Leadership Theories From Mahatma Gandhi To Winston Management Essay

Leadership Theories From Mahatma Gandhi To Winston Management Essay From Mahatma Gandhi to Winston Churchill to Martin Luther King, there are as many leadership styles as there are leaders. Fortunately, businesspeople and psychologists have developed useful and simple ways to describe the main styles of leadership, and these can help aspiring leaders understand which styles they should use. So, whether you manage a team at work, captain a sports team, or lead a major corporation, which approach is best? Consciously, or subconsciously, youll probably use some of the leadership styles in this article at some point. Understanding these styles and their impact can help you develop your own, personal leadership style and help you become a more effective leader. With this in mind, there are many different frameworks that have shaped our current understanding of leadership, and many of these have their place, just as long as theyre used appropriately. This article looks at some of the most common frameworks, and then looks at popular styles of leadership. Leadership Theories Researchers have developed a number of leadership theories over the years. These fall into four main groups: 1. Behavioral theories What does a good leader do? Behavioral theories focus on how leaders behave. Do they dictate what needs to be done and expect cooperation? Or do they involve the team in decisions to encourage acceptance and support? In the 1930s, Kurt Lewin developed a leadership framework based on a leaders decision-making behavior. Lewin argued that there are three types of leaders: Autocratic leaders make decisions without consulting their teams. This is considered appropriate when decisions genuinely need to be taken quickly, when theres no need for input, and when team agreement isnt necessary for a successful outcome. Democratic leaders allow the team to provide input before making a decision, although the degree of input can vary from leader to leader. This type of style is important when team agreement matters, but it can be quite difficult to manage when there are lots of different perspectives and ideas. Laissez-faire leaders dont interfere; they allow people within the team to make many of the decisions. This works well when the team is highly capable and motivated, and when it doesnt need close monitoring or supervision. However, this style can arise because the leader is lazy or distracted, and, here, this approach can fail. Similar to Lewins model, the Blake-Mouton Managerial Grid helps you decide how best to lead, depending on your concern for people versus your concern for production. The model describes five different leadership styles: impoverished, country club, team leader, produce or perish, or middle of the road. The descriptions of these will help you understand your own leadership habits and adapt them to meet your teams needs. Clearly, then, how leaders behave impacts on their effectiveness. Researchers have realized, though, that many of these leadership behaviors are appropriate at different times. So, the best leaders are those who can use many different behavioral styles and use the right style for each situation. 2. Contingency theories How does the situation influence good leadership? The realization that there isnt one correct type of leader led to theories that the best leadership style is contingent on, or depends on, the situation. These theories try to predict which leadership style is best in which circumstance. When a decision is needed fast, which style is preferred? When the leader needs the full support of the team, is there a better way to lead? Should a leader be more people oriented or task oriented? These are all examples of questions that contingency leadership theories try to address. A popular contingency-based framework is the Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Theory, which links leadership style with the maturity of individual members of the leaders team. 3. Trait theories What type of person makes a good leader? Trait theories argue that leaders share a number of common personality traits and characteristics, and that leadership emerges from these traits. Early trait theories promoted the idea that leadership is an innate, instinctive quality that you either have or dont have. Thankfully, weve moved on from this approach, and were learning more about what we can do as individuals to develop leadership qualities within ourselves and others. Whats more, traits are external behaviors that emerge from things going on within the leaders mind and its these internal beliefs and processes that are important for effective leadership. Trait theory does, however, help us identify some qualities that are helpful when leading others and, together, these emerge as a generalized leadership style. Examples include empathy, assertiveness, good decision-making, and likability. In our article Building TomorrowHYPERLINK http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_62.htmHYPERLINK http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_62.htms Leaders, we discuss a series of attributes that are important for all types of leaders