Summary on Leadership Course Experience

Abstract

This paper will provide information about what I have learned during first semester in my leadership course. I will write about my prefer lecture and do all this summary by myself of course. In this course we have done 10 topics illustrated with examples.The most difficult lesson for me in this course was the theory of leadership and all the other lectures have been very easy for me.

Course summary

Topic 1. Leadership

What does it mean to be a leader?

Leadership is the process, where a group or and individual influence others to achieve their goals.

Leaders are like products. (Products influence me when the products are good quality, so the leaders influence their followers when they are good.)

You can be a leader in a place, but not in the other place. So, I can be the leader of my team in my job, but not in my family, or in another team).

Leader is not above followers. It is reciprocal.

Leader doesn’t exist without followers.

Example: Angela Merkel is a leader, but she doesn’t want to be protagonist.

Leader grows followers to be better than him. If the followers are active, then the leader will be better leadership

Influence – Leader influence followers to have the best performance and to achieve common goals.

Multidirectional - Leaders should respond all challenges. A good leader should not give up only because the situation is difficult. So, leadership should be multidirectional not only one directional leader.

Noncoercive - A non-coercive leader doesn’t need to force the followers to achieve goals, non-coercive leader has the force of persuasion with words.

Reciprocal in nature – Is not ha leader would do something for followers or followers would do for leader but, is something that leader would with people and followers.

Qualities needed to make a leader effective are also required for followers to be effective. Leaders will not be effective if the followers are not.

Old paradigm leadership – Is that leader who thinks that knows everything, is always right, take decision by his own and quickly. This is a “command and control” leadership.

New paradigm leadership – Is a leader that does not know everything, ask his followers what they think, does not take decisions only by his own, and give permission to his followers to do something that is right, and the main thing is that recognizes humanity.

Effective followers - Are those followers who are active, give their opinion in manner they think, and do their assignments or duties with full energy.

Effective leader - Are focused on team interests more than in self-interest.

Effectiveness – performance (achieving goals)

Efficiency       - productivity (the cost for achieving these goals)

Management & Vision

Leadership management – Management is that property that makes an organization successful. In general, management is defined as the process of planning, organizing, directing, and controlling the activities of employers or followers. Management leadership is when leader can manage every single activity.

Leadership vision – Vision is something necessary for leadership. A leader that has good vision is the most successful leader. So, that leader who lives in present, but has a good vision for the future. Vision is about dreaming. When you dream you promise to yourself things that you should and can do.

Toopic2. Theories of leadership

Great man theories – People are born to become powerful leader. They will use everything in the world to make it possible. This theory is attractive for some people. So, a great man is charismatic and is born with right traits.

Trait theories – traits are very appealing because they are more quantified. This theory was very attractive in the beginning. For this theory we need physical stamina (energy)

Humility nowadays we find rare. This rare person is the great female leader of Germany Angela Merkel. Leader need persistence! We cannot separate personal from professional. In professional life we would need even personal life. Strength -knowledge – skills.

Behaviors of trait leadership are: - are more Dynamic; Autocratic; Democratic.

Behavioral Theory – This theory focuses on action and on the behavior of the leader. So, this theory says that the success of leadership is viewing how leader act. If there is happening something there than the leader can choose this in two ways: First way is when leader tries to solve this by looking if there is any problem with processes and this is called task-oriented leader. And the second way is when the leader look if there is anything going wrong with employers. This theory allows leader to be flexible.

Contingency – is a theory based on situation. Fred Fiedler used this theory. Contingency theory says that he can b leader in one situation but not in another one. This a theory who is based on environment, also. An example is the ambassador Yuri Kim in Albania. Think that she thinks that can be a leader and in fact she is because our “leader” allowed this.

Topic 3. My prefer lecture in this course is “Don Quixote”.

The best think I learned in this lecture is that a good leader accepts when he is wrong.

                Passion and discipline of determined soul are a foundational element of being leader. Passion and discipline are fundamental things of real.

Three main points of this lecture are:

1.Imagination and vision

 Dream is innocent like the dream of children and vision is something necessary for

leadership. Dreams are a promise that you do to yourself.  Vision and imagination are issues

of attitude. A leader that used a lot of imagination and vision was John Kennedy who said: “I

dreamed things that never where and I said why not”!!

2.Persistence and commitment

What leaders need is persistence. Persistence of imagination does not come from knowledge.

A refusal to accept the reality.

