Tag Archives: Transformational Leadership

Leadership

Leaders – You Can No Longer Afford To Ignore Wellness Leadership! (Why Would You Anyway?)

Wellness leadership’s time has come. Read on to learn how and why wellness leadership must be incorporated into your leadership practices starting today.

Which leadership model do you practice? Is it authentic leadership, servant leadership, transformational leadership or another? No matter which model it is, I would argue you also need to practice wellness leadership.

In today’s value added economy, the statement “Our employees are our most valuable asset” is no longer just a trite statement. It is reality. Thanks to the global 24/7 economy, ever-increasing complexity and the increasing pace of change, employers need the “whole” employee showing up for work each and every day.

If you are a senior leader of an organization that provides employees with health benefits, you are well aware of the costs to your organization associated with employee health and wellness. While these costs are the most visible, they are neither the only costs, nor even the largest cost to your organization.

Employee health and wellness impact your organization in many other ways, including:

• Absenteeism

• Presenteeism

• Engagement

• Performance and productivity

• Motivation

• Morale

It is for all these reasons combined that I would argue that as a leader, you can no longer ignore employee health, wellness and wellbeing. Today, wellness leadership must be included in your leadership repertoire.

The leadership literature is broad, comprehensive and complex. Much has been written about leadership theories, leader qualities, leader competencies and so forth.

From this literature, I take the essence of leadership to be:

• Creating a strategic vision

• Choosing the right strategies

• Successfully executing the strategies

• Influencing, inspiring and motivating others

• Developing others

So what is wellness leadership and how do these seven key functions of leadership apply within a wellness leadership framework?

Wellness leadership is about:

• Creating a framework for the organization for all employee health and wellness efforts

• Using the key functions of leadership to create workplace conditions that make it easy for employees to practice living healthy lifestyles

• Supporting employees in their quest for health, happiness, wellness and wellbeing

• Identifying and removing the barriers to health and wellness success

Wellness leaders include employee health and wellness as part of their organization’s vision. They readily and frequently share this vision with everyone within the organization, as well as other stakeholders. It is important that employee health and wellness be seen as positive and affirming. Wellness program strategies will always have the best chance of success when they are closely aligned with the organization’s overall strategic goals and initiatives.

Employees look to their leaders as being role models. By serving as a role model for health and wellness, leaders can be inspirational, influential, and enhance employee motivation. Leaders, who visibly demonstrate commitment for wellness, send a strong message to their organization that contributes significantly to wellness program success and sustainability. In fact, researchers have found that leadership commitment is one of the keys to wellness program success.

Leaders play a strategic role in their organization’s culture. Wellness leadership is about aligning wellness norms and goals with the organization’s culture. It is absolutely critical for the wellness program to be aligned with the organization’s culture.

During the course of any year, a majority of employees have been known to attempt, on their own, to make healthy lifestyle changes. Unfortunately, most attempts do not result in long-term behavior change. In my mind, this creates a great opportunity for leaders to incorporate into individual employee development plans any desires an employee might have to make healthy lifestyle related changes. Wellness leaders support healthy lifestyle changes as much as they support any work related performance or behavior change the employee wishes to make.

Do not ignore wellness leadership any longer. Incorporate it into your leadership practices beginning today.

Start Today

Wellness leadership is all about supporting employee health and vitality. I am here to help you develop your knowledge and skills in the leadership of employee health. I invite you to allow me the opportunity to introduce you to the available leadership tools and resources. I specialize in mentoring worksite program coordinators and creating Done With You employee health and well-being programs. You can contact me at williammcpeck@gmail.com.

Brought to you by Bill McPeck, Your Worksite Wellness Mentor. Dedicated to helping employers create successful, sustainable worksite wellness and well-being programs, especially in small employer settings.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/William_McPeck/1737577

 

Leadership

The Difference Between Transactional and Transformational Leadership

Leadership is very important for a person as well as for an organization. Without leadership, the organization (and the individual, too) is like a boat without a rudder. It will be aimless and will just follow the flow of the powerful forces in the organization.

But leadership takes on different forms in an organization. One way of looking at it is by classifying between transaction and transformational leadership. Another is by looking at formal and informal leadership. Formal position and authority matter less than influence. Influence is raw power within an organization. A person who has influence does not need formal authority to tip the organizational balance towards himself.

Leaders who do have formal authority and leadership position may simply use transactional leadership for their subordinates and followers. This kind of leadership works in certain situations. Especially if the leader is but in transition and does not have to invest much time in the development of the people under him. Transactional leadership is not long term. It is short term. The key word here is transactions! The leader does not expect any “return business” with the people he is dealing with.

