Bruce J. Avolio’s extraordinary and artistic publication “Full Leadership Development: Building the Vital Forces in Organizations” impressed me a lot ,mesmerized my thinking about leadership topic .Each point ,data, concept, team work and others issue changed my views, observations on traditional leadership technique and mentality towards a greater purpose of full range of leadership. Dr. Avolio ,Professor and Director of the center for leadership studies at Binghamton University is an scholar, researcher and practitioner in leadership .His outstanding consultation both in public and private sector renowned all over the world including the military leadership consultancy with USA, Israel, Singapore, Sweden, Finland &South Africa recognizes the extra shape of leadership . He is the fellow of Academy of Management, American Psychological Society, American Psychological Association & the Gerontological Society, ex president of the Society for Human Resource Management Foundation & the organizational behavior division of Academy of Management. His publication in the arena of leadership about 10 books and a number of 125 articles. His most influential and popular book is Transformational and Charishmatic Leadership :The Road Ahead (Elsevier Science, 2002) .Also many writings are available with one more co-writer.
Conceptualization of leadership as a system beyond it as a process or person is the ultimate target of this book including the vital individual force to enhance entire organizational force collectively. In this respect highly focused and critically discussed of timing, people, text, context ,interactions, expected results ,motivation to be performed signify the global leadership agenda .The author’s statement is totally different in case of emphasizing the each and every part’s development issue while others focus on the leader person. Here firstly we will discuss about the author’s concept, ideas & thought in respect of leadership process. Secondly my reflections on his thoughts and thirdly my basis and examples of critical analysis will be disclosed here.
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1)To Develop and construct the Leadership Process: The author’s point of viewing leadership as the combined processes as a whole system. Among the processes author emphasizes on the establishment of relationship in a clear& crystal way between the follower and to be followed creating identification sense,following commitment to be built trust. This, Transactional Leadership ,works as an input to the Transformational Leadership.
Transactional Leadership indicates one way of leadership, articulating the standards, target and goals, expectations, norms & rewards.
The writer differentiated the Transactional Leadership forms into contingent reward; management by exception &laissez faire . It is the worst ineffective because of not transacting anything in the field of performance as well as motivation.
The transactions known as constructive like what to do and why, another corrective exchange like not to do related to mistakes and errors. This is failed to develop best leadership style and a dangerous but available in risk-averse situation.
Transformational Leadership is one step ahead and a vibrant expansion of transactional leadership. It is vision oriented and challenges all the transactional issues.
The four I’s of this criteria are -1)Idealized Influence means leaders are trustworthy, admirable & respectable; 2) Inspirational Motivation means enthusiastic activities and the utopia; 3) Intellectual Stimulation means scope of questioning, challenging and innovating anything whether existing or not.
Leadership qualities like emotional tendency, intelligence and personality, tolerance are naturally inherited but a huge chance to be developed the leadership range by practicing a lot-author argues. Emphasizing the situation demand author logically tried to infiltrate the person itself. The other vibrant and most impressive is the life experiences which are decision taking force in practically.
And the third one is to learning different issues and innovating work or ideas characterized transformational leadership through the book.
Mainly discussed about two types:1) Individual level where the one person is the ultimate boss and 2) Collective level means leadership style grown through overall participation of any organization.
In any larger organization this type can be invisible. Considering all the members’ ideas, sharing, thinking, rethinking, critical analysis ,advices, directions ,intellectuality, guidance, references, creativity are cross-checked, analyzed, evaluated to build trust, accessibility, mutual understanding and sustainability through ensuring integrity, transparency this shared mentality base model generally grown.
Building the context for the transformational leadership is too difficult .For this leadership introducing destructing the present contextual structure and then restructuring is the precondition. This is not possible by overnight but to take a huge amount of time to change the context and public acceptance and mentality.
Author’s understanding is that leaders don’t affect directly rather in a transformational way it affect firstly the process and performance affected automatically. A leader firstly developed himself, then his surroundings with capacity and capability building in a technical way maintaining the strategies and fulfilling the necessary requirements. Then his followers have a chance and option to develop them, increasing the thinking and rethinking also in and beyond the leader’s actions, challenge the leader’s also. Moreover boundaries, opportunities and challenges are also analyzed.
1. Dr. Avolio shared his experiences, lifestyle, personal examples, anecdotes and different cases having and being a master trainer, researcher, consultant and parenting position. This book interacted with the readers in an open mind , finishing the idea with a open question giving emphasis on developing reader’s attitude ,personality, values, tendency and perspective.
2. The book holds the balance between reality and theory. It’s the parallel example of combination of reality and theory. Author firstly present the principles and theory then on demonstrating them with illustration of pragmatic lifestyle .Highlighting his own theory and other related expert’s opinion and empirical study.
3. Clear identification and differentiation of Transactional/Transformational leadership is the another issue where good leaders discover and shows and the follower are related to the leaders and followers’ passion is the result of the leaders’ creation.
4. Though a massive improvement is occurred in different times in the broader /smaller scale but a I think a huge chance to be improved exist also even now-a-days. These improvement opportunities should be practiced to progress the evaluation system. In his book the attitudes, cultures, values draw a huge attention in the companies, he mentioned.
5. Growing consciousness about changing leadership system taking consideration firstly the context then the people is another potential issue of this book in the eye of me. Setting the vision ,increasing attitudinal development .proper alignment of leaders and followers ,building team commitment is another strength of this book. This book states that synergise the followers, teaching and motivate to be challenged,pushing them to the front line with all the logistic support ,team building and energy creation –the prime tasks of any leader.
6. Another fact where Dr. Avolio stresses that leadership doesn’t affect directly rather it is a sequential consequence of the process not only based on totality of experienced and some competent persons but also full dose of coaching or the combination of both.
7. Finally my opinion this book is the excellent guideline to understand leadership in all aspects and outstanding outline as well as twinkling example of leadership related book arena. It will help the eager people to explore their leadership potentials.
8. This book is written based on America, Americanization leadership. Most of the examples’ taken from American context where the rest global part consciously ignored.CEO’s interview, companies’ presentation & analysis, case studies most related to the US context. It is the biasness also. Not drawing the subaltern leadership, third world countries’ scenario, politically unrest countries paralyzed leadership , leadership related to agronomy and others so on not analyzed through this book-these are the main weakness of this book.
‘Step back then forward’-is the main thought and final lesson of this book. Vulnerabilities of the society, organization, company or others can’t be avoided .So action plan, strategies, tactics and techniques or studies should be designed and implemented basis of these unavoidable above issues. Commitment, team spirit, eagerness, motivation, rewards, enrichment, inspiration and others like these essential for a collective and shared leadership including the implementation individually needed a lot.
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