to develop. However, none of these traits, nor any combination of them, will guarantee success as a leader. You need more than that. 4. Power and influence theories What is the source of the leaders power? Power and influence theories of leadership take an entirely different approach. Theyre based on the different ways in which leaders use power and influence to get things done, and the leadership styles that emerge as a result. Perhaps the most well known of these theories is French and RavenHYPERLINK http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_56.htmHYPERLINK http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_56.htms Five Forms of Power. This model distinguishes between using your position to exert power, and using your personal attributes to be powerful. French and Raven identified three types of positional power legitimate, reward, and coercive and two sources of personal power expert and referent (your personal appeal and charm). The model suggests that using personal power is the better alternative and, because Expert Power (the power that comes with being a real expert in the job) is the most legitimate of these, that you should actively work on building this. Similarly, leading by example is another highly effective way to establish and sustain a positive influence with your team. Another valid leadership style thats supported by power and influence theories is Transactional Leadership. This approach assumes that work is done only because it is rewarded, and for no other reason, and it therefore focuses on designing tasks and reward structures. While it may not be the most appealing leadership strategy in terms of building relationships and developing a long-term motivating work environment, it does work, and its used in most organizations on a daily basis to get things done. An Up-to-Date Understanding of Leadership Within all of these theories, frameworks, and approaches to leadership, theres an underlying message that leaders need to have a variety of factors working in their favor. Effective leadership is not simply based on a set of attributes, behaviors, or influences. You must have a wide range of abilities and approaches that you can draw upon. Having said this, however, theres one leadership style that is appropriate in very many corporate situations that of Transformational Leadership. A leader using this style: Has integrity. Sets clear goals. Clearly communicates a vision. Sets a good example. Expects the best from the team. Encourages. Supports. Recognizes good work and people. Provides stimulating work. Helps people see beyond their self-interests and focus more on team interests and needs. Inspires. In short, transformational leaders are exceptionally motivating, and theyre trusted. When your team trusts you, and is really fired up by the way you lead, you can achieve great things! The transformational leadership style is the dominant leadership style taught in our How to Lead: Discover the Leader Within You program, although we do recommend that other styles are brought in as the situation demands. Having said that Transformational Leadership suits very many circumstances in business, we need to remember that there may be situations where its not the best style. This is why its worth knowing about the other styles shown below so that you have a greater chance of finding the right combination for the situation you find yourself in. Popular Leadership Styles A Glossary The leadership theories and styles discussed so far fit within formal theoretical frameworks. However, many more terms are used to describe leadership styles, even if these dont fit within a particular system. Its worth understanding these! 1. Autocratic leadership Autocratic leadership is an extreme form of transactional leadership, where leaders have absolute power over their workers or team. Staff and team members have little opportunity to make suggestions, even if these would be in the teams or the organizations best interest. Most people tend to resent being treated like this. Therefore, autocratic leadership often leads to high levels of absenteeism and staff turnover. However, for some routine and unskilled jobs, the style can remain effective because the advantages of control may outweigh the disadvantages. 2. Bureaucratic leadership Bureaucratic leaders work by the book. They follow rules rigorously, and ensure that their staff follows procedures precisely. This is a very appropriate style for work involving serious safety risks (such as working with machinery, with toxic substances, or at dangerous heights) or where large sums of money are involved (such as handling cash). 3. Charismatic leadership A charismatic leadership style can seem similar to transformational leadership, because these leaders inspire lots of enthusiasm in their teams and are very energetic in driving others forward. However, charismatic leaders can tend to believe more in themselves than in their teams, and this creates a risk that a project, or even an entire organization, might collapse if the leader leaves. In the eyes of the followers, success is directly connected to the presence of the charismatic leader. As such, charismatic leadership carries great responsibility, and it needs a long-term commitment from the leader. 