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What It Takes to Be A Leader:
An Annotated Bibliography
Anthony Valdez
Academic affiliation: Oklahoma State University
©Read the copyright notice at the bottom of this page
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or electronically, or in any other form.


Ahn, Mark J., and John A. Adamson. "From Leaders to Leadership: Managing Change." Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies 10.4 (2004): 112-23. The ideas of managing change, the impact on organizational structure, group structure, and personal management styles are the fundamental skills of effective leadership. The question of whether or not the upper manager that appears to be superman is really a superior leader or is it just an illusion. Furthermore, it is determined that more than not, these managers are playing a smoke and mirror game and are not really the leaders they appear to be, rather they are poor managers. After the study was performed, the results showed that these managers were poorly trained and/or lacked the skills to be in those positions. The process of leading an organization through change is also studied within this publication. This proves to be a very difficult task that needs a very motivational, persuasive leader to accomplish it. The authors of this article are very informative on the subject at hand with allowing an easy read for the average person.

Clark, Donald. "Big Dog's Leadership Page-Concept of Leadership & Human Behavior." The Art and Science of Leadership 11 May 1997. 09 Oct. 2004 <http:// www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leader.html>. The intention of this author is to help benefit any new leaders and supervisors with their new positions. It is everyone's goal to be successful at what they do and sometimes it is necessary for a little help along the way. There are several leadership theories and explanations associated with those demonstrated throughout. It is claimed that good leaders are made and not naturally meant to be leaders, where there are multiple others who would disagree with that statement. Being in a leadership role does not make that person a leader, it makes them the boss. In order to become a leader, people must want to achieve high goals and objectives laid out by that person, rather than doing it because the boss instructed them to and it is part of their job. Clark aims his information provided for all levels of readers interested in leadership.

Fairholm, Matthew R. "Different Perspectives on the Practice of Leadership." Public Administration Review 64.5 (Sept/Oct 2004): 577-90. With more of a proper focus and renewed theoretical and practical vigor, it is hoped that the current trend of building leadership and management capacity among practitioners be undertaken. Public Administration has overlooked the aspect of management science when applying it to leadership. Management science is the expert and decision maker aspect of being a leader. It is stated that Public Administration is too concerned with doing the right things in the public eye rather than being good, confident leaders and allowing that aspect to guide their decisions. It has been demonstrated by some public administration theorists to completely avoid the topic of leadership when evaluating previous administrations, which shows that one of the most important leadership positions known to society does not even get recognized as one. This article is a little more on the technical side with the terminology used, but is sill able to be understood by the amateur.

Harrel, Keith. The Attitude of Leadership: Taking The Lead and Keeping It. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2003. Harrel uses his publication to help leaders develop themselves, by learning from other, well known leaders. Multiple real-life examples are given to help Harrel demonstrate what a good leader is comprised of and how they use the skill. There are multiple qualities people contain to be effective, well respected leaders, but a lot of times those people do not use those qualities in their proper purpose. The leaders who contributed their personal experiences to Harrel's book really adds a lot to being able to relate certain aspects to being a leader to their own lives. They are able to apply those lessons learned from others to better themselves as leaders. Harrel apparently intended this book to be informative for the novice leader and those who strive to be leaders someday.

Hill, Linda A. Becoming a Manager: How New Managers Master The Challenges of Leadership. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation, 2003. Hill uses other people's experiences in the field of management to help give ideas and lead new managers in the right direction in their new level of their career. She also demonstrates what being a manager is and tries to define what a manger needs to be effective. Furthermore, Hill allows for the experiences of other managers and subordinates to explain the importance of managers. One unique aspect Hill takes on the subject is that she evaluates how subordinates view their managers and what works and does not work from that level. Most other authors only give a very one-sided view point of what you are supposed to do in those positions and not allowing the people that are most affected to give an opinion. The book is written to be informative as an introductory to being an effective manager and allow for new members into the field to learn from the ideas and experiences of others.

