Background
Leadership scholars recognize that the most successful leaders revitalize and transform their organizations. Accordingly, these leaders? orientation is referred to as ?transformational leadership?. Transformational leadership is perceived as a leadership approach that causes change in individuals and in groups. In its ideal form, it creates valuable and positive change in the followers with the end goal of developing followers into leaders. Enacted in its authentic form, transformational leadership enhances the motivation, morale and performance of followers through a variety of mechanisms. These include connecting the follower’s sense of identity and self to the mission and the collective identity of the organization; being a role model for followers that inspires them; challenging followers to take greater ownership for their work, and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of followers, so the leader can align followers with tasks that optimize their performance.
Required Reading
Carless, S. A., Wearing, A. J., & Mann, L. (2000) . A short measure of transformational leadership. Journal of Business and Psychology, 14, 389-405.
Assignment
You are asked to read the article by Carless, Wearing, & Mann, L. (2000). Then after having a very clear idea about the meaning of the seven behavioral manifestations of transformational leadership, asses your transformational leadership score following these rules:
Give yourself a score on each of the seven dimensions between 1 (rarely or never) to 5 (very frequently).
Sum up your scores and divide them by 7 to get your average score on the scale.
Ask someone who knows you well (preferably someone who works with you) to rate your leadership behavior on the scale and calculate the average score.
Compare the results obtained by yourself and your friend/peer.
What do you think about your scores on that scale? Are they high/low? What does it say about your leadership style?
Based on the results you obtained, on what aspect of your leadership behavior you think you should focus to improve your leadership style? How this might translate into actual behaviors at the workplace? What might be the results of such an improvement?
It is really important that you get a second opinion about your leadership behavior from someone who knows you, preferably in the work context. If for some reason you can’t get a second opinion as part of this exercise, be sure that you explain well why it’s not possible. Just ignoring this part of the exercise will cost you part of a grade.
Your paper should be short (2-3 pages, not including the cover sheet, references, and assessment sheet) and to the point. You are expected to deal with these issues in an integrated fashion, rather than treating them as a series of individual questions to be answered one by one and left at that.
Keys to the Assignment
The key aspects of this assignment that should be covered in your paper include:
Completion of the assessment according to the guidelines and interpreting the results.
Including the actual instrument and results.
Based on your results, explain how you could improve your leadership behaviors and under what conditions.
Based on your results, explain how improving your leadership behaviors might translate into actual behaviors at the workplace? And what might be the results of such an improvement?
Assignment Expectations
Your paper will be evaluated on the following points:
Precision – Does the paper address the question(s) or task(s)?
Clarity – Is the writing clear and the concepts articulated properly? Are paraphrasing and synthesis of concepts the primary means of response to the questions, or are excessive use of quotations how thoughts are conveyed?
Breadth – Is the full breadth of the subject, i.e., the keys to the assignment, addressed?
Depth – Does the paper address the topic in sufficient depth, and include the background readings and other background resources as references?
Organization – Is the paper written well? Does the grammar, spelling, and vocabulary appropriate to graduate level work? Are headings included in all papers greater than 2 pages?
Referencing (citations and references) – Does the paper use citations and quotation marks where appropriate? Are the references from the background readings and assignment used and properly cited? Are all references listed in the bibliography used and referred to via citation?
Application – Are the concepts of the module appropriately applied to the subject organization?