LDR/300 Innovative Leadership
LDR/300 Weekly Overview
Week three: leadership and power
Objectives for the Week
· Analyze the interaction among leaders’ sources of power, motives, and influence tactics.
· Differentiate among strategic leadership types.
· Identify strategic forces on management and leadership.
· Identify unique challenges to leaders in nonprofit organizations.
What You Already Know
In Weeks One and Two, you learned about the difference between management and leadership and explored characteristics of effective and ineffective leaders. You also identified leadership roles and obstacles and assessed leadership effectiveness based on common measures for success presented in the course readings.
At this point, you have an understanding of what constitutes effective leadership, how leaders can balance competing values and priorities, how to avoid managerial failure, and methods to develop leaders. Your understanding of these important concepts may assist you in navigating the material for Week Three.
This Week in Context
The material covered in Week Three is specifically applicable to the relationships among leadership and power, motives, and influence tactics. Readings focus on the dark side of power and the domain and impact of strategic leadership. In addition, the unique challenges of nonprofit organizations are addressed.
The techniques learned in this week may be applied to the individual assignment and the Learning Team assignment, introduced in Week Three and due in Week Four. The concepts of power and strategic forces are important to understanding how leaders operate in a global marketplace.
Assignment Overview
The individual assignment concerns the relationship between leadership and power based on the minicase The Prime Minister’s Powerful Better Half at the end of Ch. 5 of Leadership: Enhancing the Lessons of Experience. After reviewing the section on leader motives, you are asked to characterize Ho Ching’s motives and then identify what role, if any, gender differences play in the minicase.
The Learning Team assignment associated with the objectives for this week is due Week Four. After reviewing the strategic forces at the end of Ch. 7 of The Art and Science of Leadership, you are asked to use the information about learned environment, strategy, culture, structure, technology, and leadership to determine the better candidate for a position in a nonprofit organization.
How and when leaders exercise their power and influence can help determine the success or failure of their organizations. Nonprofit organizations—including public schools—have their own unique set of challenges. Being able to select leaders who understand and can overcome these challenges affects not only the organizations themselves but also communities, states, and entire countries.
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