Leadership & Change Management Essay Example for Free

Leadership Change Management Essay Transactional leadership styles are more concerned with maintaining the normal flow of operations. Transactional leadership can be described as keeping the ship afloat. Transactional leaders use disciplinary power and an array of incentives to motivate employees to perform at their best. The term transactional refers to the fact that this type of leader essentially motivates subordinates by exchanging rewards for performance. A transactional leader generally does not look ahead in strategically guiding an organization to a position of market leadership; instead, these managers are solely concerned with making sure everything flows smoothly today. Transactional leadership motivates followers by setting up social or financial transactions that persuade them to act. For example, a transactional leader might offer bonuses to her sales staff for exceeding quotas. The bonus is a form of financial transaction. Transactional leadership often is set in opposition to transformational leadership, which is a leadership style that relies on convincing followers that a particular vision of what the organization can achieve is worth working toward. Transformational leadership A transformational leader goes beyond managing day-to-day operations and crafts strategies for taking his company, department or work team to the next level of performance and success. Transformational leadership styles focus on team-building, motivation and collaboration with employees at different levels of an organization to accomplish change for the better. Transformational leaders set goals and incentives to push their subordinates to higher performance levels, while providing opportunities for personal and professional growth for each employee. Transformational leadership might sound preferable because the leader doesn’t cynically harness the self-interest of her followers, as the transactional leader does. But there’s a problem. A transformational leader might not be forthright with her followers. For example, a business owner might motivate her workforce with stirring speeches about the nobility of hard work, while her real aim is to increase production for personal gain. This type of transformational leader might be called inauthentic. Advantages Both leadership styles are needed for guiding an organization to success. Transactional leaders provide distinct advantages through their abilities to address small operational details quickly. Transactional leaders handle all the details that come together to build a strong reputation in the marketplace, while keeping employees productive on the front line. Transformational leadership styles are crucial to the strategic development of a small business. Small businesses with transformational leaders at the helm shoot for ambitious goals, and can they achieve rapid success through the vision and team-building skills of the leader. Applications Different management styles are best suited to different situations. When it comes to front-line supervisors of minimum-wage employees, for example a transactional leadership style can be more effective. Shift supervisors at a fast food restaurant will be much more effective if they are concerned with ensuring all of the various stations run smoothly, rather than spending their time thinking up better ways to serve hamburgers. On the other hand, CEOs or sales managers can be more effective if they are transformational leaders. Executive managers need the ability to design and communicate grand strategic missions, passing the missions down to transactional leaders for implementation of the details. Organizations emphasize the concept of leadership in training managers or group leaders to propel a team or the organization forward. Within leadership, the effectiveness of the transformational versus transactional leader is often debated. Transactional leadership relies more on a give and take understanding, whereby subordinates have a sense of duty to the leader in exchange for some reward. Transformational leadership, on the other hand, involves a committed relationship between the leader and his followers. In 1985, industrial psychologist Bernard Bass identified and wrote about four basic elements that underlie transformational leadership. Idealized Influence Transformational leaders act as role models and display a charismatic personality that influences others to want to become more like the leader. Idealized influence can be most expressed through a transformational leaders willingness to take risks and follow a core set of values, convictions and ethical principles in the actions he takes. It is through this concept of idealized influence that the leader builds trust with his followers and the followers, in turn, develop confidence in their leader. Inspirational Motivation Inspirational motivation refers to the leaders ability to inspire confidence, motivation and a sense of purpose in his followers. The transformational leader must articulate a clear vision for the future, communicate expectations of the group and demonstrate a commitment to the goals that have been laid out. This aspect of transformational leadership requires superb communication skills as the leader must convey his messages with precision, power and a sense of authority. Other important behaviors of the leader include his continued optimism, enthusiasm and ability to point out the positive. Intellectual Stimulation Transformational leadership values creativity and autonomy among the leaders followers. The leader supports his followers by involving them in the decision-making process and stimulating their efforts to be as creative and innovative as possible to identify solutions. To this end, the transformational leader challenges assumptions and solicits ideas from followers without criticizing. She helps change the way followers think about and frame problems and obstacles. The vision the leader conveys helps followers see the big picture and succeed in their efforts. Individualized Consideration Each follower or group member has specific needs and desires. For example, some are motivated by money while others by change and excitement. The individualized consideration element of transformational leadership recognizes these needs. The leader must be able to recognize or determine through eavesdropping or observation   what motivates each individual. Through one-on-one coaching and mentoring, the transformational leader provides opportunities for customized training sessions for each team member. These activities allow team members to grow and become fulfilled in their positions. The Benefits of Transformational Leadership Motivation A transformational leader uses her belief in the vision of the company to inspire the staff to be more productive and work towards company goals. The drive behind a transformational leader is to find ways in which she can get the entire staff on board with corporate strategy and planning. When the entire company is on the same page with the corporate vision, it can make achieving that vision easier. Planning Inspirational managers do not focus their energy solely on motivating the staff. A good transformational leader has broad visions for the companys future, and those visions can become instrumental in company planning. Whether it is refining the overall business plan or affecting individual marketing programs, the transformational manager has ideas and visions for the future of the company that he wants to share with the management team and work to turn those plans into reality. Retention The idea of transformational leadership is to reach out to each employee and bring out the best in them. An inspirational manager spends time with each employee discussing ways to make the employees job easier, and helping to create plans for developing the employees career. This individual attention that is offered by transformational leaders helps to create a strong bond between the manager and his employees that will reduce employee turnover. Growth  A manager that is not intimately involved in the growth of the company and the development of her staff can start to struggle with managing her department as the company grows. A transformational leader is constantly involved with the growth of the company and the ongoing development of employees. As the company grows, the transformational leader maintains that close contact to the company and employees and can make the process of growing a more involved experience for new and veteran employees.

