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What makes someone a better business leader

RMIT - MBA
Name: Kieu Nguyen ID: s3357989 Course: BUSM 2411 - 4000 Instructor: Dr. Phil Smith PhD

Introduction The past has been giving lessons of how significant leadership might affect the outcomes of human activities. Many people have become legends because they are great leaders who possess extraordinary leading ability. Since leadership might affect the way to success or failure but remains difficult to be clarified, the demand of understanding leadership is essential and critical. Thus, researches have been carried out, cases have been studied for a long time in order to examine and define leadership. In regard to business, many theories from different viewpoints have been constructed in order to formulate leadership in this particular context. The results vary, since it is not an exact science. Based on those diverse theories, this essay will focus on examining leadership in order to answer the question: What makes someone a better business leader? Leadership and Leader Definition Firstly, the concepts of leadership and better leader need to be determined in order to form the foundation of this essay. As regards leadership, Northouse (2004, p.3) defines it as a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal. Kouzes and Posner (2007, p.20) describe leadership as a relationship between those who aspire to lead and those who choose to follow. From another point of view, Goleman (1998, p.12) considers the leaders task is to get work done through other people. Accordingly, leadership is the relation between the leaders and the followers towards goals. Theoretically, there has been distinction between the definition of leadership and management, and this difference is emphasized by many theorists and theories. Kotter (2001, p.86) argues that management is about coping with complexity *+, leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change. Zaleznik (2004) also consolidates this opinion through Managers and Leaders, the article which compares leaders and managers by the attitudes toward goals, conceptions of work, relations with others and the sense of self. Since today business is the combination of complexity, ambiguity, and paradox (Quinn et al. 2011, p. 11), the concepts of leaders and leadership have changed considerably in order to adapt the new situation. Since the evolution of business leads to the evolution of management models in which leaders perform, and the competing values framework has become one of the theoretical formulas for today business, the term managerial leaders (Quinn et al. 2011, p. 16) has been formed accordingly, confirming a different definition in which the idea of leaders and managers are not separate but combined. Moreover, Thomas (2001, cited in Blagg & Young 2001) provides an evaluation regarding leaders: The people who are the most effective are those who essentially are both managers and leaders. Practically, it would be impossible or difficult for leaders to lead without managing skills, and vice versa, because managers skills, which are planning, organizing and 1|Page

controlling, and leaders skills, which are setting direction, aligning people and motivating (Kotter 2001), are supportive factors of each other and are unable to be detached in the process of achieving objectives. Altogether, the managerial leader, who is the leader that leads with both leading and managing skills, is the appropriate reflection of the concept of better leader within the context of business, which therefore defines the scope of this essay. Emotional Intelligence The terms emotional intelligence (EI) is an important ingredient of leadership and first introduced by Goleman in 1995 in the book with the same name. It is the combination of five factors which are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. Goleman (1998, p.5) concludes that EI is the sine qua non of leadership since it is proved to be twice as important as the others for jobs at all levels in his analysis in the 1990s on leaders of many large firms. Self-awareness The first component of EI is self-awareness, which means having deep understanding of ones emotions, strengths, weaknesses, needs and drives (Goleman 1998, p. 6). Since if you do not understand yourself, it is nearly impossible to understand others (Quinn et al. 2011), self-awareness has become a decisive factor of leadership because the true measure of leadership is influence nothing more, nothing less (Maxwell 2007, p. 9) and it is impossible for influencing without understanding people. Moreover, self-awareness provides people a virtually complete understanding about themselves concerning different aspects. This helps leaders in the process of constructing the Johari window, which is a tool for visualizing themselves in the relationship with others, in order to find the sections that they need to improve. According to Goleman, selfawareness is composed by four elements which are emotional awareness, understanding selfs values and goals, self-confidence and self-assessment. The first sub-element of self-awareness is emotional awareness. Leaders who are emotionally aware understand how their feelings affect them, other people and their job performance (Goleman 1998, p. 6). Therefore, they understand how to create the appropriate working environment that comforts themselves as well as others, emotionally, since they understand the emotional behavior of themselves as well as their colleagues. Additionally, understanding selfs emotions enables leaders to create their optimistic state of mind, which is one of the key things people need from their leaders in order to achieve positive results (Warren Bensis, n.d, cited from Peterson at el 2008), since the leaders emotions play a key role in generating the overall emotional condition of the team and is likely reflected by their followers. Moreover, by understanding emotions, leaders 2|Page