Commitment: Author starts with big sentence “Exaggeration makes leader to be

disappointed” From these disappoints good leaders takes lessons and hopes. And make to

ourselves a question “What kind of situation am I in”? A life of commitment doesn’t depend

on consequences. Quixote sees his failure as confirming the purity of commitment.

Possibility of joy

An essential element of life and leadership is joy. Joy in leadership is most associated with

victory.  When we say Joy, we should remember two important things as: Effectiveness (is

result over objective, so what you achieved) and Efficiency (result over cos, so it is how

much you spent to achieve the goal)

Three grand affirmation that we learned from Don Quixote are:

2. Joy in engagement – Wherever you are be with all your heart.
3. Commitment to will - to a sense of self and discipline necessary to act without fear of consequences. To achieve a sanity if identity rather than a sanity of reality.                                                     

3. Commitment to beauty- Beauty is not a prize to poses. This affirmation of

engagement, will and beauty as well as the joy they produce, are essential elements of the Quixote legacy.

Note:   This lecture is the best lecture I had, and the reason is because I had read the book when I have been in high school. I have never thanked that Don Quixote would serve me for anything in this life. When professor told us to watch that video, I just said with my mind that that hour would be no very interesting and then I listed the first sentence, and it was the best lesson that I did in this semester. Learning that even the dreams of don quixote serves about something is very surprisingly I always had, and I always will have visions. I like challenging myself. Even studying BUS is because someone told me that I can’t do it and I challenged myself and I did even I was not very good in math.

The best thing I learned from this lesson is that when you have an idea, you should take your friends and do it.                        

          Topic 4: Challenges of leadership in service – oriented industries

When I listen this term, I remember only one leader that professor told us “Joe Biden”. Joe Biden is the current president of United States (US) who won with his empathy. People believe more President Joe Biden because of his tragedies that have happened to him. He had loosed his two son and his wife. Because of this people believed in the word of Biden. He showed this in the last debate when he said that 500 children will unite with their parents that have been in cages because attempt to cross the border. Joe Biden won with this sentence. Now, we can talk about the lecture. The service industry and knowledge workers are living in a smarter planet. Therefore, you must deal with self-managing teams, even physical or virtual. Two essential challenges: Leading the knowledge – Emotional intelligence

• Workers

Advised leadership approaches

Servant Leadership is to put people first, because if your employees are not satisfied, then your customer will not be satisfied.

Transformational leadership is the theory of leadership where a leader works with teams or followers beyond their immediate self – interests to identify needed change, creating a vision to guide the change through influence, inspiration and executing the change with committed members of a group.

Transformational leadership serves to enhance to motivation, morale, and job performance.

Self-managing teams: Autopoietic, Self-regulation, Productivity and Kaizen etc.

                                        Topic 5: Leadership, mind, and emotion

Emotional intelligence is when you know to manage your emotions. You know how your emotions affect the others. Fortunately, this is something that I have on my character and I very happy for this. There are five key elements on emotional intelligence:

1. Self-awareness- If you are self-awareness then you know to control very good your emotions. You know that your emotions may have bad effects on the others. We have done a quiz of Harvard and my results were these, about self-awareness:

These are my results about emotional intelligence.

Topic 6: Ambidexter leadership

Ambidextrous leader is somebody who is capable to play both different hands equally well.  Is that leader that stands up and make his decisions. The ambidexter leader knows when to step in and to make difficult judgement and, they know when to step back.

Ball represents a corporation that, throughout its long history, has never stopped anticipating the future by constantly scanning distant horizons.

Ball makes it through the storm; ambidexterity is a talent that is rare in humans and

organization. CEO need to decide not only to read but how to act when things change.

Example: The world first quartz watch prototypes were invented by SWISS, but they failed to realize commercial. And in 70s a Japanese Company bought it and then this brand became famous.

An ambidextrous leader welcome innovation into organization requires.

Are the “rules” that an ambidextrous leader has.

IBM realized that was missing opportunity because of an obsessive focus on short term results, it set up the Emerging Basin Organization.

1.Implementation

2.Keep it separated

3.Develop multifaceted.

Organizational ambidexterity as the ability of among to explore and exploit to compete with new technologies.

Ambidexterity manifests itself in multiple – expansive identities and self-concepts.

