Critique on Leadership: A Communication Perspective
Summary
“Effective leadership is the product of the creation and delivery of inspiring and compelling messages.” (Hackman & Johnson, 2009, p. 336). This book is a comprehensive review of historical insights, current theories and recent research on leadership theories and leadership issues, with an emphasis upon how effective leaders communicate.
Leadership: A Communication Perspective is based on the current and somewhat American idea that leadership can be learned and anyone can be a leader. Leadership is viewed as an interaction between leaders and followers, in which shared goals are discovered.
Humans are unique in their use of symbols. As leaders, this ability to create symbols and use them to inspire, direct, and transform others is at the heart of true leadership. In every organization, leaders communicate directions, goals and rules. Leaders also manipulate meaning. Through storytelling, celebrations, and mission statements, leaders interact with followers to create a group culture. Through symbolic manipulation, leaders change the way followers view themselves and their world. Effective leaders can transform their follower’s schemas or ways of interpreting life and assigning meaning.
While trait, situational, functional, relational and charismatic leadership were all included in this comprehensive review of leadership theories, transformational leadership received the greatest attention. Transformational leadership goes beyond the achievement of organizational goals. It seeks to empower followers so that they become leaders, and inspiring leaders to make them moral leaders of change. As such, leaders empower through creativity, interaction with ...
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...ent-oriented leadership “emphasizing excellence and demonstrating confidence in a follower’s abilities” (2009, p. 83). As in Hersey and Blanchard’s Situation Leadership Theory, the teacher will base her guidance on student readiness, in regards to the student’s relationship to the teacher, and their understanding and competence with the desired behavior.
For administrators in a Christian school, this book will be invaluable due to its advice on techniques regarding public speaking, working within groups, and creating a culture of inspiration and achievement. These are all areas of great importance that impact the job of administrating at a Christian school.
Hackman and Johnson’s comprehensive review of leadership is excellent as a textbook and reference book. It will continue to be used by leaders in education, business and other organizations.
Leaders are very important members of society. Leadership, regardless of how it is defined, is still the ability to lead, manage, advise, teach, decide and direct. In the book “Leading Out Loud” the author Terry Pearce says leadership communication has to express the competence of the communicator while contributing to a sense of trust. Leaders must make it clear that change is aligned with the organization and their leadership goals. Leaders must prove themselves to be competent and trustworthy. In authentic leadership communication the author states that 4 principles must be employed- discovering what matters, applying courage, discipline, and decide to lead.
According to Riggio (2009), the most popular theory of leadership is transformational. Many believe that these leaders get the job done through inspiring, modeling, and helping others develop their skills as leaders. Research provides clear evidence that groups lead by transformational leaders have higher levels of performance and satisfaction than groups led by other types of leaders (Riggio, 2009). Clear communication is vital to transformational leadership and in order to succeed further, one will need to work on their own skills, and set aside time and space for personal development (Manktelow, 2005).
Throughout this class, we learned that leadership can be defined in many ways by different authors. The definitions depend on many things and different variables. One way of we can attempt to define is through characteristics of the leader, the followers, and the situation (Yukl, 2013). Yukl, 2013 defines leadership as being “the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives” (Yukl, 2013 p.7). The character of the leader influences situations and followers in different ways. The characteristics of the followers also call for a different type of leadership style
Yukl, G. (2002), Leadership in Organizations, 5th ed., Prentice-Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ, .
Kouzes, J., & Posner, B., (2007). The leadership challenge, (4th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-
As stated earlier, leadership is an ever-evolving practice that one is subject to throughout the course of a lifetime. Leadership has countless working parts and theories that many human beings can only grasp through formal classroom training. There are leaders however, without formal education and training who are extremely successful in all aspects of their roles. These leaders focus and thrive on employee relations. These dynamic leaders utilize a plethora of styles and theories which helps to faci...
Lord, R. (2000). Leadership. In A. E. Kazdin (Ed.), Encyclopedia of psychology, vol. 4. (pp. 499-505). Doi:10.1037/10519-216
The emphasis on leaders being not just executives and managers, and that not all executives and managers are leaders, is extremely vital. Anyone can strive to be a leader in whatever organization in which they are involved. Bennis and Nanus claim that leadership is about character, setting the example for how team members treat one other (and in a corporate setting, their clients as well), being truthful and sustaining organizational trust, and encouraging themselves and others to learn. On one hand, it can be easy to see how many people in leadership positions do no match up to these standards of leadership. On the other, it seems a bit like common sense to be truthful to others and to effectively communicate with people who work together everyday. Leaders is an effective tool for summarizing and inspiring leadership not in that it teaches tough strategies and manipulations, but that when looking at an overview of its content, Bennis and Nanus are essentially teaching human relations and human decency. All in all, this book highlights strategies for us all to be better in our lives and our everyday
Leadership at times can be a complex topic to delve into and may appear to be a simple and graspable concept for a certain few. Leadership skills are not simply acquired through position, seniority, pay scale, or the amount of titles an individual holds but is a characteristic acquired or is an innate trait for the fortunate few who possess it. Leadership can be misconstrued with management; a manager “manages” the daily operations of a company’s work while a leader envisions, influences, and empowers the individuals around them.
Leaders are the individuals who help to create options and opportunities. They help in identifying the choices and solve the problems. They build commitment and coalitions. Leaders do this by inspiring others and working along with them to construct the shared vision of the possibilities and commitments of a better group, organization or community. They engage the followers in such a way that most of the followers become leaders in their own right. The variety of demands of an increasingly complex world very often require that leadership be shared by most of the members of an organization, in appropriate ways for different situations. A leader is the on...
Leaders are those who have a great influence on the lives of many people. This is especially relevant in today’s organizations, which face extreme time changes and an increasingly growing complexity (Yukl, 1998).
Leadership is defined as a process by which an individual influences others to obtain goals. There are three aspects that should be addressed when explaining leadership. One aspect is that leadership is a social influence process; leadership could not exist without a leader and one or more followers. Another leadership aspect is compliance; all of the leader’s directions must be complied with voluntarily. Compliance is what separates leadership from other influence-based formal authority. Finally, leadership results in the followers’ behavior, that is purposeful and goal-directed which must be in some organized setting (Leadership Theories and Studies, 2009).
Northouse, P. (2010). Leadership: Theory and practice (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Lussier, R.N. & Achua, C.F. (2010). Leadership: Theory, application, skill development (5th ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western.
Classical management theory conceptualises communication as a downward, one-way transfer of information from management to staff. In your view and engaging with contemporary academic literature to substantiate your argument, what makes for good leadership communication in organisations?