are able to reduce the distance with their team and become more attached as well as influent to their followers. As a result, coordination will be more effective since people are more open and cooperative because stress, depression and antagonism, which are possibly generated from inharmoniously emotional connection, are greatly reduced. This is critical since it provides the advantageous condition for leaders in the process of leading the followers to achieve the results. The importance of the second element of self-awareness, which is defined as the understanding of selfs values and goals, is also centric since great leaders have unwavering commitment to a clear set of values (Kouzes & Posner 2007, p. 45) and people expect leaders to have sense of direction (Kouzes & Posner 2007, p. 28). Drucker (2005, p.104) also emphasizes value in his statement: To work in an organization whose value system is unacceptable or incompatible with ones own condemns a person both to frustration and to nonperformance. Obviously, without goal, leadership and leaders become unnecessary because there is not a reason for any activity. Additionally, by understanding their values and goals, leaders know what is worthy and where they are heading to. Therefore, they are able to set up the appropriate objectives and directions in which they are harmonious and consistent with. This is decisive for leadership since the followers will find it hard to trust and follow their leaders whose values and goals are contradictory. Furthermore, when leaders clearly define their values, leadership style will be determined and application will be straightforward since they derive from the values set. Therefore, understanding values and goal is the required foundation for setting the way of leading, in terms of how to lead and where to lead to. The third element of self-awareness is self-assessment which is knowing your strengths and limits and being open to feedback that can help you develop (Quinn et al. 2011, p. 39). This is also about assessing selfs emotion and being able to speak accurately and openly *+ about [their] emotions and the impact they have on work (Goleman 1998, pp. 8-9). When leaders understand their abilities, they will play with their strength (Goleman 1998, p. 8). Accordingly, they are able to model the direction realistically and avoid putting themselves into situations in which they are weakly applicable and effective. Therefore, leaders will be able to avoid damaging their images as well as reputation, which are very important intangible assets of leadership since to commit to doing something without the capacity to perform it is either disingenuous or stupid (Kouzes & Posner 2007, p. 63). Moreover, since leaders are open to feedbacks, they receive large amount of objective information that is essential for the input of building leaders reflected-best-self (RBS) portrait which allows managers to develop a sense of their personal best in order to increase their future potential (Roberts et al. 2005, p. 76). In other words, they will have more accurate pictures of themselves, and therefore, they are able to construct appropriate strategies for

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developing and improving their strengths as well as weaknesses. Furthermore, since Goffee and Jones (2000, pp.65-66) argue that exposing weakness establishes trust and thus helps get folks on board and communicating a weakness also builds solidarity between followers and leaders but exposing weakness must be done carefully since some flaws are simply jeopardizes central aspects of *leaders+ professional role. Therefore, it is possibly impossible for leaders to reveal their selective weakness in order to improve their leadership without precise understanding about themselves. Overall, self-assessment provides the concept of selfs abilities regarding strengths and weaknesses. Lastly, self-confidence is the fourth element of self-awareness, which is considered as by having clear concept of self thus leaders know exactly their worthiness. It is shown as leaders present themselves with a strong sense of self and are willing to stand up for what they believe in, even their perspective is unpopular (Quinn et al. 2011, p. 39). In other words, self-confident leaders are more tenacious and persistent with their opinions and beliefs. Thus, they foster people to follow since people realize their bold perseverance of their values. Self-Regulation It is defined as the ability to control, manage and utilize the emotional impulse (Goleman 1998). Emotional impulse usually exists in the form of intense feeling. Expressing intense feelings possibly generates negative effects since followers expect a passionate but self-controlled leader, who is calm enough to analyze the problem but strong enough to overcome them. Therefore, by controlling their emotional impulses, leaders appear more appropriate since they can manage their negative or extreme behaviors. Additionally, communication will be improved because people are more confident to express themselves as well as their ideas with less concern of the consequences. Moreover, people who are in control of their feelings and impulse that is, people who are reasonable are able to create an environment of trust and fairness (Goleman 1998, p. 8). Consequently, cooperation will be ameliorated because leaders are able to deliver vision, thoughts, direction more easily since trust releases their colleagues from the defensive state of mind. From another angle, people who have mastered their emotions are able to roll with change (Goleman 1998, p. 8) and change is important since leadership is about coping with change (Kotter 2001, p. 86). Emotional impulse also appears in the form of drive, and leaders will always find the drives for changing and not changing within their perception, which possibly become the leverage or obstacle depending on the situation. Leaders who master their emotional impulses are able to control their internal drives and use them to foster their willingness of facing the change thus they become more

