Unit 522 becoming an effective leader a
Task for Unit one - Becoming an Effective Leader
Learner name:
Section 1: Understand own ability to fulfil key responsibilities of the leadership role.
An evaluation of my own ability to use a range of leadership styles, in different situations and with different types of people, to fulfil the leadership role.
There are in essence, four core leadership theory groups [1], which are:
Trait theories,
Behavioural theories,
Contingency theories and
Power and influence theories.
I strongly believe that a leader must be adaptable to the situation and therefore prefer the Contingency theories. I shall therefore use two contingency theories to illustrate my ability to fulfil key responsibilities of my leadership role.
I will use two contingency theories in my illustration.
Hersey and Blanchard model
The Hersey and Blanchard Situational Leadership Theory was created by Dr Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard in the mid-70’s. The fundamental basis of this theory is that there is no single ‘best’ leadership style and effective leaders have to adapt their styles depending upon the maturity level of delegates. So essentially the model rests on two fundamental concepts; leadership styles and the groups or individuals maturity level [2] .
Hersey and Blanchard defines four Leadership Styles [3]:
Telling (S1) – where the leader directs people what to do and how to do it.
Selling (S2) – where the leader provides information and direction, selling the message to get people on board, and providing support.
Participating (S3) – where the leader works with the team, sharing the decision making and responsibilities. Focus is more on relationship and less on direction.
Delegating (S4) – where the leader passes most of the responsibility for a task onto the individual or group, only monitoring progress.
S1 requires the most effort on the part of the leader which reduces through S2 and S3 to S4, which requires the least effort. Style S4 therefore would enable the leader to deliver more for
Learner name:
Section 1: Understand own ability to fulfil key responsibilities of the leadership role.
An evaluation of my own ability to use a range of leadership styles, in different situations and with different types of people, to fulfil the leadership role.
There are in essence, four core leadership theory groups [1], which are:
Trait theories,
Behavioural theories,
Contingency theories and
Power and influence theories.
I strongly believe that a leader must be adaptable to the situation and therefore prefer the Contingency theories. I shall therefore use two contingency theories to illustrate my ability to fulfil key responsibilities of my leadership role.
I will use two contingency theories in my illustration.
Hersey and Blanchard model
The Hersey and Blanchard Situational Leadership Theory was created by Dr Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard in the mid-70’s. The fundamental basis of this theory is that there is no single ‘best’ leadership style and effective leaders have to adapt their styles depending upon the maturity level of delegates. So essentially the model rests on two fundamental concepts; leadership styles and the groups or individuals maturity level [2] .
Hersey and Blanchard defines four Leadership Styles [3]:
Telling (S1) – where the leader directs people what to do and how to do it.
Selling (S2) – where the leader provides information and direction, selling the message to get people on board, and providing support.
Participating (S3) – where the leader works with the team, sharing the decision making and responsibilities. Focus is more on relationship and less on direction.
Delegating (S4) – where the leader passes most of the responsibility for a task onto the individual or group, only monitoring progress.
S1 requires the most effort on the part of the leader which reduces through S2 and S3 to S4, which requires the least effort. Style S4 therefore would enable the leader to deliver more for
Bibliography: 1 ‘Core Leadership Theories’, MindTools (2013). Available at: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/leadership-theories.htm (accessed 22/10/2013). 2 ‘Situational Leadership Theory’, Wikipedia (2013). Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situational_leadership_theory (accessed 04/11/2013). 3 ‘The Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Theory’, MindTools (2013). Available at: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_44.htm (accessed 22/10/2013) 4 ‘Action Centred Leadrship’, Businessballs.com (2013) 5 Goleman, D., ‘Leadership that gets results’, Harvard Business Review (March-April 2000) 6 Salovey, P., & Mayer, J 9 Goleman, D. (1995), ‘Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ’, Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0-553-38371-3 10 ‘Emotional Intelligence’, Businessballs.com (2013) 15 Maslow, A.H. (1943).A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–96. Retrieved from http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation.htm (Accessed on 16.01.14).