Part 1
Introduction
As a part of this assignment, the writer has identified an individual in his community that he believes to have leadership characteristics. He (the writer) personally idealizes several of his qualities. His name is “Christopher Plummer”, and he is Operational Manager at a well-reputed real estate marketing agency. Personal information about him is also described in the table provided below:
Part 2
Interview Questions
The writer has conducted an interview with Christopher Plummer to build an insight into his approach to the concept of leadership in a precise way. He was asked the set of questions given below, and detailed answers were collected against each of these questions:
How would you define leadership?
What are the chief characteristics of a leader to you?
What is the greatest leadership challenge that you ever faced in your life? What did you do? What was the result?
Describe your communication style?
How do/would you communicate your ideas if you intend to bring a critical change to an existing process or system of doing things?
What ethical approach do you use to motivate your taskforce to add value to the organization?
Analysis
Christopher responded comprehensively against each of the questions described above, and his answers provided several clues to his approach to leadership. According to Christopher, leadership refers to managing people by example and inspiration. He further adds that a good leader is one that motivates his followers to follow him instead of achieving this purpose through command and control.
These ideas are perfectly in line with the spirit of ‘transformational leadership’ that is the antithesis of a transactional approach to that. A transformational leader does not force his subordinates to follow him but makes them willing to do so in a more ethical way. He nurtures, among them, motivation through his inspirational style and brings change by creating and transferring a vision (Guay, 2013). The writer is also in agreement with the interviewee’s viewpoint on inspiration and motivation. However, he believes that utter suspension of command and control is also a threat to organizational performance, as it may make the staff take unfair advantage of it.
The greatest leadership challenge was faced by him when his individuals in his group on a certain project were not pulling their weight, and he could smell failure. The situation was faced due to conflicts among them, as the members came from different ethnic groups. He implemented a reward and punishment system at a later stage, but it ended in failure. The writer believes that Christopher should have let the group passed through the stages of ‘norming’ and ‘forming’ to manage the diversity through proper interpersonal communication. In that way, the group would have systematically entered the phase of performing to avoid the catastrophe that it ultimately faced (Lee, and Gill, 2013).
The interviewee simply replied to the fourth question that he believed in face-to-face and direct verbal communication and did not rely on phone calls or emails for most of his purposes. It confirms his belief in motivating people through interpersonal communication by following the transformational style of leadership (Guay, 2013).
As for his response to the fifth question, the interviewee believes in taking all the stakeholders including employees at all level, managers, and any other concerned entity into confidence prior to the implementation of any critical change. It is indicative of his comprehensive approach to ethics. However, it does not properly align with his definition of leadership that requires him transferring his vision for change into his subordinates and utilizing them as tools to achieve that vision. Merely convincing them through presentations and other methods does not comply with ethical mechanics of a transformational leader of which the writer is also a strong believer (Guay, 2013).
Finally, Christopher believed that a leader should enforce a system of performance appraisal integrated with a transparent mechanism of reward management to fetch maximum performance from his people. It is appreciated, but the only point of concern, as identified by the writer, is that he merely focuses on monetary benefits overlooking the importance of satisfying employees’ motivational and esteem needs. Hence, he does not comply with Maslow’s five level of motivation that brings him up to the highest level of performance. This is the satisfaction of motivational needs such as self-esteem and self-actualization, which is seen as more important than financial benefits (Kremer, and Hammond, 2013).
References
Guay, R. (2013). The Relationship Between Leader Fit and Transformational Leadership.PsycEXTRA Dataset. doi:10.1037/e518332013-479
Kremer, W., and Hammond, C. (2013). Abraham Maslow and the pyramid that beguiled business. BBC. Retrieved August 22, 2016, from http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23902918
Landis, E., Hill, D., and Harvey, S. (2014). A Synthesis of Leadership Theories and Styles. Journal of Management Policy and Practice, 15(2), 97-100.
Lee, P., and Gill, B. (2013) LEPs – forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning. In: Where next for Local Enterprise Partnerships? The Smith Institute, London, 36-45.
