Leadership Training

This case highlights the importance of identifying and developing leadership skills. A four-step cross-training process for developing leadership capabilities is presented. This process moves from skill assessment to skill development. The case discusses the importance of tying these skills to organizational goals.

The ability to develop leadership skills is important in an organizational setting. The identification of different types of skills and how to develop these is discussed. These skills can be related to the five components of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.

Read the case below and answer the questions that follow.

Leaders who want to take the next step in their career can follow a straightforward four-step cross-training process. The basic idea behind this cross-training approach is simple yet effective. While the most effective leaders have at least one competency that makes them great and eventually indispensable, it makes little sense to continually work on already great qualities. Instead, leaders can benefit from identifying and developing complementary strengths. Building complementary strengths—or competency companions—may lead to substantially greater leadership effectiveness than finding increasingly rare opportunities to improve an already outstanding competency.

First, leaders must identify their strengths in areas that usually fall into five categories: character, personal capability, getting results, interpersonal skills, and leading change. While this task can be done in multiple ways, it is important to realize that your own view is less important than how others see you, making a 360-degree evaluation the method of choice.

Second, choose a strength to focus on. Most people find it easy to identify weaknesses and focus their attention on improving them. Unless a competency is extremely underdeveloped (i.e., in the 10th percentile), however, it may pay to focus on an already strong yet not outstanding competency. Developing a competency from strong to outstanding often can raise the perceived leadership effectiveness dramatically. However, choosing between multiple strong competencies is easier said than done, because most people lack clear selection criteria. To engage effectively in this process, leaders should focus on a strong competency that is important to the organization. Moreover, leaders should choose a competency they feel passionate about.

Third, select a companion behavior. While developing a great or outstanding competency is an important step on the journey to becoming an indispensable leader, it may increasingly pay to also focus on a mediocre competency that can be developed in an interacting (or complementary) fashion. As before, this companion competency should be valued by the organization and also be something the leader feels passionate about.

Lastly, develop your companion behavior. Once you have settled on an organizationally valued and personally engaging competency, you should now work on improving the basic skills in this area. Practically speaking, you could look for as many opportunities as possible to develop this competency, both inside and outside of work. For instance, you could take courses or practice informally with friends and coworkers. Volunteer to engage in activities that allow you to practice this skill, and ask for continuous feedback.

Extensive research by Zenger Folkman, a leadership development consultancy, provides solid evidence of the benefits of pairing leader attributes. Such findings were based on an analysis of its database of more than a quarter million 360-degree surveys of some 30,000 developing leaders. Take, for example, the competencies “focuses on results” and “builds relationships.” Only 14 percent of leaders who were reasonably strong (that is, scored in the 75th percentile) in focusing on results but less so in building relationships reached the extraordinary leadership level: the 90th percentile in overall leadership effectiveness. Similarly, only 12 percent of those who were reasonably strong in building relationships but less so in focusing on results reached that level. However, when an individual performed well in both categories, something dramatic happened: Fully 72 percent of those in the 75th percentile in both categories reached the 90th percentile on overall leadership effectiveness.

Source: Zenger, J. H., Folkman, J. R., & Edinger, S. K. 2011. Making yourself indispensable. Harvard Business Review, 89(10): 84-92.

What do the authors mean by selecting a companion behavior?

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Leadership  Theories-WORKSHEET IS ATTACHED

Research the following five leadership theories and include these in your matrix (use the matrix template provided):

-Trait theories of leadership

-Behavioral theories of leadership

-Contingency models of leadership

-Skills approaches to leadership

-Situational methods of leadership

Develop the definition and characteristics of various leadership theories and approaches to leadership (trait leadership, behavioral leadership, contingency leadership, skills leadership and situational leadership). 

Provide one or more examples to support the definition or characteristics of each form of leadership. 

Write out your explanations in each section using about 350 words for each section. You will thus have 5 sections of 350 words each.

Format your Leadership Theory Matrix with the template and consistent with APA guidelines.

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Leadership that makes subordinates aware of the importance of their jobs and performance to the organization and aware of their own needs for personal growth and that motivates subordinates to work for the good of the organization

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Leadership subject:     Minicase: Richard Branson Shoots for the Moon (End of Chapter 1)

The Virgin Group is the umbrella for a variety of business ventures ranging from air travel to entertainment. With close to 200 companies in over 30 countries, it is one of the largest companies in the world. At the head of this huge organization is Richard Branson. Branson founded Virgin over 30 years ago and has built the organization from a small student magazine to the multibillion-dollar enterprise it is today.

Branson is not your typical CEO. Branson’s dyslexia made school a struggle and sabotaged his performance on standard IQ tests. His teachers and tests had no way of measuring his greatest strengths—his uncanny knack for uncovering lucrative business ideas and his ability to energize the ambitions of others so that they, like he, could rise to the level of their dreams.

