Q1. The Leadership Grid Model
The leadership grid model is basic tool utilized by leaders in assessment of working style. It encompasses activities, actions and behavior to their juniors. It was first introduced by Blake and Mouton in the year 1960. However, it has undergone numerous reviews and extensively utilized for assessment and development. The grid describes how leaders aid organizations to attain their goals via the production factors concern (task behavior) and people concern (relationship behavior).
The leadership grid is composed of the Y and X axis. The Y axis provides a representation of production concern and the X axis provides a representation of people concern on a 9 point scale, 1 being the minimum and 9 representing the maximum concern. The grid is significant in provision of a framework for leadership assessment. The scores from the grid can be utilized in the examination of the leaders’ behaviors and evaluate how they can adjust to promote their effectiveness.
Q3. Components of Leadership Credibility
For leaders, credibility is very significant in their activities. Credibility starts with simple trust, however, it requires more than trust. It also demands respect and affinity with other people. Trust is essential in holding a high regard for the veracity of leader’s word. The truth may show a factual depiction of reality, sincere word of intent, or honest explanation of opinion, one’s values or perspective. Respect is also crucial in ensuring a leader’s credibility. The followers must recognize and respect their leader’s authority so as to believe of his/her accomplishment capability. Finally, affinity is necessary for a common connection of interests, demands and concerns. The issues that are of importance and value to the leaders must be similar to that of the people. The leaders must possess all three components to obtain credibility. Martin Luther was a credible leader because he possessed all the qualities listed above.
Q7. The Difference between a Group and a Team
A group is the collection of people who control their personal efforts while a team is collection of people who have mutual purposes or goals. The team members are mutually committed to the aim and to fellow members. The mutual commitment generates a joint accountability which develops a strong motivation and bond. A well-structured strategic plan, which outlines the objectives, values and team goals, acts as glue that binds a group together and help to transform it into a team. A leader can utilize a plan to place outline expectations for people and a team as a whole. Leaders or managers do not manage individuals only; they have a chance of managing team as a whole, and utilize the team to support in management of individuals.
Q8. Benefits and Costs of Increasing Group Size
There are benefits of having large group sizes. It encourages task interdependence. In increased group sizes, the activities which are assigned to group members are more reliant on every member, hence creating a pool of ideas and opinions, thereby, enhancing the outcome. Secondly, heterogeneity is achieved. Heterogeneity of the group members creates a diversity of perspectives, which is advantageous to the group.
However, there are costs of increasing group size. It poses a challenge in the process and product assessment. The evaluation of the teamwork skills are more challenging than evaluation of the product. For effective assessment, the process demands thoughtful consideration of the goals and approaches. This further creates unanticipated system complexity. Finally, the assessment of an individual and group performance is challenging. Group outcomes may hide vital differences in performances of different people. This multiplies the complexity of the evaluation of performance and mostly they are ignored or underestimated.
Q10. Traits/Behaviors/Values of Great Global Leaders
The great world leader shares some common traits and values. Firstly, they are continual learners. They have wisdom and experience which is utilized in different situations, but they also always expand their knowledge, skills and share information with other people. Great global leaders inspire a shared vision and are very good listeners. They also challenge processes by experimenting and searching for new innovative ideas and opportunities. Great leaders empower others with the belief that people will be available for them and will be their advocates. They promote collaboration and mentorship. Finally, they act as good examples. Leaders portray similar values and behaviors that they expect from other people.
Q11. Definition of Group Norms and their Function
In daily life, people basically respect different norms or rules so as to adapt to a group or environment. The group norms define the nature of interpersonal interactions enhanced among the group members or non-members. There are different functions of the group norms. Firstly, they help the group to achieve its goals. Since the members have common code of conduct, the norms dictate each member’s responsibilities and obligations. The resultant combination of choices and behaviors enhances group members’ harmonious functioning. Secondly, the norms suggest what kind of attitude the members should adopt in different situations. For example, they help the members to resolve conflicts by offering potential solutions to problems or some misunderstandings. Subsequently, the misunderstandings are eliminated and the harmonious association among them is preserved. Finally, they help the group members to obtain a better comprehension of their experience. This is by proposing the acceptable and unacceptable behaviors and roles they empower the members to better comprehend their co-members’ behaviors. The norms are significant in identification of the members who do not respect the group’s rules.
