Reflection - Topic 2 Leadership Traits and Ethics

Topic 2 - Leadership Traits and Ethics

This is my favourite topic! :) 💓💙💚💛💜

In this lesson, I've learned about traits and personality, the big 5 personality dimensions, universality traits of effective leaders, achievement motivation theory, theory X and Y, Pygmalion effect and positive self concept. 

What I have learned...

What differences do traits and personality have got? 

Traits are consistent, long lasting, innate and inherited characteristics, behaviours and feelings. Warm or cold, loud or quiet, passive or aggressive are some example of a person's traits. 

Personality is the collection of characteristic thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that are associated with a person. It is a combination of traits that classifies an individual’s behaviour therefore they are partly innate and partly learned. 

Why learn about personality traits? 

Personality influences the decisions we make. Personality affects behaviour as well as perceptions and attitudes. Knowing personalities helps you to explain and predict others’ behaviour and job performance. Understand own self’s personalities enable us to reflect on ourselves and make changes and improvements on our leadership skills. 

The Great Man Theory

It was assumed that leaders are born, not made, therefore, leadership attributes are innate / gifted. When there's a great need, a great leader will arise. This theory is the scholarship of leadership traits. However, there are criticism for this theory which are the lack of scientific validity. Also, it strongly stands that society is shaped by leaders which may not be entirely true. 

 Trait Leadership Theory 

Trait leadership theory advocates that effective leaders have in common a pattern of personal characteristics. Some core traits suggested are achievement drive, leadership motivation, honesty and integrity, self-confidence, cognitive ability, knowledge of business and emotional maturity. The strength of the theory is that it is intuitive and easily understandable. Also, it has ample of supporting research. On the other hand, the traits are subjective and endless, even perhaps biased. There's consideration neither on of the environment not the follower. It's focus is on leaders only. 

The Big Five Model of Personality 👇

Theory X & Theory Y 👇

Pygmalion Effect 👇

Achievement Theory 👇

3 levels of Moral Development 👇

What I thought...

I enjoyed this topic very much because it describe the nature of human mind. It is easily understandable and it make sense. Everyone of us has traits that we are proud of, and of course not so proud of. These traits affect our decisions and decide what kind of leader we are going to be. The traits theory is like the basic of everything else. However, I do have some concerns about how the environment can affect leadership style. After all, leading and following is a two way communication. So, how does it affect one another? 

To understand my traits and personality, I took some tests and those are absolutely interesting. 

Here's the results of Myer Briggs personality test. I am an INFJ-T person. I think this describes me pretty accurately. According to my informal observation, this test describes my friends and colleagues very accurately too. I trust the test results a lot.  

 

This, on another hand, is the results from The Big Five Personality Test, which I think make sense but not very reliable. Why would I thought so? According to my results, all traits have similar scores, except for Extraversion which is relatively low. My interpretation to my result is that I am have a well-rounded personality, with my most dominant personality neuroticism. If compared to the Myer Briggs Personality test, the Big Five Personality Test makes more sense and give more meaning for my analysis. 

Openness 75%

Contentiousness 79%

Extraversion 46%

Agreeableness 60% 

Neuroticism 87.5% 

For my high neuroticism (I think emotional instability is a bad bad thing), I prescribe myself the Pygmalion effect. Since people are influenced by the expectations built upon them, I have asked my family members and my close friends to constantly remind me how happy I can be in my life and how much I should be grateful to my life now. It reminds me also how I have told my little ones in classrooms. 

'Wow! That's great. See, you've done it! I was so sure of you! Well done and keep it up!'

Those are my most used sentences in class. Now I know, it is Pygmalion effect! I am doing it right and I should continue. Hopefully I can lead my pupils to develop positive self concept. 

The motivation theory, the X theory and Y theory affect me much too. I am now more aware of my actions and consequences. Hopefully I can better lead my pupils to grow to be confident learners. 

The question for this topic is that, do we still have Theory X managers? Of course, of course. 

Why? Because everyone has got a choice to decide what they wish to be. Theory X is apparently easier for those people because it supports pointing finger to the followers when things are not done as how they want it to be. In the 21st century, that is not a trend for leadership. Co-lead and common goals are better options, definitely. Although I do not agree much with Theory X, I am in no position to judge anyone who chooses this because I am not in their shoes and I have no understanding in their followers and situations.  

This is indeed an interesting topic. 💪

Reflection - Topic 1 Introduction to Leadership

Topic 1 - Introduction to Leadership

In this lesson, I've been introduced to leadership and leadership theories.

Here's what I've learnt...

Leadership is the influencing process of leaders and their followers, with the aim to achieve organisational objectives through change. A leader is someone who possess leadership skill, therefore can be defined as an individual who influence a group of people towards achievement of goals. Leadership is essential in the 21st century as a leader with good leadership skills is able to lead his team through crisis or any difficult situations. Also, having good leadership skills can enable a leader to excel in organisational performance, fulfil employee job satisfaction and ensure the success of management. An effective leader often set realistic and reliable objectives and influence change for continual improvement. Also, the management of interpersonal relationship is of utmost importance as a good leader should be able to work with people.  As this is an introductory lesson, we were also exposed to the 4 main leadership theories, including the trait theory, behavioural theory, contingency theory and integrative theory. 

Here's what I thought...

    Before the lesson, I have never seen myself as a leader. I don't even like the idea of being a leader. Through reflection, I realised that everyone can be a leader. I am a teacher - I am a leader in my classroom and my followers are my little kids. A mother can be a leader too - she manages the household and co-lead the family with a father, their followers are their children. Everyone, I realised, everyone, can be a leader. 

    While leadership cannot be specifically defined, the keywords that I have grasps today regarding leadership are INFLUENCE, CHANGE, PEOPLE and OBJECTIVES. In my opinion, influence and change are the major component I look into as an English language teacher while being a leader in classrooms. I am the leader and my children are my followers. While organising classroom activities and managing pupils' work, I set SMART objectives and work with my children to discuss and negotiate the achievements and progress. Every class (team) and every children (follower) has different mood and styles. To ensure their learning (objectives), I have to understand them and embrace them to lead them towards achievement objectives. 

What is the best leadership style?

    Since there is no strong definition to what leadership is, there is no say to what is the best leadership style. However, I could describe what kind of leader that I like and what kind of leader that I aspire to be. So, here it is...

    I have a perfectionist personality and I enjoyed working with people who organised roles and responsibility fairly and reasonably. I think, a good leader should be someone who is considerate of member's ability, assign reasonable yet challenging responsibilities and divide leadership duties. I believed that everyone has got a potential to develop into a leader, to understand what they are doing and why they are doing it, so that a team will always do the right things to work towards the same aim. So, I hope that a leader can allow questions and be open-minded to discuss about aims and progress. 

    To sum up the topic, I think I am starting to believe that I can be a leader, or be a good follower with leadership skills. I think this is a great start. 

:)