Who should work where? Well that is always a good question to ask. In leadership one-way to decide who should be manager of what is through skills. If you have high technical skills but low conceptual skills you should probably be in supervisory management. If you are highly conceptual but have very few technical skills you should be in upper management. If you have both, on the other hand, you should be in middle management as you are the middleman between the two ideas. But what is interesting about all of this is that no matter what you should have strong people skills as a manager.
When I worked as a caddy over the summers I had a relatively good leader. He wasn’t amazing but for the most part he knew what he was doing and he knew how to act with both the golfers and the caddies. You could consider him a middle manager between the two. The golfers held a share of the property so they decided what happened to it. They had the conceptual skills. Now the caddies are a bad example of supervisory management but lets just say they supervised the ball for the golfers as the golfers wanted them to supervise it. But as all people do eventually he moved up the ladder. Unfortunately for the caddies and the golfers we were left with a new manager that was in the wrong place. This manager had high technical skills and very low conceptual skills as well as low people skills. He didn’t know how to work with people he yelled at the caddies all the time for minor incidents and his smile made the golfers uncomfortable. When the golfers had a conceptual idea he had no ability to relay it to the caddies. It was a real disappointment to the golf club and I.
On top of skills there is situational leadership. This is based on two principles; support and directive. You need different people in different situations depending on whether high or low support and high or low directive is needed.
Once again the caddy master used the wrong leadership in this situation. The caddy master used to be in the marines where the majority of leadership is high directive and low support. You really don’t have time to be supportive of somebody while being shot at.
Thankfully there were no guns being shot on the golf course but he decided to make it as if there were. Some of the caddies were young and required a lot more support as well as directive but he only offered directive. Some caddies new exactly what they were doing and yet he still gave them directive. And then there were caddies who new what they were doing and yet were feeling down but he didn’t offer support only directive. He was simply a bad leader.
Needless to say it didn’t take me very long before I left the club to look for other jobs. It will be a disappointment on my life but there is nothing that I can do about it other then walk away and attempt to never be like him.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Not so Great Man
Would you say that people who are great or do great things were born for greatness? Would you be able to pick out a child from a nursery and say that one will be the greatest? Or watch a family of children grow up and decide which one will be the greatest? For a long time it was thought that people were born great and that you could find these people based on the traits they were born with. Now according to Newtonian mechanics you are born with a destiny to be great but that’s a bunch of complicated mumbo jumbo that we are going to ignore for now. For now we will look at trait theory and why it doesn’t work.
People have done many tests to discover which traits, both mentally and physically, make the best leader. Although there are traits that match up well with people in other professions the traits that were discovered to make a good leader were only applicable to situations not professions. The great leaders that we look at today were people who made a huge difference in a time of great strife but even more often we are not in a time of great strife. Even though we are not in a time of great strife there are still problems to attend to. Who is going to look at these problems? Well the first answer would of course be a leader. The thing about solving the problem now is that we don’t need a leader with high achievement, low affiliation, strong persuasion, and a hierarchy power structure. For this problem we need a network structure, which requires an immense ability to affiliate. The situation has now changed entirely causing the traits of the leader to change entirely.
So could you reuse an old leader from a totally different situation to attend to this situation? Or are the traits that the leader was born with static? Now although these are questions based around Behavioral Theory, which implies that they were learned. But what if they were not learned the leader just changed naturally like a lizard changes color. Could these changes be traits that the leader was born with? Or could it be behavioral so that the leader was taught when and how to change?
Now there are many theories that people have and there are many sub-categories within these theories. Trait has multiple such as the distinction between physical and mental traits or emotional and intelligence traits. Now all of a sudden you have traits cancelling each other out making potentially good leaders bad leaders and potentially bad leaders good leaders. In the end although Trait Theory sounds like a good theory it ends as being impractical. The actions of the human population are too complex and change at such a high rate of speed that there is no way to accurately predict leaders based on traits.
People have done many tests to discover which traits, both mentally and physically, make the best leader. Although there are traits that match up well with people in other professions the traits that were discovered to make a good leader were only applicable to situations not professions. The great leaders that we look at today were people who made a huge difference in a time of great strife but even more often we are not in a time of great strife. Even though we are not in a time of great strife there are still problems to attend to. Who is going to look at these problems? Well the first answer would of course be a leader. The thing about solving the problem now is that we don’t need a leader with high achievement, low affiliation, strong persuasion, and a hierarchy power structure. For this problem we need a network structure, which requires an immense ability to affiliate. The situation has now changed entirely causing the traits of the leader to change entirely.
