The Core of Thought Leadership: Chapter 1 - Introduction to the Leadership Critique

Leadership Critique

Even though leadership is a complex subject, action of leadership comes from the qualities of the leader. A personality comprises of various characteristics as the unique way every individual adjusts to their environment through psychological systems. Let’s look at a study of change management where a leader requires to deliver within a group to take into consideration the action of change. Change is constant and a change initiative would be an excellent way to critically analyse leadership styles. Incremental improvements would be lost very quickly with a large group of people to implement change within a business. An authentic leader would set up a staff development session to manage change initiatives with the following key steps:

Setting a result or goal

Communicating the vision, mission and values related to the result

Preparing a charter to execute change

Involve all levels of an organisation towards the change initiative

Identify change agents at every level of the organisation

Equip key staff and change agents to drive followers towards development

Set a culture for change with processes, systems, soft skills and technical skills

Communicate this change to every layer of the organisation with transparency

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Transactional & Transformational Leadership:

To be able to implement leadership for change management, leadership needs to move from Transactional Leadership to Transformational Leadership. Below are the parameters as a critical analysis that define the two leadership styles as noted by Jogulu (2010).

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Noted by Andrews (2015) - Transformational leadership is in which leadership requires to identify the needed change, create a vision through inspiration for guidance, and executing the change in tandem with all layers of the organisation. A leader facilitates individual growth and the growth of a business by achieving the following:

???????demonstrates a zeal for their purpose

???????practices their values consistently

???????leads with head and heart

???????establishes long-term relationships

???????practices self-discipline to get results

???????displays courage to do what’s right (not what’s easy)

???????leads by example

???????is consistently inspirational, motivational, and personal

???????is audacious by setting direction and driving the vision

???????changes mind-sets and thinks differently to move the needle

???????leads by example and walks the talk

???????constantly innovates, energizes, and influences self and teams

???????listens, invests, and develops people as the future of a business while making the right choices

???????mentors and encourages teams to deliver great things

???????empowers people and gives them creative freedom

???????inspires and shapes the behaviour of others

Transactional leadership advocates an autocratic approach whereas Transformational Leadership advocates a democratic approach. Businesses have become truly global with a click of a button competition can be accessed to give the same products, across the globe. What makes a business different overall? Earlier, before 2010, stakeholders used to ask: Is the product usable; desirable and does it meet needs? Today, post 2010, stakeholders ask: Is the company easy to deal with, enjoyable to be with and finally does it meet needs? To make a business easy to deal with and enjoyable to be with require people within the business to carry those beliefs that are transferred to stakeholders subtly. This boils down to the culture of a business from its leadership that set standards for the business.

If a business is only concerned with a one-time transaction, then that business would be far behind the rest and will be unsustainable as also advocated within Transformational Leadership. However; if a business is interested in sustainability and development then nurturing relationships of stakeholders is increasingly important as within Transformational Leadership. To bring about this change, a transformational leader applies feedback to all members of the business. Though how does a transformational leader tell a subordinate or superior that they are doing something unwanted? As noted by Gallagher (2007) The following is a strength based feedback called the CANDID approach:

Compartmentalise the message into its neutral and emotional components

Ask assessment questions based on the other person’s response

Normalise the situation

Discuss the details factually and neutrally

Incentivize the outcome

De-emphasise the encounter and move on

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When supplying feedback, one should not develop an argument based on the emotional component rather should develop an argument based on the situation and neutral component of the message.

An authentic transformational leader can be explained through the various constructs that make a leader. “Such as; by the outcomes of struggles that can be described by my own transformational story that explains my psychological system that adjusts uniquely to the environment as an authentic transformational leader, by a natural process like kings and queens of nations who are born into a leadership position within an environment that demands it, by finding a cause such as Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela whose cause was to fight for freedom which made them authentic transformational leaders, by learning from experiences when appointed as head of department, manager or supervisor who learns through training and learning from ones mistakes on role.” (Shamir & Eilam, 2005)?

These methods of acquiring a leadership position denote a specific environment in which a leader requires to adjust for their purpose and for the belief in their individual identity derived by asking the questions “Who am I?” and “What is my purpose?” (Shamir & Eilam, 2005)?

Further to this, the levels of leadership are “level 1 of good working habits and a keen ability to implement ones’ knowledge. Level 2 of contributions towards a team with knowledgeability. Level 3 of organizing resources including people with competence. Level 4 of being responsible to encourage high performance with a clear vision towards this. Level 5 of high integrity with humility of oneself blended with a strong will towards performance. Here, every level of leadership gets stronger and encompasses the previous level/s.” (Collins, 2005) However; critical analysis on Authentic Transformational Leadership may not support all levels mentioned above because when compared to the formation of an authentic leader as described by Shamir and Eilam (2005), as mentioned earlier, would point directly at a level 5 and may even be a level 4 with the potential of becoming a level 5 leader.??

