Monday, January 27, 2020

Factors that influence choice of leadership style

Factors that influence choice of leadership style Identify factors that will influence your choice of leadership styles and explain why your leadership styles are likely to positively affect your team In todays business world, leadership is more important than ever and while organizations have focused on identifying leadership competencies as a means of gaining competitive advantage, the quality of leadership is still a concern. Typically organizations identify a number of leadership competencies of behaviours that are important to leading the business effectively. Naturally with any developmental experience offered, the organization would like to see its leaders improve in as many competencies as possible. This is where the enhancement of Emotional Intelligence skills can provide significant leverage and value. Any team develops into an effective unit in a number of stages and over a period of time. The form of leadership required from the leader has to be appropriate to the stage of development of the team. In the 1960s Bruce Tuckman published a model for developing team effectiveness, identifying four stages; Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing. This has close parallels with Hersey and Blanchards Situational Leadership model where the leadership style changes from telling, through selling and participating and on to delegating as the team becomes more mature.   It also fits with the Tannenbaum and Schmidt continuum which describes initial use of authority by the leader developing into greater freedom for team members as the team develops. The models all tell the same story; the leadership style has to change depending on the situation and different leadership behaviours will come into play. While leaders may well consider themselves to be just human beings, or another cog in the great organisational machine, this is not how their team members see them. For them, the leader is the organisation, and they are looking for answers as to what the organisation is about. The most known leadership styles are as follow autocratic, democratic and bureaucratic. In my opinion the most effective is democratic, although in some situation the best solution is autocratic. Leaders using autocratic leadership style dont give a chance for their subordinates to express their ideas or disagree with the leaders opinion and vision. As a result of fact the team become a group of people just mechanically implementing the leaders instructions what is good only for emergency situation. While emergency no time for disputes and asking for suggestion, the decision should be accepted immediately and autocratic style is a brilliant for that type of situation to lead people. Democratic style of leadership is more fruitful and promotes the sharing of responsibility. Such a techniques as consultation, effective delegation of tasks, encourage becoming a leader and being involved in leadership development determined my choice. So the main factors that influence to my choice of leadership are positive work environment where junior employees are given a possibility to challenge themselves, successful initiatives when the process of consultation and feedback naturally results in better decision making and more effective operations. The next factor is encouragement of creative thinking, because creative thinking is required to solve problems in every single organisation, whatever its nature. Reduced employee turnover is the last of the factors. When employees feel empowered through leadership development, a company will experience lower rates of employee turnover which has numerous benefits. Further I try briefly state why democratic leadership styles are likely have a positive effect of individual and group behaviour. Democratic leadership is allowing employees to give their ideas on how processes become leaner and more efficient and effective in organisations where training, professional leadership development and quality of work performed are very appreciated. Organisations are benefit from drawing upon the creative energies of all their staff to bring about cost cutting techniques or fund raising ideas, from the free flow of ideas that democratic leadership brings. ( Review of own leadership behaviour Assess your own leadership behaviours and potential by referring to a relevant leadership model, your organisations working practises, and by collecting feedback from others. Describe what actions you could take to improve as a leader Most people are naturally anxious about change and it doesnt take a lot for the pessimist in all of us to emerge. The individuals response to change is heavily influenced by the response of the people round about them, and key among those influences is the reaction of the leader. If the leader displays a negative reaction then so too do many members of the team. The leader needs to be aware of the impact that their behavior has on other people. The leaders own behavior is then a key influence on the outcome of the change process and the leader needs to behave appropriately, if the change is to be managed successfully. Ability to communicate is to be ready to answer to the questions such as Why are we doing this?, What do we do?, How do we do it? in the new world. Communication is a two way process. Instant answers are not good in new world better to discuss and to gradually understand what will be required of from the team in the future. Change leadership is enhanced when leaders communicate a little at a time, as often as possible, in as many different ways as possible, and providing as many different perspectives as possible. Once team members have built their own personal model of the future and have checked it out against the reality of what is happening on the ground, so that they can once again begin to make their own decisions, the communication process will have served its purpose. For the  second leadership behaviors is ability to support the members of the team. Support in this context is very much about the individual. Leader need to make time available for each individual, need to make himself accessible and need to be prepared to listen. Answers can come in due time, but the leader needs to provide active support to each individual. The next of the leadership behaviors is independence. Leaders need to retain a degree of independence from members of the team all of the time, but at a time of change it becomes even more crucial. Leader have to be able to make the correct decisions, and even begindisciplinary process if some team members refuse to respond appropriately to a new environment. If they dont deal with an individual who is being obstructive, they risk alienating others who respond appropriately. Independence is also important to separate the leaders behaviour towards the team from the way that the leader behaves as an individual. The next step of the leadership behaviours is the ability to develop others. At a time of change everyone has to learn to do things differently. A good leader is working with their team to help them discover first of all what they need to be able to do, and secondly to learn how to do it. Coaching will probably be a key activity at this time. By helping team members to achieve new skills the leader not only enables the team to do its work, but increases the confidence of the team member and reduces any concern about the change stemming from their ability to learn new skills. Leadership style is how you relate to subordinates. Assessing my way of leadership I came to solution that mostly I use democratic leadership style behavior to motivate employees to work harder, involve employees for more participation in the decision-making process. Opinion of personnel is much appreciated and leads them to be motivated especially when their ideas were used in the work processes. As a result work environment become healthy and employees feel good about it.   Workers feel that their opinion counts, and because of that feeling they are more committed to achieving the goals and objectives of the organization. The collaborative environment created by this style often results in more thorough solutions to problems. I realize that sometime the democratic style could be no effective as take time when I ask people about their opinion, while they explaining what they think and other understand what they are saying. Efficiency is in right assessment of the knowledge and exp erience of subordinates. If they are not quite qualified this will be just waste of the time. So when is situation critic and I need to make urgent decision I switch the style. Even the most successful team will need help from its leader when faced with major change in its environment. For change leadership to be successful, certain leadership behaviors need to be used more regularly until the team has taken the impact of the change on board, and has learned how to be successful in the new environment

