Leadership Essay
Week 2

Eric Zeidman
Week 2 Leadership Essay The Vision into Performance Model basically says that if you can dream it, you can make it happen. Being effective is not an accident or random thing, it is a well thought out process that can be applied to any business. Warren Bennis tell us that a good leader can create and realize a vision. Vision, change, Implementation, and results are the keys to success. The Vision into Performance combines these key elements plus more. (1) There have been many examples in our world of people who have had a vision and turned it into a great performance opportunity. Bill Gates with Microsoft and Henry Ford with Ford Motor Company are two of the better known visionaries. Some of the less known but not less important are: Chris Albrecht with HBO who tells us to surround ourselves with people who are smarter than you and that we should make ourselves comfortable with that. George Steinbrenner of the New York Yankees tells us we should all take our father’s advice and listen to him because he has already gone through the trials and errors. Brad Anderson CEO of Best Buy tells us that all good companies must be people powered and all good companies grow through their relationships to customers. (2) The Achieve Model is something we will also take a look at. While most managers are effective in letting people know what problems exist, they are ineffective in finding out why these problems exist. The Achieve model uses feedback and validity to correct this problem. People need to know what and how well they are doing and decisions need to be validated to effect people’s careers. Achieve stands for: Ability, Clarity, Help, Incentive, Evaluation, Validity, and Environment. Ability refers to being able to complete a specific task, Clarity understands what to do, Help is the support people get, Incentive concurs with motivation, Evaluation is feedback on daily performance, Validity is the appropriateness of and legalness of managerial decisions and Environment is the external factors that can influence performance.(3) There are also the Situational Approaches to Leadership which Drucker says that people all need to be led differently and there is no right or wrong way to lead people. He believes in three main components, the Leader, the Follower, and the Situation. Fred Fiedler developed the Leadership Contingency Model which consists of leaders’ relationships to their group members, the degree of structure in the task that they are asked to perform, and the power and authority the position provides. Finally, the Vroom –Yetton Contingency Model is based upon leadership that takes a contingency approach to leadership. They list seven attributes fro AI to GII on how to solve issues or problems and their diagnoses questions. Effective Leadership has many different ideas and theories. What works for one may not work for another. Kurt Lewin tells us this and has defined the following: (5)
a. behavior is a function of the field that exists at the time the behavior occurs
b. analysis begins with the situation as a whole from which are differentiated the component parts
c. The concrete person in a concrete situation can represented mathematically. Contingency Theory argues that effective leadership styles vary according to the context and suggests the use of Blake and mouton’s managerial Grid. Instrumental Theories stress task and oriented behavior by the leader to help with effective performance. In Management and Organizational Behavior many leadership theories are discussed. We learn about both the positive and negative leadership traits along with Attitudinal Approaches and putting these many theories into practice. Some researchers such as Blake, Mouton, McCanse and McGregor have talked about that the “one best” style of leadership is one that maximizes productivity, satisfaction, growth and development in all situations. (6) There is no reason