Understanding_Leadership_Styles

Understanding Leadership Styles Section 1 AC1.1 Describe the factors that will influence the choice of leadership styles or behaviour in workplace situations. The organisation I work for is called the Community Involvement project (CIP).We deal with all communities who need interpreting services, guidance to other services such as benefit applications and where to go for education studies. We also have workshops and hold events for health awareness for cancer, diabetes, strokes and heart attack. We have started to include the deaf community as well. My choice of leadership styles are consulting and selling. With these two styles I feel I can communicate and explain to my staff more properly and make them understand what the job entails and make them more comfortable to approach me for help and advice regarding the job. This way, I feel more comfortable and can get to know them whilst at the same time asses and look for their strengths and weaknesses. This gives them the opportunity to also understand me and my style of approach with them. Section1AC1.2 Explain why these leadership styles or behaviours are likely to have a positive or negative effect on individual and group behaviour. My preferred style of leadership is more influenced by the collaborative approach. I sat a test which lets you know what influencing style you use with your staff. The test is called influencing styles. I found out that I was influenced by the collaborative style more than any others. The styles for my factors are consulting and selling. My first factor of style is consulting. That means that I talk to my staff and ask for their opinions and ask questions. Then after listening to their opinions, I make my decision. This helps me to assess them and at the same time gives my staff more confidence .Also they are then more able to approach to me more easily. When I speak to my staff- I speak in an informal style. By using this manner they are less likely to feel unhappy or insulting. In this style they are more likely to feel that can come to me and not feel uncomfortable .They would hopefully ask me for any help or problems they have regarding their work. This is where I can also build their trust and get rid of any uneasiness which could cause stress. To me, it is very important for me to help alleviate any stresses which could well affect their concentration and their ability to perform their work. The negative side of this is that my staff can often bring their private life issues with them into work, which gives them more stress and they can lose their concentration and ability to work sufficiently. In which case that affects their performance in work they are doing. Second Factor My second factor is selling, where staff is unable but willing. Followers lack the ability due to lack of experience, but are enthusiastic for work. Some of the volunteers lack experience and lack of employment histories. Also if they have no other income, my organisation cannot pay their expenses and that can cause difficulties. This is something we are working towards. All our organisations volunteers are qualified and have level 3 community interpreter’s certificates. Our volunteers are very enthusiastic and willing to do the job appropriately, however due to lack of experience they intend to get nervous very quickly. The negative side is that they sometimes do not interpret properly due to lack of experience and have problems with right terminology. The second problem is that they occasionally do not like being told what and how to do the job correctly. This could be due to having low confidence due to their inexperience. They can feel angry and upset, some of the volunteers start sulking. With this problem I find it difficult to explain to them I am here to help them with any difficulty they have regarding the work. At the present moment I am the only person who is experienced in interpreting. The effects of adopting a named style with an individual and on the volunteers as a team In our organisation I use various styles and methods to communicate with my volunteers. If I am in a group I use to use the selling style, but then I tried to using the consulting style which was more effective and found it easier to communicate with volunteers. In one circumstance I had to organise a project regarding helping refugees and asylum seekers and find out what difficulties there were having within the community especially the youth. Our task was to get some volunteers to go to the refugees and asylum seeker communities and ask them what problems there were having. I held a meeting with all my volunteers and asked them for their opinions and how can we help them. Some of the volunteers had experience working with refugees and asylum seekers, but were not confident and some of the volunteers had no experience or qualification, but had enthusiasm. The project was called Refugees Empowerment Project (REP) and Refugees and Asylum Support Project (RASP). Some of the volunteers like Tinta, Mama Christine, Zak and Fozia they all had experience but did not have confidence. I used the consulting style and delegated the task to each volunteers. We made two groups one was men group and the other was women group. The reason was that men group can talk to men and women group would talk women. In the men group there were Tinta and Zak and women group there were Mama Christine and Fozia. Their job was to talk to the communities and find out what help they needed. By using consulting style the group worked really hard and the result successful. As the result for the whole group they all gained confidence and experience. The effects the whole group was that they gained confidence and experience and became more comfortable to approach me for any problems regarding work. But I still had problem with Khalid he was who use to moan and start sulking. With him I used the directive style which gave me less stress and tension. Every time I give him the task now it is always directive style. Overall now the volunteers’ feedback is that they are more confident and their behaviour is much calmer and less stressful and looks forward to new challenges. Section 2AC2.1 Assess own leadership behaviours and potential in the context of a particular leadership model and own organisation’s working practices and culture, using feedback from others. My model of leadership is servant leadership. The reason being is that I listen to the volunteers and their problems. I look at the problem from all angles and find the correct solution for that volunteer. With some of the volunteers I have to explain to them in their level of understanding, which is hard sometimes. This can discourage them at times and can affect their confidence. I always tell our volunteers to look at me as a