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The World of Cyberspace and its Effects on Social Relationships Many studies have been conducted on the various features of cyberspace, its connection to social media, and how it influences professional, intimate, and cordial relationships. Although many spectators are convinced that society’s frequent use of cyberspace has taken a turn down the wrong path, cyberspace has opened up many opportunities for professional relationships to establish, such as the relationship between Facebook usage and an increase in work values in Taiwan (Lin, Le, Khalil, & Cheng, 2012). However, contradictory results suggest that heavy use of the internet by young children, specifically adolescent girls, may be a factor of negative social well-being (Pea et al., 2012). In order to fully understand how social cyberspace affects everyday relationships, all forms of interactions must be examined. This paper will examine the positive and negative effects of cyberspace connections and whether they should be utilized and in what manner. Primary Issues Cyberspace Cyberspace is a time-dependent set of interconnected information systems and the human users that interact with these systems (Ottis & Lorents, 2010). In recent years the term â€Å"cyberspace† has been used to explain things that pertain to any type of network system and anything to do with the use of computer technology. However, given the frequent use of cyberspace and its different qualities that people use daily, human relationships are affected by the information systems. The everyday use of cyberspace has changed the way in which social identity, social interaction, and relationship formation is formed differently online than in real life (McKenna & Bargh, 2000). Cyberspace has affected the way ... ...various businesses. Social media is now used in order to recruit and hire employees for different companies. For instance, the social media site, LinkedIn, has many social profiles of individuals that are thrown in a candidate pool for different jobs. Many recruiters can find their ideal candidate by searching for key terms that may match individual’s background or show up on their personal profile (Blacksmith & Poeppelman, 2013). Although this process may make it easier for recruiters to scout potential employees, the method has its limitations. Recruiters are basing their decisions off of information provided by the unknown individuals, information that could potential be false. Also, other trivial things, like people not updating their profiles or revealing photographs of themselves that are accurate may influence the recruiter’s decision to hire someone or not.

Plato and Aristotle Essay

Plato and Aristotle both have been very influential as the ancient Greek philosophers. Aristotle was a student of Plato and there are many similarities between these intellectual giants of the ancient world but there are also many things that distinguish them from each other. Aristotle was far more empirical-minded than Plato. First, Plato’s philosophy relegated the material, physical world to a sort of metaphysical second class. His contention was that the abstract truths of the mind-mathematical truths, moral and normative truths about ideals-are what really matter in life and in philosophy, and that the empirical world around us consists of merely poor copies of these ideals. By contrast, Aristotle did as much or more work in what we would today call science (physics, biology, etc. ) as in what remains a part of philosophy. While Aristotle certainly did important work in ethics and related areas, he concentrated as much or more on examining the material world. Plato can be read at times as being quite disparaging of science. This is not true of Aristotle. Second, the difference in the approaches and values of these two philosophers resulted in very different political philosophies. Plato’s political philosophy, which can be found principally in the Republic. For him, the just state is one ruled by ascetic philosophers who have been raised from birth not to value material reward or exclusive human connections, even with their own kin. They are the ideal of wise, objective, fair-minded, ultra-rational beings. In contrast to Plato’s utopian political philosophy, Aristotle’s political philosophy, which can be found principally in the Politics, has a large component of descriptive political science. When he does argue for certain political schemes, they tend to be incremental improvements on existing systems. Like his teacher Plato, Aristotle’s philosophy aims at the universal. Aristotle, however, finds the universal in particular things, which he calls the essence of things, while Plato finds that the universal exists apart from particular things. Aristotle makes philosophy coextensive with reasoning, which he also would describe as â€Å"science†. Note, however, that his use of the term science carries a different meaning than that covered by the term â€Å"scientific method†. For Aristotle, â€Å"all science is practical, poetical or theoretical†. By practical science, he means ethics and politics; by poetical science, he means the study of poetry and the other fine arts; by theoretical science, he means physics, mathematics and metaphysics. In general, Plato is the more extravagant thinker, the â€Å"thinking outside the box type† who was equal parts brilliant and bizarre in his ideas. Aristotle is more the cool, logical, dry, systematic thinker whose works tend to read like encyclopedias.

Theory Analysis of the Experiments of Kohler - 743 Words

Kohler was the father of insight psychology and seemingly one of the precursors of behaviorism. He concluded that learning is a trial-and error process that depends on rewards and punishments. Kohler learned this form his studies with chimps and other animals such s dogs and cats, where, he showed that through insight behavior animals learned how to achieve their goals and which types of conduct to avoid (Hothersall , 1995). His first experiment was to place food at the other side of a barrier. The dogs went directly for it. The chimpanzees tried going around the barrier to retrieve the food. His other experiments were mostly around the same theme:o f placing chimps in an enclosed cage and of keeping food out of their reach watching how they would go for it. The four chimps that he used, called Chica, Grande, Konsul, and Sultan, tried to ape Kohlers modeling in order to reach the bananas and when they could not, Sultan put two sticks together and created a stick long enough to reach the bananas outside his cage. On a consequent study, Kohler hung bananas from the roof. The chimps first tried to get them down by using a stick. Eventually, they balanced boxes on top of one another to reach the bananas. Kohl saw three categories of insight learning: 1.through trail-and-error, the animal perceives the solution to the problem. 2.Insight learning is not dependent on rewards 3.when one problem has been solved, it is easier to solve a similar problem (Hothersall, 1995). TestingShow MoreRelatedReflection Of The Confucius A Chinese Philosopher s Saying Essay1604 Words   |  7 Pagesfirst, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest. 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