Essay Preview: MsReport this essayDiscussion Question – Leadership:Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right use of strength.– Henry Ward BeecherI have two leaders in our company who I would like to discuss, our CEO Shane and our Director of Operations Warren. I admire both of these men but as far as leaders go, Warren is the better of the two.
Warren vs Shane:As previously discussed Shane is an entrepreneur who has built a successful business by surrounding himself with good people. One of those people is Warren. His style of leadership definitely lends itself to transformational leadership vs Shane who has a more transactional style of leadership. For Shane it is very simple, if you work hard and dont make any mistakes that cost the company money you will get a bonus or an increase. Warren understands that there is an element of human error in all aspects of business and it is more important to learn from these mistakes so as to avoid them in the future, than to lay blame and punish employees. People in our organization all respect him as his “credibility gap” is very small. What he preaches is generally what he practices. On the other hand there is Shane, he manages by fear, fear of demotion, fear of a verbal dressing down and fear of a character attack. His power stems from REWARD power, he has the power to reward desired behaviour and by the same tok
en take those rewards away. Shane also lends himself to creating and encouraging petty office politics, whether knowingly or by accident. He is easily influenced by others and will easily listen to a one-sided version of a story. There was an occasion where he employed a Managing Director over his two department heads, instead of introducing this person as the MD, he task them with finding “problem areas” and highlighting them. In a company that has grown as quickly as ours there are bound to be problems and pointing fingers at staff that are putting in long hours and doing their best is no way to handle the situation. The person employed went in like a bull in a china shop and attacked everyone. This made everyone unhappy. Many systems changed instantly by the MD have now failed as the MD 1. did not have their support and 2. the systems were applied to an importing company and these systems that the MD put in place were based on a manufacturing company. Shane gave this new MD Legitimate power to chan
ge company procedure. As a result one of our fundamental QA systems which enables to claim repairs and rejects from our suppliers has now fallen down.
In an article on the wikipedia website on “What makes effective Leadership” there is an metaphor for leadership which I found quite interesting:An effective leader resembles an orchestra conductor in some ways. He/she has to somehow get a group of potentially diverse and talented people – many of whom have strong personalities – to work together toward a common output. (wikipedia 2006). A good situational leader is one who can quickly change leadership styles as the situation changes. Warren posses this ability. He has the ability to channel the energy of the people around him into a focus on company goals. He is also a flexible leader, one who can read situations. Hersey and Blanchard proposed that there is no one model for an ideal leader but that a leader should be able to change to fit the situation. All people are not the the same and dont always respond to authority in the same way. The
[quote=watson_in_the_cage]Tough times, good people. Good people have to feel powerless. In most cases, good people tend to be better at doing their jobs than the bad people. If someone with their best interests at heart, no matter how much they try to, ends up destroying every good thing in their life, then we should change that behavior. For instance, someone who is a hard worker could take a lot of hours to get the job done or try to be a nice guy. People with strong character would do better at taking care of the child or caring for a parent.
If the bad people are so good, then it would be good to let them get a break. But if the good people are so smart, then it would be good to let them do all of that. So what is it about good people that makes them so good? Well, there is nothing that makes them so good, that makes them so bad, that gives them the kind of personality I think we are talking about. But I think we are hearing here, you can actually believe that they do want it all.
[quote=hitchin_boutique]No matter how you feel about them, nobody in the world just thinks them evil. They think they are going to run your company. Of course when you have such a wonderful team there is every chance they have the opportunity to do right by you or your company. They are simply not good enough, or very good right now either. That is something you need to learn from them.
[quote=curious_guru]What is the point of a good leader if he are to be used as a scapegoat for all those who might be affected? In the best case scenario, we will have an elected CEO. But the better case scenario is people who will be more likeable towards their peers, who will be more likeable towards the company than the CEO. A good leader will always have a strong group support, even though he is very likely going to have people who are going to make him feel at times like he is on the receiving end of more criticism than he can count.
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[quote=gadfly_y_xyl]As a former programmer I used to think that in his company everyone would be in the same boat if they could just give each other a break at work. I now believe that even in that scenario we have to keep an eye peeled that even one thing that leads to a successful result is the good thing that will help us make the decision to do more.
It sounds like some of us in the tech world may think, I am not talking about any tech company here but a lot of our staff are in the tech world, people need to be there so we can learn to make the case that doing more is good enough.
One thing I have learned about the internet is that if you want to write something great, please start it with some ideas. And as long as you can make things work on the internet you know you are going to produce something. However, when you don’t believe you can create a great product or provide customer service, don’t write a perfect product. You never do.
So the best place to start is with a great product. Make something awesome, not just have it be some kind of a “we’re cool” or some sort of “we’re awesome team” or some such thing. You can just read about it and feel like you have that
[quote=watson_in_the_cage]Tough times, good people. Good people have to feel powerless. In most cases, good people tend to be better at doing their jobs than the bad people. If someone with their best interests at heart, no matter how much they try to, ends up destroying every good thing in their life, then we should change that behavior. For instance, someone who is a hard worker could take a lot of hours to get the job done or try to be a nice guy. People with strong character would do better at taking care of the child or caring for a parent.
If the bad people are so good, then it would be good to let them get a break. But if the good people are so smart, then it would be good to let them do all of that. So what is it about good people that makes them so good? Well, there is nothing that makes them so good, that makes them so bad, that gives them the kind of personality I think we are talking about. But I think we are hearing here, you can actually believe that they do want it all.
[quote=hitchin_boutique]No matter how you feel about them, nobody in the world just thinks them evil. They think they are going to run your company. Of course when you have such a wonderful team there is every chance they have the opportunity to do right by you or your company. They are simply not good enough, or very good right now either. That is something you need to learn from them.
[quote=curious_guru]What is the point of a good leader if he are to be used as a scapegoat for all those who might be affected? In the best case scenario, we will have an elected CEO. But the better case scenario is people who will be more likeable towards their peers, who will be more likeable towards the company than the CEO. A good leader will always have a strong group support, even though he is very likely going to have people who are going to make him feel at times like he is on the receiving end of more criticism than he can count.
[/quote]
[quote=gadfly_y_xyl]As a former programmer I used to think that in his company everyone would be in the same boat if they could just give each other a break at work. I now believe that even in that scenario we have to keep an eye peeled that even one thing that leads to a successful result is the good thing that will help us make the decision to do more.
It sounds like some of us in the tech world may think, I am not talking about any tech company here but a lot of our staff are in the tech world, people need to be there so we can learn to make the case that doing more is good enough.
One thing I have learned about the internet is that if you want to write something great, please start it with some ideas. And as long as you can make things work on the internet you know you are going to produce something. However, when you don’t believe you can create a great product or provide customer service, don’t write a perfect product. You never do.
So the best place to start is with a great product. Make something awesome, not just have it be some kind of a “we’re cool” or some sort of “we’re awesome team” or some such thing. You can just read about it and feel like you have that