1.6 Chapter Summary and Case

Assignment 1: Managing versus Leading

This assignment allows you to define what leadership means. It also helps you distinguish between the various roles and positions in leadership, particularly leadership versus management roles. Using the material covered in the text, respond to the following discussion questions:

Assignment 2 (Journal): Define Managerial Leadership Skills

Assignment 3: Defining Leadership

To get us thinking about leadership and its definition, this activity helps you put an “image” to leadership.

Images carry strong emotion, influence, and power. Leadership is much the same. Select and attach an image that describes what leadership means to you. Answer the following questions:

Once you have completed the assignment, have a class activity where you share your image and discuss your responses with your classmates. In your response, be sure to do the following:

In 1984, Bev joined a military unit during the Cold War in what was then the Federal Republic of Germany. She joined as an entry-level officer responsible for close to forty-five individuals organized into five sections. After four months, her leadership potential, determined based on external organization inspections and audits, was recognized by leaders at the regional headquarters, and she quickly advanced to an executive officer position in a lateral department within the region. She only stayed in this position for six months before she was offered the department management position after her supervisor was moved due to a scheduled rotation. What was unique in this situation is that she was a junior officer at the time and was advanced into a qualifying job for continued advancement ahead of five senior people. She attributes her success at the job to being extremely familiar and experienced with this particular organization and its standard operating management procedures. She would have likely succeeded in this position if given an opportunity to do so elsewhere. This particular position enhanced her ability to succeed, as she understood every facet of the organization. Her leadership potential was evident because she ascended to this particular position before attending the midlevel-management leadership course all managers in her position are scheduled to attend before leading a department of the size and complexity she was given. After completing her tour of leadership throughout the department, she attended the midlevel-management course. While in the course, she realized she did not know about organizational leadership and management as well as she thought. Upon reflection, she learned new leadership concepts and managerial skills that would serve her when leading other organizations. She was eventually selected to instruct the midlevel-management course herself and learned a lot more about how to coach and teach leadership and organizational management in the process. As circumstances and organizational timing would have it, she was selected to lead the largest line company in the army (at the time). In this new leadership role, she exercised the lessons learned in a professional development school aimed at developing leaders along with her leadership experience in previous command roles.

This story makes the point that a person’s leadership and management experience can be limited to similarly organized companies we serve in. We should be cautious that we do not become blinded by our previous experience and must adjust to each new environment presented to us, especially as the scope of authority and responsibility increases. This illustrates the point that we continually need to learn more about leadership and management if we want to develop the potential for further leadership or management positions. Each of us may be steeped with a specific level of experience relevant to our current position, yet we have not mastered the leadership or management requirements necessary to lead at an executive level, which requires unique skills.

Formal and informal leaders exist throughout an organization. If the formal leader does not perform, informal leaders will rise to fill the gap in leadership. Government organizations reflect this concept because they are often hierarchical and bureaucratic structures with lower-level leaders constantly striving for upward leadership mobility. Today we have to be cognizant that many organizations decide to become structurally flat, and if not careful, this can have a detrimental effect in creating too many leaders and not enough followers, which puts the company’s long-term existence at risk. Members of flat organization structures can function in a very collaborative environment as the leader-to-led relationship is not necessarily as authoritative as in a line-and-staff or hierarchically structured organization.

An example of a flat organization could be an entrepreneurial group coming together to deliver a service or product. One group performs the management functions, another group the service, and yet another delivers a product, and so on. One group acts as the management team that takes the lead and is responsible for synchronizing the various activities. Each subordinate organization fulfills a contractual obligation, receives a portion of the revenue, and determines what its personal profit share is for the venture. We may have participated in this type of venture in private industry, where executive leaders from each organization come together while their managerial staff works out the details. No single leader is higher in authority than the others, yet a leadership team is put together to create the vision, mission, and strategy of the venture. The other executive leaders are responsible for their operational conduct. Each level of leadership and management function relies on the others’ experience and unique capability to meet the vision and mission or scope of the contract. Often these entrepreneurial ventures are short term but can sometimes last longer.