Strategoc Leadership for Me.

Strategic Leadership for Me.

Recruitment Agencies

Management---------------------àStudent <-----------------Family

Colleagues and Friends

Positioning Map:

The positioning was expounded by Harris (1982), in which language exists only as concrete occasions of language in use. La langue is said to be an intellectualizing myth - only la parole is psychologically and socially real (DAVIES & HARRE, 1990).

In any literate societies instances of this writing can be drawn upon as concrete prototype of how to talk. We regard an immanentist stance with various similar theories about the sources of patterned human productions, specifically towards social rule sets (DAVIES & HARRE, 1990).

Since 'positioning' is mainly a conversational phenomenon we must clear at what level of analysis speaking together has to be taken as relevantly conversation. We take conversation to be a form of social interaction the products of which are also social, such as interpersonal relations. We must therefore, select analytical concepts that helps to reveal conversation as a structured set of speech-acts that is as sayings and doings of types defined by reference to their social (illocutionary) force. This level of analysis must be extended to include non-verbal contributions to conversation (DAVIES & HARRE, 1990).

Levels of analysis are based on entities and objects of study in the group. Entities are typically arranged in such an order that higher levels (groups) are included in lower level (individuals) and lower levels are embedded in higher levels too (Dansereau et. Al 1984; Yammarino 1996; Yammarino and Bass ,1991) (Yammarino, Dionne, Chun, & Dansereau, 2005).

There are 4 levels of human analysis that are necessary for Leadership purposes (Yammarino, Dionne, Chun, & Dansereau, 2005).

First, human beings can be seen as person, independent of one another.We can focus on certain groups like follower and subordinates; leaders who dominate the group or followers who follow their leaders can differentiate within themselves. Individual differences are of interests here (Yammarino, Dionne, Chun, & Dansereau, 2005).

Second, human beings over are seen as dyads that means that they’re interdependent within same organisation. Dyads are 2 people groups and they can be focused as superior and subordinates dyads or leader follower personal relationship independent of formal work groups(Yammarino, Dionne, Chun, & Dansereau, 2005).

Third, human beings are seen as groups and teams even though there are potentials differences amongst themselves yet they’re independent and interdependent on face to face or virtual basis (Yammarino, Dionne, Chun, & Dansereau, 2005).

Fourth individuals can be seen as a whole means like a cluster of people irrespective of their hierarchy levels based on some common expectations and goals. Collective groups need not be directly interacting but they are held together as group via echelons and hierarchies (Yammarino, Dionne, Chun, & Dansereau, 2005).

Beyond this single level analysis we do (Individuals, Dyads, Groups and collectives viewed separately) multiple analysis of the same as well. Means levels can be seen simultaneously or in combinations (Yammarino, Dionne, Chun, & Dansereau, 2005).

In this case we are concerned with multi level and cross levels effects and mixed determinants and mixed effects as well (Dansereau et. Al 1984; Danseareau and Yammarino 2000, Klien et al 1995, Rousseau 1984). For the purpose of study multi level model depicts the relationship between independent variables and dependent variables; that operate at different levels of analysis that are called cross models. It can also be patterns of relationships replicating at different levels (Yammarino, Dionne, Chun, & Dansereau, 2005).

Even though concept of relationship-oriented behaviour has been the earliest formal studies of leadership in organizations (Stogdill & Coons, 1957), but yet Relational Leadership is surprisingly new (Brower, Schoorman, & Tan, 2000; Drath, 2001; Murrell, 1997; Uhl-Bien, 2003, 2005). Because of which meaning is still uncertain (Uhl-Bien, 2006).

In comparison to traditional orientation, which considers relationships from individual’s point of view as independent, discrete entities (i.e individual agency) (Bradbury & Lichtenstein, 2000; Hosking et al., 1995), a “relational” orientation begins with processes and not persons, and views persons, leadership and other relational realities as made in processes (Hosking, in press) (Uhl-Bien, 2006).

As such, the “knowing” individual is taken as the architect and Controller of an internal and external order which makes sense with respect to the area of their self “possessions” (their mind contents) (Dachler & Hosking, 1995). This view approaches relationship-based leadership by focusing on individuals (e.g., leaders and followers) and their perceptions personalities, expectations, intentions, behaviours and evaluations relative to their relationships with one another (e.g., Hollander, 1978; Lord, Brown, & Freiberg, 1999; Uhl-Bien et al., 2000) (Uhl-Bien, 2006).

Dachler & Hosking (1995) one can call this approach a “subject–object” understanding of relationships: “Social relations are enacted by subjects to achieve knowledge about, and influence over, other people and groups” (p. 3) (Uhl-Bien, 2006).

