Leadership and Management Attributes

This study material explores the attributes of leadership and management. It discusses different leadership behaviors, the importance of fair treatment of employees, effective communication skills, and personal attributes of a leader. The material also includes a case study of Vanessa Mangion, a leader in the public service.

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Leadership and Management Attributes
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Leadership and Management Attributes
Introduction
The structure of life dictates that we always need to have a leader not only to show us
direction but also to provide solutions to the problems. Leaders also eliminate the confusion of
who is answerable to who in the society (Antonakis &Day (2017 p.45). Organizations are not an
exception to this fact because as the research by Antonakis, and House (2014, p.746) established,
an organization is defined by the type of leaders that it has. This research was supported by
Chemers’ (2014, p.43) study that conducted and found out that many successful organizations
attribute their success to their leaders just like many failed organizations can attribute their
failure to their leaders. This is so because most of the decisions in any organizations are made by
leaders, and those decisions that ordinary employees require the approval of their leaders for
them to be effective. This means that leaders play an integral part in the success or failure of an
organization. However, a study by Dinh, Lord, Gardner, Meuser, Liden, and Hu (2014, p.36)
established that being a good leader does depend on the level of education of a person. This is on
account that there are no “magical combination” of characteristics that can make a leader success
especially given that different circumstances call for different characteristics of a leader. It is
because of this that Dinh, et al. (2014, p.37) in their research proposed that for a leader to be
successful they need to understand different approaches to leadership and how to use the same to
tackle different situations. In this paper, I give an evaluation of the attributes of Vanessa
Mangion who is a leader in the public service. The evaluation follows an interview with her to
know her perception and compare it with my own based on the leadership and management
theories.

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Body
Our interview with Vanessa commenced with me asking her to explain to me the five
main behaviors that make a good a leader. Vanessa believes that a leader’s behavior is
determined by how he/she interacts with the employees in the organization. That is why she has
been very inclusive in decision making by involving all the employees in every decision-making
process in the organization. This according to her has made the employees feel respected and
part of the organization. From her explanation, I observed what Northouse (2018, p.67) in their
research had established regarding the behavioral theories of leadership which categorized
leaders into three categories that are the autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire leaders.
Autocratic leaders are those types of leaders who do not involve their teams in the decision
making the process. Democratic leaders are the opposite of autocratic leaders because they
involve their teams in the decision-making process by allowing them to provide input in the
decisions made. Laissez leaders are leaders who allow their teams to make all the decisions
without interfering with them. Based on these three categories, I find Vanessa to be a democratic
leader because she allows her employees to provide input to the decisions made. Even though the
level of inclusivity exhibited by Vanessa is good for any leader because it gives employees the
freedom to make important decisions which could lead to innovation in the organization, I still
believe that sometimes autocratic leaders are required in the organization. For example, when
decisions to be made are urgent, consulting every employee is not necessary since this will waste
a lot of time especially given that some employees will be hesitant to allow some decision to be
made. In scenarios like this, Northouse (2018, p.67) in their study established that autocratic
leaders will be necessary because autocratic leaders do not waste a lot of time consulting other
employees before they make any decision. This therefore means that autocratic leaders can also

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be considered as effective leaders and having them in the organization is very important
especially in situations where there are urgent decisions to be made. In addition, there are
situations where laissez-faire leaders are required in the organization. For example, when a
leader is dealing with a team that is highly motivated and are experts in that specific field, the
leader does not need to interfere with the decisions that the team is making as summarized in the
research conducted by Othman, and Rahman (2014, p. 359). This means that even laissez-faire
leaders can make good leaders as opposed to what Vanessa believed that only democratic leaders
are effective leaders.
Further to this, Vanessa suggested that another behavior that has made her stand out as a
leader in her organization is fair treatment of the employees. According to her, employees are
very important to the organization and how leaders treat employees determines how productive
those employees will be to the organization. It’s because of this that Vanessa as a leader believes
in equal treatment of employees as a means to motivate them in the organization. Vanessa also
believes that as a result of equal treatment, the employees feel valued and respected by the
leadership of the organization because she treats them equally. She further told me that leaders
who favor some employees in the organization are not effective leaders as they will divide
employees into two groups with each team trying to outdo the other which can result into a
conflict of interests in the organization. From her explanation I observed what Ramchunder, and
Martins (2014, p.1) established about the Leadership-Member Exchange (LMX) theory which
asserts that some leaders have fallen into a trap of human resource by favoring some employees
more than the others in the organization. Scully (2015, p. 439) in their research further
established that one of the factors that have contributed to poor employee performance is
preferential treatment from their leaders which demotivates them and in the process the

