Assignment: Types of Leadership

There are various types of leadership roles in an organization. They extend from the executive leadership role to the project leader. Each has different sets of responsibilities to the organization and each leadership role utilizes skill sets that require influencing people to move the business towards the vision. This week's theme focuses on those levels that are most visible to the students either because they are seen from afar as being on the top or because they seek to become involved personally: executive, managerial, and team leaders.

In completing the following learning activity, students will examine the role of each leadership type and the skill sets associated with them.

Executive Leader: Are leader that are often seen from afar. They are the people at the top. Their role is to design the vision, mission, structure and culture of the organization. It is their ideas that provide the framework upon which the manager builds. The job of the executive leader is to be the social architect. An executive leader creates the vision, mission, structure and culture and is change agents.

Managerial Leadership: Leaders create followers through influence while managers lead people and manage things (overlap is the skills needed to lead people to do things)

Leading Teams: In this role, guidance, direction, instruction, motivation and leadership are provided to a group of workers for the expressed purpose of achieving an outcome.

Learning Activity #1

• Read the course material for this week.

• Develop and post a list of the characteristics of the executive leader that distinguish a leader from a manager.

• Research and find one leader that you would define as a successful executive leader as described by the list of characteristics that you made.

• Explain the reasoning for selecting the chosen leader and for the list criteria used to make the selection.

Learning Activity #2

"Leading from where you are" means taking a leadership role in any job held.

Take a few minutes to reflect about whether you have ever led from where you are? Using your experience in the workplace give an example of when you "led from where you are."

Remember leadership in this context means an action that leads others to an action that benefits the organization but is not necessarily within the job description. Be sure to define what "leading from where you are" means. Be sure to use the course material to support your reasoning/explanation.