Week 2 Team a Weekly Reflection

Week 2 Team Weekly Reflection

Adesola Elijah; Ashley Metz; Allison Wright, Tremaine Russell

LDR/ 531

September 26, 2016

Dr. Patricia Anderson

Week 2 Team Weekly Reflection

During week 2, Team A was challenged with discussing the topic of Leadership, what leadership style and characteristics works best for each team member, and how this week’s topic could be applicable to our respective fields. The contributions of each team member are found below:

Adesola indicated- There are different theories that attempt to explain different leadership practices and theories. The situational leadership model states that there is no one form of leadership attribute that define a specific leader (McCleskey, 2014). Rather leaders change their specific attributes based on the conditions or situations they find themselves. The transformational theory defines specific leaders as being inspirational and motivational focusing on people rather than the task while transactional leadership favour tasks ahead of people (Barling, Christie, & Hoption, 2011). Transformational leadership is associated with most concepts that relate to leadership compared to  transactional leadership which focuses on concepts that relate to managerial tendencies (Denis, Langley, & Sergi, 2012). Contingency leadership follows a similar approach to situational leadership though it confers specific traits associated with certain forms of leadership. Charismatic leadership is based on a leader branding themselves and creating an image that readily attracts followers (McCleskey, 2014).

Leadership traits and theories have been used since time immemorial to determine specific traits that are better suited in leading any organisation. Today, different organisations select their leaders based on certain traits that have been well explained and captured among the leadership theories (McCleskey, 2014). Some of the above named theories have gone forth to be linked to specific leaders across the entire continent.

Allison indicated - I had a hard time with the mentor portion. I asked my boss to be my mentor and that works out great as I was told on Wednesday that they promoted me from a lead to a Supervisor. So she is helping me in my transition from just supporting the team and giving direction to actually doing the everyday management, HR, payroll, etc. The problem I have is I am not sure exactly what to talk to her about each week.

In addition, a couple of weeks ago my son broke my nose in one of his behavioral fits. Well I had emergency surgery on Friday to fix an issue that was caused from that accident resulting in limited computer access. My mom brought it to me so I can finish up my homework for the week and I could possibly be released by Tuesday.

Ashley indicated - This week’s information is very interesting to say the least; the idea that not all managers are leaders can be hard for one to understand. Most people would assume that a manager is a leader; however it is possible to have a good manager who is not a leader and a regular employee who is a leader. Leadership is something that assists others with their work and how they handle a situation, it is guidance and understanding so that you become more acquainted with the position or task at hand, it has nothing to do with your title provided.  It is important that organizations are able to realize this and understand that managers do not necessarily have to be leaders but they need to have some of the traits so that they are able to get people interested in changing for the better and follow them by example.