Prior
to taking the Organizational Leadership
course, many of the students in the leadership program were required to take
the Leadership Found’s in Research
course. During the course, students were assigned a project that focuses on their
choice of an element or system and identify its importance in leadership. For
the project, I decided to focus on empathy, or the ability to understand and
share the feelings of others. Overall and as one of my sources for the project
stated, only having the ability to perform your job is insufficient and that it
is important for leaders to understand and connect with their surrounding
environment: including people (Singh, 2014). It was concluded at the end of the
assignment that empathy establishes and builds stronger relationships, as well
as providing opportunities for leaders to gather additional data to be used for
decision-making. As a result, my initial definition of leadership heavily
revolved around the project (Travenetti, 2016):
…leadership is defined as the ability to motivate and lead groups
clearly with consideration of everyone’s (including leader) thoughts, opinions,
and emotions.
As I went through nine weeks
into the Leadership Found’s in Research course,
I realized that my definition of leadership has slightly changed. Today, I
believe that leadership is defined as the
ability to motivate and lead groups in balance with everyone and everything
involved. The past definition revolved a little too strongly towards all
the people involved in an environment. Unlike the past, now I believe that
leaders should never get too comfortable on “one side”. At one point of the
course, students were assigned to watch a TED talk show by Itay Talgam. In
summary, Talgam shared several video clips of musical conductors and used them
as metaphors to explain different leadership styles. I personally found this
video to not only be interesting, but it was very informative and provided
actual physical visuals. For instance, he showed one clip of a serious-faced
conductor who violently swung his baton to the music and another one with a
happy expression who danced during the performance. The serious conductor
represented a leader that is too commanding (directive), and the other
represented a leader who follows too much (supportive). The important
point made from the talk was that being too directive can cause followers to
become unmotivated and stressed, whereas a leader who follows too much doesn’t
have steady control or lack of involvement in leadership.
Deeply considering Talgam’s video, I realized that establishing and maintaining people’s relationship is important, but too much of it might be “annoying” as Talgam mentioned. When I initially started working as an assistant campus director, my goal was to provide a more student-friendly and comfortable environment since in the past, I have dealt and understood the hardships students go through at the university. As much as I want to be nice, being too nice could be harmful for my position. For instance, I have a couple students that question me on how to enroll for courses. Since the system was confusing for me as a former student, I do provide walkthroughs. However I always ensure that I don’t become too helpful to the point that a student’s own responsibility becomes mine (student becomes too dependent on me). To avoid being too much on the kind side, I balance it out by speaking in a directive language, saying things such as, “it is the student’s responsibility…”. As a result, I believe that leaders should switch and use a combination of different leadership styles in different situations because a preferred form of leadership doesn’t work in all situations.
References:
Noisch, G. D. (2012). Learning To Think Things
Through: A Guide to Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum. Boston: Peason
Education.
Singh, P. (2014). Employees’ use of empathy to
improve their job behavior. The International Business & Economics Research
Journal (Online). Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/docview/1525361493/abstract/2F2815C3B74C411EPQ/1?accountid=27203.
Travenetti, K. (2016). Define Leadership [Blog].
Retrieved from https://erau.instructure.com/courses/42907/discussion_topics/572707?module_item_id=2073442
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