4. Democratic leadership or participative leadership Although democratic leaders make the final decisions, they invite other members of the team to contribute to the decision-making process. This not only increases job satisfaction by involving team members, but it also helps to develop peoples skills. Team members feel in control of their own destiny, so theyre motivated to work hard by more than just a financial reward. Because participation takes time, this approach can take longer, but often the end result is better. The approach can be most suitable when working as a team is essential, and when quality is more important than speed to market, or productivity. 5. Laissez-faire leadership This French phrase means leave it be, and its used to describe leaders who leave their team members to work on their own. It can be effective if the leader monitors whats being achieved and communicates this back to the team regularly. Most often, laissez-faire leadership is effective when individual team members are very experienced and skilled self-starters. Unfortunately, this type of leadership can also occur when managers dont apply sufficient control. 6. People-oriented leadership or relations-oriented leadership This is the opposite of task-oriented leadership. With people-oriented leadership, leaders are totally focused on organizing, supporting, and developing the people in their teams. Its a participative style, and it tends to encourage good teamwork and creative collaboration. In practice, most leaders use both task-oriented and people-oriented styles of leadership. 7. Servant leadership This term, created by Robert Greenleaf in the 1970s, describes a leader who is often not formally recognized as such. When someone, at any level within an organization, leads simply by meeting the needs of the team, he or she is described as a servant leader. In many ways, servant leadership is a form of democratic leadership, because the whole team tends to be involved in decision making. Supporters of the servant leadership model suggest that its an important way to move ahead in a world where values are increasingly important, and where servant leaders achieve power on the basis of their values and ideals. Others believe that in competitive leadership situations, people who practice servant leadership can find themselves left behind by leaders using other leadership styles. 8. Task-Oriented leadership Highly task-oriented leaders focus only on getting the job done, and they can be quite autocratic. They actively define the work and the roles required, put structures in place, plan, organize, and monitor. However, because task-oriented leaders dont tend to think much about the well-being of their teams, this approach can suffer many of the flaws of autocratic leadership, with difficulties in motivating and retaining staff. 9. Transactional leadership This style of leadership starts with the idea that team members agree to obey their leader totally when they accept a job. The transaction is usually the organization paying the team members in return for their effort and compliance. The leader has a right to punish team members if their work doesnt meet the pre-determined standard. Team members can do little to improve their job satisfaction under transactional leadership. The leader could give team members some control of their income/reward by using incentives that encourage even higher standards or greater productivity. Alternatively, a transactional leader could practice management by exception rather than rewarding better work, the leader could take corrective action if the required standards are not met. Transactional leadership is really a type of management, not a true leadership style, because the focus is on short-term tasks. It has serious limitations for knowledge-based or creative work, however it can be effective in other situations. 10. Transformational leadership As we discussed earlier, people with this leadership style are true leaders who inspire their teams constantly with a shared vision of the future. While this leaders enthusiasm is often passed onto the team, he or she can need to be supported by detail people. Thats why, in many organizations, both transactional and transformational leadership are needed. The transactional leaders (or managers) ensure that routine work is done reliably, while the transformational leaders look after initiatives that add new value. Key Points While the transformational leadership approach is often highly effective, theres no one right way to lead or manage that fits all situations. To choose the most effective approach for yourself, consider the following: The skill levels and experience of your team. The work involved (routine, or new and creative). The organizational environment (stable or radically changing, conservative or adventurous). You own preferred or natural style. Good leaders often switch instinctively between styles, according to the people they lead and the work that needs to be done. Establish trust thats key to this process and remember to balance the needs of the organization against the needs of your team.

