MGST 453 - M1, Elements of a Leader's Character

how do you define leadership

Leadership is the ability to influence a group of individuals to achieve

a common goal

• Leadership is simply “a process of influence.”

• Leadership is “social influence.”

The Romance of Leadership

We overestimate how much influence a particular person’s behaviors have on successful and unsuccessful outcomes.

• our assertion that a CEO leads her

  company to record earnings disregards the social

  influence and decisions of thousands of other people,

  along with a host of salient industry or market factors

  and just plain old good timing.

Indicators of Effective Leadership

▰ High group performance

▰ Improved group processes

▰ Follower satisfaction

▰ Employee engagement

▰ Career success of leader

Evidence-based management (EBM)

a practice where leaders make business and organizational decisions using critical thinking combined with the best available data and research

The weakest link in businesses and government is

leadership

What makes it hard to be evidence based?

▰ Obsolete knowledge

╺ Managers and practitioners sometimes trust their own experience more than they trust research.

▰ Specialist skills: Making decisions that capitalize on the practitioner’s own strengths.

▰ Hype and marketing play a role in what information reaches the busy practitioner.

▰ Dogma and belief

╺ When people are overly influenced by ideology, they often fail to question whether a practice will work

▰ Mindless mimicry of top performers

Qualities of a good leader

▰ Basic intelligence

▰ Clear and strong values

▰ High level of personal energy

▰ Strong drive for responsibility and task completion

▰ Vigor and persistence

▰ Venturesome and originality in problem-solving

▰ Initiative in social situations

▰ Self-confidence and sense of personal identity

▰ Willingness to accept consequences of decisions and actions

▰ Readiness to absorb interpersonal stress

▰ Willingness to tolerate frustration and delay

▰ Ability to influence other persons’ behavior

▰ Capacity to structure social interaction systems to the purpose at hand

Fundamental state of leadership can be achieved

in 3 steps

Step 1 – Discover Your Greatness (Self- awareness)

Step 2 — Develop Your Greatness (Character Building/Self- leadership)

• Believing that intelligence and personality are fluid rather than fixed, always try to grow

Step 3 — Deliver Your Greatness

• Being proactive and create a workplace that brings out best in others

• Having creative and practical intelligence

• Having social skills

in the Fundamental State of Leadership, people …

actualize their leadership potentials.

how to Enter the Fundamental State of Leadership

▰ Step 1: Recognize that you have already been there.

▰ Step 2: Analyze your current state.

• its harder to judge ourselves than it is to judge others.

what is the issue with self awareness?

▰Seeking self knowledge is a prerequisite for personal growth.

▰However, we avoid seeking information about ourselves because it may make us feel inferior.

Barriers to Self-Awareness

Managers are often isolated from direct reports’ feedback

▰ Direct reports, even when asked, may not want to give honest feedback to someone in a higher hierarchical position

▰ Managers often hire people in their own image and thus are unlikely to be criticized

▰ Managers may fear mess around with the “winning formula” that helped them achieve their success so far

▰ Managers are often too busy for reflection

What makes a good leader?

• personality matters, but it doesn’t determine leadership

• Personality shapes how someone leads, not whether they can lead

• self awareness beats personality

• must be introspective and adapt your behaviour

• Personality gives you your starting point. Character, skill, and reflection determine how far you go.

Five-Factor Personality Model (CANOE)

Getting along

• conscientiousness → careful, dependable, can be perfectionists

• agreeableness → courteous, caring, can be ppl pleasers

• neuroticism → anxious, hostile

Getting ahead

• openness to experience → sensitive, flexible, willing to take risks

• extroversion → outgoing, talkative

tower of most important leadership traits

• Most important: compassion, integrity, conscientiousness

• Least important: ai literacy, can easily hire someone for this

what is emotional intelligence? explain emotional sensitivity to being a good leader

Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to perceive, understand, and regulate our own or another person’s emotions.

▰ People who are more sensitive to their emotions & their impact on others will be more effective leaders

can EI be learned? how?

• yes, it is a skill that can be improved on

• through coaching, extended practice, and feedback.

• EI increases with age -- maturity

how can you develop EI in the workplace?

Research shows that people with high emotional intelligence are better at interpersonal relations and perform better in teams

• Leaders who can master the 3 C’s of coaching, communicating, and collaborating are in great demand

• Coaching: Requires the ability to attract, inspire, and grow great people

• Communicating: Requires well-developed skills of listening, speaking, and

writing

• Collaborating: Requires the ability to achieve results across generations,

geographies, functions and groups

nature vs nurture personality

• influenced by nature: heredity explains up to 50% of behavioural tendencies

• influenced by nurture: socialization, learning

• personality stabilizes in young adulthood

• 50% of variation in personality is explained by genetics

• swapped twins: a good environment can potentially overcome a genetic shortcoming

downsides of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness

extraversion → more impulsive, more accidents

agreeableness → lower career success, cant cope w conflict

conscientiousness → low adaptability, lower learning in initial stages of skill acquisition

emotional stability → cant detect risks, more risky behav., more realistic

openness → more accidents, can be counterproductive, rebellious

narcissism