Leadership Value

Leadership has been a common term and everyone has his or her own understanding of its meaning. Most of the time we understood leadership on one’s strong character combined with charisma. But this understanding is faulty as leadership is not a sole function of individual charisma or talent but a collective activity.

Gilbert Fairnholm defines leadership as an interactive function of a leader and several followers jointly engaged” (p. 8) which means that there is a collective effort in terms of value and trust enough to prove each one’s confidence in participating in collective activity.

Value on the other hand derived its roots from French and English word courage or valor. In business world, value means worth thus according to Kim S. Cameron, “value creation is the objective of every enterprise, every worker, and every leader and all employees are judged by their ability to create value” (p. 4). Leadership value therefore could mean a collected courageous undertakings being inspired by the leader’s own courage or the worth of having a leader in a collective effort.

The Leadership Principles

Joseph A. Heim pointed out five principles of leadership that should be implemented in order to have a “successful management of people and technology” (p. 161). The first principle, the people understands the vision. Heim explained that when people understands the vision or the larger task of an enterprise, and are given the right information, the resources, and the responsibility, they will do the right thing (p. 161).

The second principle is empowerment of individual. Heim noted that empowered people—and of course with a good leadership–empowered groups will have not only the ability but also the desire to participate in the decision process. Heim explained that the level of involvement will enable and encourage the individual to make decision rather than adopt a passive or reactive attitude, waiting to be told what to do.

The third principle is a comprehensive and effective communications network. Heim emphasized that this network should distribute knowledge and information widely; embracing the openness and trust that allow the individual to feel empowered to affect the real problems.

The fourth is integrated enterprise, it is the result of “democratization and dissemination of information through the network” (p. 161) in all directions irrespective of organizational position. The result of these first four principles, which is distributed decision-making, is the fifth principle. Heim pointed out that “information freely shared with empowered people who are motivated to make decisions will naturally distribute the decision making process through the entire organization.

Leadership and Values

According to Jeswal Salacuse, “Leadership express a complex and at the same time flexible concept” (p. 19). Salacuse noted that the English word “leader” is derived from the old English laedan which means to show the way, to be ahead of  moving a group of people willing toward and objective. It therefore implies the existence of followers.

Like leadership, everyone may have already basic idea of what values are. Dran, Gila M. Von, and Jennifer Cargill point out that Values “are broad general beliefs about the way people should behave, or about some end state they should attain” (p. 121).

They explained that people form their values in the same way in which they develop their personality, thus values are conclusive beliefs individual develop gradually about what is true or right or good about their world. They pointed out “values come from the early conditioning, experience, and significant events in one’s life” (p. 121) and are the criteria for selecting actions, goals, and methods.

Leadership Traits

Pieter John Diederik Drenth, Henk Thiery, and Charles Johanes Wolff, pointed out that leadership traits “is founded on the assumption that leaders poses certain personal qualities, such as courage, intelligence, strength of character, vision, or charisma, which followers do not possess” (p. 326) But this assumption waned because according to Drent, Thiery, and Wolff, “it has proved impossible to find a single set of characteristic that enables a clear and reliable distinction to be drawn between… leaders and followers” (p. 326).

But recent study admits that certain characteristics are only important in certain circumstances such as in athletic or sports. Drent, Thiery and Wolff pointed out the studies conducted in 1981 by Bass which concludes that “Leadership as such is not a property of an individual’s personality, but there are nonetheless certain fixed personal characteristic that seem to play part in the exercise of leadership” (p. 326).

Leadership Skill

Like leadership and values, skill is a familiar term. Skill is the ability to do something well. Robert Eugene Lefton and Victor Buzzota identified four basic leadership skills that a leader needs. First, The sizing-up skills or the ability to observe what do in work situations as objectively as you can; Second, Communication skills or the ability to find out what others think and for getting your own ideas across, Third, Motivational skills or the ability to create an environment in which people do what they are capable of because they have a compelling reason to do so, and fourth, Adaptive skills or the ability to relate to people as a unique individual.

Advance Leadership Skills

Advance leadership skills according to William Christ, are “blends of knowledge, skill, and attitude and require greater levels of behavioral flexibility and adaptability” (p. 29). Below are some of the advance leadership scales that Christ delineated. (1) Manage and resolve conflicts effectively, (2) Develop messages that influence attitudes, beliefs, and actions, (3) Ability to demonstrate credibility and ability to manage multiple communications effectively, (4) Creative management skills, and (5) interpersonal skills.

Leadership Behavior

Leadership behavior according Manuel London is the result of perceiving situations, relating situational perceptions to accumulated knowledge, and then using scripts to guide the production of situationally appropriate behavior.  Studies on leadership behavior shows that exemplary leaders always balanced high task orientation and high person orientation, according to Gary Monroe Crow, Joseph Mathews, and Lloyed Mc Cleary, task orientation focused such behaviors as planning, monitoring and coordinating, while person-orientation focused on such behavior as informing of decisions and praising their accomplishment (p. 11).

Assessing Leadership and measuring its Effect

Assessing leadership according to Daniel Goleman , Rechard Boyatzis, and Annie Mckee can be done through a series of interviews  and observations by a professional executive coach. Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee point out that a “typical process include conversations about the leaders career and life history, discussion of current managerial and leadership challenges, and discussion of the organizational-level issues as well as including things such as climate, politics, and system” (p. 228).

Novick, Morrow, and Mays discussed measuring leadership effect.  According to them, one question that a leader should ask is, ‘How am I doing as a leader?’  They suggested that by using psychological assessment instruments can help measure leadership effect or effectiveness.  This instrument that help assess one’s self and appreciate the contribution of others is available in many forms.

Work Cited

1. Cameron, Kim S. Competing Values Leadership: Creating Value in Organization.
2. Christ, William. Leadership in Times of Change: A Handbook for Communication and Media Administrators (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998)
3. Crow, Gary Monroe, et.al. Leadership: A Relevant and Realistic Role for Principals. (Eye on Education, Inc., 1996).
4. Drenth, Pieter Johan Drederick, et.al., Organizational Psychology. (Psychology Press, 1998).
5. Fairnholm, Gilbert W. Leadership and Culture of Trust. (Praeger/Greenwood, 1994).
6. Heim, Joseph. Manufacturing Systems: Foundations of World Class Practice. (National Academies, 1992).
7. Goleman Daniel, et.al. Primal Leadership: Learning to Lead. (Harvard Business School Press, 2004).
8. Lefton, Robert Eugene and Buzzota, Victor. Leadership Through People Skills. (McGraw-Hill Professional, 2004).
9. London, Manuel. How People Evaluate Others in Organization. (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001).
10. Novick, Lloyd, et.al. Public Health Administration: Principles for Population Based Management. (Jones and Bartlett, 2007)
11. Salacuse, Jeswal W. Leading Leaders: How to Manage Smart, Talented, Rich, and Powerful People. (AMARCOM Div. American Management Association, 2006)