Storytelling:

Sir ken Robinson once gave a presentation where he talked on 'Do we ever think that kids have creativity too'. He gave an example of a six year old girl who was doing poor in her studies but was terrific in painting. Her teacher asked her what she was drawing and she said that she was drawing a picture of god. The Teacher told her that nobody knows that what god looks like. Then girl answered now they'll. Being wrong is not as being creative but what if being wrong is the right way of thinking. It is something that requires out of the box thinking (Robinson, 2007).

Kids are not scared of being wrong. Kids will take a chance on creativity, if every time they don't know what's going to be next. They're not afraid to make a different story altogether if they don't remember the next line or pages. But we kill their creativity by telling them what to do and what not to do while studying or thinking and never let them express or define what exactly they have in their own mind about the world, people, values and customs (Robinson, 2007).

Picaso once said that 'All children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up'. You see we kill creativity of kids starting from their childhood. We don't let them think creatively but rather get them to think out of the creativity. Creativity is as important as literacy in modern world. If we see our education system today we have Maths and Science at the top and Arts at the bottom of every education system in the world. Nobody wants their kids to be a Dancer or Musician or a DJ. They all want Engineers and Doctors and Lawyers so that they can have a successful living (Robinson, 2007).

What we don't know is that if we are not prepared to be wrong then we'll never come up with anything original. Why we have same set of principles of profit making in business and same sets of civil engineering rules and practices, same sets of medicinal practices on worldwide basis. Today our Education systems are so rigid that we stigmatize people to be creative. We stigmatize people to be wrong in Business and never let them think creatively. Our systems are based to get us educate out of creativity rather than getting educated to be creative (Robinson, 2007).

We start to educate kids starting from their body to their heads and later on just their heads only. If you ever see people who're highly intellectuals or thinkers they're always thinking and they live their whole life right on top of their shoulders and in their heads only. We educate kids to be like professor or doctors rather than what they really like and can do creatively (Robinson, 2007).

Our systems are made in such way that they are meant to be like university professors. Thinking just from one side of the brain; slightly to the left I guess. There body is the way to transport their heads. If you want to see the real life out of the body experience of these senior academics then get to their conference meetings and take a look at them at final night of that conference in the night club. They would be dancing off the beat and then at the end of the party going back to their desks at home writing a whole bunch of article about last night experience in the club. They're the people who come out on top. We can't put them in high water mark of achievement (Robinson, 2007). They're just a form of living life and everybody doesn't necessary need to be like them.

There was no education system before prior to 19^th century. They all came up to meet the needs of industrial revolution and thus so they are based on commercial purpose rather than creative purpose. So most of the subjects are the things that are meant for business and not for fun. So we are benignly keeping the children away from their favourite activity because our systems are not meant to serve that (Robinson, 2007).

We need to radically change our view our thinking towards intelligence. Intelligence is diverse, dynamic, distinct. The brain isn't divided into compartments but rather it is the combination of all the activities from various disciplines. Creativity comes from the whole rather from one or two sections. We need to think about the fundamental principles on which we are teaching our children's (Robinson, 2007).

Cognitive Mapping:

Cognitive science taught us about decision making and in particular about cognitive biases and error which rational thinkers are bound to make while attempting to speed up the decision with heuristic and other cognitive short-cuts (Rodhain).

Scientists suggest that relying on intuitive heuristics such as scripts and schemas, simplifies and speed up routine decisions; these cognitive short-cuts are based on past experience while leading to impending biases in novel, unstructured situations (Rodhain).

Cognitive mapping and assumption analysis helps us to avoid biases.

Cognitive maps and assumption analysis prior to selecting one course of action or other is likely to hinder the decision speed and the exact outcome that use of cognitive short cuts is trying to avoid. Alternative cognitive tools that facilitate decisions speed have not been explored much (Rodhain).

Usually a map is a graphical representation of an individual's or several individuals’ mental models. It is made up of ideas and links between those ideas. Most of the links are casual links between ideas.

For example:

X is an explanation of Y and Y is the consequence of X.

If X is a mean and Y is the goal.

Process of transforming tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge is known as externalization process. Process of externalization is not neutral. It is difficult to articulate and develop the mental models on papers (Rodhain).

He also says that the power impulse has 2 forms explicit, in leaders; implicit in followers. Men follow leader in order to acquire power of group which leader commands ( Rodhain).

It is also seen in various research that intuiting is also having subconscious. The conscious part takes a large amount of knowledge and its difficult to keep it in focal awareness simultaneously; finally it is kept in subconscious memory. Intuitive processing involves both storing knowledge in the subconscious and retrieving it simultaneously. Thus whatever is stored is affected by experience; so people with a lot of experience may perceive lot more and better intuition (Woiceshyn, 2009).

