'Any Leader today must be both a good team member and good at leading teams'( Maznevski, 2008:95) - Essay Example

Concepts on leadership are based the following theories: “great man”, trait, contingency, situation, situational, participative, management, relational, transactional and transformative leadership (Kendra, 2011).Great man theory posits that leaders are born and that the capacity to lead is inherent to the person. Trait Theories assumed that a leader exhibit qualities and traits while contingency theory post that leaders emerge at particular situation (Kendra, 2011). Situational Theory on the other hand posit that leaders has option to choose what best to act on particular situation while Behavioral Theory assert that leaders are made; not born (Kendra, 2011).

Other sociologists also assailed that ideal leadership encourage participation of members. This is considered as Participative Leadership. Management theory, otherwise known as transactional leadership, focused on supervision, organization and performance. Leadership here is based on rewards and punishments (Kendra, 2011). Conversely, relational leadership or transformational leadership motivate and inspire people to act toward fulfillment of certain goals (Kendra, 2011). Leaders are either skilled or imbued with competencies as manager of change; of coaching and counseling and of conflict management (United States Marine Corps, 2011).

They are perceived as customer-oriented, decisive, flexible, appreciative of diversity and teamwork, equipped with deep knowledge, influential, self-directed and innovative (USM, 2011, pp1-3). They are proficient in human resource management and as effective communicators, they are expected to be principled, transparent in managing resources, clever in managing risks and uphold standard values and behaviors while they strategize, plan, or perform function for the organization (pp. 1-3). These are also the competences or criterion that are required among ‘global leaders’ – persons who have the capacity to lead wider regions with goals to “effect significant positive change by building communities based on trust and through structures and processes whilst journeying with cross-boundary stakeholders, multiple sources of external cross-boundary authority, and multiple cultures under conditions of temporal, geographical and cultural complexity (p. 17).” Like Maznevski, there are numerous sociologists who assailed that global leaders lead global teams and behave well too as member of global teams-- theoretically, empirically and virtually, the latter meant being technically expert in communicative processes using webs in networking and linkaging (Mendenhall, Osland, Bird, Oddou, & Maznevski, 2008).

This means that global leaders are expert in "intercultural communication competence" (Mendenhall et. al, 2008) thus, can assume roles and expectations in cross-cultural context and engages people with mindfulness, sensitivity, relational requisites that are present in different countries and intercultural situations (Mendenhall et. al, 2008). As such, as both teambuilder and member, they are expected to be expert in communicative processes especially if they assume roles in governments and intergovernmental organizations in analyzing and preventing risks, in conflict mitigation and roles in democratizing societies from constitutional reform to mediation to deter military deployments (Destrez et.

al, 2011 pp. 1-45). That requires