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2017 | Buch

Leadership and Purpose Kapitel lesen Erstes Kapitel lesen

Leadership Today

Practices for Personal and Professional Performance

herausgegeben von: Joan Marques, Satinder Dhiman

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buchreihe : Springer Texts in Business and Economics

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

This textbook provides a clear understanding of leadership needs in today’s business world, explained within the scope of hard and soft leadership skills. It captures qualities and skills such as spirituality, empathy, moral behavior, mindfulness, empathy, problem solving, self-confidence, ambition, knowledge, global understanding, and information technology. This text explains and provides guidelines for the implementation of each skill and includes examples from contemporary and historical leaders inviting the reader to consider each quality and engage in self-reflection. This book deviates from excessive theoretical descriptions presenting a timely, hands-on approach to leadership.

Even though leadership, as a phenomenon, has been studied extensively in the past decades, it remains a challenge as times, needs, and perceptions change and the world increasingly merges into a global village. Numerous leadership styles have been developed, varying from resonant, servant, and laissez faire, to authentic, authoritative, and coercive; from charismatic and team, to transformational and transactional leadership. And while each leadership style harbors a wealth of qualities, strategies, and behavioral guidelines toward successful implementation, there are critical overarching themes that keep emerging, regardless of the “label” one chooses.

In recent years, an important distinction has been established in leadership qualities: soft and hard skills. Soft skills are reflective in nature, and entail qualities such as empathy, motivation, self-awareness, self-regulation, and social skills. In leadership performance, the application of soft skills entails a combination of interpersonal and social skills. Hard skills are more of a measurable nature. They encompass analytical and technical skills. Both soft and hard skills are important for leaders because they complement one another.

Featuring contributions form academics and professionals from around the world, this text will be of interest to students, researchers, professionals in business and leadership who aspire to lead beyond their immediate environment.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Soft Skills