Q12. Leaders’ Provision of Constructive Feedback
Good leaders should appropriately provide constructive feedback. This process demands that no essential ingredient is excluded. Firstly, they understand time management. Timeliness is vital so as the recipient to related the behavior to the feedback. Inability to keep time lessens the effect of the feedback. Good leaders are specific so that the recipients possess a clear comprehension of the behavior or approach they require to promote. They should also anticipate numerous questions and be adequately prepared to offer specific and precise answers to aid the recipient obtain the feedback effectively. In addition, leaders are relevant by providing explanations to situations. Good leaders also place the response in perspective so as to send appropriate information. Finally, good leaders reaffirm an individual’s value to the company and assure them of their desire to enable them improve their abilities and succeed.
Q13. Common Reasons why Ineffective Leaders Avoid Delegation
Ineffective leaders refuse to delegate duties to their juniors. In real essence, learning to delegate makes the leaders better and keeps their juniors engaged in their work. Ineffective leaders view delegation as a tool of strengthening the juniors’ careers. Secondly, the leaders assume that delegation makes them of less significance to their organization. Thirdly, the leaders, who do not delegate, have control issues. They have a problem with surrendering control over stuff that affects their work. It is for a reason that they fear that the juniors may outshine them or even replace. Some ineffective leaders view delegation as a waste of time since they assume that they are at a better positon of completing the tasks quicker and better. Finally, the ineffective leaders do not delegate duties because of the lack of management skills. For example, the leaders with poor communication skills have a challenge in providing clear instructions to juniors.
Q15. A Leader’s Utilization of Crisis in Changing an Organizational Culture
Organizational culture determines an organization’s operations externally and internally. During a crisis, the process by which the organization handles the significant event that threatens to harm the company, its stakeholders or the community. With proper crisis management, this crisis can be utilized to change an organizational culture. When a crisis strikes, companies must continue with their operations in the midst of the crisis while planning the organization’s recovery from the damage caused by the crisis. The crisis handlers also engage in continuity planning that the determination of the human and technological resources required making the organization operational. This ensures organizational resilience.
Q18. Leadership Behaviors of Path-Goal Theory
The path-goal theory is the process in which the leaders choose particular behaviors that best match their employees’ demand and the work environment so that they provide the best guidance to the juniors in the path to carry not their routine work. There are four kinds of leader behaviors. Firstly, they are directive because the leader is expected to inform the juniors of what is expected from them, task performance, work scheduling and coordination. This kind of approach is more effective when the workers are unsure of their duties or uncertain within the environment. Secondly, the leader is supportive; the leader creates the work more pleasant to the employees by being approachable and friendly. Moreover, this approach is more effective in situation in which the duties and connections pose a challenge psychologically and physically. Thirdly, they are participative; the leaders are expected to consult with their juniors before decision-making. This view is most effective when the juniors are highly trained and deeply involved in their work. Finally, there are achievements whereby the leader outlines the challenging objectives for the follower, and expects the juniors to perform at their best level and exhibits confidence in meeting the expectations. This view is best suited for the professional work environments such as scientific or technical.
Q20. Leadership Lessons from Steve Jobs
The following are the lessons learnt from Steve Jobs. There are two ways of running a business, which is either the focus on products or profits. Jobs paid attention to the products and the profits followed. Secondly, simplicity surpasses supreme. Jobs’ simplicity portrayed itself in both the user interface and in the combined end to the end process. Thirdly, a leader must possess foresight and intuition so as to predict the next organizational move. Fourth, Steve Jobs was focused. His single minded attention enabled him achieve most of its projects. Finally, Jobs’ possessed a reality distortion field whereby the leader drives the followers to perform tasks that they think they cannot handle.
