1. According to Kouzes and Posner’s research, what four characteristics do people most look for and admire in a leader, someone whose direction they would willingly follow? Briefly describe each characteristic.
Answer: According to Kouzes and Posner people most admire a leader that is, “Honest Forward-looking, Competent, Inspiring” (Kouzes & Posner, 2012, p.33). A leader that is honest is holding to the truth, guiding their people through honest feedback, reviews and advice. These leaders gain trust, respect and cooperation by sharing honest information with all. People want to know that their leaders are looking for future opportunities that will guide the company and drive success for all. Competence breads both respect and confidence. A
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What are common obstacles to inspiring a Shared Vision? Which kinds of obstacles are valid and which can be overcome? Give examples.
Answer: “Visions seen only by the leader” (Kouzes & Posner, 2013, p.100). This is a very common obstacle that is both valid and can be overcome. It’s valid because leadership drives vision and purpose. If the leader has not expressed a vision that all can understand or support, the organization will not be successful. This obstacle can be overcome by other leaders within the unit having the courage to identify this failure and address it.
5. What makes the challenge meaningful for those who push their own limits to get extraordinary things done, who risk their security to change the social condition or risk their lives to save others or defend liberty? In general, what makes something new and innovative worthwhile
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Small wins can help strengthen resolve by generating excitement. These small success may be the stepping stones to accomplishment. When taking risks or proposing something new and innovative, failure and setbacks can be discouraging. Kouzes and Posner point out that, “One way of dealing with the potential failures of experimentation is by constantly generating small wins and learning from experience” (Kouzes & Posner, 2013, p.20).
8. How can leaders create a climate of trust and facilitate relationships among people in a work team? What can leaders do to show others that they are trustworthy? What can they do to demonstrate that they trust others?
Answer: A very important aspect of leadership that will build trust is leading by example. Leading by example is what Kouzes and Posner call, “modeling the way” (Kouzes & Posner, 2012). Leaders that inspire others through example know that their team is watching their every move. They are watching to see how motivated the leader is, how committed to the process they are and how truthful they are even when lying would be easier. These leaders build strong teams by always setting the example.
9. What is the most meaningful recognition you have ever received? Be specific about the way in which you were recognized. What made this recognition
Lastly, the key to successful leadership is getting all of one’s followers on their side. In order to achieve this, leaders must gain all their followers trust. Bennis outlines four key elements to gain this trust. Primarily, constancy must be enforced. Leaders must stay the course. Second, congruity is essential. This is so the leaders can “walk the talk.” Third, reliability is needed so that leaders are present when it matters most. Lastly, leaders honor their commitments through integrity. All of these important, aspects gain the trust of their followers by their side.
An effective leader is a person who is capable of making others follow him. A person who leads people becomes a leader. The quality of life of followers depends upon the quality of leader they have, so, it becomes important for a leader to be effective. Leaders possess certain traits that can be defined as relatively coherent and integrated patterns of personal characteristics, reflecting a range of individual differe...
Having and transmitting a successful "shared vision" requires true "buy-in" on the part of the employees and the organization as a whole, and must foster genuine commitment and active enrollment in order to bring that organizational vision to a personal level. For shared vision to become a product of personal vision, each individual must "feel it", and be able to see how this vision can be articulated to promote the long-term interests of the company's success, and position in the larger scheme of things. This road to the end result is usually not mapped out or even guaranteed, and the creative tension this inspires, through personal commitment and dedication, is the fire it produces form it's visionary fuel.
Up until this point, much of the focus has been centered on defining effective leadership from characteristics and traits that have been identified through research and behavioral science, but what do the followers have to say about the leader’s characteristics and traits? Furthermore, what makes someone want to follow a leader? Thus, there are five specific traits or characteristics a leader must display before being followed, and the first characteristic or trait is honesty (Shead, 2016). While people desire to follow an honest leader, honesty is the key trait that allows the leader to influence others besides power; however, leaders have very few opportunities to demonstrate honesty, especially in large organizations (Shead, 2016). Therefore,
In an effort to understand the questionnaire, one must first understand the definition of an Authentic Leader. Genuine, trustworthy and reliable are a few words that are interchangeable with the term authentic. Authentic leaders exhibit qualities of confidence, transparency, and high moral standard and are usually very confident (Gardner, Avolio, Luthans, May and Walumbwa, 2005). A person that is considered to be authentic is one who taking account for their behavior and a person who is true to themselves and what they think. A quality of an authentic leader is that he/she exudes the level of authenticity through their actions that encourage others to want to behave the same way. The leader who acts in this manner believes that all individuals have something to contribute to a goal and
Enable Others to Act – leaders actively engage individuals and make an effort to generate an ambience of trust and self-esteem.
