Level 5 Diploma in Leadership and Management skills

Task: Assessing your own leadership capability and performance

There are so many definitions of leadership and it is difficult to establish a specific definition;

The Oxford English Dictionary definition of leadership is:

"The action of leading a group of people or an organization, or the ability to do this."

Drucker’s summed up leadership as “The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers” whereas, John C Maxwell said “leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less”. Warren Bennis focuses more on individual capability and defines leadership as "Leadership is a function of knowing yourself, having a vision that is well communicated, building trust …show more content…

The middle management team hated attending meetings as they all too often ended up managers being belittled in front of their counterparts as an example.

Since those early days there has been step changes in the leadership of the organisation, the revised structure has resulted in improved communication and direction, the board are now more open to development ideas from the rest of the management team and in fact now actively include the rest of the management team in compiling the company’s business plan, which is an inspirational move which has improved morale resulting in a sense of ownership.

McGregor’s X / Y theory (1960) identified two types of people. People on the X side, hated work and wanted to be lead. However people on the Y side were driven and enthusiastic. He identified that these behaviours was a result of the style of the management.

|Theory X |Theory Y |
|Attitude |
|We dislike work, find it boring and will avoid it if we can |We need to work and want to take an interest in it and enjoy it|
| |under the right