Blog#12 – Different Leadership Style Between Men and Women

 

Difference between men and women is always an interesting topic for us to learn about, after we had discuss this in class with professor Feinberg, it became a topic that interested me most during these few days.  In last blog, I wrote about men and women who is the better leader. For this blog, I am going to talk about the different leadership styles between men  and women by watching this video. The following three parts are the main topics that I am interested in and I think can be related to things I have learned from CSR 309.

Emotions – In emotions part, men and women present a huge different. Women tend to express both positive and negative emotions more often, and tend to hold onto emotions longer than men do. There is a study mentioned in the video, this study shows two neutral faces, one of men and one of woman; however, the result shows that most people interpret the women to be sad face in the men to be happy. This study indicates that the negative stereotypes of women  being overly emotional is still prevalent as it is seen by this study.For man, language in emotion are in two different hemispheres of the brain, but for women, language and emotions are in the same part of the brain, which is why it is easier for them to talk about their emotions. In a leadership, men tend to be more competitive, women tend to be more equalizes. For female leaders, sometimes this is hard in the workplace because they do not feel as comfortable breaking and it may make them appear less confident.

Decision Making – Decision-making is a huge part in a leadership, being a good decision maker is a very important part to accomplish if you want to become a successful leader. Based on the information given from the video, men are tend to be the faster decision makers than women, since women tend to over analyze problems before and after they are made. Even know this not only can result in more careful consideration, but also it can make problem more difficult to solve.

Overall Strengths – Both men and women have their own strength in their type of leadership. Men strengths include being more individually focused, more autocratic and more directive. Men also tend to be less socially concerned and instead focus on the practical aspects of getting the job done. Women are more coach-oriented and value group participation, this requires greater communication skills. Women value the social aspect of leadership and incorporated into organizing and planning. This can make them better project managers

In summary, even though men have shown their advantages and superiorities in both emotion and  decision-making part, but in overall, women reveal their strengths in leadership, which can help them success in the leader position. Men and women have different leadership styles, and they have many difference in different aspects, but both of them can be a good leader if they make good use of their own strengths.

Blog#11 – Men or Women: Who’s the Better Leader?

Once, professor Feinberg talk about the topic of  “man vs. woman” in class, we had shared our opinions around four questions, which are what do men think of women,  what do women think of men, what do you want men to think of women and the last one, what do you want women to think of men. We picked the most interesting answer from each question and it was fun to hear many different interesting answers from everyone in the class.

This lecture shows that man and woman are two extremely different species, they have their own advantages at different fields. As everyone knows, the old folk concept emphasized that man should always be a leader instead woman. However, as time goes by, more and more female leader appeared, woman starts to have relatively equal opportunities to become a leader in a group or organization.

People may start asking that men and women, who is the better leader? This question interested me and I have found an article which might answer part of this question for us. This article is provided by PewResearch, by doing a nationwide survey, the results present many data to compare the different between male political leadership and female political leadership.

Figure.1

From the results of this survey, as we can see the percentage difference shows on the figure 1, except the decisive, hardworking and ambitious section, women part presents an absolute advantage on other sections such as  honest, compassionate and creative. According to the article, half of all adults think women are more honest than men, while there just one-in-five said that man are more honest. Honesty is one of the most important traits to political leadership, moreover, for the next most important leadership trait, intelligence, women outperform men again: 38 percent of respondents think women are smarter than men, while 14 percent said men are smarter.

Figure.2

Based on the data shows on the figure 2, something interesting happened. The funny part is women emerge from this survey like racks up better statistics but still loses the battle – only 6 percent of respondents said women generally make better political leader than man. But at the same time, there is a large majority of respondents, which is 69 percent, think that men and women make equally good political leaders, and this result show that there is a profound changes in women’s role in society over the past several decades.

Indeed, men and women have huge difference based on their natural instincts, they have their own traits, strength and weakness, but all of these should not becoming factors that may decide whether give or deprive one’s (men or women) opportunity of being a leader. They were born different, but they should not treat differently.

