| Apr. 21st, 2005 @ 08:58 pm Another day of homework... |
|---|
Well, I guess it is time for another installment of Craig’s school work. I know, you may think it is boring, but hey it’s a journal! All I do all day every day is homework. So that’s what you all get. If you don’t like it, you can always take me off your friends list :P. This post is for my management class. It is a short synopsis of my infinite wisdom on leadership. Roflao Enjoy….note: this may take more than one post and it is all quoted material from my homework; however, I will not be adding quotation marks at the beginning or the end. It is my work :P and I am to lazy to do it, you all know its quoted so :P.
Anthony Jay once stated, “The only real training for leadership is leadership.” This is so true, and is a fundamental issue in this week’s discussion on leadership. We are all here taking this management class in the hopes of learning about how to be an effective manager and leader, not only in our workplace, but in our lives. However, this class alone or even a degree in management will not make us effective leaders. You can memorize and study as many definitions of leadership, theories of leadership, and case studies as you like, but without a proper frame of reference it will do you little good. My entire life, to include 5 years in the military has taught me this.
How is merely 5 years of work experience enough to spout such blasphemy? Do I proclaim to be an expert on leadership? No. Do I have any scientific studies to back up my swank claims? No. I simply have a limited experience and observations of what I have seen that works and does not work.
I was able to observe and discuss management with many enlisted and officer soldiers, even in just my brief time in the military. I saw officers that could lead, ones that couldn’t. I saw sergeants that could lead, and one’s that couldn’t. I even saw airman that could or could not lead. One could easily tell the officers, fresh from Officer Training School (OTS), who had no previous management and leadership experience. Getting to know these officers would quickly show the obvious, they had graduated college and joined the military without much prior work experience. What work experience they had, never seem to include being responsible for people or directing people. Aside from a lack of experience, these officers had one other thing in common. They couldn’t lead a flight, small group, of “Lego” men if their lives depended on it. If it wasn’t for senior NCO’s, who often act as mentors, during this precarious time in a young officer’s career, I do not think many of them would make it. What is it about leadership, which prevents inexperienced people, such as young officers in the military, from excelling at it?
“Leadership is the ability to influence people to willingly follow one’s guidance or adhere to one’s decisions (Rue and Byars 289). There is no set of rules that can teach this, nor is there any magical formula which allows one to properly influence people to follow them. “Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions,” according to Harold Geneen. For it is the two words, influence and follow, which makes up the heart of what leadership is. People are individuals, and no two are influenced for the same reason, nor do they follow a person for the same reason. This is because human motivation is complex, dynamic, ever-changing, and unique.
Perhaps the most used theory of motivation, in management and leadership classes, is that of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Jess and Gregory Feist had this to say about Maslow’s view of motivation:
“First, Maslow (1970) adopted a holistic approach to motivation, repeatedly pointing out that the whole person, not any single part or function, is motivated. Secondly, motivation is usually complex, meaning that a person’s behavior may spring from several separate motives.” (497)
Many other psychologists’s such as Bandura and Skinner have different views on human motivation. “Although people are basically goal oriented, Bandura believes that they have specific rather than general intentions and purposes” (J. & G. Feist 327). To Skinner, motivation is merely a result of outside influences. People “…may seem to be motivated by inner causes, but in reality those causes can be traced to sources outside the individual” (J. & G. Feist 295). In fact, J. and G. Feist’s book, “Theories of Personality,” discusses the theories of 18 different psychologists, and no two theories have the exact same view of human motivation. The fact is that none of these theories are completely right or completely wrong. The genius of the human condition is our uniqueness, and no one theory will ever be able to account for all of the variables of this one small fact.
It is in this epiphany of human uniqueness, which we find the answer to why experience is so important to leadership. We are not born with the innate ability to read and interpret other’s motivations, nor are these things we can master through reading a text book. Instead, it is something that must be mastered through the trial and error of human experience. Leadership is situational based upon current conditions, criteria, and the influence of those on any given individual’s motivation at any given time. This is why it is so important to use all three leadership styles, autocratic, laissez-faire, or democratic, depending upon the situation a leader finds himself in. In fact, we must not even be limited by these three approaches. The only way to truly learn what approach is the best for any given situation is through experience. From experiencing what works and doesn’t in different situations, we as humans develop a schema. These schemas assist us in making future discussions based upon previous situations.
Another aspect of becoming a proficient leader, aside from learning to understand others and having experience, is learning to understand one’s self. Our own view of motivation, which depicts how we influence and follow others, will cause us to feel more comfortable with a certain style of leadership. Boxing ourselves in to such a mindset is disastrous and prevents us from being effective.
The article “A Janitor’s 10 Lessons in Leadership” and “Collin Powell’s Rules,” could be used by some to box themselves into a limited ability to lead. While both articles provide very good information, none of the rules should be considered as having no exceptions. There are always exceptions to every rule in leadership. For example, one of the rules from “A Janitor’s 10 Lessons in Leadership,” is “6. Leaders Should be Humble” (Moschgat). While this is a great ideological outlook of leadership, it is not realistic. Some people are influenced leaders who are not humble. Someone may see a humble leader as weak and refuse to follow that person. To mention a person, which will stir up a lot of controversy, Hitler was not humble. He was evil, cruel, and did horrible things. However, he was an effective leader. Leadership in itself is not ideological. It is not good, nor is it evil. Being an effective leader has nothing to do with the morality of how it is used. That being said, I believe the three rules which most closely follow the premise of encouraging effective leadership are:
1. One must understand the motivation behind others and themselves: not knowing what will influence and cause people to follow at any given time will prevent one from being an effective leader.
2. Leadership is situational: Being inflexible and following one theory of leadership sets a leader onto a fixed course of destruction; only through flexibility can a leader be effective in any given situation.
3. Experience is the only true teacher of leadership: without the development of schemas, one can not predict which action will result in the most beneficial outcome with any certainty.
While this is a management class, one can not manage effectively without first being a leader. “Management is the process of planning, organizing, staffing, motivating, and controlling through the use of formal authority” (Rue & Byars 289). However, this can not be accomplished without first being able to influence others and getting them to follow you. Formal authority is merely a title, words on a piece of paper, no different than the theories of leadership written in our text and discussed in those papers. Without the application of leadership those words will provide naught in the way of results. “The only real training for [managing] is leadership” (Jay).
Works Cited
Feist, Jess and Feist, Gregory. “Theories of Personality.” 5th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002.
Moschgat, James. “A Janitor’s 10 Lessons in Leadership.” 21 Apr. 2005 <http://parkonline.org/ec/courses/13850/crs-mg352d-2161423/leadership_(what_a_janitor_taught_me).doc>.
Rue, Leslie and Lloyd Byars. “Management: Skills and Application.” 11th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005.
“The Quotations Page.” 2005. 21 Apr. 2005 <http://www.quotationspage.com/>. |
|  |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
saintpain's journal
blank
accomplished
aggravated
bored