Module 4 - SLP

LEADERS AND LEADERSHIP

Background

Leadership scholars recognize that the most successful leaders revitalize and transform their organizations. Accordingly, these leaders’ style is often referred to as “transformational leadership.” Transformational leadership is perceived as a leadership approach that effects change in individuals and in groups. In its ideal form, it creates valuable and positive change in followers with the end goal of developing followers into leaders. In its authentic form, transformational leadership enhances the motivation, morale, and performance of followers through a variety of mechanisms. These include connecting the followers' sense of identity and self to the mission and the collective identity of the organization; being a role model for followers that inspires them; challenging followers to take greater ownership for their work, and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of followers, so the leader can align followers with tasks that optimize their performance.

Required Reading

Carless, S. A., Wearing, A. J., & Mann, L. (2000). A short measure of transformational of Business and Psychology, 14, 389-405.

This article can be found in the ABI/INFORM (Proquest) database.

Assignment

Read the article by Carless, Wearing, & Mann, L. (2000). Then after gaining a clear idea of the meaning of the seven behavioral manifestations of transformational leadership, determine your transformational leadership score following these rules:

1.Give yourself a score between 1 (rarely or never) and 5 (very frequently) on each of the seven dimensions.

2.Add up your scores and divide them by 7 to get your average score on the scale.

3.Ask someone who knows you well (preferably someone who works with you) to rate your leadership behavior on the scale and calculate the average score.

4.Compare the results obtained by yourself and your friend/peer.

5.What do you think about your scores on that scale? Are they high/low? What does it say about your leadership style?

6.Based on the results you obtained, what aspect of your leadership behavior do you think you should focus on to improve your leadership style? How might this translate into actual behaviors at the workplace? What might be the results of such an improvement?

It is vital that you get a second opinion about your leadership behavior from someone who knows you, preferably in the work context. If you cannot get a second opinion as part of this exercise, be sure that you provide a thorough explanation of why it's not possible. Just ignoring this part of the exercise will cost you part of a grade.

Your paper should be short (2-3 pages, not including the cover sheet, references, and assessment sheet) and to the point. You are expected to deal with these issues in an integrated fashion, rather than treating them as a series of individual questions to be answered one by one.