Running head: WEEK 5: POSITION PAPER

Week 5: Position Paper David Mizelle LDR 531 June 18, 2013 Philip Marlowe

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Week 5: Position Paper I have the opportunity to determine the position that would best suite my personality, values, attitudes, and communication skills in a Leadership work environment. Leadership styles, can inspire growth and ability to handle different situations based my preferred style is paramount. I will discuss my position to demonstrate while my preferred style is best suited in a leadership capacity. There are many different views surrounding Leadership Styles. As discussed during week 4 in class, Leadership can be defined as a process by which one individual influences others toward the attainment of group or organizational goals. There are three points about leadership that should be emphasized. First, leadership is about influencing people socially. In order to lead, there must be a least one follower. Secondly, leadership elicits voluntary action on the part of followers. This voluntary position is what separates leadership from other types of influence. Again, this take us back to the definition of influencing. And lastly, leadership results in followers' behavior that is purposeful and goal-directed in some sort of organized setting. Some studies tend to focus on the nature of leadership in the workplace (Advameg Inc., 2010). Leadership should be distinguished from management. Management involves planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling, and a manager is someone who performs these functions. This definition aligns with some thoughts regarding NCOs in the military that they use more managerial skills than leadership. Managers are also viewed as having more formal authority by virtue of his or her position or office. I think it can also be said a manager may or may not be an effective leader, and a leader's ability to influence others may be based on a variety of factors other than his or her formal authority or position (Advameg Inc., 2010). To be an effective leader one must know what their personal leadership style is to include

WEEK 5: POSITION PAPER ones strengths and weakness. For example, I took the personal leadership assessment and my

results are as follows: Whats My Leadership Style? I scored an 11 on concern for other people and a 9 for task. This assessment states: This leadership instrument taps the degree to which you're task or people-oriented. Task-orientation is concerned with getting the job done, while people-orientation focuses on group interactions and the needs of individual members. It further revealed the relevance of the cutoff score as: The cutoffs scores separating high and low scores are approximately as follows. For task-orientation: High is a score above 10; low is below 10. For people-orientation: High is a score above 7; low is below 7. The survey further states, The best leaders are ones that can balance their task-people orientation to various situations. A high score on both would indicate this balance. If you're too task-oriented, you tend to be autocratic. You get the job done, but at a high emotional cost. If you're too people-oriented, your leadership may be overly laissez-faire. People are likely to be happy in their work, but sometimes at the expense of productivity. I believe my leaderships style best suits me for the expanding role in the company. What adds to my strengths, I contribute to my background being a counselor for 24 years in the Air Force. Its fully prepared me with how to interact with people, thus scoring High on the people orientation element of the survey. My past experience also serves me well on the other hand by hammering the fact, people still need to be held accountable for their actions. I think this plays hand-in-hand with my high task orientation score. My strengths compliment each other, as they are nearly balance with each other, and the established threshold. Im in-touch with what motivates people to do, act, achieve and reach their goals. Im also focused enough to realize, the mission must sometimes come first. I partially attribute this thought to the military discipline side. As well as these are strengths; I also recognize these as my weakness. Not having a well-

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defined balance in anyone of these areas can cause problems for me in my leadership style that could jeopardize my effectiveness. Being too people oriented not only may make me seems to Laissez-faire as indicated in the assessment, but may also lead those under my supervision to not take me as serious. This will drastically impact my effectiveness when needed. Being too task oriented on the other hand will lead to those whom I lead to feel I insensitive to their needs. As the key to Air Power has been described as flexibility; flexibility is also seen as the key to an effect Leader. This brings my to my point that a Situational Leadership styles is better suited from me, than an Authoritative style. Situational Leadership vs Authoritative Style There are pros and cons to each of the above styles Ive chosen to discuss. Situational leadership has advantages in terms of ease of use and simplicity. It recognizes the need for flexibility on the part of leaders and the importance of the followers as determinants of leader behavior. It also has intuitive appeal. On the other hand, there are drawbacks as well. The situational leadership model has a North American bias that neglects the way other cultures communicate and prioritize values such as individualism and family. This model may also ignore differences between female managers who typically have a nurturing style, and male leaders who may lean toward a task-oriented management style. Situational leadership can divert leaders' focus away from long-term strategies, symbols, structure or politics. Critics of situational leadership point to the difficulty in defining and quantifying maturity, who should rate it, and the tendency to assume that job maturity matches emotional maturity. Hersey and Blanchard define job maturity as "ability to take responsibility" but do not provide a credible source to support that definition. Situational leadership focuses on follower maturity as a key determinant of the leader's focus

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on tasks over relationships. This view conflicts with other leadership models that embrace numerous situational factors as determinants of numerous leader behaviors such as providing support and direction, participation and focus on follower achievements. In the other leadership models, situational factors include relationships between leaders and followers, position power and the structure of the task. Even with the cons, I feel Im definitely a situational leader. The Authoritative decision making style is useful when the leader possesses all the necessary information and has the required expertise to make the best decision. He/she makes the decision and the subordinates are then informed of what the decision is. This style is useful when the leader is the expert, and when a rapid decision is required. The leader takes sole responsibility for the decision. Depending on the situation, this aspect could actually be listed under both pros and cons. It is least useful when there is expertise available elsewhere that the leader could call on to make a more effective decision. Nor is it useful if it becomes the only decision making style used by power driven individuals. Conclusion Ive discussed my particular leadership style and traits, which in my opinion are a well, defined balance between people and task oriented. Ive also discussed my position for choosing a Situational Leadership Style versus Authoritative. These particular traits and styles coupled together will help me to achieve the perfect balance as a leader.

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References

Situational Leadership Pro & Cons retrieved from: eHow http://www.ehow.com/info_7851680 _situational-leadership-pro-cons.html#ixzz2WXIdvUfS Social Psychology retrieved from: http://www.prenhall.com/divisions/hss/app/social /chap9_1_answer.html