Six Dimensions of Effective Leadership: Influence Process
Prior to beginning work on this assignment, read and review Chapters 1-8 of Introduction to Leadership: Concepts and Practice. Additionally, review the Week 3 - Weekly Lecture.
By the end of Week 3, you have covered many topics about leadership (Chapters 1-8). You have taken self-assessment surveys, created journal entries on leadership, and have begun to understand some of your own strengths and weaknesses with regard to leadership.
This week you learned that leadership is a skill that can be learned, the importance of developing a strong vision, and the relationship between effective leadership and productive work.
Address all of these bullets (create an appropriate APA heading):
Identify which one of the six dimensions you have learned about (i.e., trait, ability, skill, behavior, relationship, and process) seems to be the most obvious for the leader you have chosen to research for your final project.
Describe the biggest challenge this leader had to face and how was it overcome.
Identify the trait or skill the person used to overcome this challenge.
Explain if the leader was successful in overcoming the challenge and why or why not.
Describe the style of leadership this person exhibits (i.e., authoritarian, democratic, or laissez-faire).
Provide specific examples for why you chose this style.
Explain emotional intelligence and its importance as a leadership skill.
Explain the importance of a leader following and communicating a vision and setting the tone.
It is strongly encouraged that you receive feedback on your paper using the University of Arizona Global Campus Writing Center Paper Review before submitting this assignment. It is recommended that you submit your paper for a paper review at least two days before your assignment is due in order to receive feedback and implement it into your paper before submitting your paper to Waypoint. For instructions on how to use this feature, please review the Writing Center’s Paper Review (Links to an external site.) resource.
The Leadership Styles, Skills, and Vision paper
Must be four to six double-spaced pages in length (not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA Style (Links to an external site.) as outlined in the Writing Center’s APA Formatting for Microsoft Word (Links to an external site.) resource.
Must include a separate title page with the following:
Title of paper in bold font
Space should appear between the title and the rest of the information on the title page.
Student’s name
Name of institution
Course name and number
Instructor’s name
Due date
Must utilize academic voice. See the Academic Voice (Links to an external site.) resource for additional guidance.
Must include an introduction and conclusion paragraph. Your introduction paragraph needs to end with a clear thesis statement that indicates the purpose of your paper.
For assistance on writing Introductions & Conclusions (Links to an external site.) as well as Writing a Thesis Statement (Links to an external site.), refer to the Writing Center resources.
Must use at least three scholarly or credible sources in addition to the course text.
The Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.) table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
To assist you in completing the research required for this assignment, view The University of Arizona Global Campus Library Quick ‘n’ Dirty (Links to an external site.) tutorial, which introduces the University of Arizona Global Campus Library and the research process, and provides some library search tips.
Must document any information used from sources in APA Style as outlined in the Writing Center’s APA: Citing Within Your Paper (Links to an external site.) guide.
Must include a separate references [page or slide] that is formatted according to APA Style as outlined in the Writing Center. See the APA: Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.) resource in the Writing Center for specifications.
Six Dimensions of Effective Leadership: Influence Process
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Introduction
The six dimensions of effective leadership are trait, ability, skill, behavior, relationship, and process. Ideally, every leader has a certain quality that makes him or her stand out, and engaging the right traits at the right time and place is vital in leadership. More so, leadership is an ability, and the power to step out and lead is equally fundamental. Skills as a dimension refer to the competence to know the means and methods of leading. Those who learn from experiences can often acquire great leadership skills. Finally, leadership as a behavior refers to what leaders do to become effective leaders. Good leaders understand the difference between task behaviors and process behaviors and use both interchangeably to drive towards set goals.
Furthermore, leadership is a relationship process where communication between leader and follower is vital. Good leaders realize that they affect and get affected by those they lead but importantly, their situations affect them all. As such, leadership ought to be available to everyone. Of more importance, leadership as an influence process remains the most important of the six dimensions of effective leadership. Leadership is not just the traits, behavior, or skills owned by the leader but a day-to-day interaction and influence between leader and follower. Leaders have to direct their efforts towards influencing followers to accomplish goals.
Leadership as an Influence Process
The influence process is a key dimension for effective leadership. Regardless of where one leads, whether in a big or small company, the main goal is always to influence people to behave and act in ways consistent with organizational goals. Whenever leaders attempt to influence their followers, there are always four outcomes: compliance, identification, private acceptance, and resistance (Fiaz, Su, & Saqib, 2017). With compliance, followers do what is expected. With identification, followers tend to do what is expected largely because they identify or like the leader. With private acceptance, followers do what is expected because they believe it is the right thing. Finally, followers often can resist influence, especially when the connection between leader and follower is poor. According to Jex and Britt (2008), leaders can influence followers by using nine tactics. First, adopting the inspirational appeal by making proposals that arouse employees' enthusiasm by appealing to their ideals, values, and aspirations to bring out the best results. Secondly, leaders can influence through consultation where leaders seek employee's participation in planning, change, or any activity. Thirdly, leaders can influence through rational persuasion whereby using logical and factual arguments to persuade employees to buy an idea is adopted.
Fourthly, leaders can engage in integration where leaders learn to put employees in good moods before asking for requests or proposing things (Fiaz, Su, & Saqib, 2017). Fifthly, using personal appeal to capture employees' loyalty and friendship can work. Forming coalitions, legitimizing things, exchange, and integration are the 6th, 7th,8th, and 9th approaches, respectively. Ideally, what works well for many leaders is inspirational appeals and consultations because through these two, leaders get the opportunity to engage with employees personally. Using tactics such as legitimization, coalition forming, or pressure triggers resistance and demotivation among employees. Effective leaders desist from using influencing tactics that involve persistent monitoring of employees, threats, or demands.
Challenges Faced In Influencing Process And How To Overcome
One challenge faced by a leader trying to influence followers is resistance. Resistance to influence is often a result of many organizational challenges, including organizational politics, poor communication, low commitment, autocratic leadership, discrimination, unclear vision, or a climate of mistrust. Employees will comply and self-identify with leadership instructions or visions when there is greater trust within the organization when they feel less threatened and comfortable with the leader (Al Khajeh, 2018). Mutual trust between the leader and follower is a recipe for fast and effective influence. Ideally, good leadership starts with fostering good relationships, establishing strong communications, avoiding discrimination, building employee commitment, setting up a vision, and convincing followers to follow through with facts and reason. Influence often fails when decisions are made with little consultation of employees.
Little or no consultation fuels organizational politics, which often slows progress and decision-making. In most cases, organizational politics trigger unhealthy competition, increase work turnout or even lead to frustration of some key employees. Managing organization politics and increasing employee commitment starts with leaders setting good examples such as handling conflict constructively, teaching employees about decorum and collaboration, and communicating objectively and factually (Al Khajeh, 2018). Importantly, overcoming every challenge that results from influencing is best handled through first realizing that everyone is human. The human aspect of leadership makes it possible to deal with every problem rationally and methodically. Both leaders and followers are people,...