Charles Dickens Great Expectations Essays -- Charles Dickens Great Ex

Charles Dickens' Great Expectations One of Dickens’ most popular novels ‘Great Expectations’ is a griping search for identity- the narrator’s self-identity Pip has been born into a difficult world in the early years of the 19th Century. Philip Pirrip is the narrator of ‘Great Expectations’. In the book he is known as Pip. He called himself Pip because as a young child his infant tongue could only get across to Pip. I the first few chapters of the book he is described as a timid, sensitive and guilt-ridden person. His parents had died earlier, probably due to poverty. Pip is living with his sister, who intimidates him in every form. We realise his intimidation when he arrives late from the graveyard, â€Å"I twisted the only button on my waistcoat round and round, and looked in great depress at the fire. Tickler was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by collision with my tickled frame† I see a parallel between Dickens and Pip. Dickens’s lived in an over-crowded place when he was young. His parents had no intentions of sending him to school. He spent his days running errands and doing chores around the house also his younger sister died of smallpox just like, Pip’s brothers and sisters. Dickens was very concerned with social issues like poverty. At the time when the book was written, there was a very high level of infant mortality, which was made worse by deaths among poor adults, hence the number of orphans. The first meeting with Magwitch is in the churchyard, where Pip is lost in childish absorption grappling with his family’s fate. His state of mind is very unstable when Pip is grabbed violently and the convict threatened to cut his throat if he was to make noise. Pip imagines Magwitch as a pir... ...r. Pip felt, Estella looked down on him because he was poor and not a gentleman. Pip was asked to play, but he didn’t know how to ‘play’. Estella lived in a society where her class did not have to work, and we read that Pip wanted to leave when he was told to ‘play’ because he did not understand the word ‘play’. In chapter 9, when Pip returns home his shame will not allow him to tell the truth to his sister and Pumblechook so he is exaggerates. We see that Pip is telling Joe about his real feelings about his trip to ‘Satis House’. Unlike the theft, which he kept secret, he eventually confides to Joe because he knows Joe will keep an open mind and he is the only one person he can speak to without being punished and having a guilty conscience. What he is confiding to Joe is his shame as a working-class person and how he must change in order to win Estella.

Demand vs Supply Essay

The two main driving forces of the economy are supply and demand. Understanding the basic concepts of supply and demand can help an organization focus on the bottom line. According to Gretzen (2007), demand is the relationship between price and quantity. Supply refers to the amount of a good or service available at any particular price. The principle of supply and demand describes a balance that develops between the supply of an item or service and the demand for it (Kleinman, 2009). Economics plays a major role in the health care industry. As a resource, the health care workforce is a determinant of the balance between supply and demand. The health care workforce consists of nurses, physicians, and other ancillary health care workers such as certified nurses’ aides (CNA’s) and patient care associates (PCA’s). The supply of health care workers directly impacts the demand of quality care rendered to patients. SERVICE OR PRODUCT Health care organizations have specific stated missions and visions to map out their fundamental way of operation. In health care, the workforce is instrumental in assisting with the organizational delivery of services to consumers (patients). The primary issue for all health care workforce personnel is that of inadequate staffing. This paper focuses on the staffing effectiveness of supplemental staffing of health care personnel within the inpatient setting. IMPACT Nursing managers formulate staffing patterns on a daily basis. The staffing of inpatient units requires a knowledge of unit census (total bed capacity),  consideration of patient acuity (level of care required for the patient), and skill mix (nursing hours per patient per day and nurse patient ratio) (U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2002). Often times, inadequate staffing is due to a high rate of call outs of sickness or other emergencies. Inadequate staffing directly impacts patient safety and quality of care. All health care titles render supplemental staffing coverage in one of two ways, overtime and through per-diem agencies. Overtime employment provides regular full time employees with monies set at a rate of time and half for any extra work completed over the prescribed 40 hours a week. Per-diem agencies are outside contractors capable of providing their own qualified titled personnel to fill vacancies with monies defined at a set rate. Patients are admitted to inpatient setting with varied co-morbidities may or may not indirectly increase the necessity of staff. Patients are often admitted for diagnoses of altered mental status, agitation / combativeness, risk for falls, suicidal ideation, and alcohol