Richard Branson’s true talents began to show themselves in his late teens. As a student at Stowe School in England in 1968, Branson decided to start his own magazine, Student. Branson was inspired by the student activism on his campus in the 1960s and decided to try something different. Student differed from most college newspapers or magazines; it focused on the students and their interests. Branson sold advertising to major corporations to support his magazine. He included articles by ministers of Parliament, rock stars, intellectuals, and celebrities. Student grew to become a commercial success.

In 1970 Branson saw an opportunity for Student to offer records cheaply by running ads for mail-order delivery. The subscribers to Student flooded the magazine with so many orders that his spin-off discount music venture proved more lucrative than the magazine subscriptions. Branson recruited the staff of Student for his discount music business. He built a small recording studio and signed his first artist. Mike Oldfield recorded “Tubular Bells” at Virgin in 1973; the album sold 5 million copies, and Virgin Records and the Virgin brand name were born. Branson has gone on to start his own airline (Virgin Atlantic Airlines was launched in 1984), build hotels (Virgin Hotels started in 1988), get into the personal finance business (Virgin Direct Personal Finance Services was launched in 1995), and even enter the cola wars (Virgin Cola was introduced in 1994). And those are just a few highlights of the Virgin Group—all this while Branson has attempted to break world speed records for crossing the Atlantic Ocean by boat and by hot air balloon.

As you might guess, Branson’s approach is nontraditional—he has no giant corporate office or staff and few if any board meetings. Instead he keeps each enterprise small and relies on his skills of empowering people’s ideas to fuel success. When a flight attendant from Virgin Airlines approached him with her vision of a wedding business, Richard told her to go do it. He even put on a wedding dress himself to help launch the publicity. Virgin Brides was born. Branson relies heavily on the creativity of his staff; he is more a supporter of new ideas than a creator of them. He encourages searches for new business ideas everywhere he goes and even has a spot on the Virgin website called “Got a Big Idea?”

In December 1999 Richard Branson was awarded a knighthood in the Queen’s Millennium New Year Honours List for “services to entrepreneurship.” What’s next on Branson’s list? It’s Virgin Galactic, Branson’s company designed in part to make space tourism available to private citizens. And as a step toward that end, he has said he hopes to fly in space himself in 2018. The first passengers will be Branson himself and his two adult sons; you can take a later flight yourself for a mere $200,000 for a two-hour trip. Not everyone is convinced that space tourism can become a full-fledged part of the travel industry, but with Branson behind the idea it just might fly.

1. Would you classify Richard Branson as a manager or a leader? What qualities distinguish him as one or the other?

2. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, followers are part of the leadership process. Describe the relationship between Branson and his followers.

3. Identify the myths of leadership development that Richard Branson’s success helps to disprove (Hughes, 20180, pp. 33-35).

Reference:

Hughes, R. (20180313). Leadership: Enhancing the Lessons of Experience, 9th Edition [VitalSource Bookshelf version]. Retrieved from https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9781260167702

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Assignment Choice #1: Leadership Style

The following self-assessments allow you to learn more about yourself. These instruments feature behavioral questionnaires that address a variety of personal attributes such as personality, emotional intelligence, communication abilities, motivation, and decision making. The overall expectation is that these instruments will provide you with value-added results that will later allow you to hone your skills as a solid decision maker and leader.

Emotional Intelligence:

• Psychtests
• Memorado- this test done

Decision-Making Style:

• Self-assessment 7.8: What is your preferred decision making style?
• How good is your decision-making?- this test done

Leadership Assessment:

• Leadership skills assessment questionnaire
• The leadership motivation assessment: How motivated are you to lead?-this test done

• Take at least one emotional intelligence test, one decision-making assessment, and one leadership assessment from the links in this assignment.
• Discuss the outcomes of the assessments by specifically addressing what the experience of taking the tests tells you about:
  • Individual personality.
  • How personality fits into organizations generally or the organization that you currently belong to.
  • Decision-making style.
  • How personality, EQ, and decision-making style impact organizational contributions and leadership.
• Answer the following questions:
  • How can one be effective in ones role in an organization or elsewhere? Cite and discuss a specific role as an example. 
  • What common biases might impact decision making?
  • What can one do to be a more effective decision maker?

Paper Requirements

• Your paper should be 4-5 pages long, not counting the title and reference pages, which you must include.
• Format your paper per CSU-Global Guide to Writing and APA Requirements.
• Use at least two scholarly sources to support your claims. (You may not use the required and recommended readings in this course.) The CSU-Global Library is a good place to find sources.

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