Leadership and Communication Flashcards
What is leadership
Leadership is the process of influencing others to achieve group or organisational goals.
Compare managers and leaders
Managers and leaders both do the right thing.
Managers are short term whereas leaders are long term.
Managers make the means, leaders make the ends.
Managers problem solve, whereas leaders inspire and motivate.
Explain the Trait (Characteristics) Theory
Traits are stable characteristics.
Effective leaders possess similar traits such are a desire to lead, drive, knowledge of business, cognitive ability, emotional stability, self-confidence and honesty.
Explain leadership behaviour
Initiating structure is the degree to which a leader structures the roles of followers by setting goals, giving directions, setting deadlines and assigning tasks.
Consideration is the extent to which a leader is friendly, approachable and supportive and shows concern for employees.
Explain Strategic Leadership
The ability to anticipate, envision, maintain flexibility, think strategically and work with others to initiate changes that will create a positive future for an organisation.
Explain Visionary Leadership
Creates a positive image of the future that motivates staff and provides direction for planning and goal setting.
Explain Charismatic Leadership
Have strong, confident, dynamic personalities that attract followers.
Strong relationship between leaders and followers.
They have a clear vision based on values, consistent with a vision, communication high performance and display confidence in followers’ abilities.
Compare Ethical vs Unethical Charismatics
Ethical charismatics: ○ Developmental opportunities ○ Negative and positive feedback ○ Recognise others ○ Share information
Unethical charismatics: ○ Control and manipulate followers ○ Selfish ○ Only want positive feedback Moral standards that put themselves before others.
Explain Transactional Leadership
Exchange where followers are rewarded/punished for their performance.
Explain Transformational Leadership
Creates awareness of purpose and mission. Gets employees to see past their own needs to those of the group.
What are the elements of Transformational Leadership
○ Charisma or idealised influence: Transformational leaders act as a role models for their followers.
○ Inspirational Motivation: Followers are motivated and inspired by providing meaning to their work.
○ Intellectual stimulation: Followers are encourages to be creative and innovative. They are encouraged to look at problems in different light, even if it differs from the leaders ideas.
Individualised Consideration: Creating learning opportunities for individuals and accepting differences. This is achieved by being a good learner.
Define Perception
A process in which individuals attend to, organise, interpret and retain information from their environments.
Define Perception Filters
Personality, psychology or experienced-based difference that influences people to ignore or pay attention to particular stimulus.
Perception Problems: Selective Perception
Accepts objects and information that is consistent with values/beliefs and screens out inconsistent information.
Perception Problems: Closure
Fills gaps of missing information by assuming what we don’t know is consistent with that is known.
Perception of Others: Attribution Theory
Attribution Theory: Humans need to understand causes of other people’s behaviour.
○ Internal Attribution: Behaviour is voluntary
○ External Attribution: Behaviour is involuntary
○ Defensive Bias: People seeing themselves as similar to someone who is having difficulty.
○ Fundamental Attribution Error: People ignore external causes of behaviour and attribute other people’s actions to internal causes.
Explain Perception of Self
Self serving basis: People attribute success to themselves and failure with the external environment.
What is the Communication Process
The communication process is the process of transferring information or meaning from one individual or group to another.
Explain the steps in the Communication Process
○ Sender: Begins with a sender thinking of a message that he or she wants to convey to another person.
○ Encoding: Putting a message into a written, verbal or symbolic form that can be recognised and understood by the receiver.
○ Transmit the Message: The sender then transmits the message via communication channels.
○ Decoding: The process by which the receiver translates the form of a message into understood message.
○ Feedback: The last step is feedback is sent to the sender that indicates the receiver’s understanding of the message.
What is ‘noise’ in relation to the communication process
‘Noise’ is anything that interferes with the transmission of the intended message.
Noise can occur is the sender is unsure what message to communicate, not clearly encoded, the wrong channel is chosen, improperly decoded and the receiver lacks experience or time.
Explain Formal Communication Channels
Official approved communication channels
○ Downward Communication: Flows from higher to lower levels
○ Upward communication: Flows from lower to higher levels.
○ Horizontal communication: Flows from mangers and workers at the same level.
Formal communication can be improved by:
○ Decreasing reliance on downward communication.
○ Increase favour for upward communication.
○ Encourage horizontal communication.
○ Awareness of problems.
Explain Informal Communication Channels
Messages from employee to employee outside of formal channels, aka ‘through the grapevine.’
It is highly accurate, information is timely, senders seek feedback and accuracy can be verified. Managing organisational grapevines: ○ Do not withhold information ○ Do not punish those who use it ○ Embrace the grapevine Utilise it as a source of information
Coaching Communications
To improve the person’s on the job performance or behaviour.
Counselling Communications
Discussing non-work related issues that can affect someone’s performance at work.