The core of leadership depends on the construct of the leader which includes their way of adjusting to the environment through their unique psychological system that derive values that lead to underlying principles for a change initiative.?

Endorsing this view, the psychological system consists of a leaders’ thoughts, emotions and behaviour that I believe can be changed favourably for successful leadership.

An important part of a change management is that a leader has the capacity and responsibility to stabilize that change briefly noted by Allio (2009). Much like a car that travels at 100 km/hour with the use of an accelerator – when the foot is removed from the accelerator then the car still travels at a good speed for a period of time before it starts slowing down again as an indication to step of the accelerator again. Similarly, in a business – consider the accelerator as leadership and the speed as the momentum of change. To stabilize change, one needs to nurture the business engine – the people. Therefore, stabilization is the act of considering the risk of burn out. Which means that the business can pick up to original speed again when it slows down with a revisit to the requirements of a business to implement change as mentioned above.

According to Allio (2009) - it is vital to note that to execute change, a leader with low or high character and ability would result to the following:

Low character & high ability are Scoundrels

Low character & low ability are Imposters

High character & low ability are Fools

High character & high ability are Leaders

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People have low character and low ability due to succumbing to self-entitlement- as self-serving deciders. Weakness of will to do the right things. Seduced by power and a growing sense of certitude with it. Become isolated and then lose their way when their plans fail.

In essence, collaboration and teamwork is imperative to business survival and an authentic transformational leader drives this. Just as the Pygmalion Effect states that if a leader sets high expectations of their followers then their followers rise to the occasion and meet those expectations as described by Livingston (2003). This is the driving force of change within Transformational Leadership.

Conclusion:

These theories indicate a strong tie-in to my formation as a leader, putting theory and concepts to running practices as a leader. This is an eye opener to recognising myself as the “authentic leader” (Shamir & Eilam, 2005). However, moving from “level 4 to level 5 of leadership” (Collins, 2005) requires practices to be refined for the future within my Personal and Professional Development Plan. My progressive step will be to give the brand of the business more weight than that given to the partners of the business as per my personal and professional development plan. The brand consists of the people in it and the products/services that underlay leadership successes. I find these theories and concepts interesting to my work as identifiably relevant to my practice and personality.

Finally, I arrived at my Personal and Professional Development Plan when I studied my transformational story that described changes in my attitude. The three elements of attitude are thoughts, emotions and behaviour. These changes illustrate Bass, B. & P?Steidlmeier, (1999) on the key qualities of a leader for transformational leadership; that are “to connect with family, friends and communities whose?welfare?may be more important to one’s own, to encourage questioning and creativity. to be morally uplifting, to?believe in universal brotherhood and not ‘we-them’ thinkers and to have an open architecture?for inputs and evaluations”

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The opposite of what is mentioned above forms Pseudo Transformational Leaders in which key qualities of a leader are “to be inauthentic, as tyrants of history, with a villainous approach, seeking power and position by overweighting authority and underweighting reason”

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The obstacle I anticipate in achieving my goals would be within the natures of leadership which are dynamic, collective, situated and dialectical as described by Yukl (2001). The way I will mitigate these are negotiating within “demands, constraints and choices” (Yukl, 2001) and these will influence my Personal and Professional Development Plan with a periodic revisit.

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References:

·??????Allio, R., (2009) 'Leadership - The Five Big Ideas', Strategy & Leadership, 37 (2) pp.4-12

·??????Andrews, A., (2015) ‘Frontline Leadership’, Beyond Frontline Excellence, (4) pp.34-44

·???????Bass, B. & P. Steidlmeier, (1999) 'Ethics, Character, and Authentic Transformational Leadership Behavior',?The Leadership Quarterly, 10 (2) pp.181-217?

·??????Brown, M. & M. Mitchell, (2010) 'Ethical and Unethical Leadership: Exploring New Avenues for Future Research', Business Ethics Quarterly, 20 (4) pp. 583-616

·??????Collins, J., (2005) 'Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve', Harvard Business Review, 83 (7-8) pp.136-146.???

·??????Gallagher, R., (2007) ‘How to Give Strength-Based Feedback’, How to Tell Anyone Anything

·??????Livingston, J., (2003) 'Pygmalion in Management', Harvard Business Review, 81 (1), pp. 97-106.

·??????Shamir, B. & G. Eilam, (2005) 'What's Your Story? A Life-Stories Approach to Authentic Leadership Development', The Leadership Quarterly, 16 (3) pp.395-417???????

·??????Uma D. Jogulu, (2010), ’Culturally-linked leadership styles’, Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 31 Iss: 8 pp. 705 – 719

·??????Yukl, G., (2001), 'The Nature of Managerial Work' Leadership in Organizations, 5th ed., Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. (2) pp.21-46

Now you are aware!

This is Nicky's Nutshell!