Leadership and Human Needs

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As Captain Towns makes his way to find James Liddle, he comes across the book The Happy Isles of Ocenia that was blown out of their plane during the crash landing. The book is an auto-biographical story about a man who tries to get lost in a journey in hopes of self –discovery and it is not a coincidence that the director put that book in the shot. The groups of stranded passengers are lost in the desert and are on a voyage of self-discovery to see how long and how far they can go in order to survive. When Towns and Liddle meet they discuss both of their perceptions about rebuilding the plane and keeping hope alive within the group. Liddle says to Captain to Towns that most people need at least one of these three things in order to survive: “someone to love, something to hope for, and something to do.” Liddle pleads with Captain Towns that if he no longer believes in hope than he (and the rest of the group) should focus on something to do, like rebuilding their plane. The first need for survival is someone or something to love. My perspective on this need for survival and how it relates to leadership is when a leader prioritizes relationships with their employees and colleagues. According to the text, Fiedler’s Contingency Theory asserts that “leaders are either task oriented or relationship oriented” depending upon the leaders primary need for gratification (Nelson & Quick, 2013). Relationship oriented leaders feel the need to develop “comfortable interpersonal relationships” (Nelson & Quick, 2013). The authors, Nelson and Quick describe that relationship oriented leader’s do well in situations of intermediate favorableness by determining the “degree of fit between the leader and the situation” (Nelson & Quick, 2013). Relations... ... middle of paper ... ...ram, I have also learned that it takes a combination of leadership styles and taking scenarios case by case to perform as an effective leader. My preferences would be a combination of transformational and transactional leadership. Since I work in processing, the transactional part of my leadership will have to be there, but I would strive to add leading with integrity, a shared vision, and being humble among staff members. I hold myself accountable just as I would with other team members. I understand that this approach will not always work, because situations will change and call for different types of leadership, but for the most part a combination of transactional and transformational leadership would be the most effective in the majority of situations at work. References Nelson, D. & Quick, J. (2013). ORGB3 (Student Ed). Mason, OH: South-Western Publishers.

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