Peer review to each discussion

120 words each discussion

apa format

give references if you use other information

Discussion 1

Introduction

Leaders are individuals trying to guide people towards a common goal. The two chapters discuss the multitudes of approaches and theories that can be applied to succeed in leadership based on the individual leader as well as the circumstances based on people and situations. When using guidance, it is understood it is no direct transfer of these leadership approaches and theories. People may always encounter grey areas where critical thinking and cognitive skills are salient to succeed in a leadership role.

Question 1: If you were a first-level supervisor of a team of telemarketers, how would you go about assessing the development level of your subordinates? Do you think most leaders can easily shift their leadership style to suit the development level of followers?

When holding a supervisor role of a team of telemarketers, one should know that there is a possibility for a high turnover rate. The employees are rarely with the company in the long run. The best way to understand the employee’s readiness towards the job is by their attitude and performance.

As mentioned above, since telemarketers’ turnover rate is high, there would always be new people to approach and train, where contingency approaches would be beneficial (Daft, 2018). Having a leadership which is more task-oriented helps for this scenario, since there may be a high turnover rate. Path-Goal theory, a contingency approach to leadership where the leader’s responsibility is to increase employee motivation through instruction necessary for task accomplishment and rewards (Daft, 2018), can help in this scenario. It is not easy to change leadership style in such a volatile employee environment, as telemarketing management. In this scenario, having a pre-planned leadership style would be beneficial. However, this is not always the case. Depending on the environment and company, the leadership style can be shifted to aid the followers, since this directly benefits the leader and the vision and mission of the place of work.

Question 2: Think back to teachers you have had, and identify one each who fits a supportive style, directive style, participative style, and achievement-oriented style according to the path–goal theory. Which style did you find most effective? Why?

Supportive style leadership cares for the wellbeing of the employees providing a more pleasant work environment (Daft, 2018). My former Manger had these qualities. However, he was struggling to cater to shareholder and upper management needs due to going overboard on these qualities.

Directive Leadership gives exact instructions to employees as to what needs to be done (Daft, 2018). It is more of a controlled environment and reduces encouragement to creativity. Fortunately, I have not had personal experience in the directive leadership experience.

Participative Leadership is more of a mutual work environment with a leader and team, where people consult each other and plan (Daft, 2018). My current place of work manager practices this kind of Leadership.

Achievement-oriented Leadership expects high-quality performance on the expected challenging goals by employees (Daft, 2018). Again, I have not had experience in such Leadership. However, a few of my colleagues who work for Amazon Corporation have commented that they have a similar leadership style.

Based on the above description, the participating style finds more effective, in my opinion. This helps the team to comfortably share ideas and add more value to the decision process. The team is contended and feels respected and more valued in the group. This directly results in happy employees, which directly helps the company and Leadership

Question 3: What might be some reasons the dimension of “openness to experience” correlates so strongly with historians’ ratings of the greatest U.S. presidents but has been less strongly associated with business leader success? Do you think this personality dimension might be more important for business leaders of today than it was in the past? Discuss.

Openness to experience is when a person has a broad range of interests and open to imagination, creativity, knowledge, and new skills (Daft, 2018). There are many reasons as to presidents may be open than leaders. Presidents have more responsibility and must have more knowledge in comparison to leaders. However, since the U.S is a first world country, there is not much of a contrast to others even if openness to experience fails. Presidents were more aggressive and ambitious due to the time limitation and had the luxury to take risks and make lasting changes in a way that honors their legacy. In the recent past, with the recession, President’s had to be more risk-averse due to the economic status. Leaders are more introverted and are more passive in comparison to the presidents. Due to this reason, I feel the personality dimension is more important to business leaders today than in the past.

Question 4: A survey found that 79 percent of CEOs surveyed fall into the category of being “highly optimistic,” whereas a much lower percentage of chief financial officers were rated as highly optimistic. Do you think these differences reflect personality characteristics or the different requirements of the two jobs? Discuss.

CFO’s primary responsibility is the financials. Their decision process is solely based on numbers of the financials of the company. Depending on the financials of the company, their optimism varies. CEO’s are more involved in initiating and executing business ideas with the capital in hand. To do so, they need to believe in themselves as well as the employees of the company. They need to take risks and to encourage others. To successfully do so, the CEO needs to be optimistic. The above description shows that the difference in optimism is mostly based on different job requirements.