Sunday, January 19, 2020

Nickelodeon in Latin America

Taran Swan had successfully launched Nickelodeon in Latin America. Would Swan be able to continue leading the team from New York? Or would it be better to appoint an interim director, and if so, whom? 1) Appoint a current member of the team as interim director †¢Swan knows her team member’s work ethics. They all know about each others projects. †¢Who should she choose? 2) Appoint third party individual as interim director †¢Third party with unattached opinion and new view. Hard to find a person, interview him, etc. 3) Divide responsibilities among current team members †¢Previously divided the Vice President of Marketing between Friedman and McCarty. †¢Valuable because joint partnership with two opinions instead of one. †¢But can lead to communication problems. †¢The position would have to be approved by Corporate, which can be a long process. 4) Continue serving as director remotely from New York †¢Swam has already successfully led her t o team through many challenges. Virtual meetings pose a problem. †¢Swan’s assistant, Sonia Schwarz, could continue acting as her â€Å"point person. † †¢Most work required the staff to travel to Latin America to work on deals with local offices in Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil. †¢Without Swan’s guidance, will her team still have the same energies? †¢Swan’s and her baby’s health is still unpredictable. Recommendation I recommend that Swan should continue to lead Nickelodeon Latin America from New York.She has successfully led her team through many challenges, and she cannot quickly find a person to take her place. She should mitigate risks and ensure there this a â€Å"back up† person incase anything would to happen to her. However, I think her relocating would pose as a minimal problem to her team as nowadays, many things can be done virtually, and people are already used to working with other team members through virtual means.