Ambidexterity = “Satisfy not sell”

                         Chapter 7: Leading the digital workforce

The best inventions that have happened in the world are the giant robots that work on vehicle’s factories and of course the computers. Leading this workforce is something hard and tired.  From this lecture I remember that professor talks about giant robots that work for the car construction. They are very difficult to lead but maybe for me. Maybe those employers who are specialized don’t think that leading this digital workforce is a difficult thing. To lead this workforce every employee should be very focused on his job and specialized because even they are giant, they are “delicate”, if something broke in these robots than the employee must be able to know what or where the problem is.

Banks are using the digitalized tools to protect money. Everything is with security code or fingerprints or even with face now. Our money is safer than before. Credit cards that we have connected with our phone is something amazing. All notifications about our money comes in our smart phones. Okay maybe is not something very useful for me because my daddy knows every money that I spent on clothes, and he doesn’t like buying a lot of clothes. But is something amazing, in this case for my father.

Leading companies is using the software now. Every data of the company is in SD cards.

 Chapter 8: Conformity

When group say “yes” you say “yes” because you want to stay with the group. This tendency to conform happens in little bunches and/or society as an entire, and may result from unpretentious oblivious impacts, or coordinate and unmistakable social pressure. Conformity can happen within the nearness of others, or when a person is alone. For case, individuals tend to take after social standards when eating

or observing tv, indeed when alone. People regularly accommodate from a want for security inside a group—typically a bunch of a similar age, culture, religion, or instructive status. This is often regularly alluded to as groupthink: a design of thought characterized by self-deception, constrained make of assent, and congruity to group values and morals, which disregards reasonable examination of other courses of activity. Unwillingness to comply carries the chance of social dismissal. Similarity

is frequently related with puberty and youth culture, but emphatically influences people of all ages.

I remember the conformity experiment, if one of the participants of the group write on the letter “well” then everyone else should write it. They influence each other. And if one of them write “bad” then everyone looks him strange.

Note: in this lecture I was not present physically in class, I was online, but I didn’t understand a lot, but it is very interesting lecture. When I read the research paper it was very good information for me.

Chapter 9- Change

Things constantly change. Change is mandatory to ensure survive.

Properties:

1^st property: change is when you act within the box

2^nd order change is when you act out of the box.   

3^rd property is when it keeps the same identity

Logical types of 2^nds order the element and the community stay in different levels. You need to change the sets out of the box.

Another topic in this chapter is common mistakes

We need to act, but we don’t act. When there is a conflict, you need to solve.

Instead acting in the box, you act out of the box.

A good and real “rule” is: “The younger you are, the higher adoptive you are”.

Example: if you never congratulate your children or your employee then you will never motivate them.

If you want to see where the problem stands, you need to stimulate it. You should look at the tries of solution to understand the problem. When you act you understand what happening and then you see if you will act in or out the box.

Chapter 10 – Leadership power and influence

Transformational – It is a transaction between the leader and followers. If you make a thing, it will be a reward for you”.   “If you don’t there will be a punishment”. So, the reward is what you get for a good performance and for a bad work performance you will get a punishment.

Transformational – the keys of transformational leadership are Inspiration and motivation

You treat every employee as unique. In this manner you motivate them. Also, if the leader is very good in everything, systematic in his things than that leader would be an inspiration for his followers.

Charismatic leader – is that leader that influences his/her followers with his/her communication skills, the ability to convince the others and with their charm to influence the others. The best example of charismatic leader is Adolf Hitler.

Coalitional leader – Are those leaders that participate in activities to get experiences which makes them better leaders. Leaders makes a lot of interviews.

Leadership power:

Power of leadership changes can influence in follower’s behaviour.  Leaders that have power can influence the other to achieve objectives. I think I can take example our leaders as Edi Rama the prime minister of Albania and I think that he does everything to achieve his objective.

There are five sources of leadership power:

1. Legitimate – is the power that the position gives to you. For example, being president, you have a legitimate power to take some decisions and the others who agree with this decision have legitimate power.
2. Reward power- in an organization reward power is expressed by giving benefits, gifts, or reward about their job performance.
3. Coercive power: are the consequences or punishments that somebody or a follower take. This punishment can be because of a mistake in their job or because a very bad job performance.
4. Expert power: expert power comes from a specialized person. This power is “available” only in specific areas. For example, FORENCIS Rapports.
5. Referent Power: is when a person is capable to make his/her followers loyal. They may be loyal to him/her because of charismatic or other things that the leader has. An example of referent power is ex. Prime minister of Albania, Mr. Sali Berisha. His followers stood loyal to him in every situation.

Note: I have learned a lot thing about leadership. Things that I see every day, but I don’t know how to explain, things that I need to have to be a good leader and things that I have.