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employee productivity is reduced. From Vanessa’s point of view and the Leadership-Member-
Exchange theory, it is evident that effective leaders are those who treat their employees equally
and fairly at every circumstance. However, in my perspective, I believe there are circumstances
that some employees need unfair treatment than other employees by their leaders. For example,
when one employee keeps on repeating the same mistakes more often, a leader needs to treat that
employee differently from other employees by punishing him for the mistakes he has done. This
means that one of the attributes of an effective leader is ensuring that all employees perform as
per the expectations and if the employee does the contrary, the leader will administer the
punishment to the individual employee as per the penal code. From my perspective, effective
leaders should treat employees fairly by even administering fair punishment to them when they
go wrong and not only in rewarding employees or allocating duties to them. This is against
Vanessa’s assumption that an effective leader is a leader who administers fair treatment to all
employees but she does not consider punishment as fair treatment. This therefore means that
there is a need for a leader to understand the penal code in the organization so that whenever an
employee fails to do his duties, he will take responsibility of administering the punishment as per
the penal code.
Vanessa also believes that it has been easy to carry her duties effectively as a leader in
public service because she possesses effective communication skills. To Vanessa, effective
communication summarizes everything that an effective leader should have because the main
task of a leader is to pass information of the team she/he is leading to the senior management and
vice versa. The only way a leader can pass this information to the senior management is by
effectively communicating to them the interest of other employees and communicating the
decision of the management to the employees to so that there can be smooth running of the

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organization. Vanessa believes that there are a lot of challenges that employees face while
handling their respective duties, and these employees turn to their leaders for solutions. This is
because she is well equipped with the communication skills, she has been able to talk to these
employees and solve employee differences that otherwise would have resulted in a major fallout
in the organization. despite largely agreeing with her regarding the essence of a leader to possess
good communication skills, in my perception I believe that as the world is moving to embrace a
concept of globalization, diversity in taskforce especially in the public service will be inevitable.
That is why I believe that apart from having good communication skills, an effective leader
should also be culturally competent. A culturally competent leader will be able to communicate
with employees from different backgrounds effectively.
Regarding personal attributes that make her a leader, Vanessa believes that a leader must
be likable, assertive, good in decision making and should have integrity as well as empathy. She
believes that she possesses all these personal characteristics because she has been successful in
the organization so far. She believes that these qualities mentioned above are innate and
instinctive which to her means that the aspect of leadership is inborn and a person is either
having it or does not have. However, in my own perception even though I agree with Vanessa
that empathy, integrity, good decision making and likability are personal attributes that a leader
must have, I would disagree with her where she said that leadership is inborn because I believe
good leadership is learned as opposed to it being inborn. This is so because there many people
who possess the same personal characteristics that Vanessa claims to possess but all those people
are not good leaders. As suggested in the study by Gelei, Losonci & Matyusz, (2015, p.477)
leadership entails handling different challenges that different situations bring. This means that
for a leader to be able to handle these situations effectively, it’s not enough to depend on

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personal characteristics alone since he has to interact with the immediate environment which will
force him to learn new things that are helpful for him handling the situation. This is well
mentioned in the trait theories which believe that all leaders share a good number of personal
characteristics which can be used to make a guess on whether that leader is effective or not.
However, those shared characteristics can be developed by different people on their own (2644,
p. 2644). This theory was consistent with the research by Mason, Griffin, & Parker (2014, p.174)
which established that there are two ways that a business owner can use the trait theories to
benefit his business and these areas include; first, a business can use the theory to adjust his own
leadership styles and secondly, recognize who among his staff has the capabilities of a good
leader. Based on the trait theories mentioned above, Mitchell (2015, p.39) in their study
established that for anyone aspiring to be an effective leader has to take the initiative of learning
some of the personal traits that will make them effective leaders. For example, a person can learn
how to make sound decisions that will benefit his organization by critically following the
decision-making process every time he makes a decision. By doing this, a leader who previously
was not good in decision making will be able to systematically make decisions that will benefit
his organization.
General Observations and conclusion
During my time with Vanessa, I was able to make general observations about her, for
example, she is very good in problem-solving. This came when there was a disagreement
between two employees that required attention. She took just took five minutes to make both
employees smile and shake hands. From the way she communicated to me during the interview, I
observed that she possesses effective communication skills. In addition, I observed that she is

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time conscious. This is so because she answered the questions I asked by going directly to the
point, and she even made sure that the interview took exactly the time it was allocated for.

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References
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