Frontmatter
1. Leadership and Purpose
Abstract
Leadership starts with leading oneself before leading others. Purpose is a foundational aspect thereby. This chapter defines a perspective on leadership that may not be the most common one, but is highly identifiable for people of any age group and in any stage of life. It discusses five interrelated qualities in finding our purpose: (1) awareness, which enhances the quality of decisions we make; (2) respect, which is an outflow of awareness and ensures proper treatment of others; (3) morality, which enables us to consider and deal with the consequences of our decisions; (4) vision, which guides our path and attracts others to it; and (5) understanding, which can help us adjust our direction if we find it to become unfulfilling. Cases are presented for each quality, discussing global and business leaders such as Muhammad Yunus; Princess Diana; Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface; Sir Richard Branson; and Nelson Mandela. The chapter ends with a brief narrative on finding our purpose, inviting the reader to engage in self-reflective questions, responding to them, and defining his or her own life’s purpose.
Joan Marques
2. Leadership and Trust
Abstract
Trust is a dynamic, interpersonal link between people, with unique implications for the workplace. Trust is defined as an expectation or belief that one can rely on another person’s actions and words and that the person has good intentions to carry out their promises. Trust is most meaningful in situations in which one party is at risk or vulnerable to another party. For this reason, it becomes critical in relationships between leaders and followers, who by definition have different roles and different levels of status and power. This chapter explores the role of trust in the leadership relationship, the antecedents and consequences of trust in leader-follower relations, as well as the different outcomes that often result from trusting versus mistrusting relationships. In addition, we will consider situations where trust can act as an important buffer against negative workplace experiences. Finally, we will consider when and why leaders are more likely to trust their followers, the dynamic development of trust between leaders and followers, and mistrust. Because trust is a relational concept that occurs between people, both leaders and followers play an important role in creating and sustaining trusting relationships.
Michelle C. Bligh
3. Leadership and Moral Behavior
Abstract
Even though leadership theories are diverse, one notable commonality among leadership theories is that they inculcate the importance of moral behavior. This chapter explores moral leadership by providing brief contextual considerations regarding morals, outlines the most commonly used moral theories, examines each moral theory’s strength and weakness, discusses the connection between moral theories and leadership theories by examining contextual considerations for the discussion, and discusses the central role of pro-social values in both morals and leadership theories, and then the chapter resolves with a case study and a simple moral test. This chapter will promote the idea that moral leaders act in ways that seek the welfare of others, even at personal cost.
Timothy Ewest
4. Leadership and Values
Abstract
Becoming a successful leader—someone who is able to build a long-lasting, high-performing team or organization—is not about what you do, although that is important; it is about how you do what you do; it is about living your deeply held values. This chapter explains what values are, why they are important, and how they are linked to the stages of psychological development. Based on the descriptions given in this chapter, you can find out what stage of psychological development you are at and what level of leadership consciousness you are operating from and how you can improve your performance.
Richard Barrett
5. Leadership and Vision
Abstract
Organizations have evolved into complex entities that exist within even more complex and dynamic societal and global systems. Understanding the complexities and facing today’s challenges may require different leadership skills. Traditional leadership theories, vocabulary, and perspectives on leadership vision are insufficient in guiding the knowledge economy. Vision can mean a long-term goal or an idealized future state, but vision can also mean the ability to see. This chapter explores a new perspective on leadership vision by turning to new science theories such as the quantum field theory and the holographic principle.
Isaac Wanasika, Keiko Krahnke
6. Leadership and Authenticity: The case of Buurtzorg Nederland
Abstract
The research question of this chapter is to study the relationship between leadership and Yoga where Yoga is seen as an approach to view the world and a way to enhance virtuous behavior. So far leadership has been studied as style, an attribute, or trait. New models propose it as an activity. Here we propose leadership as a cognition and a virtue. The virtues of people are fueled by their authentic nature. Leadership and authenticity have been looked upon from various philosophical perspectives. The following pattern has emerged while studying a good practice in the community care “Buurtzorg Nederland.” There are three expressions of authentic virtues in this case: needing, rethinking, and common sensing. The Yogic intellectual capacity of Vivekam Buddhi acts as a way to enhance authenticity. It is argued that Yama and Niyama, that embody the psychological limbs of Yoga, act as the authentic virtue which creates the foundation for the Yogic Leadership. The basic Yogic principles of Abhyasa and Vairagya have been found in the role of leadership as a way to enhance authenticity as a virtue. They act like determinants along with Vivekam Buddhi (discriminative wisdom) in the proposed conceptual model of authenticity among leaders who takes a client center or customer center perspective in their organizing processes and decision-making design
Puneet Kumar Bindlish, Sharda Nandram
7. Leadership and Emotional Intelligence
Abstract
As an umbrella concept covering multiple domains, emotional intelligence has been gaining attention for its contribution to productive teams and effective leadership. We examine the role of emotion perception, expression, and management in professional and personal development, as well as discuss multiple models of emotional intelligence and their corresponding measurement instruments as applied to organizational settings. Recent empirical studies highlight the function of emotional intelligence in effective leadership within the fields of healthcare, finance and banking, project supervision, information technology, and change management.
Svetlana S. Holt, Adam Wood
8. Leadership and Spirituality