Blog#10 – 4 Ways For Leaders to Make a Decision

In last blog, I have written about what did I learned after I read an article which is related to decision-making issue for leaders. For this blog, I will stick with this topic, to write another decision-making technique related article. As I mentioned in last blog, after Professor Feinberg talked about the importance of decision-making in a leadership, I start to looked for some related articles about some ways for us to improve the skill to make good decisions.

Brent Gleeson

The contributor for this article names Brent Gleeson, he is a Navy SEAL and since SEALs are trained to be innovative free thinkers with the ability to make rational decisions with limited information under very stressful situation, thus, he did learned how to make quick decisions in those highly chaotic environment. Likewise, different kinds of leaders in different kinds of fields are faced with dozens of decisions to make frequently, to do so, many successful leaders in the world might tell you that they used to make wrong decisions before, but all of those wrong decisions and failures also lead to valuable learning experiences for them. Even though the decision that makes by leaders are not always right, but one of the missions for being a leader is to be the one to make decision, no matter how hard the situation is. Thus, it is very important for leaders to make decision quickly in order to keep the organization or team moving forward.

Through the SEAL experience and based on what he had learned, Gleeson indicated four basic decision-making styles that leaders can choose to use:

Command

Command decision-making means leaders makes decision alone, without consulting followers. Of course this is the most effective style for leaders to use, especially when the team is looking for the immediate guidance. It could be a decision that will lead the team being successful, but it could be also lead the team to the wrong side, it is very depends on the leader’s decision-making capability.

Collaborative

Collaborative decision-making is about leaders are still the final decision maker, but leaders will request and gather the feedback and insight from their team before they make decisions. In this case, leaders tend to make decision supported by proper data and information that collected from their followers. This kind of style can avoid people surrounding you who are always agree with you, at the same time, those follower’s advice helps leaders to clarify their decision.

Consensus

Consensus decision-making is more likely a democratic vote, which means leaders will let their followers to vote, and this style is kind of follow the majority rule. In my opinion, the consensus decision-making style is needed when the outcome is going to affect the whole team and everyone in the team should declare themselves. It is not an efficient way to make a decision, and Gleeson said that this style of decision-making was very rare in the SEAL teams, unless when the team is allowed to vote and have a voice. But if they do so, this type of decision-making can help mold the culture.

Convenience

Convenience decision-making can be used when the followers are trusted, then leaders is not necessary the only one who can make the final decision, leaders can appoint their followers to do so. The benefit by using this decision-making style included it is a good chance to measure the decision-making ability of followers, empowering the team and maintaining leaders own sanity. In addition, Gleeson think the new decision makers might take fresh approaches to solving problems.

In summary,  consensus and convenience are the two main decision-making styles we will use in our Hong Kong Student Association, the reason why we will choose to use these two is because we trust each other and we prefer to make a decision as a group, especially when we making some big decisions that affects how the event process.

Blog#9 – Great Leaders are Great Decision-Makers

In class, Professor Feinberg told us decision-making is an important part for a leadership, and he also indicated that if you want to be a good leader, make good decision. After class, I kept thinking about how to improve my decision-making skills in order to help myself to become a good leader in my association.

Larina Kase helps to answer my question in her article, Great Leader are Great Decision-Makers, by offering three qualities that can take the paralysis out of our daily decision analysis.

These three qualities are:

• Emotional Intelligence
• Managing Uncertainly and Choices
• Trusting Your Intuition

In emotional intelligence part, Kase mentioned emotional intelligence is an ability is one of the most important qualities a leader must possess, a leader’s emotions are contagious, which means a leader’s mood will resonate with others and set the tone for the emotional climate in the team even the whole organization, that is why resonant leadership is so important. Since leader’s emotion will easily affect others surrounding, further it might affect leader’s decision-making, thus emotional self-control skill will be more important for leader to improve. Great leaders are well aware of their emotional state and pay more attention to it, in the meanwhile, they are able to manage intense emotions which helps them to make smart decisions.

For the second quality part, Kase tells us to learn to accept the uncertainty. One of the main reason that people cannot make a good decision is that there are many uncertainties shows up when they try to make decision, since the majority of people are always want to avoid as many uncertainties as possible, as a result, they are paralyzed by uncertainty and end up basing their decision on things that are not even related. The thing I have learned from this is that, when we git stuck or investing too much time or other resources on something we are working on,  the first thing we should do is to ask ourselves that if these uncertainties we are facing is resolvable. If the answer is No, it is important for us to accept these uncertainties, then leave it and move on.