Saturday, January 11, 2020

Lord of the Flies Literary Analysis Paper

Through the Doors of High School Bullying – something that happens every day in high schools, but yet people do not always acknowledge what goes on. According to the article Bully Facts & Statistics, 56% of students have personally witnessed some type of bullying at school. Bullying exceedingly affects a person. Whether it comes to a stop or not, the person harassed will never have the same mentality. In William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies, a plane crashes on a deserted island and all that remains is a group of boys. No adults – young boys all alone.Throughout the novel the children have leadership roles and rules in order for their continued existence. The experience a person has while on the island is how they reach their goal – survival. Lord of the Flies is a classic because it is seen as a metaphor for high school in this contemporary era because of the struggle for power that is showed through the setting, the characters, and the symbols. Goldi ng uses the scar on the island as a part of the setting to relate to high school. No matter if the boys abscond from the island, the mark will still exist similar to a student’s reputation in high school.The scar in the novel is the scene where the plane crash emerges. This is the characteristics of the scar after the crash: â€Å"The undergrowth of the side of the scar was shaken and a multitude of raindrops fell pattering† (7). A scar literally means leaving a mark on something. The popular crowd in high school ensures an easier time of leaving a positive impact on the school, because they have additional power over the other students. This is an example of students struggling for power. Besides the popular crowd, everyone else has a hard time of gaining their power and making an impact on the school.A person will never forget about their experience in high school just like the boys will never overlook the effects of the plane crash that happened in Lord of the Flies on the island. From the novel Lord of the Flies, Piggy’s characteristics remain not all that different from high school students. Early on in the novel, when Piggy and Ralph first meet, Piggy states, ‘†I don’t care what they call me,† he said confidentially, ‘â€Å"so long as they don’t call me what they used to call me at school†Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ (11). Piggy’s declaration refers to how he accustomed to be treated back home.Piggy’s heavyset body and nerdy glasses causes constant harassment directed towards him. Contrary, high school students remain not all that different. Whether in high school or Lord of the Flies, name calling can really get to a person. The students that get picked on constantly are the ones that struggle the most at gaining power. The students that pick on others are the ones that contain the most power. On the island, a social stance takes place. Ralph and Jack are the leaders while the litluns follow th em. Piggy remains the outcast. In schools the bullies, usually the jocks, tend to pick on the nerds.Although Piggy was known as the outcast, he had brains. â€Å"But Piggy, for all his ludicrous body, had brains. Ralph was a specialist in thought now, and could recognize thought in another (78). † Piggy was smarter than most of the others; that was part of the reason of why he stood out. Similarly, high school students judge to quickly. Again, that is a big part of why bullying takes place at school. Because Piggy is smarter than the others, it causes him to struggle the most for power. He is seen differently than the others and judged for it.Furthermore, possessions parallel materialistic possessions of people in high school. In the novel, the conch is used as an important object to the boys. Towards the end of the book when Roger rolls a boulder on Piggy, â€Å"The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and c eased to exist† (181). In Lord of the Flies, the conch symbolizes power. The conch represents order; it keeps the boys in line. Similar to high school, the conch represents power like students’ possessions. By having expensive clothes, it symbolizes richness, coolness, and popularity.Ralph a leader in the novel, uses the conch to gain his power. But Ralph eventually loses his power. â€Å"The space under the palm trees was full of noise and movement. Ralph was on his feet too, shouting for quiet, but no one heard him. All at once the crowd swayed toward the island and was gone – following Jack (38). † This is like high school because everyone fights for their power. Ralph represents society and in order for them to maintain their societal image; Ralph guides the boys by making rules. The conch calls the group to meetings and remains exceedingly important to the boys – especially Ralph.After giving the boys false information for a period of time, the boys turn to Jack as their leader instead of Ralph. Therefore, Lord of the Flies is a classic because it persists as a metaphor for high school in this contemporary era because of the struggle for power showed through the setting, the characters, and the symbols. In Lord of the Flies people have to deal with bullying every day. All because of the social groups that take place and the power that comes along with it. Always remember – bullying will proceed to exist in high schools but if a person does not let it bother them then it will not be as affective.

Thursday, January 2, 2020

Does the Current Electoral Process Result in the best...

Does the Current Electoral Process Result in the best Candidate for President? History informs us about the first method the parties developed in order to pick their presidential candidates. This method was the congressional caucus. The framer’s method in 1787 was that each elector would cast two electoral votes, each for a different person for president. The person who received the majority of the electoral votes would win the presidential election and the person who received the second most amount of electoral votes won the vice presidential election. However, the rise of political parties and the election of 1800 made a great change to the system. During this time the electors cast their two votes for two different†¦show more content†¦All together, there are 538 Electoral votes. In December after the election, the electors cast their votes. When the votes are counted on January 6th, the Presidential candidate that gets more than half, 270, wins the election. The President-elect and Vice President-elect then take the oath of office and are inaugurated two weeks later, on January 20th. Returning to the main question, I don’t believe the electoral process results in the best candidates for President. I believe the choice should not be left for the electoral college but for each person’s vote to count. One alternative is the popular vote where everyone’s vote would count for one vote. I dont think it is fair to try to convince people that they have a voice and encourage them to vote, when the Electoral College has the final say. The Electoral College leads to things like there being massive amounts of campaigning being down in battleground states like Ohio and Florida while people in solidly red or solidly blue states have their issues basically ignored because its almost certain which way the state is going to go. History informs us about the first method the parties developed in order to pick their presidential candidates. 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