Leading Change at Home

The change challenge I recently faced involved my neighborhood. I live in an apartment complex that is a block away from a bar which recently changed ownership. After the change in ownership the bar became very popular and was regularly attended by numerous patrons. The problem was that these patrons would take the parking spaces assigned for residents in the building, and all the other spaces within a six block radius every night of the weekend the bar was open. The major problem was the residents of my complex had to look for parking far away and were displaced from the spaces supposedly reserved for them. This issue became all the more delicate because of the landlord's role in it. He had previously met with the new owners to discuss any concerns regarding the loud music they played inside and outside of it. As such, he was perceived throughout the building as having been aligned with the club and insensitive to the needs of his tenants. Moreover, the building parking spaces are accompanied by signage stating that non-resident vehicles will be towed from those spaces. However, this policy was largely unenforced -- primarily due to quiescence on the part of the landlord regarding this matter.

Analysis of Leadership Capabilities

I decided to take a prominent role in the rallying of the tenants to reclaim their parking spaces on nights in which this bar was open for business. Analyzing my role in this matter, it becomes clear that I utilized a transformation leadership style to gain the support of my peers and reach a modest degree of success in regaining our parking spots. There were several reasons the transformational approach was effective in helping us to achieve our goals. Firstly, the objective of my leadership efforts was to produce a change, which is one of the core tenets of transformational leadership (Langston, 2009). That change was manifested in the securing of tenement parking spots from club patrons attempting to take them. But it also reflected a deeper change within the apartment complex community. Previously, the complex had merely functioned as a collection of disparate individuals who happened to live together. There was no solidarity among the tenants -- except for on a very impersonal, amicable basis. My efforts were able to unite the complex under a common cause and get it to consider the effect that such solidarity has on addressing whatever grievances... This was the larger change I was able to produce, and it occurred because I was able to rally the tenants around this particular issue.
It is critical to discern exactly how the nature of this change coincided with some of the core attributes of transformational leadership. The change I was able to produce got my neighbors to effectively consider a higher form of needs as identified by Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Most of the tenants were simply thinking about their basic physiological needs -- defined by Maslow as the bottom rung of his hierarchy (Mathes, 1981, p. 69)-- when they were apathetic and unresponsive to the parking situation. No one wanted to cause any commotion and present any problems with where they lived. However, after I was able to convince them to follow me and assert their rights to park where they lived, they began to think about a higher set of needs defined by Maslow as those pertaining to security and belongingness (Mathes, 1981, p. 69). Therefore, the nature of the change produced was certainly transformational in nature because it cultivated my neighbors to concern themselves with higher needs on Maslow's hierarchy. Compelling others to do so is regarded as one of the chief characteristics of transformational leadership (Mccleskey, 2014, p. 120).

Perhaps more importantly, the transformational style of leadership was effective in this instance because of my specific characteristics as a leader. I have always been told that I am fairly charismatic. Furthermore, I have lived in this complex (which houses approximately 50 residents) for longer than all but six of them. As such, I know the majority of the tenants and, on an individual basis, have always had a good rapport with them. Therefore, I was able to utilize my relationships with people as individuals, in addition to my charisma and admitted charm with some of the male tenants, to get them to believe in my vision. Charisma is an innate characteristic of transformational leadership (Mccleskey, 2014, p. 120).

The vision I presented and which took hold of my neighbors was a relatively simple one, but one that I used to inspire and ultimately motivate them to follow me. I devised the idea that each tenant should write a number on the space in which they usually park. Doing so would allow them to effectively claim that space as their own. I also took the initiative to print out computer generated replicas of those numbers…