Conclusion

There is a multitude of leadership theories and practices, and the leader needs to identify the best approach to the circumstances while considering the well-being of the team and employees. Strategic leadership through individual leadership style and leadership approach through theories allow us to execute challenges at hand in any given situation successfully.

Reference

Daft, R. L. (2018). The Leadership Experience (Seventh ed.). Cengage Learning.

Discussion 2

Chapter 3 went over the contingency approaches to leadership. “Contingency means that one thing depends on other things, and for a leader to be effective there must be an appropriate fit between the leader’s behavior and style and the conditions in the situation.” (Daft, 2019) Leaders depend on the situation and the followers. Hersey and Blanchard developed the situational theory which focuses on the characteristics of the followers as the most important element of the situation and they can determine how effective the leader behavior is. The situational theory states that are four different types of leadership styles that leaders can adopt: delegating, participating, selling, and telling. Telling(S1) is a directive approach that focuses mainly on tasks and very little on people and relationships. The selling style(S2) is more balanced style that focuses on both relationships and the tasks at hand. Participating style (S3) focuses mainly on relationships and not as much on tasks. The delegating style (S4) doesn’t show any concern for relationships or tasks. Like I mentioned before, how effective a leader is depends on the readiness level of their followers. Low readiness (R1) is when the leader uses a telling style and tells the followers what to do. Moderate readiness (R2) of followers goes well with the selling leadership style. High readiness (R3) goes well with the participating style and the followers have education, skills, but may lack the confidence to back their abilities. Very high readiness (R4) works best with delegating style of leadership because the followers have high levels of skills, education, and confidence.

Chapter 4 covers the leader as an individual. It is very important for leaders to be self-aware of themselves. Blind spots are things that leaders do not notice as a problem that can keep them from reaching their full potential. The Big Five personality dimensions are five general dimensions that describe personality, extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience. (Daft, 2019) I found Exhibit 4.1 to be very interesting to do because it asked as series of questions that go with the Big Five Personality Dimensions.

If you were a first-level supervisor of a team of telemarketers, how would you go about assessing the development level of your subordinates? Do you think most leaders can easily shift their leadership style to suit the development level of followers?

I think leaders can change their leadership style, but there are many factors that come into play. Their styles can depend on the situation they are in and their followers. I think it is also important to check the readiness levels of the subordinates, which can be checked at how well they are performing at their job. The leadership style change also depends on how well the leader adapts to change and if they struggle with change.

Think back to teachers you have had, and identify one each who fits a supportive style, directive style, participative style, and achievement-oriented style according to the path–goal theory. Which style did you find most effective? Why?

For the supportive style, this would have to be my AP calculus teacher I had during my senior year of high school. Our teacher was very friendly and tried their hardest to make sure each one of us passed our AP exams at the end of the year. We would often group up and always feel like one big team. The directive leadership approach would have to be my human resources professor I had during my undergrad. They would continuously tell us what exactly to do, how to do an assignment, and what guidelines to follow. If we didn’t meet the exact format, we would lose points. Participative leadership would have to go to any of the professors in the MBA program. They are always encouraging us to shares our thoughts with others and engage in open ended discussion posts. Achievement-oriented leadership would have to be my yearbook teacher I had back in high school. At the beginning of the year, she set each one of us goals that we would eventually complete by the end of the year.

What might be some reasons the dimension of “openness to experience” correlates so strongly with historians’ ratings of the greatest U.S. presidents but has been less strongly associated with business leader success? Do you think this personality dimension might be more important for business leaders of today than it was in the past? Discuss.

I think the reason as to why the dimension of “openness to experience” correlates so strongly with the greatest U.S Presidents is because they are seen as those who are not afraid to take risks and are open to new ideas. I think for business leaders, they face too much competition and are sometimes scared to try something new.

A survey found that 79 percent of CEOs surveyed fall into the category of being “highly optimistic,” whereas a much lower percentage of chief financial officers were rated as highly optimistic. Do you think these differences reflect personality characteristics or the different requirements of the two jobs? Discuss.

I honestly think it is down to the individual. In my opinion, the CEOs are willing to take more risks, which can influence companies’ decision. For a CEO to be successful, they need to be willing to take risks and open minded. CFOs are less likely to be optimistic because of their job requirements. They focus on the financial side of an organization. They need to be more analytical and tend to focus more on actual data.

Reference

Daft, R. L. The Leadership Experience. [Yuzu]. Retrieved from https://reader.yuzu.com/#/books/9781337516020/