Leadership Survey Analysis

After completing the exercise, I was able to compare my results from part A to part B. Through my comparison, it is apparent that I resemble Person 1 more than person 2. This does not surprise me too much since person 1 is my father and he has had an overall positive effect on me lately. This resemblance is most likely due to the fact that I am most comfortable using the same sources of power that he does. These sources of power would be: Coercive Power, Referent Power and Expert Power. In my past experiences, these power bases have had the most success when trying to gain the respect of a group of people in order to drive them towards a goal.

The base of power I most frequently tap into is power from expertise. I feel that a major aspect of being an efficient leader is having experience. This experience allows a leader to have a clear vision of what needs to be done and how it should be approached. Also, this experience leads to building confidence, which I find to be another vital quality of leadership. This is why I'm most comfortable drawing from expertise as a source of power. When I am able to use past experience I am confident in my decisions. This confidence allows me to be as efficient as I possibly can. While I may like to feel confident I make sure that it does not lead to arrogance. I believe that it is just as important that I frequently draw from referent power. I feel that having the right personality and being approachable allows all workers to benefit. I also find that drawing from the Reward power base often gives workers a higher morale, which can lead to work being completed more effectively.

There are some sources of power that I refrain from using. For instance, in my experience, I have not had much success drawing from a coercive power base. It just does not seem effective. There is a higher chance that those you are trying to lead will become less motivated upon threatening to punish them. What can result from this is lower quality work and a loss of respect. Another power source I'm not a fan of using is legitimate authority. The truth of it all is that no one likes to be bossed around. While it is vital for one to establish themself as a leader it is not the job of a leader to bark orders. Taking away power from the people underneath you can be extremely counterproductive. As a leader I rather consider the opinions and suggestion of my workers in order to improve upon what I have set out to be completed.

As a leader there are certain situations in which I feel empowered. At the same time there are situations where I feel almost out of control. A situation where I feel I have the most power is when I have experience and appointed power. For example, being a captain of an athletic team. This is a situation where my peers will be able to clearly see the legitimacy of my power base and respect me. A situation when I feel like I have the least power is when I am trying to take legitimate power over a group where I have no merit. These situations can include a study session where all of my peers have the same knowledge base.

Upon comparison to graph 3B my answers differ from my personal feeling. This is because while I feel like some sources of power are positive when working together but negative when on their own. For example one can be an extremely efficient leader by drawing from the expertise and referent bases. Not only do you have experience but your workers are able to approach you about their problems. While a leader who relies only on power from expertise and has poor communication with his workers can be completely inefficient.

12.2

The survey in assignment 12.2 is a self-assessment of how one chooses to use leadership skills in the working environment. These answers can lead to discovering what type of a leader one chooses to be. However, the results of this survey could be misleading due to a lack of experience. This is accredited to only being a freshman in college. While I may have had the opportunity to lead in the past, I do not have all the experience to consider myself an expert leader. So this lack of experience does not allow me to properly gage some of the survey questions. On paper I may feel a certain leadership skill can work for me, but I will have no idea if it actually works until I experience it first hand. On the other hand, I do have experience as a leader. This experience has given me an idea of what methods have or have not worked for me in the past. This allowed me to answer some of the questions with greater accuracy.

After completing my survey, I compared my answers with two of my peers. Upon comparison, we noticed that our answers were generally in the same area. When we calculated our average scores we were surprised to know that we each averaged about 4. It seemed that we had the same opinion on most of the areas covered in the survey. Our answers converged in the fact that we found communication as a vital part of being a leader. This included encouraging workers and letting them know when they were performing good work. Also, we seemed to find it important to set schedules and goals for workers and urge them to meet them. While we did agree in most areas there were places where our answers diverged. These areas mainly included the questions in deciding how much power should be distributed to workers. For example, we all had a different opinion of how much of an influence workers should have when it comes to making decisions.

There are probably many reasons that our answers differed on this survey. All these reasons however are most likely accredited to a common area. This area would be experience. The experiences we have had as a leader is our main influence to properly answering these survey questions. This influence can be accredited to either a lack of experience or a plethora of it. We all have come from different backgrounds in education and therefore have had different experiences of leadership. We may have been leaders in different kinds of situations but most importantly