Global Persepctives of Leadership

Essai , 2008 , 9 Pages , Note: 1,6

Gestion d'entreprise - Divers

Leadership is an art that can be learned, to some extent:

It is the communication of a vision to followers and superiors, in dependence on the environment in- and outside of the organization and the qualities and skills of the manager.

How and why does the way we answer that question matter?
A definition of leadership is like a mirror to the management skills of the person that describes it. It affects the way we react in an organization with our supervisors and with our followers. We see the results of decisions every day in the media but if we are not willing to look behind and see the complex structure of such decisions, we are blind and get the wrong conclusions. A try to understand leadership is the beginning of a way to understand organizations and politics at all.

1. What is leadership ?

Leadership is an art that can be learned, to some extent:

It is the communication of a vision to followers and superiors, in dependence on the environment in- and outside of the organization and the qualities and skills of the manager.

a. How and why does the way we answer that question matter?

A definition of leadership is like a mirror to the management skills of the person that describes it. It affects the way we react in an organization with our supervisors and with our followers. We see the results of decisions (from organization and politics) every day in the media but if we are not willing to look behind and see the complex structure of such decisions, we are blind and get the wrong conclusions (even if the decisions affect our private live or our employment). A try to understand leadership is the beginning of a way to understand organizations and politics at all.

i. Approach: Born Leaders^[1]

At the beginning of their book, Jackson and Parry ask the question if leaders are born or made. They give not a clear answer to this question but by reading the whole book, between the lines, you get the feeling that the authors believe, that leaders can be made to a big part. The debate of whether leaders are born, or made dates back many centuries. In today's modern society, we observe a rapid decline of heredity leadership and a significant rise in role models being business or political leaders. When we ask whether someone can be brought up as a leader, it is a fundamental question if we can train people to be leaders, regardless of their personal attributes (qualities). The idea of making leaders suggests that there is a skill set that can be developed. Furthermore, it is the right mix of experience, traits, skills and the organizational environment that makes great leaders. Identifying those characteristics that can and cannot be developed is very important. We have seen many great leaders in the twentieth century. The names that come to mind are Margaret Thatcher, Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Adolf Hitler (there is a discussion, if you can see him as a leader. Jackson and Parry did not see him as a leader. They argue, that you have to look behind the charisma of a person and to its motivation - page 97) and John Francis “Jack” Welch Jr. the famous CEO of General Electric (Fortune magazine titled him as the manager of the millennium) just to name a few. In my opinion some people are born with certain qualities, suit to a leadership position. So the better question in my opinion, instead of asking if leaders are born or made, would be to which percentage are leaders born and to which made.

ii. Approach: Communicative approach of leadership^[2]:

Gail Fairhurst is using the words mental model and framing to describe the importance of communication. After reading her book, you could say that communication is leadership. She believes that a communication goal depends strongly on our mental models. For her the contents of a good mental model are missions, visions and values. She is explaining, how language can be an effective tool to frame us, others and the situation (using metaphors, jargon, contrast, spin, stories and complex metaphors – definition page 126). Another important issue for her to an effective framing is that you gain believability from the people around you. In an essay^[3] Fairhurst also describes the relationship between her so called “discursive Leadership” and leadership psychology. It is an important point, as we will see especially in the third approach, communication in an organization needs a very wide spectrum of things you have to keep in mind (you need to handle the psyche of other persons, if you want to look behind the spoken words and find the mental model of them) and handle with. Just to mention it, there is even a difference in the use of language between men and women. Woman use more different tones in their language. That makes it sometimes very hard for them, to use some of the language tools (e.g. telling jokes about others sounds sometimes different if a men or woman says exactly the same - Genderlinguistik).

iii. Approach: Managers doing Leadership^[4]:

This approach described in the mentioned article is “based on a case study in a large, international knowledge-intensive company”. The authors see the appearance of listening and informally talking as an important part of good leadership in an organization. In their conclusion they say, that a lot of actions taken part in an organization from so called leaders are trivial and become only special because of the formal positions of this persons. But, if you try to take a look behind this mundane normal daytime activities, you will see, that they are important for building trust / relationships, giving followers a feeling of importance and make it so easier to transmit a vision “top down” of the organization. In my opinion it is not by accident that the title of the article speaks from managers. I would like to use this opportunity to say something about the question:

[...]

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^[1] A very short, fairly interesting and reasonably cheap book about studying leadership; Brad Jackson, Ken Parry; Sage 2008

^[2] The Art of Framing, Managing the Language of Leadership; Gail T. Fairhurst, Robert A. Saar; Jossey-Bass 1996

^[3] Discursive Leadership, A Communication Alternative to Leadership Psychology; Gail T. Fairhurst; Management Communication Quaterly Vol. 21 Number 4, 510-521, 2008

^[4] Managers Doing Leadership: The Extra-Ordinarization of the Mundane; Mats Alvesson, Stefan Sveningsson; Human Relations 2003; 56, 1435

• Université: Copenhagen Business School (Copenhagen Business School)
• Note: 1,6
• Auteur: Alexander Deicke (Auteur)
• Année de publication: 2008
• Pages: 9
• N° de catalogue: V123748
• ISBN (ebook): 9783640292264
• ISBN (Livre): 9783640292479
• Langue: anglais
• mots-clé: Global, Persepctives, Leadership