Transformational leadership, on the other hand, is a very different kind of leadership. It takes into account the motivation and the situation of the followers and subordinates. It primes up people for repeat business and continuous improvements!

As a leader, would you rather use short term transactional leadership or the long-term-impact transformational leadership? While I would advocate transformational leadership off-hand, the best leadership style depends on your circumstances and the organizational goals and objectives.

The important question to ask then is, how can you study the organizational context so as to understand the kind of leadership that is suited to it? Ask your people. Is there good morale in the organization? Or is it full of complaints and murmuring? Are the people happy to be part of the organization? Or are they simply waiting for one paycheck after another?

You also need to look at the performance of the organization. You can conduct an evaluation or even an internal audit of your organization. This way, you can assess the strengths and the weaknesses of the organization. Based on that, you can make important decisions as to the style of leadership suited for the organization.

There is no right or wrong styles of leadership to be used in an organization. What matters is how you use one style of leadership to accomplish your goals as a leader.

Transformational leadership is not rocket science! GET FREE LEADERSHIP COACHING from M Rasing’s leadership blog, http://www.mightyrasing.com.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/M_Rasing/182627

 

Leadership

Leadership Attributes, Leadership Traits, and Transformational Leadership Research

My doctoral dissertation leadership research primarily focused on the impact and relationship between leadership and adversity. However, a material additional component of my leadership was to evoke from the sixteen prominent leader’s descriptions their concepts of leadership, as well as their styles of leadership, including transformational leadership.

The sixteen prominent leader / research participants each had their own unique life journey in dealing with adversity and then working to become a successful and accomplished leader. One common theme is that obstacles or adversity in the early lives of the participants, such as the loss of a parent, poverty, discrimination, or even being a Holocaust victim, was not the seminal or most important event in their lives. They each grew through the experiences that came with increasing responsibilities in their careers, or through significant career changes. Successfully overcoming the obstacles in their adult lives helped them to grow. The encouragement, guidance, and examples from mentors played a significant part in their lives.

My in depth Doctoral dissertation research into leadership and adversity has shown me that a mentor, especially a servant-leader mentor, can teach a person how to overcome the obstacles and adversities of life. Enlightened mentors or servant-leader mentors are a classic example of someone who uses transformation leadership techniques and skills in the life.

The leader I interviewed commented on the importance of being the enlightened and caring mentor can guide from their own personal experiences with adversity. They are some who has been there and has successfully overcome the difficult problem or major adversity. In some cases, mentors may teach mentees which way to go based on their experience of taking a wrong path and having learned a better way. The mentor may have experienced and overcome some other, even more horrendous, difficulty in his or her life’s journey that could inspire the mentee to higher heights.

The sixteen prominent leaders that I personally interviewed identified nine important qualities of a leader. Many of these leadership traits, including though usually associated with transformational leadership, are found in the lst from my leadership research:

1. Honesty or integrity
2. A high level of people skills
3. Initiative, assertiveness, drive, or determination
4. Excellent communication skills or willingness to speak up, take a position, or take charge
5. Vision (being forward-looking)
6. Desire or passion to lead and inspire
7. Positive attitude and self-confidence; charisma
8. Knowledge of the business and/or group task at hand; competence
9. The ability to overcome adversity or obstacles

The sixteen prominent leaders that I interviewed for my Doctoral dissertation research into leadership and adversity specifically identified an additional four important qualities that are not commonly found in the academic leadership literature.
10. Being a Servant-Leader, serving people, and especially being humble
11. Having both religious faith and strong family ties
12. Framing or recognizing the worst adversity as an opportunity
13. Having a mentor or mentors in their development as leaders (Haller, 2008, pp. 116-117)

Several of my leadership research participants acknowledged the refining nature of adversity, but it was not really a “transformational leadership traits,” but rather a comment on their experience with overcoming adversity, obstacles, abuse, discrimination, death of a parent, or in one case the Nazi Holocaust.

Leadership Attributes or Traits, and Transformational Leadership
I have found from my personal leadership experience and my doctoral research in the area of leadership foundations, that transformational leadership especially important in the “real application” of leadership. Starting back in the 1980s there was a resurgence of researchers updating the academic literature with their findings, repackaging, and comments leadership trait theory. Many of the leadership scholars focused there framing on leadership traits in the context of discussing transformational leadership.

