Date: 24 May 2013
Assignment title: Understanding Leadership
I would like to present my knowledge and understanding of different leadership styles. I will explain why different styles or behaviours have positive or negative effects on individual and group behaviour. I will also identify actions which I can use to enhance my own leadership behaviour.
The first question to consider is what makes someone a good leader? A leader is a role model who delivers performance by enabling and trusting the team and individuals, to fully develop and utilise their skills and experience. The leader ensures the team “gets the job done” effectively and efficiently through good planning and organisation, delegating tasks to appropriate individuals, developing and inspiring them to achieve and monitoring their progress. A leader works with others to accomplish goals of the organisation. Leadership styles are techniques used to influence the performance of others. A good leader appreciates that everyone uses the four learning styles differently:
1. ACTIVISTS – Prefer to learn by doing something immediately; they get on with it.
2. REFLECTORS – sit back, watch and listen to others doing the task beforehand.
3. THEORISTS – want to understand a wider picture and they prefer to build systems and take things down from first principles.
4. PRAGRAMATISTS – experiment by trying out new ideas to see it working with their own eyes.
Team members need to be given enough authority to carry out tasks effectively. Team work is very important as without it tasks do not get completed. The Belbin’s team roles system is helpful for me to help identify which people are better for certain tasks. On one occasion, my team were asked to accomplish a big task and during that day I observed each team member. I found that my team had people playing many roles from the Belbin system including:
1. PLANT – the source of the team’s ideas. Very clever and will