Leadership

PSYCH 485 blog

Blog Post 3: Team Leadership in an International Event

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Yuki Yamashita

Dr. Hamel

PSYCH 485

October 23, 2023 (JST)

Blog Post 3: Team Leadership in an International Event

    One week ago, I joined an international event to discuss what is going on in international society, based on the content of some provided articles. In the event, there were four groups, and most participants were Japanese, while there were also Egyptian, Peruvian, and two Nigerian student assistants. The group I was assigned included one Peruvian student as an assistant, so I would like to analyze her leadership based on the course content.

In the event, the Peruvian student worked as an assistant/ leader to lead a discussion on what topic the group wanted to focus on, general thoughts and opinions about the topic of the article, any solutions for global leaders, and how the group members were going to give a subsequent presentation. One significant leadership the Peruvian student demonstrated is that she helped one of my Japanese peers in the group to share his opinion about the topic considering his introverted personality. In other words, the Peruvian leader showed amazing inclusiveness which is vital to be a leader.

Another leadership she demonstrated was seen when she was trying to assign group members some tasks to comprehend the article deeply and to determine who was going to oversee what part of the presentation. According to the course material, a leader should support their followers to make decisions, make plans, and achieve their goals as a group (The Pennsylvania). To apply this information to the real-world leadership situation, the Peruvian leader played an important role as a leader by helping a student so that he would be able to keep up with the discussion and still be part of the community.

In addition, her leadership included what the course material calls, creating a “positive climate” (The Pennsylvania). This is because she confirmed if the student who was likely to be left behind wanted to be in charge of a particular portion of the presentation so everyone, including the student, of course, was on the same page with one another in terms of the task allocation and the content of the work. If her leadership had not included this skill, the student would have felt isolated and would have not felt comfortable with active participation. Thus, her confirmation of the task allocation demonstrated her potential to be a leader.

As described in the paragraphs above, the international leader showed great leadership in terms of her supportiveness, task allocation, and the creation of a friendly environment. Thus, it is rational to say that the Peruvian leader is democratic and can often gain the support of her followers.

Reference

The Pennsylvania State University. (2023). Critical Functions of Team Leadership. [Lecture notes]. Canvas @ PSU. https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2283258/modules/items/38927226.

Teachers as a Leader

by

Yuki Yamashita

Dr. Hamel

PSYCH 485

October 2, 2023 (JST)

Teachers as a Leader

    Learning about leadership, I often recall teachers in a classroom. As I have shared in this course, I played the role of a leader, called “class leader,” who was expected to ask classmates to be quiet as necessary, encourage students to submit all assignments on time, lead peers to be on time at every class, and to explain to a teacher why the class was not on time when they did not manage to get fully prepared before the bell rang when I was an elementary school student. Although I had a lot on my plate as a leader, it still seemed that the teacher was a kind of paramount leader of the class. I feel, however, that I did not get enough support from the “leader” when I worked as the leader. Thus, I would like to analyze the teacher’s leadership style in terms of behavior.

When it comes to being a class leader at the elementary school, I had a lot of difficulties in completing the tasks assigned to me as the leader since kids would not be quiet or would not hand in every assignment by the due date even if a teacher tells them to be abided by the rules. Since I was skeptical about the probability of successfully making peers obey the rule, and I did not make it, I always wanted some teachers’ help while almost all the teachers just focused on how to encourage students to obey the rules instead of supporting me or students who seemed to fail to be ideal in class so that everyone would be on the same page with the teacher about the class structure and the rules that everyone should follow.

Applying the teachers’ leadership style to one theory about leader behavior which is part of leadership style, the teachers seem to be directive. According to course material, the directing leadership style is that a leader directs their followers instead of being supportive (The Pennsylvania). Similarly, Northouse says that directing leaders often see a lack of supportive behavior (Northouse, 2022). In the situation where I did not conduct a brainstorming session with teachers to discuss the process for students to improve the quality of their academic journey, and rather, the teachers would often focus only on the result they want to get from kids’ improved performance and attitude during class, I am sure that their leadership style was directing which could sometimes be dictatorial.

I do not mean to criticize the teachers at that time since I now understand as a grown-up person that it is difficult to lead one class of around 30 kids to do ideal work both in class and outside of class. Thus, I should have thought about some possibilities of leadership styles I could have adopted so the blend of multiple kinds of leadership styles could work for teachers and kids.

 

Reference

Northouse, Peter G. (2022). Leadership: Theory and Practice (9th ed., pp. 109-131). SAGE Publications, Inc.

