Reflective essay

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Leadership

WEEK 4

Dr Edward Kachab

August 22nd

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Leader as an Individual

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Learning Objectives

• Understand the importance of self-awareness and recognize your blind spots

• Identify major personality dimensions and understand how personality influences leadership and relationships within organizations

• Clarify your instrumental and end values and recognize how values guide thoughts and behavior

• Define attitudes and explain their relationship to leader behavior

Leader as an Individual

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Learning Objectives

• Explain attributions and recognize how perception affects the leader– follower relationship

• Recognize individual differences in cognitive style and broaden your own thinking style to expand leadership potential

• Understand how to lead and work with people with varied personality traits

Leader as an Individual

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Leader as an Individual

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What is a leader's self-awareness

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What are blind spots?

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Importance of self-awareness

• Effective leaders know who they are and what they stand for

• Allow people to know what to expect from them

• People require self-reflection to avoid blind spots that limit effectiveness and career success

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Personality

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Big five personality dimensions

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Big five personality dimensions

Extroversion: Degree to which a person is outgoing, sociable, talkative, and comfortable meeting and talking to new people

• Includes the characteristic of dominance

• Likes to be in control and influence others

• Self-confident, seeks positions of authority, and is competitive and assertive

Leader as an Individual

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Big five personality dimensions

Agreeableness: Degree to which a person is able to get along with others by being good-natured, cooperative, forgiving, compassionate, understanding, and trusting

• Warm and approachable

• More agreeable people are more likely to get and keep jobs

• Overly agreeable people tend to be promoted less and earn less money

Leader as an Individual

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Big five personality dimensions

Conscientiousness: Degree to which a person is responsible, dependable, persistent, and achievement-oriented

• Focus on a few goals

• More important than extroversion for effective leadership

Leader as an Individual

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Big five personality dimensions

Emotional stability: Degree to which a person is well-adjusted, calm, and secure

• Emotionally stable leader can:

• Handle stress and criticism well and does not take mistakes or failures personally

• Develop positive relationships

• Improve relationships

• Leaders with a low degree of emotional stability can become tense, anxious, or depressed

Leader as an Individual

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Big five personality dimensions

Openness to experience: Degree to which a person has a broad range of interests and is imaginative, creative, and willing to consider new ideas

• Intellectually curious and seeks new experiences

• Early travel and exposure to different ideas and culture are critical to development

• Important because leadership is about change

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Paired Discussion

What might be some reasons the dimension of “openness to experience’ correlates so strongly with historians rating the greatest US presidents but has been less strongly associated with business leader success? Do you think this personality dimension is more important for business leaders today than it was in the past?

Discuss

Leader as an Individual

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Leader’s self-insight 4.5

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Maximising leadership effectiveness (Exhibit 4.1)

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What are values?

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Values

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Difference in leader and non-leader values (exhibit 4.1)

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What are attitudes?

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Theory X and Theory Y

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Attitudes and assumptions of theory X and theory Y

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Leader’s Bookshelf

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Paired Discussion

Extroversion is often considered to be a good trait for a leader to have. Why might introversion be considered an equally positive quality?

Discuss

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What are perception?

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Perceptual distortions

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Perceptual distortions

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Cognitive style

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Patterns of thinking

• Left hemisphere—Logical, analytical thinking and a linear approach to problem solving

• Right hemisphere—Creative, intuitive, values-based thought processes

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Herman’s whole brain model (Exhibit 4.4)

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Paired Discussion

How can a leader use understanding of brain dominance to improve the functioning of an organisation?

Discuss

Leader as an Individual

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Guideline for working with different personality types

• Understand your own personality and how you react to others

• Treat everyone with respect

• Acknowledge each person’s strengths

• Strive for understanding

• Remember that everyone wants to fit in

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Case Study

A nice Manager?

Page 128

Case posted on LEO

In your groups answer all

questions!

Leader as Individual

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Group Presentation

Case study presented:

What shall I say?

Izabo Perez

Taylor Mcguire

Presentation (30 min)

Q&A (10 min)

Leader as Individual