Justin Graves

LDRS 5454: Leadership in Diverse Contexts | Dr. Eric Kaufman

Applied Learning Reflection 5: Leadership with a Higher Purpose

Part 1: What?

As I conclude synthesizing the main points of my final leadership, the piece that we jus completed on Greenleaf’s servant leadership ring especially true for this Applied Learning Reflection.  Servant leadership enacts front-line leadership.  Greenleaf’s definition is as accurate as you can get – the servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible.

Part 2: So What?

 How does servant leadership enact itself in our everyday lives? Let’s compare it to the leadership crisis that is going on in Washington, D.C.  There is a popular idea that is consistently circulating about how there it is alarming that more than eighty percent of the issues discussed in our Nation’s Capitol – let’s use Obamacare as an example – does not apply to more than ninety percent of those making the decisions.  When you consider “who has the power?” it’s pretty alarming that there is minimal interaction on the front-lines between our nation’s leaders and the policies that they distribute.

Part 3: Now What?

My argument for this blog, as I finalize my ideas for my final leadership philosophy paper, is that we must consider how, exactly, our nation’s leaders are not quite servant leaders. Is that a potential cure to our leadership crisis? To see our politicians and policy-setters on the front lines, forced to be served by some of the same programs they create and distribute?  Many argue that this is a large reason that we have a leadership crisis in our country.  To harken back to the beginnings of our course, a leadership crisis is plainly evident in today’s culture, especially in the United States.  I truly believe a way to begin to circumvent that crisis is to have more servant leaders in as many arenas as possible.

 

 

Justin Graves

LDRS 5454: Leadership in Diverse Contexts | Dr. Eric Kaufman

Applied Learning Reflection 4 
Article: Critical and Distributed Perspectives

Authentic Leadership by Burke & Cooper

 

Part 1: Purpose & context

This chapter was a part of a larger textbook titled Inspiring Leaders by Burke and Cooper.  Authentic leadership can sometimes encourage questions like “how do you lead those who want to follow?”  But, leadership that is authentic encourages around-the-clock leadership.  One must realize that leadership, including authentic leadership, is about much more than influence.  Authentic leaders have insight, demonstrate initiative, exert influence, have impact, and exercise integrity (Hyatt, 2012).  One of the most important aspects of leadership is the exercising of integrity.  The scope of authentic leadership gives much attention to the notion of around-the-clock integrity, while in formal leadership positions or not.

Part 2: Fundamental & powerful concepts of the article

Now, how does a leader remain authentic at all times? Is that a realistic expectation? Is that actually achievable in a world full of 24-hour vigilance, social media, etc.?  This book, Inspiring Leaders, and more specifically the chapter titled Authentic Leadership emphasize the importance of this constant nature of positive behavior.  That is, if one wishes to inspire leaders, it is important to act in a legitimate, leadership-like fashion in as many instances as possible.  The chapter identifies the main components of authentic leadership as self-awareness, which includes their values, identity, emotions, and motives/goals.  There is also a focus on authentic behavior, where behaving authentically means acting in accord to one’s values, preferences, and needs as opposed to acting merely to please others or to attain rewards or avoid punishments through acting falsely.  For the authors, authenticity is not a compulsive effort to display one’s true self, but is the free and natural expression of core feelings, motives, and inclinations (Burke & Cooper, 2006).

Part 3: Discussion

Frankly, I don’t have too strong of a critique of this chapter.  One of the massive strengths of the article is a concept coined as “positive organizational behavior,” which is basically applying positive technology into the workplace.  POB differs from positive psychology in that it identifies measureable and developable state-like strengths rather than more fixed, trait-like characteristics and virtues.  This concept also overlaps with one of our required texts for this unit, Strengths-Based Leadership by Rath & Conchie.  Rath & Conchie (2008) highlight the necessity for a leader to be able to identify the strengths of their followers, especially when leading a team. In order to inspire their leaders (Burke & Cooper, 2006) they must be able identify the strengths of their leaders in order to facilitate positive leader-follower relationships.

Part 4: Utility

This chapter shares a lot of the utility found in the Strengths-Based Leadership (Rath & Conchie, 2008) text. Although our unit is all about critical and distributed perspectives of leadership, it truly does harken back to our previous unit of follower-centered perspectives.  As I mentioned in class while Heather Evans shared some time with us, I originally was not a big proponent of the strengths-based leadership movement, as I learn more about it, specifically as it relates to inspiring future leaders, I feel more strongly that there is utility in this perspective.

References

Burke, R. & Cooper, C.  (2006).  Inspiring leaders: Authentic leadership.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Press.

Hyatt, M.  (2012).  The 5 Marks of Authentic Leadership.  Helping Leaders Leverage

Influence.

Rath, T., & Conchie, B. (2008). Strengths based leadership: Great leaders, teams, and

why people follow. New York: Gallup Press.

Justin Graves

LDRS 5454: Leadership in Diverse Contexts | Dr. Eric Kaufman

Applied Learning Reflection 3 
Article: Follower-centered perspectives Blog

 

Part 1: What?

In this unit, we have focused on the follower-centered perspectives of leadership.  Through this lens, we can focus more on the interactions that a leader has with their followers.  I believe this will be my preferred unit of the course because I, too, believe that much attention should be given to the follower if one intends to facilitate a positive leader-follower relationship.  My final paper will focus largely on follower-centered perspectives of leadership, specifically looking at how interpersonal relationships affect the likelihood that a follower will want to abide by the vision of the leader. My own definition of leadership borrows from how leadership can be defined as the ability to convince a group of followers to work toward a set of common goals (Northouse, 2013), how the study of leadership has proven that it requires effective communication and valuable relationships (Jackson & Parry, 2011), and how there is always potential to be a more effective leader by highlighting certain strengths in certain instances in a developmental framework (Rath & Conchie, 2008).

Part 2: So What?

In Follower-Centered Perspectives on Leadership, Meindl mentions that “it is the followers rather than the leaders who construct both phenomenon of leadership and the images of specific leaders and hence both the emergence of leadership and its consequences are largely influenced by followers’ cognitive processes and inter-follower social influence processes (Meindl, 2006).   I think that this definition of follower-centered leadership is spot-on and hits the nail on the head.  There is great importance to be had in follower-centered perspectives of leadership because the assessment or “grading” of the leader is most likely going to be performed by the follower.  If there is no buy-in from the follower and they are not actively involved in the relationship, there is no great opportunity for them to assimilate to the values, vision, or goals of the leader.

Part 3: Now what?

Through this unit, I feel particularly affirmed in my own definition of leadership that has been forming over the course of this semester.  I truly believe that the follower-perspectives of leadership will be some that persist over the span of time due to the fact that leadership almost always has two things: a leader and a follower.

References

Jackson, B, & Parry, K. (2011). A very short, fairly interesting and reasonably cheap

book about studying leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Rath, T., & Conchie, B. (2008). Strengths based leadership: Great leaders, teams, and

why people follow. New York: Gallup Press.

Meindl, J. R.  (2006).  Follower-centered perspectives of leadership: A tribute to the

memory of James R. Meindl.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Northouse, P.G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and practice (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA:

Sage.