Chapter 13 Insights

Ethics is defined as "of or pertaining to morality" and "the science of morals, the moral principles by which a person is guided".  

Chapter 13 talks about the grey line between ethics and effectiveness, and not always being able. Sometimes being ethical is being effective and sometimes being effective is being ethical. Unethical situations are sometimes a result of leaders' incompetencies. The chapter talks about the dimensions of ethical leadership: ethics of leader/follower relationship, ethics of a leader as person, ethics of the leadership process, and the ethical decisions of leader. 

This chapter also mentioned altruism and how it is a motive for acting.

Do you think our morals and ethics should be the basis for how we act as leaders? Or do we make decisions as leaders and use our ethics as a soundboard for previous choices?

Response to Chapter 11

I think to be a successful young leader today self efficacy, leaders learning motivation and capabilities, readiness to change, and capability between congruence of organization and leader. Self-efficacy is necessary to determination/desire to learn about self strengths and weakness. Leaders need to have the desire and motivation to accomplish and achieve goals at head. The need to be able to receive feedback and be motivated to change based on the feedback. Leader's readiness to change is essential, especially in today's society. Leaders need to keep up with the world, environment, and even community. Leaders need emotional and cognitive development to embrace change within the world. There needs to be a congruence between organization and leaders otherwise high stress. Leaders need to have the steps and understanding for leadership development when working with people when with other people. As young leaders, I feel these are essential characteristics that affect leadership development. By attributing these traits, will enables to be successful in the real world workplace.

Chapter 12 Women and Men as Leaders

The chapter discusses women’s underrepresentation in leadership roles based on four general types of explanation. The first type explains there is a sex difference in human capital investments, in which the gender gap in workplace leadership is that women’s capital investment in education, training, and work experience is lower than men’s. Women’s capital investment is reasoned by women have less job experience and consistency of employment than men do. Also, motherhood and domestic obligations to the families cause women to suffer from loss of income and experience. Do you feel that this is a strong reasoning for under representation for women? I feel women have a happy balance between their personal lives and work experience. More women are going to college or receiving higher education.

The second type compares the leadership styles of men and women. Female leaders/managers tend to adopt a transformational style and use more rewards to encourage appropriate subordinate behavior, in contrast, men are more likely to engage in different aspects of transactional leadership (active and passive management-by-exception) and laissez-faire leadership. Do believe these styles apply to you based on your gender?

The third type of explanation considers the evolutionary psychology argument that is in the nature of men but not women to be motivated to lead and dominate others. I did not agree with this agreement and found it an invalid argument.

The fourth category of explanation focuses on prejudice and discrimination. I think that prejudice and discrimination occurs when women take on masculine traits for leadership roles. This opposes the common qualities for women roles in society that usually consist of friendly, unselfish, and quite. Do you think women are negatively stereotyped when they are in leadership roles? Do you think people have negative attitudes toward female leaders in our society?

Ch. 11 Leadership and Culture

Chapter 11 is about the differences of characteristics of cultures.  The Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) defines leadership as "the ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members."

There was research done on the differences of different continents, such as North America and Europe, where North America tended to focus on leader-group interaction and the European studies tended to place leadership in a broader, social, legal, and political context.  The North American group is more oriented on having a boss and just getting things accomplished, whereas Europe is more focused on people having different ideas putting towards the group.

There are four culture dimensions discussed in this chapter:

- individualism-collectivism

-masculinity-femininity

-uncertainty avoidance

-power distance

There are major distinctions between developed and developing countries where on average the developed world countries have significantly higher per capita income than do the developing countries and that developed world countries rank higher on the Human Development Index (a composite index, which indicates the presence of good education, health care, and quality of life).  

Why do you think that countries have different leadership characteristics or ideas on what leadership is?

There are differences because the countries have lived like this their whole lives.  They have not changed and think that this is a perfect idea of leadership and goes along with what they have believed in forever.  There are differences because there are also different ideas they have in their culture on what is right and wrong.  In the developing countries they might have not been taught what is right and wrong for leadership, so they may think that their leadership is right.  The US is businesslike because they are more a developed country and know what they are doing, and Europe just agrees with everyone and they are collaborative to each other.  This is why the countries are different.

Chapter ten - Leadership Development

Chapter ten discusses ideas similar to that of the leadership development model we all know and love so well! How does one develop into a leader and what aids that process?

Obviously there are some stated characteristics that make an effective leader:

- self-insight

- self-efficacy

- self-determination

- motivation

- capability

One needs to have self insight to understand their personal strengths, weaknesses and situational approaches to conflict, motivation and drive in order to lead others. Leaders also need to be aware of feedback and be able to receive it in a positive light in order to grow and change. 

Change is another major component in leadership development. Change is driven by leadership and those initiatives to make that process happen. 

Leadership does not happen on its own. Leadership is supported by the organizational structure and the congruence between said organization and the leader. Those two entities, to have effective leadership, need to be able to work seamlessly. Not without conflict, but with open communication flow and support to instigate change. 

What are some barriers in the positive development of a young leader?

Leaders are born and made. There are certain steps one can take to try to be a good leader. I was always very out-spoken, boisterous and organized. I think those are skills that made me the person and leader i am today. This was not always the smoothest path. Learning to manage my boisterousness and love of talking in a productive way was a challenge for me. Letting other people delegate to me and not always take the majority of work load was and still is a problem for my leadership style. Given these problems, i have and still have a positive support system through my family, friends and teachers that push me to be a better leader. 

What Determines Success?

In any situation, class, project, initiative; success is always the hardest thing to determine. I think success is best measured by those who did, planned, enacted or employer the activity. 

In the mind frame of social work and interning at United Way, success on a community scale is very hard to reach. The community always needs more, there is never enough money and more and more demographics of people are being missed. The big picture is the focus. Success cannot be measured in short terms. Change is a very hard thing to initiate. In my involvement with social work, i think success is any program, plan or start up that benefits some aspect of the community. It may not change statistical data on homelessness, the poverty index or battered women's shelters intake numbers, but it helps and it always is done with the best intentions. 

I think the planning portion of the leadership event judges the success the most harshly since they planned it. I think overall most things have some sort of success value. There are always things to be learned, ways to change for the future and areas for improvement.