Abstract
This chapter underscores the importance of spirituality in the workplace and its role in leading organizations. It focuses specifically on contributing to readers’ awareness about the vital difference between religion and spirituality. The chapter builds on the premise that fundamental problems facing our organizations and the society today can only be solved at the level of human spirit. The material paradigm is not suited to deal with germane problems that shape our today’s world (Vasconcelos A.F.. Cadernos EBAPE.BR 13.1, pp. 183–205). The chapter further postulates that the real spirituality is not indifference to the world but love and compassion born out of identifying oneself with all beings. It presents Gandhi as an exemplary spiritual leader who stirred the conscience of humanity by demonstrating the power of spirit over material things and extended the gospel of love and peace from personal level to the social arena. It also draws upon the vision of the Vedānta philosophy of unity of all existence as unfolded in the Bhagavad Gītā.
Satinder Dhiman
9. Leadership and Sustainability
Abstract
This chapter explores the inherent interconnectedness of sustainability and spirituality, and the role of leadership in honoring and maintaining this interconnectedness. We believe that unless people’s moral and spiritual qualities are nurtured and developed, the best of sustainability efforts will not work. Similarly, our political and economic thinking need to be attuned to spirituality rather than materialism—no economics is any good that does not make sense in terms of morality. After all, we are “Homo moralis” and not “Homo economicus.” We need to refuse to treat economics and politics as if people do not matter. We believe that the way to achieve harmonious living in all spheres is through ethics and spirituality at the personal level. The journey for world transformation starts at the individual level. The chapter contends that true ecological sustainability, in contrast to the cosmetic variety we see around us, depends upon our deeper understanding of fundamental spiritual values such as interconnectedness and oneness, nonviolence and compassion, contribution and selfless service.
Satinder Dhiman
10. Leadership and Mindfulness
Abstract
This chapter, possibly more so than others, focuses on leadership as a process that begins within the leader. The underlying assumption in this chapter is that we cannot be good leaders to others if we cannot lead ourselves well. The chapter touches on a behavioral pattern to which many people fall prey: the sleepwalking mode. People who sleepwalk, move through the motions of personal and professional life without questioning whether they still matter to them. Mindfulness, the opposite of sleepwalking, is a critical skill for a leader to develop and maintain, because it has a major influence on the type of decisions this leader will make, and the type of influence this leader will have onto followers.
Joan Marques
11. Leadership and Empathy
Abstract
Theorists across a range of practical and academic disciplines say we are entering “The Age of Empathy.” Having been lately “rediscovered” as an innate capacity to experience the others’ emotions from their perspective and to respond accordingly, empathy is a complex process that combines affective, cognitive, and communicative components.
Empathic leadership is based on the thinking that we are connected with each other and that societies have survived due to our ability to feel for the other and respond. Research shows that empathic leaders create emotional bonds and are therefore competent in understanding and addressing their team’s and customer’s needs, appreciating and drawing on people’s talents, recognizing others’ perspectives in problem solving and including them in decision-making.
This allows for a culture of trust, openness, and cooperation to flourish amongst teams and organizations. Empathic leadership in organizations is not a dualistic leader–follower transaction based on a detached individual’s influence on others. Instead, it is a collaborative process based on deep participation and mutual receptivity. More importantly, empathic leadership opens the way for relational, shared, distributed, and co-creative leadership perspectives.
Empathy can be developed through both cognitive and affective experiences. Organizations are investing in the development of empathy for both their employees and clients and Business Schools are starting to include aspects of empathy development in the curriculum.
The shaping of empathic leadership calls for an adventure in interrelationship!
Eleni Tzouramani
12. Leadership and Motivation
Abstract
Motivating employees is a crucial leadership task, as motivation translates employees’ knowledge, skills, and abilities into effort and performance by determining the direction, intensity, and duration of work-related behaviors. This chapter summarizes the leadership implications of four core perspectives on motivation. It describes why motivating requires a “two-sided understanding” of motivation that in addition to the factors that increase motivation, also covers influences that can decrease motivation. A case from a leadership seminar serves to illustrate how the two-sided view on motivation can help leaders translate their goal to motivate into genuine support. The chapter concludes by discussing how leaders and their employees can cocreate a motivating work context and how they might benefit from a shift from motivating to enabling motivation.
Christian Stamov Roßnagel
13. Leadership and Communication
Abstract
Are we born or granted leaders in our social interactions? Folklore, myths, books, TV-series, but also history, politics, economy, and more broadly our human life are disseminated with narratives of leadership construction. Latest studies have urged a shift in focus of leadership inquiry from the who (personality traits), what (behaviors), and where (situation) to the how of leadership. That has led to the emergence of a constructionist perspective that views leadership as embedded in context, considering person and context as interrelated social constructions made in ongoing local-cultural-historical processes. In this chapter, after briefly illustrating extant leadership styles, we put forth conceptually and then we substantiate with case studies the rise of conversational leadership as the emergent constructionist response to the dramatic increase of organizational and stakeholder complexity. The aim is to support readers to understand the conversational leader as an executive characterized by a flexible sensitivity in crafting relationships with people in time of disruption. Conversational leadership shows then how the mastery in soft skills ends up sustaining hard corporate results.
Silvia Biraghi, Rossella Chiara Gambetti, Stephen Quigley
