June 2011 Archives

Last Week's Definition: Leadership is directing, supporting, inspiring, and organizing a group of people to accomplish a certain goal. In order to be effective, leaders should gain the trust of the group, provide members with compassion, build hope and create stability, while also remaining true to their own personality characteristics (Rath & Conchie, 2008). Leadership can be displayed in a number of ways including being a visionary, a coach, by creating harmony and connecting people, taking a democratic approach, by pacesetting, or by commanding (Goleman, Boyatzis, & McKee, 2002).

Goleman, D., Boyatziz, R., & McKee, A. (2002). "The leadership repertoire." Primal leadership: Learning to lead with emotional intelligence (pp. 53 - 69). Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Rath, T., & Conchie, B. (2008). Strengths Based Leadership. New York, NY:Gallup Press.

This Week's Definition: Leadership is directing, supporting, inspiring, and organizing a group of people to accomplish a certain goal. In order to be effective, leaders should gain the trust of the group, provide members with compassion, build hope and create stability from the center rather than the top of the hierarchy (Kyle, 1998), while also remaining true to their own personality characteristics (Rath & Conchie, 2008). Leadership can be displayed in a number of ways including being a visionary, a coach, by creating harmony and connecting people, taking a democratic approach, by pacesetting, or by commanding (Goleman, Boyatzis, & McKee, 2002).

Goleman, D., Boyatziz, R., & McKee, A. (2002). "The leadership repertoire." Primal leadership: Learning to lead with emotional intelligence (pp. 53 - 69). Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Kyle, D. T. (1998). "The sovereign: The power of presence." The Four Powers of Leadership: Presence, intention, wisdom, compassion (pp. 159 - 191). Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications Inc.

Rath, T., & Conchie, B. (2008). Strengths Based Leadership. New York, NY:Gallup Press.

I am having an internal struggle about what to keep in my definition, how broad or specific to get, and how much detail I should add. I am finding out that leadership is a very complicated idea to define, and in addition to that, almost impossible to do in just a few sentences. There are so many aspects that I am probably missing and it seems almost impossible to be able to include, or even think of, them all. However, I really do like how much my definition does cover. I only changed one small aspect this week that I really liked from Kyle's article, which is that a leader should lead from the center instead of from a position of hierarchy. I agreed with this wholeheartedly, because the most effective leaders are not leaders so that they can possess power. Rather, they are leaders for the people and are in it to create the best possible atmosphere for their followers.

Last Week's Definition: Leadership is directing, supporting, and organizing a group of people to accomplish a certain goal. In order to be effective, leaders should gain the trust of the group, provide members with compassion, build hope, and create stability, while also remaining true to their own personality characteristics (Rath & Conchie, 2008).

Rath, T., & Conchie, B. (2008). Strengths Based Leadership. New York, NY:Gallup Press.

This Week's Definition: Leadership is directing, supporting, inspiring, and organizing a group of people to accomplish a certain goal. In order to be effective, leaders should gain the trust of the group, provide members with compassion, build hope and create stability, while also remaining true to their own personality characteristics (Rath & Conchie, 2008). Leadership can be displayed in a number of ways including being a visionary, a coach, by creating harmony and connecting people, taking a democratic approach, by pacesetting, or by commanding (Goleman, Boyatzis, & McKee, 2002).

Goleman, D., Boyatziz, R., & McKee, A. (2002) "The leadership repertoire." Primal leadership: Learning to lead with emotional intelligence (pp. 53 - 69). Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Rath, T., & Conchie, B. (2008). Strengths Based Leadership. New York, NY:Gallup Press.

Explanation: I kept a lot of my definition the same. I felt that last week's reading, which talked about trust and playing on your strengths, and an original thought about the main goals of a leader, were still ideas that I agreed with. In addition to those ideas, from this week's reading, I added the different ways a leader can go about leading. I believe that showing the different ways to lead will create a broader definition of leadership, which is how I believe it should be. There is not one specific definition or example of leadership. I believe, after reading this week's and last week's readings and looking at many different examples of leaders from these readings, that each person takes all of the different areas and aspects of a leader in order to create their own leadership platform based on their personality and what is right for them. Thus, there are probably as many approaches to leadership as there are people in the world.

Leadership is directing, supporting, and organizing a group of people to accomplish a certain goal. In order to be effective, leaders should gain the trust of the group, provide members with compassion, build hope, and create stability, while also remaining true to their own personality characteristics (Rath & Conchie, 2008).

Rath, T., & Conchie, B. (2008). Strengths Based Leadership. New York, NY:

Gallup Press.