The last quality Kase brings up is my favorite part. She points out that intuition leads to satisfaction with decision. Intuition is described as a nagging little voice inside us, but unfortunately our own intuition is always not being listened by ourselves in our daily life. It is all because in our non-stop, busy world, we keep missing out on opportunities to notice and listen to our own thinking and feeling, try to build a period of quiet into our life and we would be surprised at what we hear.

Through my personal experience, I will say intuition plays a big role in my decision-making process. When I trying to make a decision  in front of many uncertainties and options, I will always tell myself  to trust in my own intuition, I am doing this is because I know this is my decision to make, and I am the one who can really decide my way to great decisions, so it is important for me to believe in my judgment. In the same way, I think is also important for leaders to believing in their intuition, since if leaders do not willing to trust in their intuition and capability to make a decision, then what is the reason for those followers to work for these leaders.

 

Blog#8 – How great leaders inspire action

 

The video I share this time is a lecture gave by Simon Sinek, and he try to tell us how great leaders inspire us. Three and a half years ago, he made a discovery, and this discovery profoundly changed the way in which he operated. As it turns out , he found out that an inspiring leaders and organizations in the world, such as Apple, MLK and the Wright brother, they all think, act and communicate in the exact same way and it is the complete opposite to everyone else. For this finding, Mr. Sinek did codified it into the simplest idea he think, and it names “Golden Circle”.

The Golden Circle

Like the image I shows above, in the golden circle, it includes three simple words, “Why”,”How” and “What”. Mr. Sinek claims this little idea explains why some organizations and some leaders are able to inspire where others are not. In this golden circle, every single person and every single organization on the planet knows what they do,  some know how they do it, but very very few people or organizations know why they do what they do, and the “why” in here does not mean profit, it means a result, a purpose, a cause and a belief. As a result, the normal way that we think, we act and we communicate is from the outside, we tend to go from the clearest thing to the funniest thing. However, the inspired leaders and inspired organizations all think back to communicate from the inside out.

Mr.Sinek gave out an example about Apple, he indicated if Apple were think like the other companies in the same industry: We make great computers (what), they are beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly (how), and you may want to have one (why), it is uninspiring. But how Apple actually communicate is: everything we do, we believe in thinking differently (why), the way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly (how), and we just happen to make great computers (what). By comparing these two different train of thoughts, it tells us that people don’t buy what you do, people buy why you do it, and this explains why majority of people is perfectly comfortable buying a electronic products from Apple. The goal is not to do business with anybody with everyone who needs what you have, the goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.

This video makes me think, to think about if the way we think, act, and communicate can decided whether you can become not only a leader, but also a inspired leader. In my opinion, to the best of my knowledge and belief, leaders are those people who hold a position of power or authority, but the kind of leader who can inspired me is able to make me willing to follow them not because I have to, is because I want to. I think this kind of leader is exactly someone who think, act and communicate from the inside out in the Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle theory.

Blog#7 – Our Iceberg Is Melting

 

“Our Iceberg Is Melting” is a meaningful book that I have read lately, it tells us a simply story of a colony of penguins facing a dilemma, but after a series of great teamwork, these penguins solve the crisis together by exhibiting their own strength and characteristic.

This story is wrote by Harvard professor, John Kotter, and his collaborator Holger Rathgeber. The pith they try to presents by telling the story is the “Eight Step Process of Successful Change”, which I think would be very helpful to a leader who might face a dilemma or some huge changes and should lead the team go through it. When you facing a dilemma, as a leader, the first step you should take is to create a sense of urgency. The meaning of it is to help your followers see the need for change and the importance of acting immediately. The second step is to pull together a guiding team, which means you need to make sure there is a powerful group and led by someone with leadership skills, credibility, communications ability and authority, in the meantime, the leader should identify the strength for each members and know how could them use it to help the team.

In the story, there are eight main characters, they are Fred, Alice, NO NO, Buddy, The Professor, Louis, Scout and Sally Ann. Each of them has distinct  traits brings to the team, such as, Fred has great analytical skill, Louis has great leadership skill and Alice is someone who can make things happen. A good constitution of team is always a good start for success.

