Question

Leadership Behaviors

Research a leader that you believe uses either directive leadership, supportive leadership, participative leadership, or achievement-oriented leadership. Describe the leader, and explain why you think the leader uses either directive leadership, supportive leadership, participative leadership, or achievement-oriented leadership by describing the leader’s history of behavior and decision-making.

Answer in 7-10 sentences. For each website you visit to find information, if you use that information be sure to put it in your own words and include that website as a reference in APA format.

SMART Goals

Research a job description that you would like to have (it cannot be a job description you have used for previous exercises). Evaluate the job description based on Goal Expectancy Theory. Describe the job description, and explain how the individual who accepts that position could be motivated by Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-Based, and Time Specific (SMART) goals, using chapter concepts and terms to defend your position.

Answer in 7-10 sentences. For each website you visit to find information, if you use that information be sure to put it in your own words and include that website as a reference in APA format.

Answer 1

Leadership Behaviors

Strong leadership is essential for the success of any organization. Research shows that direct leaders bear the greatest influence on their organizations.

Every effective leader has a compelling vision that attracts others. This vision is often innovative and it should aim to propel the organization forward.

A strong leader is never okay with the status quo. He or she is always pressing forward and encouraging employees to do the same.

An effective leader also has clarity of purpose in progressing toward that vision. Distractions come and go, but the effective leader stays focused on the goal. Additionally, a great leader has to be an excellent communicator to share the vision.

Being respectful doesn’t just benefit you, though; it benefits everyone around you. In a study of nearly 20,000 employees around the world (conducted with HBR), I found that when it comes to garnering commitment and engagement from employees, there’s one thing that leaders need to demonstrate: respect. No other leadership behavior had a bigger effect on employees across the outcomes we measured. Being treated with respect was more important to employees than recognition and appreciation, communicating an inspiring vision, providing useful feedback — or even opportunities for learning, growth, and development. However, even when leaders know that showing respect is critical, many struggle to demonstrate it. If you’re one of those leaders, consider the following steps

Ask for focused feedback on your best behaviors. This technique, originated by researcher Laura Roberts and colleagues, will help you see your most respectful self. Collect feedback via email from about 10 people (coworkers, friends, family). Ask each for positive examples of your best behavior. When and how have they seen you treat people well? After compiling the feedback, try to organize the data by summarizing and categorizing it into themes.

Learn compassionate management

While many leadership experts will tell you that empathy is critical to great leadership, it’s actually compassion — an “objective form of empathy” — that’s key to being more in touch with your team. Practicing compassion comes down to training yourself to see situations through another person’s perspective. Compassionate management involves taking the time to consider and understand people’s stresses so you can be better equipped to take action. Unlike empathy, compassion creates emotional distance, giving leaders the ability to proactively assist another person. Being a compassionate leader can decrease team members’ stress levels and in turn, increase their productivity and effectiveness.

Inspire and Motivate Others

Leaders who are effective at inspiring and motivating others have a high level of energy and enthusiasm. They energize their team to achieve difficult goals and increase the level of performance from everyone on the team. Many leaders focus on accomplishing tasks in their job description while forgetting to inspire. This is a mistake. Without inspiration, employees do an adequate job. However, when inspiration is a focus, leaders unlock a level of additional effort and energy that can make the difference between organizational success and failure. The point is every leader needs to find ways to inspire their employees to higher performance

Admit your mistakes and acknowledge your limitations

Publicly own up to your mistakes when you make them. Admitting you were wrong isn’t a sign of weakness, but strength. Acknowledge the mistakes and outline the new course.

No one knows everything. We all have our limitations. Build a team around you that complements you – and each other – in knowledge, skillsets, and capabilities. Don’t try to do everything. Let your team members drive certain projects and outcomes. That will make them feel valued and will make you look good. But always have their back when something doesn’t go according to plan.

Developing and Pouring into Others is an Essential Leadership Skill

One important leadership skill is the ability to pour into others and develop them into strong leaders. Great leaders see people’s strengths, often hidden, and help them develop. They offer their employees challenges and opportunities to grow and excel.

Such leaders are involved mentors and coaches who pour into their mentees. They encourage, cajole, correct and prod employees into becoming great leaders. They enjoy seeing the people they work with develop into strong leaders.

Work with a coach.

Coaches can uncover potential weaknesses through surveying and interviewing those with whom you work, and may shadow you at meetings and events to pick up on subtleties including non-verbal behavior. A skilled coach may unearth some of the underlying assumptions, experiences, and personal qualities that make one prone to uncivil behavior.

Embracing a coaching mindset

Studies have shown that employee development results are best achieved when a manager is actively involved in the process.

Managers who are able to take a coaching approach to leadership develop a partnership with their teammates and establish a shared vision for what needs to be done and how these goals will be accomplished. This sort of relationship will give you a more personal and active role in each individual’s development, create a relationship of trust, and foster an environment of continual growth.

Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford found that the most successful individuals tend to fall into the “improving” or “growth mindset” category. Consequently, leaders who focus on developing people can influence teammates to adopt a similar mindset of constant self-improvement.

