Instructions:
- Post a new discussion related to the topics covered in this module. Your post needs to provide specific lessons learned with examples from this module helping you enhance your leadership capacity at work.
- After posting your discussion, review posts provided by other students in the class and reply to at least one of them.
10 Comments
Hello everyone,
Today, I want to discuss what I learned from action-centered leadership. This type of leadership involves managing individuals and teams to carry out tasks effectively. Action-centered leadership can be divided into three key elements: the task or task function, the team, and the individual.
The first element, the task or task function, refers to the specific goals or objectives that must be accomplished. As a leader, it is essential to ensure that everyone on the team understands what needs to be done and how it should be done.
The second element, the team, refers to the group of individuals working together to accomplish the task. A good leader should be able to manage the team dynamics and ensure that everyone is working together towards a common goal.
Finally, the third element, the individual, refers to the team members. A good leader should understand each team member’s strengths and weaknesses and use this knowledge to delegate tasks effectively.
Action-centered leadership is a practical approach to managing teams and achieving goals. By focusing on the task, team, and individual, a leader can ensure that everyone is working towards a common goal and that tasks aare completed efficiently.
Being a leader sometimes requires one to take on many tasks, lessons about action centered leadership can help to accomplish these tasks. Action centered leadership is about the effective execution of tasks through effective leadership of individuals and teams. It is broken down into three key areas of responsibility – achieving the task or task function, managing the team, and managing the individual. Achieving the task is the actions one takes to achieve the goal. Managing the team involves the actions the leader takes at the group level, which is encouraging teamwork and cohesion. Managing the individual are the actions the leader takes to address each individual’s needs. It may be difficult to achieve balance with all three areas, but the checklists provided at the end of the lecture would be very useful to accomplish this.
This was a good lesson on more specific skills and tasks that leaders need to have. This lesson shows that leadership is a trainable skill. They made it clear that being a leader is different from being just a manager. While you have you have to have good management skills, to be a good leader you also must be able to determine and decide direction, know the steps necessary to get there, and take others with. Action centered leadership is definitely defined by being goal oriented, having a plan, knowing what your resources are and how to use them, developing your people in every way you can, staying involved and motivating, revising the plan as needed, and ensuring the goal is achieved and executed properly. It’s really nothing ground breaking, but at the same time, it’s very detailed in how to stay engaged and focused. Definitely good to see a more thorough break down of good involved leadership.
I agree this was a good break down of involved leadership. It is important to develop the core leadership skills first and then focus on the 3 areas of responsibility mentioned in the lecture. To achieve balance, it would be important to give adequate time to each area of responsibility.
I feel that leaders are those that can effectively make a change in their subordinates by inspiring them to do better not only because they have to, but because they want to. Being able to take the basic concept and principle of a single idea, then put it into something tangible, before having the final product set into place and developed into a daily task or readily accepted practice squad or agency-wide can be rewarding and taxing. Those that can do that are an intricate part of the agency and help them move in the correct direction.
Inspiring and motivating is an important piece of leadership that I think is lost on plenty of managers. I did find it interesting that in this lesson they mentioned that motivation comes 50% from within and 505 from external factors. I don’t know if I actually believe those numbers are that steadfast. It certainly takes some internal and some external, but I think it may eb and flow depending on the day and person. Some people react really well to exterior motivators like a kuddos or a reward, while others are very self driven and don’t need a ton of motivation from other people. But, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone say they were thanked or applauded too much in the workplace. If anything, most people complain they aren’t recognized enough and that severely reduces motivation.
Leadership can be adjusted to different situations in which we come across. In some aspects someone may be more fit for the situation than you are. In the end we all have the same goal to reach. In team functions of the jail we assure that the safety and security is the main goal.
I agree. In this field, having an active role in the leadership of your agency and with your squad is highly important. Being able to prioritize goals associated with the functions specific to your unit are essential to keeping everyone on the same playing field.
I completely agree with you. Leadership is not a one-size-fits-all approach and needs to be adjusted according to the situation and the people involved. A great leader must recognize when someone else may be better suited for a particular task or problem and delegate accordingly. Ultimately, the team’s shared goal should be the top priority, and everyone should work together to achieve it. In a jail setting, safety and security should be the primary focus, and leaders must create a culture of safety and responsibility within the team.
Leadership is a skill that can be natural or a trained skill. It is important for a leader to know where they are at and to continue to grow their leadership skills. According to Crutchfield, there are three actions to the action-centered leadership model; task function, team function and individual function. All three skills play an important role in the model and can improve a unit and agency’s mission and goals. Task function is about identifying the vision or task at hand and incorporating clear goals for everyone on the team. Team function requires the leader to include all members on establishing goals, agrees to the goals and understands their roles in accomplishing the goals. Individual function requires the leader to understand the talents of each member on the team and to ensure that all their needs are met (2017).
Reference
Crutchfield, P. (2017). Action leadership. 2.8, Week # 7. National Command and Staff College. Retrieved from https://cloud.scorm.com/content/
courses/NAGVXPB5E6/ActionLeadership20eae092-88b5-4864-916e-46a84dd5b2bb/2/index_lms.html