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Leadership

Leadership and Adversity – The Shaping of Prominent Leaders – Leadership and How it is Identified

What is the best definition of Leadership? I grew up in the 1950-s and 1060’s as a “baby boomer.” As I was growing up, my idea or definition of what leadership was consisted of a combination of role models gleaned from dozens of biographies, including those of political and military leaders, captains of industry, robber barons, and sports coaches.

I read with real interest biographies and autobiographies of the “titans of industry,” with their amazing “rags-to-riches” tycoons of the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Carnegie, DuPont, Edison, Ford, Goodyear, Huntington, Morgan, Stanford, Vanderbilt, as well as those of moguls of the middle 20th century like Watson (IBM) and Sloan (General Motors).

I eagerly read the political biographies of Winston Churchill, Jefferson Davis, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman, George Washington, and Woodrow Wilson. I also devoured biographies of military leaders such as the larger than life US Generals: George Patton and Douglas MacArthur.

I as an Eagle Scout, was especially take with the biography of Lord Robert Baden-Powell, the British General, who distinguished himself in the South African Boer Wars, who turned down the honor to be the Commandant of the British Military Academy to focus on founding and building the World Boy Scouting movement.

I studied the current leaders in news magazines, books, and witnessed as a new breed of business leader emerged on television, including the Bass Brothers, Henry Ford II, Howard Hughes, Lee Iacocca, J. Willard Marriott, H. Ross Perot, and Sam Walton.

I enjoyed watching great actors, such as Charlton Heston, Gregory Peck, George C. Scott, Jimmy Stewart who brought to life the characters of Moses, Michelangelo, Douglas MacArthur, George Patton, and fictional characters like “Mr. Smith” or “George Bailey.” I observed the success and admired coaches like, John Wooden and Vince Lombardi. They coached well, build successful teams, but were true leaders and builders of young men, because they encouraged their players to become upstanding total persons and true team players, not just outstanding individual basketball or football players.

All of the biographies, magazine articles, movie portrayals, and television coverage of leaders helped to shape my mental model and my definition exactly what is leadership. The stories of successful leaders who overcame adversity provided me with an insight as just how these leaders coped with the setbacks, the trauma of life, then succeeding in spite of adversity, obstacles, or challenges.

President John Kennedy’s life and his famous book (1956) provided profiles of courageous leaders. This book and the other biographies gave me a real insight into courage to succeed, no matter what the adversity and to become a strong leader. These stories may have subconsciously influenced my interest in Horatio Alger-type stories.

The biographies, my personal experience of over 30 years of senior leadership experience, and my doctoral studies in leadership, led me to the selection of my topic focused on Leadership and Adversity. My reading studies provided insights into a refining of my definition of leadership, as well as to the lives of leaders who overcame obstacles or dealt with adversity. These early influences laid the foundation for my admiration of those leaders who had succeeded despite having to overcome obstacles, tragedy, or adversity.

Leadership is more than just a word, it is the act of leading. True enlightened “Leadership” is guiding, leading by the right example, demonstrating genuine and deep caring for those they lead, team building, and have a clear vision of the task to be accomplished.

To provide an insight of my definition of leadership and the impact of overcoming adversity, I will supplement my personal views and leadership definition with a short literature review on leadership and the classic definitions.

I will also review the overcoming adversity literature review as the underpinning and foundation for an examination of the possible relationship between overcoming adversity or overcoming obstacles in the shaping and development of prominent leaders.

Leadership and How It Is Identified by scholars and the world

There is no one actual or accurate definitive definition of leadership. Rost (1991) presented the idea of “defining leadership,” yet noted that there is still no real agreement about what leadership is (p. 6).

The word, Lead, as a verb, comes from the Old English word leden or loedan. Some have attributed various meanings to the word “lead” such as “to make go,” to “show the way”, or “to guide.”

The noted and well-respected university scholar, academic researcher and phenomenologist van Manen’s (1991) offer a closer practical definition stating that “leading means going first, and in going first you can trust me, for I have tested the ice” (p. 38). Cronin (1980) offered a simple and succinct definition, when said that Leadership can be defined as the “capacity to make things happen that would not have otherwise happened” (p. 372).

Leadership implies that some leads, guides, directs, or orders someone else to do something that they might not otherwise do. Leadership has many types: Situational Leadership, Transformational Leadership, Servant-Leadership, Principal Centered Leadership, Command-Control Leadership, and many more types. Each type has a distinct and different definition, so one definition of leadership does not fit all type.

Howard Edward Haller, Ph.D.