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adaptive for changing. Hence, self-regulation allows leaders to manage their drives in order to orient those drives towards a desired direction. Motivation Motivation is critical in leading since it is the reason for people to act for achieving their goals. According to Quinn et al (2011), human behavior is motivated by needs and different people identified different things that motivated them. Therefore, a crucial task of leaders is to discover factors that drive themselves as well as their followers towards the purposes. Different theories are used in order to identify and practice motivation. From the viewpoint of George at el (2007), motivation exists as extrinsic and intrinsic type. Extrinsic motivation is the external, recognizable, material and measurable factors such as financial status, financial rewards and promotion. In other words, it is the outsides world parameters (George et al. 2007). The concept of extrinsic motivation is reasonable since business firstly aims to achieve material values. From another viewpoint, the equity theory (Adams 1963, cited from Quinn et al 2011, p.206) supports the idea of extrinsic motivation since it is stated that people not only pay attention of the outcomes that they receive from their efforts but also consider what other individuals outcomes are relative to those other individuals inputs and people want these ratios to be equal and that if any inequity is perceived, they will try to balance the equation. In other words, people concern about the results of their work relatively with others thus they are motivated when the fruit is worthy and fair. This is important for leaders to perceive since people always have the demand of proving and satisfying themselves by material achievements. In contrast, intrinsic motivation is derived from *peoples+ sense of the meaning of their life (George et al. 2007, p. 135) thus it is more cognitive. It drives people more strongly since people care of nothing but the satisfaction of their own senses and reasons which are parts of the purposes of their lives. It is momentous for leaders to attain intrinsic motivation since it *drives them] to achieve beyond expectations their own and everyone elses *+ *and] those with leadership potential are motivated by a deeply embedded desire to achieve for the sake of achievement (Goleman 1998, p. 6). This internal drive usually appears as passion which encourages people to work more actively rather than passively since they find meaningfulness and purposes through their jobs. Therefore, people will contribute more, acquire more energy, be more consistent with the jobs and pay attention of how to improve things as well as themselves. Consequently, the leaders as well as followers will be able to gain the best from themselves since passion pushes them to expand their abilities for their own satisfaction.

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Empathy In the context of business, empathy is thoughtfully considering employees feelings - along with other factors - in the process of making intelligent decisions (Goleman 1998, p. 10). Since emotional-awareness provides the understanding of the followers emotions, empathy is the process of taking those emotions and their possible consequences into account of leading. Since business has little room for mushiness but rationality, empathy in not adopting other peoples emotions as ones own and trying to please everybody (Goleman 1998, p. 10). Empathy is important since it extends the utilization of teams and retains talent (Goleman 1998). Firstly, since people possibly become uncooperative when they are in emotionally unpleasant situations, leaders need to balance between satisfying and regulating their followers emotions in order to generate the best combination which comforts members but keeps them within the confines. Moreover, leaders need to ponder the possible responses of their decisions, which always impact their followers in different ways, in order to prevent negative reactions and unwillingness of cooperation. Furthermore, since empathy harmonizes the connection between team members, people become more attached thus the leader is able to prevent loss of talent. Therefore, it stabilizes the condition of the team and results the stabilization of performance. From another viewpoint of empathy applied to business, Goffee and Jones (2000, p.68) provide a concept of tough empathy which is giving people what they need, not what they want. This concept concerns with the idea of leading with strong characteristic will effectively drive people to follow since people realize the strength of their leaders. Within this type of empathy, the leaders pay attention to the jobs rather than the employees but because of their bold image encourages the people strongly, they gain the empathy of the followers and at its best, tough empathy balances respect for the individual and for the task at hand (Goffee & Jones 2000, p. 68). This type of empathy is effective in difficult times when people need a more intrepid spirit, which is not possibly acquired by everyone but can be reflected and transferred from the leaders to the followers, in order to overcome the situation. Altogether, sympathy is the factor connecting people together as well as closing the distance between them thus it makes the relationship more solid and allows the leaders to focus their team on the goals more easily. Social Skill Defined as friendliness with a purpose: moving people in the direction you desire and it is the outcome of the other dimensions of emotional intelligence (Goleman 1998, pp. 11-12). It is based on the idea of nothing important gets gone alone (Goleman 1998, p. 11), therefore, leaders build