14. Leadership and Dependability
Abstract
In this chapter we investigate the relationship between leadership and dependability. Dependability is a skill that relates to a number of other workplace skills. The Bases of Competence skills model has been used to capture the skills related to dependability. There are four bases—Managing Self, Communicating, Managing People and Tasks, and Mobilizing Innovation and Change—made up of individual skills. Three of the bases consist of four skills and one is made up of five skills. The performance of a leader was shown to relate to the skills and other factors. Leadership performance and dependability are presented through several concepts: 360 degree stakeholder interactions, meeting deadlines, credit given to others, trust, mindfulness, and motivation. The difference between leadership in a crisis and in a stable situation is considered. A case study entitled “Saadiyat: A Global Team in Trouble” concludes the chapter.
Frederick Evers, Iris Berdrow
15. Leadership and Creativity
Abstract
Creativity is a leadership quality that should be an essential part of the job description. Leaders may not need to be creative themselves, but they need to understand key elements of the creative process (freedom/autonomy, working-memory limitations, ownership, acceptance, and creativity principles). Leaders should provide education, time, resources, and encouragement for their employees to generate many novel ideas. Leaders should make available and guide the use of specific techniques available for proper framing of tasks or problems and for stimulating the divergent and convergent thinking needed for arriving at optimal solutions for tasks and problems. The decision-making required of leaders should be delayed and focus on weeding out poor options frequently and quickly and in guiding the implementation of best ideas. Introduced here is the idea of systematically using a set of techniques known to guide idea creation and to treat ideas as a database that can be managed.
The history of vaccines provides a clear and concise case study of how creative ideas emerge and evolve into commercial development.
W. R. (Bill) Klemm
16. Leadership and Initiative
Abstract
Leadership entails initiative. Scholars and teachers have many opportunities to demonstrate leadership through our choice of projects and the theoretical lenses we apply to them. We take our position with those scholars who suggest that the predominant direction of global development generates significant social and environmental degradation and fuels the insecurity this degradation generates. We provide a radical feminist orientation to this view of globalization and introduce some inspiring initiatives intended to contribute to the transformation of local and global development in ways we value. Thus we begin the chapter by sketching our radical feminist position on our stand with those who are critical of the current path of global development. We then draw attention to initiatives that express values of leaders infrequently hailed in management education. We make suggestions for student engagement with our analysis of globalization, our radical feminist orientation, and our chosen stories of transformational intent.
Maria Humphries, Sheeba Asirvatham
17. Leadership and Self-Confidence
Abstract
Self-confidence has two aspects: general self-confidence, which is a stable personality trait that develops in early childhood, and specific self-confidence, which is a changing mental and emotional state associated with the specific task or situation at-hand. We develop both types of self-confidence through automatic, mostly unconscious, internal dialogues whereby we make judgments about ourselves based on our experiences and others’ feedback. While both types of self-confidence profoundly affect our thoughts, emotions, and behavior, our levels of general self-confidence are important primarily in new and unusual circumstances while our specific self-confidence is pertinent to our everyday performance. High levels of both types are essential for effective leadership and enable the leader to influence his collaborators, or followers, to build task-specific self-confidences that can strengthen their job performance. This chapter includes instructions for a conscious mental process called self-leadership, which effective leaders routinely employ and through which we each can learn to positively influence our internal dialogues so that we, too, can build on our innate abilities and develop specific self-confidences to do what we choose.
Ruth H. Axelrod
18. Leadership and Resilience
Abstract
Resilience can be defined as the ability to regain balance following exposure to an adverse event or events. Resilience is not an end state of being, but rather a process of adaptation and growth within a risky landscape. A resilient organization not only survives, but also thrives in an environment of change and uncertainty. Strong leadership that promotes cohesive and interdependent teams is a critical component of a resilient organization. Organizational resilience evolves over time as management and teams adhere to the mission and to the core values of the organization. What are the dimensions of resilience and why do some leaders and organizations adapt and sometimes grow even stronger following crisis? The answer is complex and multifaceted, involving numerous domains and mediating factors. In this chapter, we discuss the construct of resilience, its mediating factors and some of its most important psychological, biological, and social domains. We relate these factors to individual resilience, how they foster resilient leadership and contribute to resilient organizations.
Frederick S. Southwick, Brenda L. Martini, Dennis S. Charney, Steven M. Southwick
19. Leadership and Perseverance
Abstract
Perseverance is a human quality associated with exceptional leaders in a variety of domains. It is also linked to personal well-being. Within this chapter we examine the meaning of perseverance, its benefits, how to have it, and when to use it. Included are short cases on Thomas Edison and Abraham Lincoln, exemplars of perseverance. Also highlighted are more commonplace examples of perseverance in the achievement of challenging goals. For instance, pursuing a degree requires perseverance. The chapter begins with a definition of perseverance and a review of findings that substantiate its significance. Then ways to bolster perseverance in yourself and others are discussed—importantly, even though perseverance has trait-like aspects, it is also developable. Finally, we consider when to persevere or, more specifically, the value of adapting a goal or the means to achieve it to an evolving context. Embedded throughout the reading are many opportunities for reflection and application.
Kimberly K. Merriman