Q21. The Leadership Lessons from Jim Burke
Jim Burke made a winner in leadership. He was inspiring and courageous. The lessons obtained from his leadership style are articulation of values and be guided by the values. Secondly, he sought to challenge his beliefs and practices, and did what was correct and decent. Additionally, he served the public first and did better than everyone else. All constituencies are supposed to well taken care of such as the professional groups, stakeholders and others. Jim kept the trust; he felt that the pivot of all connection was based on trust. Honesty translates to trust. Finally, Jim set high standards and always stuck to the set goals. Winners set standards for themselves and work hard so as to maintain their standards and accomplish lofty goals.
Q22. Authentic Leadership
Authentic leadership is view that exerts emphasis on creating the leader’s legitimacy via honest connection with the juniors which value their input and are generated on ethical grounds. These leaders are positive with true own concepts which enhance openness. An example of an authentic leader is Oprah Winfrey. She has talked about what she had to overcome, and she is extremely transparent about her traumatic childhood. She has been able to generate enthusiastic support from the juniors and promote personal as well as team performance.
Q23. Inauthentic Leadership
This kind of leadership, the leaders loses sight of the true north. The inauthentic leaders attempt to get people to follow them instead of empowering them to lead. In leadership, they cannot elicit the best performance from their team members in if they involved in leadership primarily for themselves. The inauthentic leadership is connected to lack of self-development. The inauthentic leaders exhibit some of these features. Imposters usually advance by elimination of competitors as self-promotion. Rationalizers are the kind of leaders who shift blame to external quarters or juniors when things are not right and success is attributed to self. The glory seekers seek motivation from money, fame and power. They seek the physical success signs, they prefer rewards rather than building of long-term relationships. Finally, the shooting stars go up quickly career-wise and hardly have time to learn from their faults. Some politicians may be considered to be inauthentic if their focus is purely money and power and they seek a following from voters without empowering them or delivering on their promises.
Q26. Organizational Fit Idea and its Effect on Leadership Success
An organization culture is a collection of values, norms and expectations that modify the way people and teams cooperate in a bid to attain organization goals. It also means common qualities of how things are done and their response to various actions. Moreover, it is a representation of an input and output that provide guidance to employees toward reward behavior. The organizational fit idea is essential in leadership as it determines the team members’ performance in an organization.
Q27. Successful Leaders Today Must “Think Globally and Act Locally”
The above phrase has been utilized by people who are in leadership especially the environment sector to sum up a technique devoted to conservation of the earth’s scarce natural resources locally. However, this phrase has been adopted by other leaders in different fields so as to strengthen the demand for creating capabilities at the local level that is the country or regional even as they seek global growth. The Millennial Generation’s belief in utilization of the phrase has a significant impact on the entire foreign policy. However, a country stands to benefit from this focus on recreating a nation as well as the world at large, one community at a time.
Q28. The Positive and Negative Impact of Conflict in the Organization
Conflict is defined as a disagreement between workers, departments or people groups within a given entity. The conflicts arise due to differences in ideology or bad competition that may produce both negative and positive impact. Conflict positively impacts an organization by facilitating change mainly in the small scale entities where the formulation and implementation of new policies is easy. It also enhances goal congruence. Conflict necessitates a revision of the goals and objectives so as to meet the demands of the disagreeing parties and this may result into achievement of operation goal congruence and coherence. It also encourages innovation since disagreement results into healthy competition and inventiveness. The negative effects are sub optimization where the conflicting parties involve in extreme conflict to an extent of compromising the organizational goals. Additionally, the organizations waste time and resources. The arising issues shift concentration of the organization’s goals and objectives.
Q30. Emotional Intelligence and its Improvement
Emotional intelligence is the identification, utilization, usage and comprehension and emotions management ability to positively relieve stress and communicate effectively, be empathetic, overcome challenges and eliminate conflicts. It impacts an individual’s life aspects in behavior and interaction. Emotional intelligence can be improved by self-awareness and management. Social awareness and relationship management is equally significant in improving emotional intelligence.
