1 Transformational Leadership: Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address

Posted on March 15th, 2010 by admin

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is a prime example of a collective appeal for the nation to adapt to transformational leadership principles. Transformational leadership is a leadership when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality. The term was first coined by J.V. Downton in 1973 in Rebel Leadership: Commitment and Charisma in a Revolutionary Process.

James MacGregor Burns (1978) first introduced the concepts of transformational and transactional leadership in his treatment of political leadership, but this term is now used in organizational psychology as well. According to Burns, the difference between transformational and transactional leadership is what leaders and followers offer one another. “Transforming leadership… occurs when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality. Their purposes, which might have started out as separate but related, as in the case of transactional leadership, become fused. Power bases are linked not as counterweights but as mutual support for common purpose. Various names are used for such leadership, some of them derisory: elevating, mobilizing, inspiring, exalting, uplifting, preaching, exhorting, evangelizing. The relationship can be moralistic, of course. But transforming leadership ultimately becomes moral in that it raises the level of human conduct and ethical aspiration of both leader and led, and thus it has a transforming effect on both.” (p. 20)

Transformational leaders offer a purpose that transcends short-term goals and focuses on higher order intrinsic needs. This results in followers identifying with the needs of the leader. The four dimensions of transformational leadership are idealized influence (or charisma), inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individual consideration.

Duration : 0:4:55

Read the rest of this entry »

2 Transformational Leadership: Leadership Vs Management

Posted on February 22nd, 2010 by admin

Video 2 in the Transformational Leadership Series I. Comparing the similarities and contrast between leadership and management roles.

The word leadership can refer to:

The ability “to get people to follow voluntarily.”
Those entities that perform one or more acts of leading.
The ability to affect human behavior so as to accomplish a mission designated by the leader.

The word leadership can refer to:

The ability “to get people to follow voluntarily.”
Those entities that perform one or more acts of leading.
The ability to affect human behavior so as to accomplish a mission designated by the leader.

Leadership is a quality an individual may possess. One can categorize the exercise of leadership as either actual or potential:

actual – giving guidance or direction, for example: a teacher being a leader to a student, as in the phrase “the emperor has provided satisfactory leadership”.
potential – the capacity or ability to lead, as in the phrase “she could have exercised effective leadership”; or in the concept “born to lead”.
Leadership can have a formal aspect (as in most political or business leadership) or an informal one (as in most friendships). Speaking of “leadership” (the abstract term) rather than of “leading” (the action) usually implies that the entities doing the leading have some “leadership skills” or competencies.

other categorisation from a 1939 study by Kurt Lewin suggest 3 types of leadership:

Authoritarian Leadership (Autocratic)- provides clear expectations for what needs to be done
Participative Leadership (Democratic)- the study found that style is generally the most effective. Democratic leaders offer guidance to the group, but also participate in the group and allow input from other members.
Delegative (Laissez-Fair)- Researchers found that children under this type of leadership were the least productive of all three groups.

The verb manage comes from the Italian maneggiare (to handle — especially a horse), which in turn derives from the Latin manus (hand). The French word mesnagement (later ménagement) influenced the development in meaning of the English word management in the 17th and 18th centuries.[1]

[edit] Theoretical scope
Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933), who wrote on the topic in the early twentieth century, defined management as “the art of getting things done through people”.[2] One can also think of management functionally, as the action of measuring a quantity on a regular basis and of adjusting some initial plan; or as the actions taken to reach one’s intended goal. This applies even in situations where planning does not take place. From this perspective, Frenchman Henri Fayol[3] considers management to consist of five functions:

planning
organizing
leading
co-ordinating
controlling
Some people, however, find this definition, while useful, far too narrow. The phrase “management is what managers do” occurs widely, suggesting the difficulty of defining management, the shifting nature of definitions, and the connection of managerial practices with the existence of a managerial cadre or class.

One habit of thought regards management as equivalent to “business administration” and thus excludes management in places outside commerce, as for example in charities and in the public sector. More realistically, however, every organization must manage its work, people, processes, technology, etc. in order to maximize its effectiveness. Nonetheless, many people refer to university departments which teach management as “business schools.” Some institutions (such as the Harvard Business School) use that name while others (such as the Yale School of Management) employ the more inclusive term “management.”

Speakers of English may also use the term “management” or “the management” as a collective word describing the managers of an organization, for example of a corporation. Historically this use of the term was often contrasted with the term “Labor” referring to those being managed.

Duration : 0:1:2

Read the rest of this entry »

  • Categories

  • Pages

  • Tags

    and building business change coaching communication communications conference consulting corporate development effective employees Executive inc innovation keynote leader leaders leadership leadership development leadership skills leadership training leading management managers managing Marketing mckenna motivation Network Rob science situational situational leadership skills Social speaker Strategic strategy Styles success team training transformational
  • Archives

  • Meta

  •