The Pennsylvania State University. (2023). Leadership Style and Development Levels. [Lecture notes]. Canvas @ PSU. https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2283258/modules/items/38927174

#1 Blog Post: Followership in a Choir

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So far in this course, leadership, trait, and followership have been covered. Each aspect determines what kind of people are appropriate to be a leader and what kind of support the leader needs to exercise their power as a leader. In this assignment, I would like to dissect followership by referring to my experience of being part of school choir when I was a junior and senior high school student in Japan.

In Japan, there is a culture where the older are likely to be a leader unlike in the US where people with skills tend to be a leader in a group. In this situation, it is quite natural to see that third-grade students in a junior high and sophomores in a high school play a role as a leader, sub-leader, and part leaders of soprano, mezzo, and alto. As a follower, I saw some students were against the leader of the choir because the leader’s instructions did not go well with what the students wanted to do for a concert. Applying what the course material says, it is rational to say that this situation sees some alienated followers for being a “negative energy” for the leader (Northouse, 2022).

At the same time, however, the members also demonstrated traits of exemplary followers. When I worked as a part leader of soprano, for instance, all members in this part practiced by themselves to learn the tunes of a compulsory song for a competition while I had not told them to remember the tunes but just to listen to other choir singing the song. Moreover, the choir members even shared their thoughts on the status quo of the members’ performance and vocal production to let me broaden my knowledge about what other skills are needed to create music with other part. In this situation, I would conclude that these amazing peers were exemplary followers who, according to Northouse, demonstrate active participation skills and share helpful criticism (Northouse, 2022). Therefore, my peers of soprano were exemplary followers when I was a part leader of this part.

As written above, one cannot deny the possibility that people can sometimes be exemplary followers and other times be alienated or other kinds of followers depending on situations. Hence, one clever way for a leader is to see what members or followers want to do to accomplish a shared goal instead of focusing on the leader’s own want and goals.

Reference

Northouse, Peter G. (2022). Leadership: Theory and Practice. (9th ed., pp. 352-383). Sage.

Long Distance Leadership

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Remote working

The coronavirus outbreak that began almost two years ago forced millions of Americans to work from home due to workplace shutdowns and consequently created a significant shift in the way most organizations operate (Parker et al., 2020). Everyone has been affected by the transition to teleworking whether you personally had to pack up a banker’s box with your essential items needed to accomplish your job from home or are a leader of a team that has some employees who telework out of necessity and others who are required to be physically present. I can say from personal experience that I experienced both sides of the coin; I lead a team of essential workers who have been working in-person since day one of the outbreak and now I am a member of a 100% remote team that is based all throughout the U.S.

More than half of employed adults (54%) who can execute their job responsibilities from home report that they would like to continue teleworking most or all the time once the coronavirus outbreak is over (Parker et al., 2020). That should not be a surprise to most people, in fact, remote work and geographically dispersed teams will only increase in comparison to pre-pandemic levels. Virtual teams provide many benefits to include flexibility, convenience, increased diversity, and better task accomplishment (Pennsylvania State University World Campus [PSU WC], 2021), but leaders need to change their management style, take advantage of technology, establish rules of engagement, encourage remote social interactions, and show flexibility to ensure success.

Zoom call

Having only worked within a 100% remote team environment for the past five months has definitely been an adjustment for myself as an individual and I know is also a challenge for leaders who must juggle the daily priorities of accomplishing tasks, staying in constant communication with team members across different time zones, and ensuring the team is social interactive with one another. Many of my team’s meetings are now via Zoom (thankfully because Skype for Business is outdated and has way less features) and the one expectation that my senior manager has set for all of us is we are to have our webcams turned on while actively in the meeting. It is quite easy to disengage and hideout within virtual meetings and by establishing this rule of engagement, it forces us to connect with one another, and it also supports engagement strategies (Gleeson, 2020).

Another new tradition for us has been our weekly team meeting on Wednesdays via Zoom. From an individual contributor’s perspective, this new rhythm allows my teammates from California, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Alabama to interact with one another for 30 minutes and focus on team building and morale. From a leadership perspective, that weekly scheduled meeting is accomplishing all eight principles of mastering virtual leadership of teams (Deloitte Denmark, 2020):

  1. Re-igniting team purpose
  2. Establishing a new rhythm
  3. Tracking progress
  4. Leveraging technology to collaborate
  5. Be visible and check-in frequently
  6. Strategically over-communicate
  7. Empower and promote self-leadership
  8. Ensuring the well-being of all the team members

Leading virtual and geographically dispersed teams is challenging because it goes against the grain of what many organizations are accustomed to – traditional face-to-face interactions. If there is any kind of silver lining to the covid-19 outbreak, it is the unexpected success and resilience from remote-working teams and the leaders who are developing better strategies to lead them (Sills, 2021).