colleague and a friend when they have any issues regarding their work and most important is they are not frightened to ask for advice or help. The feedback from other colleagues they have told me that I am too soft with the volunteers. They have told to me that when it comes to leadership I should keep a gap between myself and the volunteers so they know that you are the leader and that you are in charge for all the decisions. The feedback from my superior said that I should allow my volunteers the opportunity to talk about their experiences and then share their lessons they have learnt to improve his leadership. Self-assessment against the other aspects of servant leadership (such as foresight As self-assessment and reflection, the trait theory may suggest that I may not be suitable or have all the qualities that a leader should have like empathy, awareness, persuasion, and building community or to a sufficient degree My own assessment is that I am more naturally to use collaborative influence and feel uncomfortable using a directive approach, however I do recognise that sometimes I have used directive approach depending on each individual and situation. The reason I adopted the collaborative style was that I wanted my volunteers to approach me and help them in any way from building confidence and trust me with all the decision which I make regarding their task and give more motivation. I asked some of my volunteers to answer a questionnaire. The questionnaire was influencing style questionnaire by Dr Peter Honey about me. The result were that five members suggested that I “frequently” used the “directive” style (68, 70, 73 74, and 76).Two suggested that I frequently used “collaborative” style (71 and 75). The directive approach is easier to achieve in the role of culture. When I was in the army we used to get orders from our commanders which were passed down from one rank to another. As a corporal in the army I was detailed what to do every week and had to follow it. The structure was highly defined with control and used formal communication systems and procedures were already in place. My assessment of the organisation I work with at the moment is that it could be viewed as having a person culture with many features of a task cultures. The organisation is run entirely by volunteers and peer leaders. The volunteers are from different communities who want to develop their talents and interest with the organisation’s aims and objectives. The volunteers are very important to our organisation because it needs their individual talents and exhibit creative input and output to develop experience. I have found it easier to achieve better input and output and even better outcome by using the collaborative influence team volunteers The leadership model I adopted appeals to me is a servant leadership. The example of the characteristic I am practicing and developing. These are some of the characteristic which I am practicing and developing are Listening, empathy, awareness and building community, our main objectives are helping all the communities from different back ground like refugees and asylum seekers to our local communities in prevention and awareness of health and legal matters. * Listen - We listen to the communities what help they need like having difficulty when the government does not allow them to work while they have not received the indefinite stay in this country. * Awareness – All the volunteers in our organisation have to be aware of everything from equality and diversity to awareness of the communities we help. * Building communities – Identify and contact other organisation and agencies we work with and build bridges and relations in developing with providing more and events to make our communities live a better and long life. Section 2AC2.2 Describe appropriate actions to enhance own leadership behaviour in the context of the particular leadership model. The problem my volunteers have is their terminology is very weak and also lack of experience. In this situation I will send my volunteers on a short course so that the volunteers can learn the terminology of their expertise, like interpreting in the NHS where they will learn the medical terminology or interpreting in the public services like the courts and magistrate and using the appropriate terminology. With the lack of experience, I will try to send my volunteers with an experienced person to places like seminars and events where they can gain experience, so they can build their own confidence at the same time. As from the feedback I will be showing our volunteers that they can approach me but with more authority and at the same time still be approachable and informal. The feedback from my superior means I will be following his advice regarding giving the volunteers the opportunity to talk about their experiences and share the lessons they have learnt to improve my leadership. After looking at the feedback from my colleagues and my superior, I will be following the advice given and see if I can improve more from the feedback and become a good leader and a role model for my colleagues and our volunteers and the organisation. At the present time our organisation is looking vulnerable, due to lack of funding opportunities. We are applying to organisations that fund projects like ours like CVS and the Big lottery fund in order to gain security for our future. This in itself creates insecurity throughout the organisation and cause direct stress on all employees and volunteers. Describe in more detail exactly how you are going to remain approachable but with more authority The method I will be using to show my volunteers that I will be approachable is by talking to them more in an informal manner and by asking them more of the work they are doing and what progress they are making in their daily tasks, talk more about general things such as did they have a nice weekend, when we send them out to work as an interpreting did they find their destination without any problem and how they did in interpreting etc. By doing this thing I am hoping to build the trust and relation with my volunteers. Write down the actions and the behaviour To improve my leadership I will take these actions to enhance my behaviour as follows: * Learn how to control my anger and how to control my stress by doing a course on these subjects. * Develop new techniques in the areas which I do not have experience in such as strategic planning and business planning to help me to plan my organisation future. * Cultivate better and working relationship with my colleagues and other volunteers and my manager by having more one to one meetings * Encourage the volunteers and myself to follow the organisation culture by being more open. * To build more trust with the volunteers, with the manager and myself.