Chief Enlightenment Officer

The Leadership Success Institute

http://www.TheLeadershipSuccessInstitute.com

HowardEdwardHallerPhD@gmail.com

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Leadership

Leadership Theories – What Does it Take to Be an Effective Leader?

There are more leadership theories than you can shake a stick at. Theories have evolved from “Great Man” and “Trait” theories to “Transformational” leadership – each with a different set of dynamics, contexts and focus.

Early theories tend to focus upon the characteristics and behaviours of successful leaders, whereas the later theories consider the role of followers and the contextual nature of leadership.

Here is an overview of leadership theories – but first here are 2 quick questions for you: (1) see if you can spot which applies to Genghis Khan and which applies to Mother Theresa; and (2) try to figure out which of these theories best describes the style you feel would be most appropriate for leading your change initiative?

(1) The Great Man theory – this was based on the belief that leaders are exceptional people, born with leadership qualities and are destined to lead. This theory reflects the male-oriented view of leadership which has predominated until the late 20th century.

(2) Trait Theory – is based around an extensive list of all of the qualities or traits associated with leadership.

(3) Behaviourist Theories – focus on what leaders actually do rather than on their qualities. Their different patterns of behaviour are observed and categorised as leadership styles.

(4) Situational Leadership – sees leadership as situation specific – where the style of leadership is adapted to the requirements of the context in which it is exercised.

(5) Contingency Theory – is a development of the situational theory – focusing on the situational variables which will determine the most appropriate or effective leadership style to fit the specific circumstances at that time.

(6) Transactional Theory – emphasises the importance of the transaction – or relationship – that takes place between the leader and the led. It focuses on the perceived mutual benefits derived from that relationship whereby the leader dispenses favours in the form of tangible and intangible rewards in return for the commitment, loyalty or [at least] compliance of his or her followers.

(7) Transformational Theory – The central concept here is change and the role of leadership in envisioning and implementing the transformation of organisational performance

(8) Servant Leadership – emphasises the leaders’ duty to serve his/her followers – leadership thus arises out of a desire to serve rather than a desire to lead. It is a practical philosophy which supports people who choose to serve first, and then lead as a way of expanding service to individuals and institutions. It encourages collaboration, trust, foresight, listening, and the ethical use of power and empowerment.

(9) Dispersed Leadership – an ‘informal’, ’emergent’ or ‘dispersed’ leadership, this approach argues a less formalised model of leadership where the leaders’ role is dissociated from the organisational hierarchy. Individuals at all levels in the organisation and in all roles can exert leadership influence over their colleagues and thus influence the overall leadership of the organisation.

(10) Primal Leadership – refers to the emotional dimension of leadership. The articulation of a message that resonates with their followers’ emotional reality, with their sense of purpose-and so to move people in a positive direction.

I know it is now fashionable and politically correct to vote for theories 6 – 10, and that for many years it has been fashionable to assume that inherited traits were far less important than learned and situational factors in those people fulfilling leadership roles. However, the science and study of behavioural genetics is gradually refocusing attention on the fact that far more is to do with our genes and our inherited traits and characteristics than has been assumed or accepted for several decades.

So I have to say that the latest research on genetics does appear to indicate what I have long believed – namely that leaders are born not made – so I would go for an element of theory 1 with Genghis Khan. I am not sure how appropriate the Mother Theresa number 8 style is for a business environment? But maybe elements of this are covered in 7 and 10?

Clearly, there are strengths in all of the types of leadership – but in the present turbulent climate, I personally will nail my colours to the mast and select a combination of type 7 and 10 – because transformational and primal leadership qualities applied in a change management context are ideally suited to the holistic and wide view perspective of a programme based approach to change management and, as such, would form key elements of successful strategies for managing change.

And, to ensure that you are employing successful strategies for managing change – that are appropriate to your organisation – you need to know how to apply: (a) these transformational and primal leadership styles, AND (b) how to apply the supporting programme management based processes – that will ensure that you avoid the catastrophic failure rate of ALL business change initiatives.

For more on this: “What is effective leadership?”

Equip yourself to avoid the 70% failure rate of all change initiatives with the “Practitioners’ Masterclass – Leading your people through change, putting it all together and managing the whole messy business.”

Stephen Warrilow, based in Bristol, works with companies across the UK providing specialist support to directors delivery significant change initiatives. Stephen has 25 years cross sector experience with 100+ companies in mid range corporate, larger SME and corporate environments.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Stephen_Warrilow/361805