is contemporary, unchanging, historic, and dynamic. It is difficult to conclude whether leaders are born or made through learning because leadership entails all these elements. Therefore, the answer lies between the extremes of knowledge and nature.