ManuelS.

EnvergaUniversity Foundation
Lucena City, Philippines
Granted Autonomous Status
CHED CEB Res. 076-2009

Expanded Tertiary Education Equivalency and Accreditation Program (ETEEAP)

Name: Ginalyn S. Ganaden Student No.: E19-4104

Leading

Assignment No. 8

1. Can a person without influence be a leader? Does having influence automatically make

someone a leader? (500 words)

Answer:

No. Without influence to be a leader does not occur because leadership is the act of

influencing outcome. To be an effective leader, it is necessary to influence others to support and

influence decisions that the leader and group members perceived are necessary.

To influence is to have an impact on the behaviors, attitudes, opinions and choices of others.

Influence is not to be confused with power or control. It’s not about manipulating others to get

your way. It’s about noticing what motivates employee commitment and using that knowledge to

leverage performance and positive results. A leader’s ability to have influence with others is

based on trust; in fact, our influence expands in proportion to the amount of trust that exists in a

relationship. Let’s take a look at how leaders effectively build trust and increase their influence

with others.

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 Establish credibility. Leaders begin to build trust by establishing their credibility. Stephen

Covey, author of The Speed of Trust, described four foundational elements needed to establish

one’s credibility: integrity, intent, capabilities and results. Integrity is being honest; it’s “walking

your talk”. Intent has to do with ensuring your motives are clearly understood. Capabilities are

the skills and knowledge necessary to perform your job well. Results are what we accomplish,

it’s our track record—your ability to get done what you say you will do.

Engage others and build a connection Leadership is not a solo act. If you want to

influence others, they have to be involved. Seek input on important decisions that will affect

them individually or the team as a whole. Involve employees early on when proposing or

implementing changes. Another way leaders increase their influence is through building

connections with others. Seek to understand the needs, motivations, and values of others. By

showing a sincere commitment to what matters to someone else you’ll begin to build greater

influence with them as they realize your actions include a genuine concern for their interests.

Clarify expectations and practice accountability. To get great results, leaders must be able to

enlist, persuade, and engage others. However, before expecting employee commitment, leaders

must clearly delineate expectations. Define the results and clearly communicate them to others.

Once the results have been defined practice accountability. Hold yourself and others accountable

to the expectations. When leaders fail to clarify expectations and do not practice accountability

they contribute to and unintentionally create a low-trust environment where mediocrity is the

norm. This directly impacts your ability to positively influence others.

Share your passion. One of the reasons why passion is so important is that it produces

energy; it ignites others. There is a contagious quality to passion. Passion is not something you

can fake. It must be real and authentic. In their book The Leadership Challenge, Kouzes and

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Posner state “If a leader displays no passion for a cause, why should anyone else care”. Research

has shown that one of the traits people admire most in leaders is their ability to be forward-

looking. It’s not enough for a leader to have a vision, he/she must be able to communicate it and

get others excited about it and supporting it. Effective leaders influence others by sharing their

enthusiasm and excitement.

Be open to influence should be reciprocal. One of the quickest ways to increase your

influence with others is to be open to influence yourself. This means truly demonstrating

openness. Be willing to listen to others’ ideas, invite and consider alternative viewpoints. Make

use of others’ skills and expertise. By displaying openness you’ll begin to build respect and trust

with others and that will increase your influence.

Leadership has been described as the ability to influence others. An effective leader

moves followers into action not with coercion but by eliciting their desire and conviction in the

vision and goals articulated by the leader. Misused influence can bring about catastrophic results.

But properly channeled, positive influence can bring about great change as individual actions

align with group efforts to produce gains that grow exponentially. A leader, who, through

focused and deliberate effort, exerts positive influence in others, will build trust and become a

true driving force toward excellence.

References:

Covey, Stephen M. R. and Merrill Rebecca R. 2006. The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That

Changes Everything. New York, NY: Free Press.

Kouzes, James M., and Barry Z. Posner. 1995. The Leadership Challenge: How to Keep Getting

Extraordinary Things Done in Organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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2. Identify an engineer of your choice (at least 3). Describe his leadership style. Are there

important changes that have to be made in his style? What are those? List down the

proposed character change applicable.

Answer:

1. Democratic leadership – this leader will listen to other’s opinions but will make

the final decision. The leader still is very involved in the day today activities but allow

for more creative thinking to flourish. The downside of this style is when a decision has

to make right away, and also if the decision fail to accomplish.

Every engineer commit mistake without knowing it will happen were in all your force

and effort, you give to hit the target Output. Through this, a leader should insure all the

decision that has been made is credible, to implement by analyzing it many times

together with subordinate, to identify the potential problem and to hit the target output.

Making mistake is a part of human and instead of being hard to you we should see

mistake as an opportunity for growth. Just Keep Learning.

2. Participative leader – When leader openly invites his/her subordinate to

participate or share in decisions, policy-making and operation methods. This leadership

style is one of the best leader’s that must possess.

3. Transformational leadership – This leader is self-aware, authentic, empathetic

and humble. This leader wants everyone to succeed and accomplished the shared vision.

This characteristic of a leader must possess a strong personality so that, it will not be

abused by their subordinates. The baseline must always be the output and productivity of

the line to attain their goals and objective of the group.

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Case Analysis – Leadership Lessons
1. What type of leader does Bill appear to be?

Answer: Bill’s approach of leadership is autocratic who make decisions by himself

without consulting subordinates. Somewhat, he adopts the military rule that despite of

everything, they need to follow him as their leader. He spent allot of time by showing and

telling to his people what he wants without asking them for they want.

2. Why do some managers respond to him in a negative way?

Answer: Because of his being a perfectionist. It is better to do follow up and asking your

subordinate for the status of their job but not to be stickler for details and perfection. It

was indicated above that those managers there has an experienced with 5 to 20 years,

therefore they conclude to themselves that they had done a proper job that makes them a

good manager. Considering their Vice president new type of management makes them

hard to adopt as well as their experience for handling that position individually.

3. What would you recommend Bill do to better the performance of the branch offices?

Answer: I would recommend Bill to change his leadership style; it is better if being participative

leadership style wherein he must consult his subordinates to seek their suggestions and then

seriously consider those suggestions when making decisions. So, aside from spending too much

time in showing and telling what the exact operation he wanted and introducing own management

information system, he as leader, must also ask his subordinate for their suggestions, what is their

current situation and if those he wanted can be possible to implement. By this, good relationship

within leader and subordinates will be better which lead to good performance of their branch.