Capstone: Apl Prac & Princ Ldg

1.3 Responses. Respond to the two posts below in 250 words.

Post 1- Mary

What does it mean to lead?

 

To me, leading means setting an example, offering mentorship, supporting and developing others, knowledge sharing, and positivity. I keep an optimistic attitude at work. This makes me approachable. Servant leadership is offering your talents to others. My purpose as a leader is to inject positivity, support and mentor my subordinates as they cultivate their own careers, and genuinely investing my time and interest in others.

 

Leading is more than managing. Managing is the discipline of efficiently executing a process. Leading is about developing others as future leaders and being a mentor to others for ethics, training, and refining of talents in others. Serving others is the primary focus of a good leader. It isn’t about me. It is about what I can do for those around me.

 

Basic themes to my leadership philosophy are humility, temperance, and empathy. I cultivate relationships with each person on my team. Trusting relationships are important for effective leader-follower relationships. I am authentic in my leadership style. What you see is what you get.

 

When I started this program, it was to establish a standard of leadership that I found lacking in my executive leadership team at work. The transformation that my department is currently experiencing was causing anxiety and resentment across the masses. I was able to leverage the knowledge I acquired in this course to suggest alternatives to the leadership team in areas where they were lacking. It was effective. I have seen some changes since then. I am glad that I could spark the changes that are making our new implementation more acceptable to not only my team, but the extended team as well.

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Post 2- Joshua

“Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many“ ( New International Version, 2002/2018, Matthew 20:26-28). When I first started my leadership journey many years ago, I thought only those with a particular position could “lead” someone. I often looked at leadership and management roles the same way and felt these positions were to be reveled with great esteem. Throughout my leadership career, I have realized that Jesus emulated authentic leadership through serving others and having honest humility. 

 It is my understanding that a “leader” is someone who follows a specific “leadership” style. I have adopted a servant leadership style, where I try to serve my subordinates by serving them and providing for their needs. I live out the leadership style by what Irving and Strauss (2019) call modeling (p. 24). Other leaders can adopt different leadership philosophies or even choose to be managers. The difference between the two is that “the role of management is to control a group or group of individuals in order to achieve a specified objective,” and leadership is “the ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute to the organization’s success” (para. 5). Essentially, leadership is more relational and managing is task oriented. 

Serving others through leadership is a very complex and multi-faceted idea to put into a few words, but I will try to put it into one sentence. To serve others is to build strong enough relationships for trust so followers feel comfortable enough to buy-in to the vision set forth by the leader’s influence. This also means that you are not cracking a whip over followers to complete tasks to justify numbers but influencing and motivating them to achieve shared common goals on time. Some themes that would fit into my leadership philosophy would be developing others, instilling belonging within the organization, accountability through built trust, living my leadership style, serving others, and building strong communication. 

References

Duggal, N. (2023, March 10).  Leadership vs management: Understanding the key difference. Simplilearn. https://www.simplilearn.com/leadership-vs-management-difference-article#:~:text=performance%20and%20behavior.-,Difference%20Between%20Leadership%20vs%20Management,contribute%20to%20the%20organization’s%20success.

Irving, J. A., & Strauss, M. L. (2019).  Leadership in Christian perspective: Biblical foundations and contemporary practices for servant leaders. Baker Academic.

The Maxwell Leadership Bible, New International Version. (2018). Thomas Nelson.