But Burns defines the difference between transformational leadership and what transforming leader trying to accomplish transactional leadership targets immediate goals like economic, political. Transformational leadership is the ability to sustain growth and momentum into the future. Transformational leadership is more concerned with end values, such as independence, justice, equableness (Simola, Barling, & Turner, 2009).

Transforming leader 'raise' their followers up through levels of morality, while insufficient attention to means can corrupt the ends. So both kinds of leadership have moral implications (Simola, Barling, & Turner, 2009).

To find a correlation between burns transactional leadership as materialistic thinking while transformational leadership focus on spiritual thinking; while transformational entails both materialistic and spiritual end value attainments (Simola, Barling, & Turner, 2009).

Various studies help checking the relationship between transformational leadership and moral reasoning and justifies that transformational and transactional leadership are related to cognitive moral reasoning (Simola, Barling, & Turner, 2009).

Within this a person develops three levels of moral reasoning namely individual interest is high and follow up of order to authority is to avoid punishment at first stage (Simola, Barling, & Turner, 2009).

On the second stage of post conventional moral and at third and highest level moral decisions are based on universal moral decisions (like respect is important than bribe) (Simola, Barling, & Turner, 2009).

Even though a lot of fresh research comes up in spiritual leadership with alternate leadership style yet one need to understand the perspective that it have for ‘genuine care, concern and appreciation for both self and others’ (Simola, Barling, & Turner, 2009).

It also have various aspects about things like moral bases of spiritual leadership which have concern and if yes, then training on ethic of care could enhance grace of spiritual leadership (or vice versa) (Simola, Barling, & Turner, 2009).

Leadership in social form of settings had various definitions too. Early treatment of social network research states ' both social network approach views organizations in society as a system of objects (e.g. people, groups, organizations) joined by a variety of relationships' (Balkundi & Kilduff, 2005).

‘Human beings are by their very nature gregarious creatures, for whom relationships defining elements of their identities and creativeness. The study of such relationship is therefore the study of human nature itself' (Balkundi & Kilduff, 2005).

Even though I found a lot of articles on rest of leadership issues but research on ethical leadership is hardly found. It has been written down in broader form with various fields of leadership theories mostly with transformational leadership (Iles & Macaulay, 2007).

Van wart's (2003) public sector leadership survey denotes a dedicated yet very little has been done on ethics. Couple of studies stressed on ethical leadership roles within local government as one aspect of a broader study but no such treatment as specifically. Specific studies were done regarding the impact on ethical environment of an organisation (Iles & Macaulay, 2007).

Recent studies indicated that ethical leadership in private sector is concerned with relational leadership; Maak & Pless (2006) for example, argued leadership concern with sustaining relations and leader needs to play multiple roles like moral individual, servant, steward, coach etc (Iles & Macaulay, 2007).

Crosby and Bryson (2005) also studied leadership for common good framework which suggests that for valid competing interest, adjudication and education of people relational leadership is important in a collaborative team (Iles & Macaulay, 2007).

In recent years various leadership academy has come up using 360 degree feedback, psychometric personality tests and various discussions with CEO's of strategic plan, coaching, action learning project and completion of a leadership development journal. It's a case study developed in San Diego County (Iles & Macaulay, 2007).

Conclusion:

Think of life without Leaders. You would not be able to think of anything.

Who leads your life and mine is not the only reason to do this study and writing this article. This article is to empathize and to use a lot of new ideas. I see gandhi as a ethical leader but never as a politician. I see kiran bedi as transformational leader.

A lot of people who come to my mind have one way or the other gave something so the society, people, themselves. People around them know why they have done what they did; Making them more approachable, transparent and readable. I don’t think there is any leader who didn’t want to contribute to the society or group or who just had limited influence within their group and didn’t want to expand it.

I have turned myself more rational while understanding the group dynamics and accepting the reason for that difference within group. It is helpful in looking things from different perspective and applying same in this article.

I believe leadership is not just one word it has a lot of meanings for a lot of people whether formal or informal, social or ethical, relational or transformational. These all have one thing in common that is they all want the leadership in picture for common purpose.

Abstract:

Leeds Metropolitan University students of Executive MBA had given their exams in open book manner which was applied this year as on Trial and Error basis in whole Business and Finance Department. Earlier their used to be weekly Articles or assignments submission by students individually and collectively. The management was pretty keen on using this system to enhance the quality of response while avoiding the plagiarism in the response of students.