 

References

Gleeson, B. (2020, August 26). 13 tips for leading and managing remote teams. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/brentgleeson/2020/08/26/13-tips-for-leading-and-managing-remote-teams/?sh=226b84fc577b

Parker, K., Horowitz, J. M., & Minkin, R. (2020, December 9). How the coronavirus outbreak has – and hasn’t – changed the way Americans work. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/12/09/how-the-coronavirus-outbreak-has-and-hasnt-changed-the-way-americans-work/

Pennsylvania State University World Campus. (2021). PSYCH 485 Lesson 9: Team leadership – geographically dispersed teams. https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2132629/modules/items/32790622

Sills, D. (2021, July 2). 17 tips for leading virtual teams. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/202107/17-tips-leading-virtual-teams

Followership and Its Effects on Leadership

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     Leadership has four main components: process, influence, group context, and goal attainment (PSU WC, 2021, L. 3). From these components we can see that for a leader to influence or attain a group context, there must be a group of followers for these constructs to be appropriately applied. The act of followership has been studied and broken into two theoretical frameworks: the role-based approach and the constructionist approach (Uhl-Bien, Riggio, Lowe, & Carsten, 2014). While there has been much research and consideration into the phenomenon of leadership, followership as well holds a significant amount of importance, and it is necessary to treat the subject equally to better our understanding of these phenomenon. 

     Is a leader truly a leader if they have no followers? This question is not only thought provoking and seemingly obvious, but it is necessary to consider. Qualities of a leader add up to one main job, and that is to lead. Would it be fair to say that an individual’s followers contribute to the success, failure, and behaviors of a leader (Uhl-Bien, et al., 2014, as cited in PSU WC, 2021, L. 3)? Uhl-Bien, et al. (2014) states that leadership is a co-created process, and in order to understand one we must understand the other (Fairhurst & Uhl-Bien, 2012, as cited in Uhl-Bien, et al., 2014). This idea means leaders and followers share and work towards the goal together, learning from and building off each other throughout the process. 

The role-based approach, known as reversing the lens, looks at the impact followers have on the outcome of leadership and focusing on this reversed impact (PSU WC, 2021, L. 3). The image below presents a visual demonstration of the theoretical model of the role-based approach.

cited from: (Northouse, 2018, p. 304, as cited in PSU WC, 2021, L. 1)

     The constructionalist approach, or the relational-based approach, looks at how the interaction between leader and follower influence the leadership outcome rather than how the behaviors affect it (PSU WC, 2021, L. 3). The image below depicts the different, relational-based perspective of followership.

cited from: (Northouse, 2018, p. 305, as cited in PSU WC, 2021, L. 3)

    In blatant terms, Uhl-Bien, et al. (2014) explains role-based followership being the “leader as recipient or moderator of follower influence in producing outcomes” and constructionist followership being the “followers as co-creators with leaders of leadership” (Uhl-Bien, et al., 2014).

The next question is, how exactly do these two theoretical approaches of followership help us understand its effects on leadership and how we define it? With more information being gathered we can begin to make significant connections between leadership and followership, and all the ways they work with or against each other. Followers are important in the leadership process because they are the ones assigned to carry out the tasks working in favor of the leader and group, they both support and challenge the leader, and they also learn from the leader (PSU WC, 2021, L. 3). Since followers play such a large role in the outcome of the leader’s and group goals, it is understandable that researchers are interested in the influences followership has. When defining leadership it is important to take in account that it is not only the leader that guides the group to its goals, but also the followers guiding the leader.

There are many powerful influences and components of leadership that are often overlooked upon initial observation. Researchers and theorists have been making strides to make more connections on how followers affect leaders and vice versa. “Focusing on followership helps us recognize the value of followers and their contribution to leadership” (PSU WC, 2021, L. 3). When we are able to value followership, we will be better able to value and define leadership.

References

Fairhurst, G. T., & Uhl-Bien, M. (2012). Organizational discourse analysis (ODA): Examining leadership as a relational process. The    Leadership Quarterly, 23(6), 1043–1062. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2012.10.005 

Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: Theory and practice (Eighth Edition). Los Angeles: SAGE Publications 

Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2021). PSYCH 485 Lesson 3: Followership. Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2137573/modules 

Uhl-Bien, M., Riggio, R. E., Lowe, K. B., & Carsten, M. K. (2014). Followership theory: A review and research agenda. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(1), 83–104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2013.11.007 

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