A511.4.3.RB - Leadership Traits

Reflect on the week’s readings and content. In your own words, summarize key points related to managerial motivation, traits, and effectiveness. Then assess your own leadership skills, traits, and competencies. Where are you strong? How can you leverage those strengths to improve your value to organizations like your employer? How might contingency theory and situational variables assist in that process?

In McClelland's Research on Managerial Motivation, need strength was measured with a technique called the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) (one of which can be taken here), which is a writing test coded by the experimenter to obtain a measure of three underlying needs: power, achievement, and affiliation. In taking the TAT, my results noted a need for achievement. The typical person generally scores between 4.5 and 8.5, with an average of 5.7. I scored an 11.7 in this category.

As someone who is very interested in getting things done well, I have a duty to creating and selling a vision. I must be able to convince others to accept the objectives I have set. I do so by emphasizing teamwork, and recognizing that when people work hard together, they can achieve great things.
I would describe myself as a participative leader, but contingency theories contend that there is no one best way of leading and that a leadership style that is effective in some situations may not be successful in others (Yukl, p. 140). For instance, I cannot participate in every process I need completed. Therefore, as a part of my training, I participate a lot in the beginning, back off a bit to survey, come back in to correct, survey from the back once more, then allow a worker to do something under my supervision a few times. Then, I have them teach someone else, and watch them teach, to make sure they are teaching the action correctly. Once a person has been able to pass their information down correctly to another, I am satisfied that they know what they are doing.

The LPC contingency model describes how the situation moderates the relationship between leadership effectiveness and a trait measure called the least preferred coworker (LPC) score. In the book "Leadership: Theory and Practice," the LPC measured my score as someone who values relationships over task-completion. (Northouse, 2013) This does not mean that the job does not get done; I prefer to build relationships and teams before trying to get individuals to attempt to do work together. This team-building strategy is an ability to create a robust and compelling vision of the future, and to present this vision in a way that inspires the people I lead. From there, good use of strategic analysis techniques can help to gain the key insights needed into the environment I am operating in, and into the needs of workers and students. One of these techniques is a SWOT analysis. A SWOT analysis is a widely used tool that helps in understanding the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats involved in a project or business activity. In an organization I advise, the student leaders to a pro/con evaluation with the General Assembly after all events, in which the group is asked to state one pro and one con back to back until all are exhausted. They then note these bilateral opinions, cancel out any which are direct opposites and work on continuing the pros and eliminating the cons.

With tools like these, you can explore the challenges faced and identify the options available to you. One can identify the best of these with good use of prioritization skills and appropriate decision-making techniques.

Finally, to sell a vision, you need to be able to craft a compelling and interesting story. We discussed this in MSLD 221. I use persuasion and excite can help open closed minds, so that people consider my ideas fairly. Another great way of inspiring people is to use vivid stories to explain the vision.

Major situational variables include the characteristics of followers, the nature of the work performed by the leader's unit, the type of organization, and the nature of the external environment (Yukl, p. 32).
Some other examples include:

• Physical surroundings
• Social surroundings
• Time
• Task definition

Theories that explain leadership effectiveness in terms of situational moderator variables are called contingency theories of leadership. An example or situational variables are my staff meeting. For my staff meetings, I make sure I never put them at the beginning or end of a week, as people like to go away on weekends which may extend into Monday, particularly during the summer. However, I do have issues in timing. Because out office is open for so many hours, there is always be a worker who is just getting off shift who now has to sit in a staff meeting. Plus, workers are taking classes and usually cannot make it to the office during business hours. My first choice of time would have been during the morning. This is due to the fact that a professional staff member works the front desk from 7-9 AM and I would not need to worry about people bring tired due to a long day. However, through consulting staff, I realized one of my workers has an early class, and workers would be just as tired in the anytime; they are also more likely to be late because they would be coming from bed. Having the meeting after hours also guarantees that the workers have papers and pens as well as schedules to take notes on. Involving other people in making a decision is likely to boost the quality of a decision when participants have information and knowledge lacked by the leader, and they are willing to cooperate in finding a good solution to a decision problem (Yukl, p. 135).

References

Northouse, P. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Least Preferred Coworker (LPC) Measure. Accessed at http://people.uncw.edu/nottinghamj/documents/slides6/Northouse6e%20Ch6%20ContingencyLPC%20Scale.pdf