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extraordinary support team to help them stay on course (George et al. 2007, p. 136). Accordingly, building and consolidating relationship is the major operation and communicating effectively is the main issue of social skill. The first important activity of communication is listening deeply and reflectively since this process provides the basis for understanding constituents as well as preparing the appropriate responses. Since reflective listening *is based+ on empathy, which helps us to experience the thoughts and feelings of the other person (Quinn et al. 2011, p. 55), it provides leaders a concept for enhancing empathy in order to be more appealing to their followers. Moreover, leaders listen more than just information, they listen to communicate how seriously they consider the feelings and thoughts of others (Kouzes & Posner 2007, p. 167). In other words, by listening, leaders create the impact on the speakers as much as by speaking but without a single word. Therefore, listening is also appealing and supportive for the leaders to influence the followers since people are able to realize the honesty their leaders deliver simply by assessing the leaders listening attitude. The next component of communication is speaking, which is the main and most important part since it is the way how leaders transfer their messages, thoughts, visions towards others. Because speaking is interacting, it affects people in different ways. Since the proper communication will generate proper states of mind and responses, leaders need to consider the appropriate speaking methods in order to gain advantages in relationships. This is critical in today business situation in which business is operating in the global scale and leaders need to be aware of cultures since each language has certain sayings and expressions that are unique to that language and sometimes difficult to convey to others from a different culture (Quinn et al. 2011). The most effective speaking method, according to Kouzes and Posner (2007, p.166) is to speak from the heart *because+ the prerequisite to enlisting others in a shared vision is genuineness because it is difficult for leaders to communicate values that do not really belong to them. Additionally, honesty is realized easily in any cultures and unfortunately, so is manipulation. Moreover, speak positively *because+ enthusiasm and emotions are catching, so let yours show (Kouzes & Posner 2007, p. 167). In other words, positive speaking will generate positivity and vice versa since emotions are able to be transferred, received and reflected within the communicating process between the leaders and the followers. Knowledge and Vision Since knowledge refers to the experience in the past and vision refers to the possibility in the future, they both are decisive because vision is the target and knowledge is the understanding of how to achieve the target. In the article of The Theory of the Business, Drucker (1994, p.97-98) provides a 7|Page

concept of the three parts required for what a company gets paid for: first, there are assumptions about the environment of the organization: society, and its structure, the market, the customer, and technology *+, second, there are assumptions about the specific mission of the organization *and+ third, there are assumption about the core competencies needed to accomplish the organizations mission. In other words, the assumptions of the organizations environment, competencies, which is similar to knowledge, and the assumption of the organizations mission, which is similar to vision, are critical in order to make companies *enjoy+ long-term success in business. Accordingly, when leaders acquire the sufficient knowledge of the organization and the business, they will be able to determine the vision more appropriately. This is critical since if the vision is too low, it will be difficult to stimulate people. In contrast, if the vision is too high, it will be unrealistic to achieve. In both cases, vision affects efficiency since it affects the followers spirit as well as the use of companies resources. By balancing the vision and the organizations situation, leaders will be able to maximize efficiency since the organization is more focused and activated because the target is not too close to be overlooked but not too far to be abandoned. In other words, knowledge of the leaders generates vision that fits the followers, therefore, excites them to advance since they can see the possible achievement. The three-skill approach also provides a supportive opinion of the idea of knowledge and vision. According to this theory, effective administration depends on three basic personal skills: technical, human and conceptual. Moreover, technical skill is having the knowledge about and being proficient in a specific type of work or activity [and] conceptual skills are abilities to work with ideas and concepts (Katz 1955, cited on Northouse 2004, p.36). The human skill will not be discussed since it relates to the traits and behaviors presented in the previous sections of this essay. Therefore, technical skill can be interpreted as knowledge and conceptual skill can be explained as vision. As concluded by Katz, at all level of management all those three skills are required. The difference is the proportion of each skill. As climbing up to the top management, technical skill becomes less important than conceptual skill, but none of those three skills are detachable from the administrating process. Power Northouse (2004, p.6) defines power is the capacity or potential to influence. Power is important because strategies do not implement themselves, then, power is what get it done (Pfeffer 2010, p. 86). Without power to realize concepts and ideas, the efforts of the leaders as well as the followers possibly become a waste. Moreover, leaders need power to control, restrict and oblige in certain situation because deflection is unavoidable when working with people. Additionally, power is 8|Page

