Leadership Style

Permalink:

Don't use plagiarized sources. Get Your Custom Essay on

Leadership Style

Just from $13/Page

Order Essay

Personally I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught. Sir Winston Churchill

This chapter introduces the influence of personality and physiology on leadership dynamics. Students are in- troduced to various leadership and personality assessment tests. After completing the assessment tests, students are asked to write a summary essay integrating findings of their own leader and personality outcomes. This sum- mary, and the tests that precede it, assist students in identifying a penchant for certain leadership styles presented later in the text. The assessments will assist students in understanding and relating to theories, models, and evo- lutionary trends discussed later in this text and in the literature.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. Name and describe at least four assessments related to leadership.

2. Explain your personality type, leadership style, principles, and foundational skills as informed by leadership and leadership-related assessment instruments.

3. Produce results of at least four leadership related assessments and prepare and apply those results to your leadership persona.

4. Identify and distinguish your leadership style, principles, and foundational skills (both strengths and weaknesses) based on the results obtained from leadership-related assessment instruments.

5. Based on self-assessments of your personality type, leadership style, principles, and foundational skills, devise a plan to improve your weaknesses while leveraging or enhancing your strengths.

6. Critique and interpret your unique leadership persona and relate your leadership persona with examples from your life experiences.

INTRODUCTION

The first step in improving your ability to lead people in health organizations is to understand yourself. To take that first step, gaining an understanding of your personality type, leadership style, and associated leadership

81514_CH02_Ledlow.qxd 8/4/10 3:10 PM Page 25

skills is paramount. It matters what you know, who you know, and, perhaps most importantly, what you know about yourself!1 This chapter starts the journey to understand yourself. As part of this effort, by identifying your strengths, weaknesses, and propensities, you can work to become a better leader by adding knowledge, skills, and abilities to your leadership “toolbox.” This is a lifelong endeavor. Just as you have a dominant personality (the personality you naturally have), so you also have a dominant leadership style, a dominant conflict management style, and so forth. Even so, you can learn, practice, and master other styles, which then become part of your repertoire to lead people and manage resources.

To begin your journey to understanding yourself, this chapter introduces a variety of assessment-related topics: the Myers–Briggs personality indicator, “introvertedness” and “extrovertedness” (Type A/B personality indicators), creative and empirical thinkers (left- and right-brain thinkers), and the propensity to lead and learn through visual, auditory, reading, or kinesthetic (VARK) constructs. Prior to completing the leadership- related assessments, students are asked to complete the enneagram diagnostic to discern whether their per- sonal motivational objectives mirror those of traditional leaders. The supplement to this text, available at http://www.jblearning.com/catalog/9780763781514/, provides additional assessments as well.

The final assessments focus on the test taker’s propensity and affiliation in relationship to traditional lead- ership or traditional managerial roles. Other assessments provide diagnostics that evaluate risk taking, charisma, vision, and empirical leadership characteristics. This chapter also discusses the constant battle a leader experi- ences between his or her natural predispositions and the precepts taught in leadership training and mechanical execution. While we do not present these tests as a panacea for leadership diagnosis, we do suggest that certain ability–job fit characteristics may become clearer after completing these self-assessments.

KNOW THYSELF: WHAT KIND OF LEADER ARE YOU?

Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker of the U.S. House of Representative, once said of former Demo- cratic President Bill Clinton that he did not like to talk with Clinton for too long a period of time, because after a while he began to agree with him.2 Although former White House Press Secretary George Stephanopoulos may have made this comment jovially in his book All Too Human, the statement was fundamentally accurate in more ways than one. President Clinton was widely admired for his natural charisma, political savvy, and social skills that inspired followership and easy friendship. The same might not be true of his spouse, Secretary of State Hillary Clin- ton,3 who has grown and matured in political creditability through nearly two decades of on-the-job leader train- ing coupled with personal and professional self-development. What one leader possesses intrinsically and naturally, the other honed through application of best practices and understanding of leadership styles, princi- ples, and skills. In other words, some leaders have natural abilities, while others must work to learn those abilities.

All leaders—regardless of their natural abilities, experience, education, and training—must be aware of their own personal areas for improvement so that they can grow and become more successful. As a result, we ask you to consider the following questions:

j What kind of leader are you?

j What are your strengths and weaknesses?

j Are you aware of how those strengths and weaknesses support or fail to support your leadership style?

Traits of Leaders

There is an ongoing debate, within both the literature and professional practice, over whether leaders are born or made. This argument centers on the premise that those qualities that make leaders successful cannot be taught. Such qualities might include ambition, motivation, and a strong work ethic.

There is a general agreement in the literature that these qualities are inherent within individuals who emerge as leaders in the organizational workplace. Certainly, many great leaders of our time have possessed these