Driving for Results

The drive for results is a critical behavior to success. However, some organizations are all push (drive for results) and no pull (inspiration), which ultimately reduces motivation. Conversely, all pull and no push does not work well either. A healthy balance between the two behaviors is necessary. Leaders who are effective at driving for results are skillful at getting people to stay focused on and stretch for the highest priority goals. They establish high standards of excellence for the work group. Leaders that do this well are not afraid to ask their employees for a higher level of performance and continually remind them of their progress relative to the goal.

Trust your team

Hire the best and trust them to lead. Trust is a two-way street. If you don’t trust your team, they won’t trust you.

And always remember: take the blame, but give away the credit. Acknowledge people for their contributions. The more credit your give away, the more motivated your team will be to move mountains for you. And when something goes wrong, acknowledge the fact that the mistake was made under your leadership and don’t throw your team under the bus.

Don’t play favorites

A double standard is the fastest way to trust deterioration. Playing favorites destroys strong teams. Don’t do it! Just don’t!

Treat everyone fairly

Always treat everyone fairly. Have the same set of expectations for every team member and create team rules that you expect everyone to respect and follow, such as a “don’t gossip” rule, for example. Some leaders create the team rules collectively with their teams which ensures that everyone agrees to uphold the same set of standards.

Walk the Talk

A key behavior in creating a satisfied and committed workforce is the very basic and fundamental skill of being honest and acting with integrity. Leaders need to be role models and set a good example for their work group. Leaders create cynicism and lose trust when they say one thing and do another, such as telling employees that the budget is tight and to curb all expenditures, but then proceed to stay in 5 star hotels and eat in expensive restaurants. Every leader needs to look at their behavior critically and ask the question, “Am I walking my talk?”

SMART Goals

You could say that the whole human endeavour is geared towards setting and achieving goals. Goals are part of every aspect of life: how you conduct your relationships, what you want to achieve at work, the way you use your spare time... Everything comes down to priorities, and what you would like to accomplish in every aspect – whether you make a conscious choice or go with subconscious preferences.

Without setting goals or objectives, life becomes a series of chaotic happenings you don't control. You become the plaything of coincidence. Accomplishments like sending someone to the moon, inventing the iPod etcetera are the result of a goal that was set at some point. A vision that was charted and realised.

SMART goal setting brings structure and trackability into your goals and objectives. In stead of vague resolutions, SMART goal setting creates verifiable trajectories towards a certain objective, with clear milestones and an estimation of the goal's attainabililty. Every goal or objective, from intermediary step to overarching objective, can be made S.M.A.R.T. and as such, brought closer to reality.

In corporate life, SMART goal setting is one of the most effective and yet least used tools for achieving goals. Once you've charted to outlines of your project, it's time to set specific intermediary goals. With the SMART checklist, you can evaluate your objectives. SMART goal setting also creates transparency throughout the company. It clarifies the way goals came into existence, and the criteria their realisation will conform to.

S.M.A.R.T. goal setting: Specific

What exactly do you want to achieve? The more specific your description, the bigger the chance you'll get exactly that. S.M.A.R.T. goal setting clarifies the difference between 'I want to be a millionaire' and 'I want to make €50.000 a month for the next ten years by creating a new software product'.

Questions you may ask yourself when setting your goals and objectives are:

• What exactly do I want to achieve?
• Where?
• How?
• When?
• With whom?
• What are the conditions and limitations?
• Why exactly do I want to reach this goal? What are possible alternative ways of achieving the same?

Measurable

Measurable goals means that you identify exactly what it is you will see, hear and feel when you reach your goal. It means breaking your goal down into measurable elements. You'll need concrete evidence. Being happier is not evidence; not smoking anymore because you adhere to a healthy lifestyle where you eat vegetables twice a day and fat only once a week, is.

Measurable goals can go a long way in refining what exactly it is that you want, too. Defining the physical manifestations of your goal or objective makes it clearer, and easier to reach.

Attainable

Is your goal attainable? That means investigating whether the goal really is acceptable to you. You weigh the effort, time and other costs your goal will take against the profits and the other obligations and priorities you have in life.

If you don't have the time, money or talent to reach a certain goal you'll certainly fail and be miserable. That doesn't mean that you can't take something that seems impossible and make it happen by planning smartly and going for it!

There's nothing wrong with shooting for the stars; if you aim to make your department twice as efficient this year as it was last year with no extra labour involved, how bad is it when you only reach 1,8 times? Not too bad...

Relevant

Is reaching your goal relevant to you? Do you actually want to run a multinational, be famous, have three children and a busy job? You decide for yourself whether you have the personality for it, or your team has the bandwidth.

If you're lacking certain skills, you can plan trainings. If you lack certain resources, you can look for ways of getting them.

The main questions, why do you want to reach this goal? What is the objective behind the goal, and will this goal really achieve that?

Timely

Time is money! Make a tentative plan of everything you do. Everybody knows that deadlines are what makes most people switch to action. So install deadlines, for yourself and your team, and go after them. Keep the timeline realistic and flexible, that way you can keep morale high. Being too stringent on the timely aspect of your goal setting can have the perverse effect of making the learning path of achieving your goals and objectives into a hellish race against time – which is most likely not how you want to achieve anything.

goals

Another thing that's very important when setting SMART goals, is formulating it POSITIVELY. Remember that what you focus on, increases. So when you focus on NOT doing something, all you think about is that thing. And it will increase. So don't 'stop procrastinating', but 'achieve a daily discipline'.