Students were mostly from worldwide countries India, Pakistan, African Nations like Malawi, Kenya, and Nigeria. Just a couple were local students from that country itself. All of them were working before, who came here to pursue their dream course in the middle of their career path for adding an extra value to their CV.

Students were conscious of this open book exams as nobody has ever attempted such kind of new Trial and Error thing ever before in their whole life. Couple of students had conversation with their respective families about it and they were themselves amused by this new concept of studies. Some of them were rather tight lipped over this whole new thing as they didn’t know whether it will be in the benefit of the child or not but still they were in full support of it.

Outcome of this Trial and Error: Most of the students were pretty disappointed as they had some common issues like:

· Lesser time for Response.

· Questions were not matching with case study material at all.

· Referencing the whole answer was impossible.

· Notes tend to be lengthy.

· Most of the students were in dilemma that whether they should finish all three questions according to time management or just write two in proposed time as questions response would come lengthy anyways.

Now as all the students had the real exams they didn’t know how to mention this thing to their Friends and Families about it.

· Some said exams were ok and hope to get passing marks.

· Some said it was easy but lengthy.

· Some had a new point of view that management had this Medicine tested on us that they never tested themselves and things like that.

· Some said that the test was horrible and they don’t want it again. It was better with submission of Articles and assignments.

Students Decision:

2 Students nominated by the whole group named X and Y as their class representatives went to the Management with signed documents of more than 80% of the class containing that the exams should only be taken in Assignment submission instead of open book as this exams had certain problems and management should either cancel the previous exams for the whole class or just give them average passing marks instead of being pass or fail depending upon the outcome of the results. Rest 20% kept themselves in silent as they don’t want to come in front or just didn’t thought it to be appropriate at this stage as exams had already gone.

Management Response:

Now management is in dilemma whether to quit on this new method of exams and knowledge testing of students as they thought it would help the cause of avoiding plagiarism and now they’re in controversy for new method of exam. They had applied the same on other Business and Finance courses as well. They know that if this issue arise in students of other groups as well then they might have to face an overall criticism from all sides. So they’re playing safe right now instead of being rejecting student’s view; they have asked for some time to review the new method of study and previous exams will be having a reappear if in case anybody fails it.

Family Situation:

Those students who told their families about his whole issue have their reservations as well. They had spent thousands of pounds of their hard earned money and they don’t want it going in drain just because of management Trial and Error system of new exam procedure.

If their son or daughter fails in these exams because of this new Trial and Error system of exam, they might take the University Management to court saying that the management was rather forceful on applying such exam procedures on whole student groups even though majority of them are against it since its inception and most of them were in doubts already before it actually started it.

All the students are in one voice against this whole issue and hoping to resolve it peacefully rather than making this issue a big thing as they have their future in stake as well.

We are studying the relation of each one of the group in relation to the student and evaluating them from students point of view and using positioning and cognitive map and placing leadership theory in the form explicit and tacit knowledge using the story telling technique.

ANALYSIS

a. I believe that..

Theory placed by me in this article is based on my own interpretation and it has sufficient evidence cited for it.

b. I believe that..

Story telling is based on my own real life ecperience of such issues faced in by each one of us during our childhood. It has immense affect on our development and growth as a leader too.

c. I believe that..

Conclusion placed by me is more of a generalised staement on my part. There is no eveidence or research is supported as its my own perception of people and society.

Bibliography

Balkundi, P., & Kilduff, M. (2005, September 4). The ties that lead: A social network approach to leadership. Science Direct , 241-261.

DAVIES, B., & HARRE, R. (1990). Positioning: The discursive production of selves. Journal for the Theory Social Behaviour , 20, 43-63.

Iles, P., & Macaulay, M. (2007). Putting Principles into Practice – Developing Ethical Leadership in Local Government. The International Journal of Leadership in Public Services , 3, 15-29.

Robinson, S. K. (2007, janaury 6). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY. Retrieved janaury 14, 2010, from www.Youtube.com: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

Rodhain, F. (n.d.). Tacit to Explicit: Transforming Knowledge Through Cognitive Mapping - An experiment. 51-56.

Simola, S., Barling, J., & Turner, N. (2009). Transformational leadership and leader moral orientation: Contrasting an. Sciencedirect , 10.

Woiceshyn, J. (2009). Lessons from ‘‘Good Minds’’: How CEOs Use Intuition, Analysis and Guiding Principles. Long Range Planning , 298-319.

Yammarino, F. J., Dionne, S. D., Chun, J. U., & Dansereau, F. (2005). Leadership and levels of analysis: A state-of-the-science review. The Leadership Quarterly , 879-919.

Uhl-Bien, M. (2006). Relational Leadership Theory: Exploring the social processes. The Leadership Quarterly , 654-676.