Developing a Science of Leadership Assignment Sample

• Subject Name : leadership

Contents

Question 1.

Introduction.

Answer.

Question 2.

Introduction.

Answer.

Question 3.

Introduction.

Answer.

Question 4.

Introduction.

Answer.

Question 5.

Introduction.

Answer.

References.

Barriers To Effective Communication - Question 1

Introduction

The question introduces the concept of leaders and leadership. The expectation is to understand the different leadership roles and summarize the same. This question also expects the students to understand the Great Man Theory and Blake -Mouton Leadership theory and provide a concise analysis.

Answer

1. There are several different types of leadership roles that a leader can adopt with their team. While some literature recognizes more styles of leadership but in most situations, these 6 styles cover a large spectrum of roles that a leader can play (Indeed, 2020). These include:

1. Great Man Theory- According to this theory, the assumption is great leaders are born and not made. This is due to the fact there are certain traits that ensure that the people rise above the general crowd in times of need and lead (Organ, 1996).

Blake -Mouton Leadership Theory- According to this theory, there is a managerial grid which is developed based on the concern for the people and production. In this grid, 1.1 represents management, which lacks relationship and task completion, and 9.9 represents the best-case scenario with a deep concern for people and production (Blake and Mouton, 1982).

Barriers To Effective Communication - Question 2

Introduction

The question talks about ethical leadership and the concepts that are associated with it. The expectation is to understand and replicate the principles of Ethical leadership and elements that can influence one’s value system.

Answer

1. The 4 key principles of Ethical principles (Dion, 2012) include:
   • Respect for Autonomy- this principle expects people to respect the decision made by other adults with a duty to empower those for whom there is still a responsibility
   • Beneficence- this principle expects people to bring about good in all the actions that are done and move away from negative things and actions
   • Nonmaleficence- this principle guides people to ensure that they do not harm others due to their actions, etc.
   • Justice- this principle guides people to return whatever is owned by other people or whatever they deserve. This principle ensures that people get their due in a just manner
2. There are several influences on an individual’s value system (McManus, 2011). These include:
   • Family- the family is an immediate touchpoint, and that influences a person in a lot of ways, including the values the person has initially
   • Community- besides the family, an individual’s value can also be influenced by the community he or she is part of and what basically is happening around him or her
   • Education- plays a key role in helping people understand the true meaning and need for being ethical, and people with good education are generally more ethical in nature
   • Social Group- similar to the impact a community has while growing up, the social group can be responsible for ensuring that people work ethically in a formal setup
   • Personal Needs- sometimes, the biggest influences on an individual’s value system is an individual requirement. This all sometimes supersedes all other influencing elements by driving people to either behave in an ethical manner or an unethical manner

Barriers To Effective Communication - Question 3

Introduction

The question is on leveraging a balanced scorecard as a technique to understand the performance of the strategy. Managers essentially leverage the BSC to manage their teams’ productivity. As per the balanced scorecard, the company’s financial performance, internal operations, customers, learning, and growth are all components, interconnected with each other that help ensures that the corporate strategy is monitored and managed effectively.

Answer

Any Strategy Focused Organization or an SFO has 5 odd ways to leverage the BSC (Irala, 2007). These includes:

• BSC helps in communication of the strategy. They, along with the strategy maps, play a crucial role in ensuring that the leaders have a fair understanding of the strategy and communicate the same to the team as well. This is essentially more from a financial aspect of where the company sees itself, etc.
• The leaders also ensure that they use BSC to not just communicate the corporate strategy but also align the operational team to it. A leader is also expected to communicate the unit or business-level strategy to respective teams. This ensures that each team and the member eventually knows what is expected from them and why.
• A leader also leverages BSC to leverage the variable pay to the respective team members. In this way, the leader essentially defines the measures and targets to achieve against each strategic objective. Once this process is done, they ensure that the team leverages the BSC, and the manager evaluates the performance on the targets to actuals.
• Leaders also utilize the balanced scorecard to update the strategic elements of their teams by improving on the defined objectives and adding newer objectives whenever needed. This helps in keeping the BSC as a live tracking mechanism in which each employees’ targets are captured and measured against actuals in a real-time manner (Rojas, 2001).

Barriers To Effective Communication - Question 4

Introduction

The following question is focused on various leadership theories. These questions are also centered around the analysis and understanding of rewards and recognition programs and the different challenges that can occur to communicate effectively.

Answer

1. According to French and Raven, there are 5 key Sources of Power. These have been divided into Positional and Personal Power. The first 3 are positional, and the last 2 are personal Power (Chapman and Scouller, 2020; Raven and French, 1958). These include:

• Reward Power- based on the thought that a leader will reward the team based on the completion of the task. It is important for the leader to do expectation setting
• Coercive Power- this source of Power is based on the thought that the leader will punish if his instructions are not followed. A leader can ensure that he communicates his thoughts to the team and then let the team decide on the best course action to achieve at the end goal is achieved
• Legitimate Power- this source of Power comes from a leader’s position or title in the organization. The challenge that the leader faces is that the team agrees to whatever the leader says and that reduces productivity. The leader should ensure that a dialogue happens within the team
• Expert Power- power from having the required knowledge or experience. The team feels that the leader will always be right, and that can be mitigated with the leader asking the team to challenge his thoughts
• Referent Power- this Power comes from the leader’s traits, background, etc. To overcome the challenge arising from this, the leader needs to connect with the team on a one to one basis

