Insightful Paragraphs I’d like to see used:
In the powerful passage Leaders by Bennis and Nannus’ paint a picture that leadership is a sought after concept by individuals in society today. Leadership is attacked by the young and that the old are wistful for it. Parents have lost it and the police-force seeks it. Experts claim to have it, while scholars want it. Bennis and Nanus continue to say that if bureaucrats pretend they have it, politicians wish they did; in consensus the majority agree that there is less of it in today’s society than there use to be and in many ways it seems to be a lost concept.
The abundance of present- day challenges along with the fast rate of change, there sometimes exist a void of notions and great people to implement them. Obvious challenges could account for the apparent void in leadership, and even more so, this emptiness has yielded the need for the promise of new leaders, and hopefully with so, we can anticipate new visions and power for “leadership is the pivotal force behind successful organizations and that to create vital and viable organizations, leadership is necessary” (as cited in Bennis et al., 3). Perhaps with this obvious void; it is more than ever, a time for women to fill this role.”
Notes on Leadership and Credibility.
Most scholars whom have researched and written about the ideas in which leadership stand for often pick a few key points to highlight and define the term. They usually choose principles to what they think a great leader encompass, or what essentials one needs to attain the status of a distinguished leader. Many establish that leaders, through their actions, must be challenging, inspiring, enabling, modeling, and encouraging. Even we individuals, who may not have a scholarly opinion about these details, can most likely come to agreement on what we want from our leaders. We want these qualities. But how is it that a leader gains the recognition that these are the qualities in which the common person hopes their figurehead obtains? It is through their credibility which is known to be the foundations of leadership.
Kouzes and Posner (1987), states the following:
If someone is to lead us, that person must be able to stand before us and
confidentially express an attractive image of the future, and we must be
able to believe that he or she has the ability to take us there. (p. 25)
To show your credibility as a good leader, with enthusiasm it is a goal to win others to your ideas by the joy you yourself have in them. (Walters, 1993, day 23) Without credibility, one as a leader will find it difficult to govern.
Credibility is said to be “one of the hardest to earn, and it is the most fragile of human qualities” (Kouzes et al., 1987, p. 24). This quality of credibility is summed up in three different forms: expertise, trustworthiness, and goodwill. Studied in a Leadership 101 seminar hosted on Appalachian State’s campus, credibility is a primary enhancement of leadership. The leader as an individual shows credibility by having knowledge in a subject, following through with what they say and intend, and their goodwill through engagement and service. Credibility is earned each minute by minute, hour by hour, and even by months and years; it can be lost in a very short order if not attended to. We are able to trust leaders when their deeds and words match. Kouzes et al. (1987) states, “No one will want to go the leader’s way if they doubt that the person’s trustworthiness, expertise, or dynamism” (p. 24).
Leadership and Management
The number one problem in today’s organizations, and especially ones that have failure rates, is “they tend to overmanaged and underled” (Bennis et al., 1985, p. 21). Some may be great in the aptitude to handle daily routines, yet many of these people who focus solely on the day to day task never quite get around to asking the question if the routine should be even implemented in the first place. There is a profound difference between management and leadership and both are essential to understand.
Bennis and Nanus (1985) give examples of the two:
‘To manage’ means ‘to bring about, to accomplish, to have charge of or
responsibility for, to conduct.’ ‘Leading’ is ‘influencing, guiding in direction,
course, action, opinion.’ The distinction is crucial. Managers are people
who do things right and leaders are people who do the right thing. (p. 21)
The variation between the two ideas can be summarized as activities of vision versus judgment and differentiation in the process in which they entail.
Power is the currency of leaders. The misuse of power, distinguishes the differences between management and leadership. Historically overtime, leaders have sometimes controlled rather than organized. It is also said in Encouraging the Heart, “the popular assumption about managers… that they have a high need to express control” (Kouzes and Posner, 1999, p. 9). Even though placed into a hierarchy position as a manager, they misuse the power they are given, because in essence there are many cases when managers were given little learned information about empowerment. Thus they feel powerless. Whoever they are, managers or subordinates, they tend to cling onto whatever shreds of power they feel they do have.
Defined in Leading Change (1996) by Kotter, “Management is a set processes that can keep a complicated system of people and technology running smoothly...Leadership is a set of processes that creates organizations in the first place or adapts them to … changing circumstances” (p. 25).
These two process show getting others to do and getting others to want to do. Leaders get other people to want to do while, managers with this powerlessness attitude, tend to adopt a petty and dictatorial management style. They negatively use their position at times to make people do what they want; they get other people to do. (Kouzes and Posner, 1987, pp. 27 & 163) The position of a manager is essential in business formats however, through the definition of management alone it is coherent that people would rather exchange with a leader who inspires and influences positively.
A message published in the Wall Street Journal:
People don’t want to be managed. They want to be led. Whoever heard of
a world manager? World leader, yes. Educational leader. Religious leader.
Scout leader. Community leader. Labor leader. Business leader. They
lead. They don’t manage. The carrot always wins over the stick. Ask your
horse. You can lead your horse to water, but you can’t manage him to
drink. If you want to manage somebody, manage yourself. Do that well
and you’ll be ready to stop managing. And starting leading. (Figured in
Bennis and Nanus, 1985, p. 22)
The is the perfect paradigm to show how forcing a dictatorial and managerial system on people administers repression rather than expression, and holds followers in arrest rather than in evolution needed.
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