Blog 3 : Leadership

Before examining the role of a leader, it is necessary to look at the concept of a leader. A number of theories about leadership have been devised over the years. Most of theories assume that leadership has to do with an individual intentionally exerting influence on others to structure the relationships in an organization.(Browaeys and Price, 2008)

Related to this is the question of the difference between a manager and a leader. One can be a leader without being a manager and vice versa. The leader is a person who will have a strong influence on others subordinates, indeed, a leader is born with the ability of influencing people in order to motivate his co-workers by generating ideas and inspiring others. We could also say that the leader is an asset in a organization because  he can anticipate the future of the organization by being more personal with the employees and then by communication and encouraging in order to be more efficient within the organization .However, the manager is a person often seen as someone who is planning and controlling his subordinates in order to achieve results through a specific process and a specific method .Indeed, the manager may be more impersonal and have not very good communication skills and have a low emotional involvement with the employees in order to plan, control, organise to achieve the results.

An example of an organization is my sixth form class in France. The key leaders in this organization were the teaching staff because they organized weekly meetings about what they could improve about their teaching and the student life at the school. Indeed, I worked for my school for a certain period of time in the social committee which made me contribute more to my next courseworks.

 As a result I’ve became more involved every day and my teachers were watching if everything was all right and so they could told me what was wrong in order to make me improve in this area of relationship with other people. This means that my teachers could see what they had to change about future students involved in the social committee and then they would develop new ideas and methods to help improve the academic staff performance. This links to the Goleman’6 leadership styles where the leader is a pace setter and push the students to accomplish tasks. This then links to how the teacher will push the students to accomplish their grades by working with them, however, that is if the students are willing and motivated enough. 

To conclude, the key leaders of my college were the teaching staff because they were effective as they were more passionate about their jobs and with their students, also, they found innovative ways to help the students to be motivated. This links to the Goleman’s theory were the leader is democratic which means they can participate, listen to the bad and the good news in order to gain valuable input from his co-workers. This shows how teachers can help students if they are going through any form of any stress that could affect their studies. However, it depends if the teachers have the right skills and potential to deal with the students issues. In my opinion, I think that the committee and the staff teachers are leaders in an academic organization if they are involved enough to take some time to listen to their students in order to keep them motivated and willing to get involved in their studies.

Bibliography

Browaeys, M.-J. and Price, R. (2008) Understanding Cross-Cultural Management. 1st ed. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.