1. The different theories on motivation (Ramlall, 2004) are as follows:
   • Maslow’s Need Hierarchy Theory- employee motivation happens when the basic needs are fulfilled. The leader can leverage this theory to ensure that they are able to understand and map his team’s basic needs to the output that is expected from them.
   • McClelland’s Need Theory
   • Equity Theory
   • Vroom’s Original Theory
   • Porter and Lawler’s Extension
   • The Motivator-Hygiene Theory
   • Job Characteristics Model
2. 3 main types of rewards (EASTERN, 2012) that management can give to employees include:
   • Intrinsic - non-tangible rewards majorly to increase job satisfaction, like job title, praise, etc.
   • Extrinsic- tangible rewards that employees can enjoy, like bonuses, gifts, etc.
   • Assistance- rewards to ensure a higher work-life balance like gym memberships, health care, etc.
3. There can be 4 types of barriers to effective communication (Could, 1969). These include:
   • Language barriers- people, communicating in different languages
   • Physical barriers- geographic barrier usually due to being in different time zones leading to loss of communication
   • Attitudinal barriers- arising due to conflicts between the personalities, improper management, and the fact that there is resistance to change
   • Psychological barriers- lack of communication due to behavioral and mentality barriers (Jureddi and Brahmaiah, 2020)

Barriers To Effective Communication - Question 5

Introduction

The question is essentially trying to address the decision-making process of a leader. Decision making is critical for any leader as he will always come in a situation in which he has to decide, and things will be set in motion from his decision. Similarly, there are several aspects in which leaders have to manage change, and that is also getting addressed as part of this question.

Answer

1. The different decision making styles that the leaders use include:
   • Dependent- even though the decision has to be taken by the leader, he seeks opinions and advice of others in his team, and until he receives them, he cannot make the choice
   • Rational
   • Intuitive
   • Spontaneous
   • Avoidant
2. Leaders manage organizational change in the following ways:
   • Defining the change and business goal realignment
   • Understand the impact on current employees
   • Develop a change communication strategy
   • Provide the right training and the support
   • Measuring the change process
   • Identifying and mitigating risks

Global Mindset refers to the ability of the leaders to acquire and process information from a wide and diverse source to help derive decisions that will acquire business advantage. Cultural challenges refer to a leader’s inability to anticipate, respond, and adjust while incorporating a different culture than what he and his team are accustomed to. This can be detrimental from a leadership perspective, and that is why a leader must have a global mindset to overcome challenges like cultural, etc. (Uzonwanne, 2014)

References for Developing a Science of Leadership

Blake, R. and Mouton, J., 1982. Theory and Research for Developing a Science of Leadership. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 18(3), pp.275-291.

Chapman, A. and Scouller, J., 2020. French And Raven: Sources Of Leadership Power – Businessballs.Com. [online] Businessballs.com. Available at: <https://www.businessballs.com/leadership-philosophies/sources-of-leadership-power-french-and-raven/> [Accessed 23 September 2020].

Could, J., 1969. Barriers To Effective Communication. Journal of Business Communication, 6(2), pp.53-58.

Dion, M., 2012. Are ethical theories relevant for ethical leadership?. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 33(1), pp.4-24.

EASTERN, J., 2012. Employee Rewards. Internal Medicine News, 45(1), p.78.

Indeed, 2020. 10 Common Leadership Styles. [online] Indeed.com. Available at: <https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/10-common-leadership-styles> [Accessed 23 September 2020].

Irala, D., 2007. Performance Measurement Using Balanced Score Card. SSRN Electronic Journal,.

Jureddi, D. and Brahmaiah, N., 2020. BARRIERS TO EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION. [online] Joell.in. Available at: <http://joell.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/114-115BARRIERS-TO-EFFECTIVE-COMMUNICATION.pdf> [Accessed 23 September 2020].

Mango, E., 2018. Rethinking Leadership Theories. Open Journal of Leadership, 07(01), pp.57-88.

McManus, J., 2011. Revisiting ethics in strategic management. Corporate Governance: The international journal of business in society, 11(2), pp.214-223.

Organ, D., 1996. Leadership: The great man theory revisited. Business Horizons, 39(3), pp.1-4.

Ramlall, S., 2004. A Review of Employee Motivation Theories and their Implications for Employee Retention within Organizations. The Journal of American Academy of Business, [online] Available at: <https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/55461861/Review_of_Employee_Motivation_Theories_-_Journal_of_American_Academy_of_Business.pdf?1515259230=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DA_Review_of_Employee_Motivation_Theories.pdf&Expires=1600856506&Signature=MNBBnWfEw6eYmUU8fpqJ67hoQkh8JxcVuRdg6tNTnqXrLX58xTqPSspnp3Eol0Epq-HJuZUdGJniGbCcv9801DLk3d-zsQ1uKoGTOfYj2mAd-fc~GSMD5S-TA~xMD0BsTJaoB5QGDtmlYXDybNYQB7RmxF7RT77Yz5AI~4EJr3wOr0X7sAXqq82g1-c2NOXX2xZh5qtM-h4GjB7aDrc3gkWeH4tNU7ZyuBQOug4LLMdXYkI78tNd7MFn-EZ4VnJiOODdban8vJGevP8kkkQ3OETRMegUKv8L7TTY9MSajXGZYcNbWywz62z5wIkqjpiidA2D7wyGrF0dS116KmNHjw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA> [Accessed 23 September 2020].

Raven, B. and French, J., 1958. Legitimate Power, Coercive Power, and Observability in Social Influence. Sociometry, 21(2), p.83.

Rojas, A., 2001. Going international: The balanced scorecard. Performance Improvement, 40(3), pp.46-51.

Uzonwanne, F., 2014. Leadership styles and decision-making models among corporate leaders in non-profit organizations in North America. Journal of Public Affairs, 15(3), pp.287-299.

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