MBA executive / Business Leadership / Leadership in the Voluntary Sector
Key aspects and task:
Business Leadership: Get familiar with “leadership in voluntary sector and the profit sector”
Read the given article
Read student assignment
Read instructor statement
Discuss and reflect on the given article
0 Discuss and answer the question in two paragraphs
Discuss the topic and answer question – keep in mind it is an University MBA-program – stay
academic – use ONLY peer-viewed articles/journals.
Stay academic on high level (universityl). Use at least three peer viewed articles supporting your argumentation.
Article:
Harris, M. (2000). The Changing Challenges of Management and Leadership in the UK Voluntary
Sector, An Interview with Stuart Etherington, Nonprofit Management & Leadership. Vol. 10 Issue 3,
p319.
9 uploaded
Student – assignment:
Introduction
This week’s assignment calls for the integration of theories and approaches learnt over the past three
weeks of this module. in addition we are to consider the path-goal and leader-member exchange
theories and how they relates to motivating employees and how it relates to the article “Effective
Leading” Leading Excellence.
leadership:
In the article “Effective Leading” Sweeney (2010) stresses that the needfor leadership development of
future leaders within the organization should not be ignored. He advise that development offuture
leaders is key for organizational survival and success. He postulated that individuals with potential
should be mentored, coached and given increased responsibilities to nurture and develop their
potential. He offered three key contextual design on how this may be accomplish i.e. Know your
people, Replace fear with confidence and create a culture of collaboration meaning the extent to
which employees are involved in the decision making process.
Know your people
To know your people is to know yourself. Knowing yourself involves understanding the constructs of
what makes an effective leader. This allows for the development of potential leaders within your
command. To be an effective leader, it could be argued that the individual must possess skills and
behavioral styles that promotes effective leadership. Leadership skills contributes to the paradigm
that leadership is a learnt process and can therefore be develop. This therefore places leadership
development in a broader construct than the narrow trait base bias. While trait is an important
component, leadership without the development of skills and style congruent with the environment,
will result in ineffective leaders.
The skilled leader will demonstrate technical, human and conceptual competencies for the demand of
the job. Social skills give him a unique perspective for knowing his people through his ease of
interaction when providing direction and guidance to his team. The right skills and style behavior
exemplified by the leader will earn his team ‘5 respect, trust and loyalty. He will be seen as a problem
solver and consensus builder. He is able to create an environment that encourages team motivation,
His communication style would be clear and clarifying and he will encourage team collaboration. The
leader will see these competencies exemplified in potential leaders as he himself exemplifies the same
competencies.
Arguably the leader’s style forms an important component for effective leadership as well. The style
approach helps the leader determines his real style, i.e. task oriented or relational oriented,
Northouse (2013). The task oriented leader is more concerned with completing task and achieving
results. The relational leader primary concerns are for the welfare of this team while at the same time
achieving organizational goals through consensus building, creating team unity, trust, loyalty and
respect within the team.
Replace fear with Confidence:
Replacing employees fears with confidence is congruent with situational approaches to leadership.
The situational approach demonstrates the leader’s ability to adopt his leadership style to a given
situation. The leader will be confronted with different situations that requires a directing or
supporting style approach.
An example of the situational approach may be taken from the context of my department. There are
27 employees of varying age and skill levels. Recently two new customers service representative
(CSRs) were acquired to beef up the deposit taking counter. In addition there are a number of senior
employees that are mandated to take a particular compliance exam before end of January 2015 and
whose anxiety levels are very high as they have alreadyfailed the exam on a number of attempts.
These two situations require me to adapt my leadership style to fit the two unique set of
circumstances. To allay the new CSRs fears we endeavor that they received the requisite teller
training, role play, live action observation and on placing them on the CSR counter continually being
supportive by nurturing and building their confidence. Whereas, the situational approach for the
senior staff were quite different and require a different approach which is more achievement oriented
to instill the confidence that they can be successful with the exam this time around once the right
application ofstudy and collaboration is being employed.
Path-Goal leadership
Path-goal leadership approach is predicated on the leader’s ability and competencies to fit his
leadership style to the employee characteristics to increase motivation, satisfaction level and
expectation for success. The application of the right behaviors of the leader to the situation must
result in clearly define goals, strategies and clarity on how the goal is to be attained. He must be able
to remove obstacles to the achievement of said goal and provides support as required in the quest to
achieve the goals. Through the application of path-goal theory, combining of cognitive skills and
behavioral styles to the situation, the leader can increase employee’s expectation for success and
satisfaction for the common good.
Path-goal leadership approach forces the leader to be flexible with his behavioral styles. he is
expected to be able to apply a directive, supportive, participative or achievement oriented approach
as required by the employee’s characteristics in order to get the best of that situation. Kanter and
Stein (1979) sums up path-goal approach by opining that “middle managers are key players in
achieving organizational objectives by motivating employees, removing obstacles, clarifying paths to
goal and rewarding them accordingly
Leader Member Exchange
The LMX approach speaks to the quality of the relationship between leaders and followers. Leader
member exchange could be seen as controversial as in this context there could be an impression of
bias as followers are separated in groups. i.e. “in-group or out-groups” referred to as dyadic,
Northouse (2013). The suggestion therefore is that relationships are not developed equally between
leaders and followers. This creates a perspective of favoritism in organizational culture and is likened
to a stain that managers/leaders tries to avoid at all cost.
LMX approach effectively posits that employees that take on more responsibilities and thus in effect
offers more support to the leader would gain an advantage over employees that just does his job. I
can relate to this position, as we have recently concluded the financial year end appraisals for
employees and those staff that demonstrated the willingness to go beyond their normal job
requirements during the year received better appraisals over their counterparts.
Does this means that employees are given preferential treatment? not really, all employees are
treated in equal measures, however, those that takes on more responsibilities are single out for
special recognition and attention as they provides reliability and dependability for the leader. These
employees are held as role models for others to emulate so that the team may have greater success.
Nishii & Mayer (2009), citing Hollander, (2009) posited that by “signaling their own acceptance of
employees of various backgrounds through the establishment of high-quality relationships with them,
group leaders can promote norms about equality and inclusion that will facilitate greater power
sharing and improve reciprocal exchanges among group members
Personal Application
The ideas and concepts presented in the article are currently being employed in my leadership. The
difference is that now I am more aware and can put a name to the constructs and therefore have
better clarity and identity with the concepts that are being applied.
Conclusion
Leadership is at the center of organizational success. It is a construct that should be employed at
every level of the organization. Therefore as Sweeney (2010) advances, that leadership potential must
be develop from an early stage for organizational success. Effective leadership is about trait, skills
and style, and how these constructs are adapted to fit different situations. Effective leadership is
about knowing your people, replacing the fear with confidence and having the ability to create
culture of collaboration (Sweeney, 2010).”
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