After forming a team, the third step is to develop the vision and strategy, to clarify how the future will be and how you can make the future a reality. The fourth step is to communicate for understanding and buy-in. After the developing the vision and strategy, leader need to make sure all of the followers understand and accept the vision and the strategy. The fifth step would be empower other to act. I can still remember that Professor Feinberg told us in class about enable others to act and to foster collaboration and trust, these two concepts are nearly the same. It means leader should removes as many barriers as possible so that those who want to make the vision a reality can do so. The sixth step is about produce short-term wins, during this step, leader need to create some visible unambiguous successes as soon as possible. The seventh step is don’t let up. In this step, you need to press harder and faster after the first successes.  The final step which is the most important one is create a new culture. To hold on to the new ways of behaving and make sure they succeed, until they become strong enough to replace old traditions.

In general, I have learned a lot after reading this book, those eight steps I have show above are looks very organized together. These eight steps may become a useful treasure to a leader who is leading a team to pass through a huge change in an organization and this story tells us an very important lesson that when leadership and followers are on the same page with regards to change, it is amazing to see what can happen, despite adverse conditions.

Blog#6 – How to Reward Your Employees

 

In class, Professor Feinberg did show us his version of leadership rules, which are tell them what you expect, make it doable, reward them, give them feedback and reward again when it is done. This is an interesting theory for me and I did find a video could be related to Professor Feinberg’s theory.

The video I found named “How to reward your employees,” it was shoot by Stephen Friedman. Many leader could have the same question that when and how should I reward my followers, during the video, Mr. Friedman provides us some tips about rewarding employees/ followers. Financial incentive (Money) is not the only way and it is not the most effective way to reward people, there are still few more ways to do so.

The first reward method and the least expensive way Mr. Friedman indicates is to appreciate your followers (verbal appreciation). To notice your followers is a good start,  to notice how hard did they work and knowing the extra work they do for the organization, cause noticing about what they do sometimes is enough. Secondly, as a leader, you need to make sure that the goals you have set for your followers connected to those rewards, since rewards only works when assigned goals are achieved. Moreover, you need to tell your followers exactly why they are being rewarded. The third reward way is to offer some extra vacation time, no matter is paid or unpaid days off. And the last one is to offer some great opportunities, such as an opportunity to work on a great project, an opportunity to manage the team or an opportunity to do something they did not allow to do before.

In summary, I truly think the verbal appreciation is the most effective and economically way to reward the followers. It is not a hard thing to do, the leader just need to spend some time to noticing followers’ performance and pay more attention to it. I do believe a verbal appreciation is one of the best reward followers can get from their leader.

 

 

Blog#5 – Top 10 Differences Between Managers and Leaders

 

The video I share in my blog#5 is post by Scott Williams, this video provides 10 clear distinctive to help people to understand the difference between a manager and a leader.

At the beginning of the video, Williams share his own management method to us, which is he do not manage his staff, he lead his staff.  He also share a concept he had summarized by his experience of following a great leader. This concept named “BECC”, the B means Believe, E means Encourage, C represents Challenge and C is about Correct. If we want to become a successful leader, the first thing we should do is to believe our followers, to trust them and believe in their capability. The second thing is  to encourage followers to be more, to do more. Thirdly,  a leader should challenge the followers to dream big, to think big, to do more challenge and experience more challenge professionally. The last one thing for us to do is to correct followers if they did something wrong, in order to bring them back in line.

Following are the top 10 list of differences between managers and leaders that Williams share with us in this video. I understand the reason he doing this is because there is many people who always feel confusing between the word “Managers” and “Leaders”, however, in Williams  mind, there is a huge different between these two words:

1. Essence – Manager: Stability     Leader: Change

2. Rules – Manager: Make it       Leader: Break it

3. Approach – Manager: Plans detail    Leader: Sets direction

4.  Culture – Manager: Execute          Leader: Shape

5. Conflict – Manager: Avoid       Leader: Use

6. Direction – Manager: Existing roads      Leader: New roads

7. Credit – Manager: Take        Leader: Give

8. Decisions –  Manager: Makes          Leader: Facilitates

9. Vision – Manager: Tell          Leader: Sell

10. Style – Manager: Transactional     Leader: Transformational

Williams shows the difference by compare the role of manager and leader in 10 different aspects, and some of those did impress me a lot, especially the “Credit” part. Williams mentioned in video that manager take credit, but leader give credit, i am strongly agree with this is a point of views.  Manager’s job is to manage people under him/her to finish some tasks assign from his/her boss, if the task is outperforming finished, the manager could be the one who get credit. But the role of leader should be the one who give credit to the followers, to tell them they did great and show appreciation.