the sign of strength and advantage, since people want to join the side that appears to be winning, power provides an advantage for the leaders to persuade the followers. According to Northouse (2004, p.6), power is divided into two types: position power, which derives from a particular office or rank in a formal organization, and personal power, which refers to the power a leader derives from followers. Without any of those two kinds of power, leader simply becomes a null title since the leaders acquire very limited influence towards their followers. Managing Skills The idea of the better leader is defined in the beginning of this essay in which managing skills contribute greatly in the efficiency of leadership. Practically, as regards management structure, leaders jobs refer to monitoring rather than performing a detail or particular managing process or task. Therefore, managing skills, which are listed by Kotter (2001) as planning and budgeting, organizing and staffing and controlling and problem solving, are acceptably acquired by leaders at the level of understanding the process in order to govern from the general scale. Consequently, the leaders understand the strength as well as weakness of the system, therefore, they are able understand how to improve it. Since leading is the nucleus of the administration, managing becomes the implementation of leading within the organization. Actually, a direction from the leader is difficult to be realized without planning and budgeting operation. Similarly, aligning people will possibly leads to chaos and failure in achieving efficiency without organizing and staffing process. Likewise, motivating people without controlling and problem solving might lead to deflection and conflicts within the organization. The leaders do not have to perform managing directly but they have to understand the process and ensure the effectiveness of management. In other words, managing is what keeps leadership on the ground. Thus, leading and managing skills become nondetachable factors of business leadership whose function is to cope with change and complexity, flexibly and regularly, in order to adapt the fast changing environment and generate stable development at the same time. As stated by Blagg and Young 2001, some great managers struggle with change and fail to be great leaders, while a great leader might fail to create a sense of stability in an organization and not measure up as a manager. Therefore, the people who are the most effective are those who essentially are both managers and leaders (Thomas 2001, cited in Blagg & Young 2001). Conclusion Leadership can be defined as the outcome of the interaction between people within certain environments towards specific targets. There are different approaches, which are listed by

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Northouse (2004), for interpreting leadership. From the viewpoint of the trait approach, leaders are born, not made. In contrast, the skill approach determines that leading skills are attainable, and therefore, leaders are made, not born. Regarding the style approach, leaders can choose between leading styles for different situations. Overall, leader who possesses the combination of traits, skills, behavior which matches the situation will be able to generate the best result of leadership, and becomes the better leader. The derivation of leaders traits, skills and behavior is minor since the set of those qualities is important itself. Since there are countless situations in which leadership operates, the required qualities of the leaders might vary. The traits, skills and behavior discussed within this essay are basics for leadership in today business context. Those qualities may not be sufficient in all situations, but since leadership is not an exact science, there is no certain answer for it which can be found in a book. References

Blagg, D & Young, S 2001, Harvard Business School, viewed 10 December 2011, <http://www.alumni.hbs.edu/bulletin/2001/february/leader.html>. Drucker, P 1994, 'The Theory of Business', Harvard Business Review, pp. 32-41. Drucker, PF 2005, 'Managing Oneself', Harvard Business Review, pp. 100-109. George, B, Sims, P, McLean, AN & Mayer, D 2007, 'Discovering Your Authentic Leadership', Harvard Business Review, pp. 129-138. Goffee, R & Jones, G 2000, 'Why Should Anyone be Led by You', Harvard Business Review, pp. 63-70. Goleman, D 1998, 'What Makes a Leader?', HBR's 10 Must Reads on Leadership, pp. 2-12. Kotter, JP 2001, 'What Leaders Really Do', Harvard Business Review, pp. 85-96. Kouzes, JM & Posner, BZ 2007, The Leadership Challenge, 4th edn, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. Maxwell, JC 2007, The Maxwell Daily Reader, Thomas Nelson, Nashville. Northouse, PG 2004, Leadership, 3rd edn, Sage Publications, US. Peterson, SJ, Waldman, DA, Balthazard, PA & Thatcher, RW 2008, 'Are the Brains of Optimistic, Hopeful, Confident, and Resilient Leaders Different?', Organizational Dynamics, vol 37, no. 4, pp. 342-353. Pfeffer, J 2010, 'Power Play', Harvard Business Review, pp. 84-92.

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Quinn, RE, Faermsn, SR, Thompson, MP, McGrath, MR & St.Clair, LS 2011, Becoming a Master Manager, 5th edn, John Wiley & Sons, New Jersey. Roberts, LM, Spreitzer, G, Dutton, J, Quinn, R, Heaphy, E & Barker, B 2005, 'How to Play Your Strength', Harvard Business Review, pp. 75-80. Zaleznik, A 2004, 'Managers and Leaders, Are They Different?', Harvard Business Review.

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