Leadership Profile PART II Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Leadership Profile PART II - Essay Example All sorts of leaders, be it a political leader, group/team leader (for a project), leader in any field or discipline(s) and any n' every leader; they, despite being unique by several of their attributes, they have a few similarities (Gareth & Charles, 2005). They show some of the similar patterns which can be integrated into a few categories or types of leadership styles as per the leadership theories given by renowned observers and theorists. These include several theories which have provided exceptional guidance to assist people over the whole globe and to help out leaders in leading their subordinates effectively as per the prevailing conditions and situation of an organization. Some of those world renowned theories are discussed briefly below. It will be pertinent to note here that we have already looker at the reasons and chosen the transformational leadership style to explain the behaviour of our chosen leader namely Mr. Thaksin Shinawatra. Fred Fiedler was the one who developed a contingency or situational theory of leadership. Leadership theories may be of great help in molding the behaviors of leaders but they also need to be effective enough to assist leaders in different situations. Now that many theories are there, a lot of researchers have agreed on the point that actually no "one" style of leadership is always right for every person, who is a leader. Therefore, for different conditions and circumstances, these conditional theories were developed to be applicable in different cases with respect to the task at hand, the type of organization and the people involved (G. Northouse, 2006). In this theory, the developer i.e. Fiedler emphasized on three main things that were the structure of the task, the relationship between the leaders and the subordinates, and the power that the leader has and is entitled to exercise on his own discretion. Transformational Leadership: James MacGregor Burns wrote in his book 'Leadership' about the concept of "transforming leadership" (G. Northouse, 2006). According to him, transformational leadership actually takes place when a leader changes his subordinates or followers in three important styles. He inculcates a feeling of cumulative and/or shared gains in the employees i.e. to work not only for their selves only but also fro the sake of the organization's benefit. This results in the subordinates having more trust in their leader, performing at higher levels of productivity and effectively contributes to the achievement of the organizational goal and objectives that are the target for any organization. (Bernard M. Bass, 2005) Path-Goal Theory of Leadership: This theory emphasizes on the leaders to motivate their employees by clearly stating them the means of achieving high. This includes guiding them as to how they should achieve the organizational goals, controlling their performance and monitoring their output results, lauding them for good work and respecting what they did and then further guiding them how to improve on the mistakes that were made and also how to achieve new and higher benchmarks. Leader-Style Theory: Leader style, also known as "Trait Theory" is another way of identifying and analyzing the key characteristics of a successful leader. This approached was used for actually separating the critical leadership traits of born-leaders so that

_________________ Millennials Say Marriage Ideal but Parenthood the Essay

_________________ Millennials Say Marriage Ideal but Parenthood the Priority, written by Jason Hanna and published on the CNN - Essay Example The article ends by stating that the changing environment, meaning economic, has also helped to change the current culture with respect to how marriage is viewed among Millenials as well as others. While completing an education is a high priority still, finding a good job and establishing oneself has also become almost a requirement prior to considering marriage or child bearing. Essay: Although the above article has very good points and key insights into the generation known as the Millenials, it is however somewhat deceiving as to the true trends that are being represented. Furthermore, when articles such as the one above are published it is always necessary to consider by whom, when, why, and to what end. In this way, this brief response essay will help to consider but a few of these as well as to provide some key reading insights that this author gained from analyzing the above article. Firstly, a common trend in journalism is to create stories where none would otherwise exist. I t is a well known fact that in order to sell journalism must convince the readership/viewership that ideas, cultures, and individuals are changing. Imagine a world in which a newspaper or a television news program reported that absolutely nothing new or interesting was taking place. Of course the idea seems ludicrous. Similarly, one of the primary mechanisms which the media uses to engage the attention of the viewership/readership is to convince them that a fundamental shift is taking place at each and every moment of the day. The above article is not dissimilar to such a tactic in that it has all of the tell tale makers of sensationalist journalism. Firstly, one group is compared to another. Secondly a level of statistical analysis is used. Thirdly, it is determined that based upon the statistical analysis, it is indeed measurable that the current generation does not value traditional morality to the same extent that the previous one did. Although there may be a grain of truth to s ome of the information that the study and proceeding article related, the fact of the matter is that it follows all too similar a pattern with reference to attempting to sell advertising space by playing off the emotions of a concerning citizenry. An additional point of interest is the fact that the article opens by citing â€Å"a new study† and then goes on for some length before admitting that the PEW Research Center was indeed the group that put out such a study. This is not important to the average reader. However, the fact of the matter is that centers such as the PEW Research Center are able to make the lion’s share of their profits by churning out untenable study after untenable study. Most of these are sold to political think tanks and picked up by the media. Accordingly, for each political point of view or journalist, there is a corresponding statistic that can work to tell one particular side of the story. Yet a further flaw of logic and scholarship is refere nced in the fact that the journalist refers to the fact that Gen-X placed a higher emphasis on marriage than did the Millenials based on a similar survey (Hanna 1). One would expect that the survey would have been conducted at the very least by the same group (the PEW