In Bill's case, while he was very enthusiastic, he seems to be relying on his work ethic to help him through the role of manager. While work ethic is definitely helpful, a successful manager needs more than just to be able to work hard, he needs to be able to work "smarter"; namely, he needs to understand that without involving others in his management and effective intrapersonal skills, he will not be effective regardless of how hard he works. Furthermore, Bill needs to avail himself of a basic educational foundation in how to be a leader. We now know that leadership skills can be enhanced and developed; they are not necessarily innate to all. Moreover, he needs to develop a new relationship with his crew and effectively listen as well as communicate with them. Thus far, either fear or intimidation or lack of respect or lack of self-assuredness or total and complete frustration seems to have interfered with effective communication. Until he builds a rapport and a managerial relationship with his crew, he will continue to work harder, not smarter and he will continue to lose the respect of his employees.
3. With a little foresight and education regarding his choices of sources of power, Bill can map out how to strategically approach his goal to become more than a boss, but an effective leader.
According to Rowe's studies in leadership development, she asserts that even though one might occupy a position as a manager, supervisor, leader, and that position might give you the authority to accomplish certain tasks and objectives in the organization (aka, "assigned leadership"), this assigned power does not magically transform you make you a leader. Rather, it simply makes you that person's boss (Rowe, 2007). Ross makes the critical distinction that leadership differs from being the boss in that leadership makes the followers want to achieve high goals (aka, "emergent leadership"), rather than simply bossing people around (Rowe, 2007). To this point, Bill has really just relied upon his past as an employee and his new position or assigned leadership to propel him into a position where the employees actually acted upon his suggestions. To date, he has not developed the skills or the credibility necessary to turn assigned leadership into emergent leadership.
In order to develop into a leader, Bill should look into models of leadership such as the Managerial Leadership Grid which was developed by Blake and Mouton in 1985, wherein there are two axis: (1) "concern for people" axis along the vertical axis; and, (2) "concern for task or results" axis along the horizontal axis of the grid. In this managerial framework, Blake and Mouton found that most people fall somewhere between the middle of the two axes in a place called middle of the road. Sometimes, however, people score on the far end of the scales. There are four types of leaders that emerge: (1) authoritarian leader who is strong on tasks, weak on people skills, (2) country club leader who is strong on people skills, weak on tasks, (3) impoverished leader who is weak on tasks and strong on people skills, and (4) a team leader who is strong on tasks and strong on people skills. The goal of effective leadership is to lie at least in the middle of the road range or, optimally, in the team leader area of the grid (Blake & Mouton, 1985).
In examining Bill's situation, he is definitely strong on the tasks portion of this job as he has performed them for years; however he is weak in his people skills as noted in his outbursts and failure to build interpersonal skills and obtain real feedback from his employees. Thus, Bill lies in the authoritarian portion of the grid and, in order to move to the team range, he needs to obtain guidance, education, and/or mentorship in team-building and, moreover, effectively communication skills in the workplace. As it stands, he has not begun a real dialogue or feedback or connectivity actions between his employees on the level as manager. By doing this, he will also move from a place of merely having "assigned leadership" to the level of "emergent leadership" wherein his employees are motivated to complete tasks based upon his direction.
Furthermore, according to the "total leadership" model, the basis of effective leadership consists of possessing and demonstrating honorable character and selfless service to your organization. Thus, according to this model, "In your employees' eyes, your leadership is everything you do that effects the organization's objectives and their well-being" (U.S. Army, 1983). Respected leaders therefore concentrate on three critical things: (1) what they are [be]...
Students are complex creatures, volatile, complicated and paradoxical. No two students learn alike, and no two students are the product of the same biological and cognitive processing mechanisms. In modern society, educators have taken the standpoint that students should be taught utilizing one method, a verbal learning approach. In the traditional sense, this warrants one teacher standing in front of a large classroom of students, lecturing about a particular subject
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