This is a good inspiring speech, it brought a lot of information to the surface on the topic of leadership. As a leader, you have to understand and deliver in your role. The reason why is because people are depending on you and looking to you to make the decisions that will ultimately affect them one way or another on a daily basis. On the other hand, as a manager, you are focusing more one the fact that your employees have a job to do and your role is to ensure that job gets completed on time. These are two very different approaches and this video does a great job of comparing and contrasting between the two.

In summary, after watch this video, I have learned a principle that leader develop follower and manager manage people, I will say this statement represent the essential difference between a manager and a leader. Williams said that:”People do not wanna be managed, they want to be led.” I think he got the point, manager can just manage you by following the codes and rules, but leader is a person who can give you a vision and create you a culture to follow. In the end,  I want to quote a sentence that Williams said at the end of his speech, “Manager changes thing, leader changes world. Be a world changer, be a leader!”

Blog#4 – Better Bosses Appreciate Their Employees

Better Bosses Appreciate Their Employees – Video Dailymotion

In today class, Professor Feinberg talk about the importance of appreciation in leadership, after i came home, i do search online and found this video which can related to things we had learned in today’s class.

In this video, the lecturer first talk about the two biggest mistakes employers make with employees. The first mistake the lecturer indicates is no effective process in place to hire properly. And the second mistake is employers have very little training coaching their team members.

However, the lecturer think the biggest problem is the power of appreciation when dealing with employees. He mentioned in video that GALLUP did a 10,000,000 employee interview study, the result shows that most employees had not had a positive comment from the boss in months. It was an amazing finding, and the reason might be the employer did not know detail enough about what did his/her employees do, then it leads to an embarrassing situation which is the employer do not even know what and why should they reward their employees.

Most of the employer rewarded their employees in a wrong way, like giving a Starbucks gift card with a little bit compliment. Every employee may have their own different wants and needs, this simple and with no sincerity reward method doesn’t work anymore. The lecturer told us in the video that one way to find out how employees want to be rewarded is “ASK THEM.” And this statement reminding me the video I watch in the CSR309 folder, named “Undercover Boss.” In this TV shows, the boss dressed up as one of his employee and plan to communicate with his employee in order to understand what are they truly needs and wants.

In summary, appreciated employees/followers are engaged employees/followers, this simple sentence represents the most important thing that i have learned from this video.

Blog#3 – Everyday Leadership

 

Drew Dudley, a leadership educator, who gave me an awesome speech with a title, “Everyday Leadership.”

Generally, when people talk about leadership, it should be something beyond our thought. However, Drew Dudley redefines the concept of leadership in this video. He intends that leadership is not complicated and demanding action. As he said, leadership can be obtained by doing minor things. Leadership should be easy to obtain, for example, an unexpected behaviors lead change of others unexpectedly, and this can be called as the everyday leadership.

During the speech, Drew Dudley bring up a new concept named “lollipop moment,” it is a moment that can change one’s life, and what he trying to tell us is every people could have great leadership by small things. Looking back, I also used to be influenced by someone around me. I used to hate  chemistry class so much in high school, and i always received low-grade on the exam deservedly. But one day, my chemistry teacher asked me to stay after school to give me the extra tutoring  instead giving me up, this moment did impress me a lot and did change my attitude toward study thoroughly. I consider that moment was my “lollipop moment.” A good leader should not only acting a role to control people or to give people directions, but also could being someone who influence the followers, even the whole team.

As this video said, influence in every day is enormous power. This video gave me a different thought about leadership. Leadership is not required to be a big thing, if you can affect people around you and make his/her life changed, you already have great leadership!