To start my answer related to trust, I would like to start with few quotes that shows the power of trust like, “without trust we don’t truly collaborate, we merely coordinate or at bets cooperate. It is trust that transforms a group of people into a team “- Stephen M.R Covey
“Leaders bring to every group their personal qualities, values, and life experiences and their assumption and biases” (Corey, 2011, p. 15). Understanding your personal characteristic in importance to being an effective group leader, without understanding what characters you have or do not have can help or burden the group. The eight personal characteristics of group leadership include the following. Presence is the first characteristic in which understanding others emotional experiences. The second is personal power that is the influence a personal has over others and personal confidence. Third is courage or willingness to open oneself to others. The fourth is the willingness to confront oneself to confront and evaluate oneself. Fifth
To become a truly effective leader, one must encapsulate the various behaviors related to the aforementioned course learnings in his/her persona and demonstrate such behaviors daily. This course has allowed me to identify four behaviors that all leaders must portray to be effective. The first of which is that a leader must be inspirational. To do so, a leader must set the appropriate vision and direction for the organization and provide a path to achieving defined goals. Additionally, a leader must induce the proper levels of motivation so that each employee has sufficient incentive to work towards the organization’s goals. As discussed in the class, motivation can be accomplished by factors such as rewarding hard work and providing the correct opportunities to employees. While these are motivating in that employees desire to be fairly compensated and to be doing work they deem valuable, inspiration comes more from organizational culture. A leader will be inspirational by setting a tone that appreciates each employee’s contribution, no matter how small in scale it is. Further, employees are inspired when they work collaboratively in a group setting and can capitalize on individual strengths to drive organizational goals.
Many Scholars characterize the core qualities and skills necessary for an effective leader. Useem defines leadership as “Creating a vision and translating that vision into actions”. Historically, an effective leader was assumed to be exceptionally knowledgeable, authoritative, and dominate. Those leaders applied the command and control method to lead an organization. With the passage of time, this definition has been changed. The modern definition of an effective leader is honest, courageous, trustworthy, inspirational, and result-oriented. Today’s leaders create shared values and vision, and empower others to achieve their targets.
The emphasis on leaders being not just executives and managers, and that not all executives and managers are leaders, is extremely vital. Anyone can strive to be a leader in whatever organization in which they are involved. Bennis and Nanus claim that leadership is about character, setting the example for how team members treat one other (and in a corporate setting, their clients as well), being truthful and sustaining organizational trust, and encouraging themselves and others to learn. On one hand, it can be easy to see how many people in leadership positions do no match up to these standards of leadership. On the other, it seems a bit like common sense to be truthful to others and to effectively communicate with people who work together everyday. Leaders is an effective tool for summarizing and inspiring leadership not in that it teaches tough strategies and manipulations, but that when looking at an overview of its content, Bennis and Nanus are essentially teaching human relations and human decency. All in all, this book highlights strategies for us all to be better in our lives and our everyday
One very important aspect of a great leader is to lead by example. Any person in a position to guide others cannot ask the team to do one thing and act in the complete opposite way. This is a sure way to show that the leader has a need to show power and quickly loose respect from those who should be learning from him or her. Being a role model is importan...
To me, it’s imperative that a person is honest and treats everybody equally with no discrimination. I prefer seeing those who are also enlightened about their careers and how it could drive them to motivate others. Given the chance of being a leader, I would likely follow these aspects so that everybody could be respectful and motivated enough to produce
Before a leader can be successful and before goals can be set, a vision is needed. A vision is something you want to achieve or accomplish, something you want for the future, and it is the most important thing for a successful leader to have. Without a clear vision, leaders will have problems inspiring others, and employees will have a difficult time being motivated due to not knowing what they’re working to achieve. Clark (1997) states that “As a leader, you have to get your followers to trust you and be sold on your vision” (p. 1)...
In a leadership role, knowing how to serve makes one a better leader. Honesty and integrity are also attributes desired in the workplace. An employee that can be trusted will be valued. A boss that can be trusted will be respected more by their employees. A leader that the people do not view as trustworthy is not going to get as good of results as one that is trusted.