So could you reuse an old leader from a totally different situation to attend to this situation? Or are the traits that the leader was born with static? Now although these are questions based around Behavioral Theory, which implies that they were learned. But what if they were not learned the leader just changed naturally like a lizard changes color. Could these changes be traits that the leader was born with? Or could it be behavioral so that the leader was taught when and how to change?
Now there are many theories that people have and there are many sub-categories within these theories. Trait has multiple such as the distinction between physical and mental traits or emotional and intelligence traits. Now all of a sudden you have traits cancelling each other out making potentially good leaders bad leaders and potentially bad leaders good leaders. In the end although Trait Theory sounds like a good theory it ends as being impractical. The actions of the human population are too complex and change at such a high rate of speed that there is no way to accurately predict leaders based on traits.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
History of Leadership in Western Culture
As in the last post leadership has changed significantly in the past. This is post look more heavily at that and how the theories changed. There is first a tribal look. Then there is a look at monarchies. Lastly there is a look at the past century.
The first set of leadership was tribal leadership. This was a time period where leadership both had some implications of genetic advantage and at the same time leadership had to be earned. The tribal leader was chosen often because he fought his way to the top. Although some members might have been born with larger muscles or quicker reflexes they still had to work to get their position. From the top the leader would give task-oriented orders and persuade with fear for he was the toughest. If anybody were to object to his leadership and fail they would be killed or exiled, as they would create problems amongst the tribe if they were allowed to stay.
Although this worked for a while our brains began to grow larger and now higher positions were held to those with technology. Somebody with a bronze sword could kill a stronger man who doesn’t have a strong sword. But of course this technology was rare and there for only held by higher positions.
Now although this is difficult to think about, religion and spirituality is a social technology. It is something many of us use everyday. And it was the people that create these religions that hold the highest power as they hold the technology. They are also the ones who chose the leaders. The problem was that they really didn’t have a good system for creating leaders and so sometimes the leaders didn’t make very good leaders. Many of these leaders were murdered before somebody else was to take their place. It is more likely that you would be murdered as a king then if you were to walk around a third world country in a civil war.
As time continues on and these appointed leaders begin to become more intelligent they also begin to become more independent. This breaks down the religions and redistributes the people. At this point knowledge is become less and less limited to the higher powers and more to the lower class. This transition happens from the beginning to the end of the 20th century.
As we reach into the end of the twentieth century republics become more and more relevant as everybody has enough information at the palm of their hand to make an educated decision. This is great, as everybody is educated, but this now creates an even more complex society then society already was.
Every time previously has had its advantages and disadvantages and every time in the future will have its advantages and disadvantages, as we are an ever-changing society.
The first set of leadership was tribal leadership. This was a time period where leadership both had some implications of genetic advantage and at the same time leadership had to be earned. The tribal leader was chosen often because he fought his way to the top. Although some members might have been born with larger muscles or quicker reflexes they still had to work to get their position. From the top the leader would give task-oriented orders and persuade with fear for he was the toughest. If anybody were to object to his leadership and fail they would be killed or exiled, as they would create problems amongst the tribe if they were allowed to stay.
Although this worked for a while our brains began to grow larger and now higher positions were held to those with technology. Somebody with a bronze sword could kill a stronger man who doesn’t have a strong sword. But of course this technology was rare and there for only held by higher positions.
Now although this is difficult to think about, religion and spirituality is a social technology. It is something many of us use everyday. And it was the people that create these religions that hold the highest power as they hold the technology. They are also the ones who chose the leaders. The problem was that they really didn’t have a good system for creating leaders and so sometimes the leaders didn’t make very good leaders. Many of these leaders were murdered before somebody else was to take their place. It is more likely that you would be murdered as a king then if you were to walk around a third world country in a civil war.
As time continues on and these appointed leaders begin to become more intelligent they also begin to become more independent. This breaks down the religions and redistributes the people. At this point knowledge is become less and less limited to the higher powers and more to the lower class. This transition happens from the beginning to the end of the 20th century.
As we reach into the end of the twentieth century republics become more and more relevant as everybody has enough information at the palm of their hand to make an educated decision. This is great, as everybody is educated, but this now creates an even more complex society then society already was.
Every time previously has had its advantages and disadvantages and every time in the future will have its advantages and disadvantages, as we are an ever-changing society.
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