Hard Skills

Frontmatter
20. Leadership and Ambition
Abstract
Ambition is the driving motive that propels us to reach beyond what is considered possible. Ambition fuels creativity, design thinking, and an entrepreneurial spirit, and is therefore a powerful leadership quality. Ambitious leaders are focused on performance because they continuously want to reach higher levels for themselves and their companies. Ambition, like so many other qualities, is multifaceted: it can be positive and negative in nature. When pushed too far, ambition can become a problem instead of an advantage. Consequently, it can lead to excessive workaholism, stress, health issues, and a toxic work environment due to intolerance, micromanagement, and excessive control, leading to dissatisfied coworkers. This chapter will discuss the importance of nurturing one’s ambition, but will also underline the reasons why ambition needs to be examined frequently to prevent it from becoming a liability.
Joan Marques
21. Leadership and Global Understanding
Abstract
Globalization changes corporations in fast and fundamental ways. This chapter is about the challenges of global leaders who have to face increasingly the so-called VUCA environment: very volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous business situations across national borders. There is an increasing demand to integrate local responsiveness and global consistency. For this people have to be connected across countries and leaders have to engage them to global collaboration in order to facilitate complex processes of knowledge sharing. Based on a broad variety of examples, this chapter illustrates that Cultural Intelligence (CQ) is a necessary ability to find appropriate solutions to global leadership problems. It is CQ that enables leaders to embrace global complexity and to respond to a multiplicity of management styles simultaneously. Only by reconciling conflicting demands, resolving dilemmas, and responding to opposing perspectives, can leaders succeed to turn global challenges into positive energy for the creation of opportunities.
Bettina Gehrke, Marie-Thérèse Claes
22. Leadership and Information Technology
Abstract
The ubiquitousness of Information Technology requires that leaders of organizations in almost all industries have a good deal of knowledge of what Information Technology (IT) can do for their organizations. In every industry IT is making its presence felt in a big way. For organizational leaders the knowledge of how IT is impacting the industry and, in turn, their organizations would allow them to incorporate IT into their organizational DNA. Doing this the right way may, in fact, be the central requirement for the continued existence of organizations into the future. For the sake of focus, our discussion in this chapter will concentrate on business organizations. The arguments we present could, with minor modifications, apply to other types of organizations too. In this chapter, first, we discuss how IT can augment and help various kinds of businesses within their competitive landscape. Two, we will discuss how IT is increasingly getting inextricably woven into business processes and its implications on organizational dynamics. Third, we will discuss deployment of IT and the questions to consider while making the decision on internal expertise versus externally hired services. Fourth, we will discuss how to implement IT systems. Following implementation, in the fifth section, we will discuss how day-to-day operational issues should be taken care of in a manner that delivers expected results. Sixth, we will end the chapter with a discussion on how leaders should be thinking of IT in the current times.
K. Sankaran, Moshin Ahmed
23. Leadership and Planning
Abstract
This chapter begins by establishing the need for effective leadership. Next, it sets the framework for understanding leadership. Despite its popularity and our daily encounter with it, many people lack a clear understanding of the word, while others view leadership and management as interchangeable words. To clarify the differences between the two words, we define leadership using Rost’s (1993) definition. Then we present the differences between leadership and management. The concepts of leadership and vision are explored. We provide anecdotes of visionary leadership to bolster our discussion. We next present the concept of planning and its relationship to leadership particularly with respect to organizational performance. We list the steps in the planning process and offer SWOT and SMART activities. A brief overview of the main effects of planning on workplace leadership performance is presented, followed by a more detailed description of the relevance of planning as a measurable aspect for specific key leadership behavior in organizations, namely vision, problem solving, driving and implementing change, and succession planning.
Joseph C. Santora, Gil Bozer
Backmatter
Metadaten
Titel
Leadership Today
herausgegeben von
Joan Marques
Satinder Dhiman
Copyright-Jahr
2017
Electronic ISBN
978-3-319-31036-7
Print ISBN
978-3-319-31034-3
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31036-7

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