or drug intoxication. Many patients require a higher level of skilled care, such as turning and repositioning, and assistance with activities of daily living such as toileting and eating. It requires a higher staff to patient ratio to provide safe, effective quality care. PERSPECTIVE AND RATIONALE According to published reports there are key factors affecting the adequacy of the health care workforce. Some key factors include an aging workforce of where 40 percent of practicing physicians are older than 55, and one-third of the nursing workforce is over 50 with a majority of both professionals seeking to retire within the next 10 years (Alliance for Health Reform, 2011). The largest groups of health professionals in the United States are composed of Registered Nurses. Statistically, there is a huge decline in the numbers of nurses within all regions of the U.S. An estimated 118,000 FTE RNs will exit the workforce within the next five years (Staiger, Auerbac, & Buerhaus, 2012). This potentially leaves a major void in terms of numbers of bodies needed to fill vacated positions. Low staffing levels are associated with higher rates of adverse outcomes that are directly sensitive to nursing attention, such as urinary tract infections, pneumonia, pressure ulcers, and falls (American Federation of Teachers, 2012). Unintended additional costs  associated with the development of complications in patients are greater than labor savings when units are understaffed. Acquiring pressure ulcers are estimated to cost the health care industry $8.5 billion per year (Kleinman, 2009) Overtime costs and per-diem agency costs can’t stand alone to solve the issues of staffing shortage. Their combined usage enables institutions to deliver optimal health care services to consumers/ patients. The supply of overtime and per-diem staff meets the increased demands of patients. It also assists in the delivery of quality care through services rendered. In terms of patient safety, the potentiality of the risk of injury to patients via falls, medication errors, and or sentinel events decreases. CONCLUSION The United States is a great consumer demand for health care services. The supply of such services is affected by varied factors. These factors directly influence the financial stability of health care organizations. Recessional times cause delays in career and retirement plans for health care professionals. In recessional times, there are noted changes in the supply and demand of the health care workforce. The shortage of registered nurses and providers in the workforce may inadvertently lead to a reduction in health care access for consumers. Inadequate staffing levels place heavy burdens on the nursing staff. Adverse events such as falls, hospital acquired infections and medication errors are potentially painful and life threatening events. Adverse events can result in considerable costs to be paid by the understaffed institution. For this reason alone, supplemental staffing via agency and overtime personnel provides a measure of increased patient safety. The future is trending towards the assistance in the recovery of the health care workforce shortage. It will rely heavily on the provisions made by the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (Alliance for health reform, 2011). Recruitment and reinvestment in health care professions especially nurses and physicians will assure sufficient supply of workforce personnel to meet the increased demands of health care economy and its’ consumers( Kaiser Foundation (2012). The Joint Commission bolsters workforce infrastructure through in-service and continuing education, supporting nursing education, and the adoption of set staffing levels based on  competency and skill mix relative to patient mix and acuity (Stanton, 2012). It also supports the establishment of financial incentives for health care organizations investing in nursing and workforce services. REFERENCES Alliance for Health Reform. (April, 2011). Health care workforce: Future Supply vs. Demand. Retrieved from http://www.allhealth.org/publications/medicare / health_care_workforce. American Federation of Teachers. (2012). Issues: Healthcare Staffing. Retrieved from http://www.aft.org/issues/healthcare/staffing/index.cfm Changes in Health Care Financing & Organization. (August, 2009). Issue brief: Impact of the economy on health care. Retrieved from http://www.academyhealth.org /files/hvfo/findings0809.pdf Getzen, T.E. (2007). Health economics and financing. (3rd ed.). John Wiley and Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ. Kleinman, C. (2009). Health care supply & demand. Retrieved from http://www.community.advanceweb.com Staiger, D. O., Auerbach, D. I., & Buerhaus, P. I. (2012, April). Registered nurse labor supply and the recession- Are we in a bubble? New England Journal of Medicine, (366), 1463-1465. Stanton, M. (2012). Hospital nurse staffing and quality of care. Retrieved from http://www.ahrq.gov/research/nursestaffing/nursestaff.htm U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (July, 2002). Projected supply, demand, and shortages of registered nurses: 2000- 2020. Retrieved from http://hrsa.gov. The Kaiser Foundation. (2012). Nursing workforce: Background brief. Retrieved from http://www.kaiseredu.org/Issues-Modules

The Role of Women in ‘The Great Gatsby’