Mccormick, Michael J., and Mark J. Michael . "Identifying Leader Social Cognitions: Integrating the Causal Reasoning Perspective into Social Cognitive Theory." Journal of Leadership & Organization Studies 10.4 (Spring 2004): 2-11. Due to numerous theories behind leadership, a social cognitive model and a causal reasoning perspective have been taken and combined to allow for how leader causal reasoning processes affect leader perceptions of goals, self-efficacy, and leadership task schema. This new theory is supposed to affect the leader's selection of strategies and enactment of behaviors. The combined approach allows for an evaluation of why leaders take the approaches to the tasks that they decide to take. It is determined that leadership matters and the effectiveness of an organization is based upon the type of leadership in place of that particular organization. There is also evidence that people lacking some leadership skills may be able to take some classes to help improve their proficiency at being a leader. Mccormick and Michael allow for this article to understood for a general audience without providing for a too technical read.

Pearce, Craig L., and Pamela A. Herbick. "Citizenship Behavior at the Team Level of Analysis: The Effects of Team Leadership, Team Commitment, Perceived Team Support, and Team Size." The Journal of Social Psychology 144.3 (Jun 2004): 293-310. The study of leadership is taken from a different approach when it is specifically looked at from the group level, a smaller dimension to the overall topic. It is specifically called, team citizenship type behavior (TCB). It is comprised of six factors including, altruism, civic virtue, conscientiousness, courtesy, teamwork, and mindedness. In the theory, it is necessary to obtain the previous factors in order to be a successful and efficient leader, and with this study, at the more specific group level. After careful evaluation of the results of the study performed, it was determined that people in leadership positions do well with leadership training and are able to be more successful in their positions. Most people believe that to be a leader must come natural to the person and it is not a trainable skill. However, that is partially the case, it is not to be found completely true, being that people are able to be more effective at their positions with some help. This article is prepared for the reader with some knowledge of the topic going into it, but can be negotiated through with some help from other sources.

Popper, Micha, and Raanan Lipshitz. "Putting Leadership Theory to Work: A Conceptual Framework for Theory-based Leadership Development." Leadership & Organization Development Journal 14.7 (1993): 23-27. Can leadership really be defined? Popper and Lipshitz create a discussion on what identifies a leader from the average person. The two authors base the discussion on a controversial claim that leadership is simply being able to motivate people to act by a non-coercive method. They believe that motivation and leadership is conveyed by leaders being able to accomplish this goal simply by being the people they are, using their personality and their own behavior, rather than having to resort to being the authoritarian. Popper and Lipshitz argue their leadership theory by including three components. These parts include, developing self-efficacy pertaining to leadership, developing awareness of modes of motivating others and developing specific skill. They conclude that leadership is motivating others while not intimidating them, as well as being self assured with themselves to be successful. This article provides for a well written foundation of the study of leadership for the amateur reader.

Porter-O'Grady, Tim. "Embracing Conflict: Building a Healthy Community." Health Care Management Review 29.3 (Jul-Sep 2004):181-87. Being that all human interactions are based on conflict, it is essential that all leaders are effective with conflict-reducing dialogue and relational tools. With out these necessary tools, we are unable to effectively interact with others and as a result not be able to be recognized as good leaders. It is not important for the leader to recognize the conflict, as it is important for that leader to recognize the proper communication process to take when dealing with the problem. The potential for conflict itself can generate a wide variety of emotional responses, therefore creating a difficult task to be handled by that leader. Unfortunately conflict resolution is a large aspect to the leadership role. This article provides a little different approach to the study of leadership and appears to be written for a technical audience.

Quinn, Robert E., Gretchen M. Spreitzer, and Matthew V. Brown. "Changing Others Through Changing Ourselves: The Transformation of Human Systems." Journal of Management Inquiry 9.2 (Jun 2000): 147-64. The authors take an interesting approach on how leadership is instituted by people. It looks at how effective strategies are for altering human systems to create change for one to be a leader. It concentrates on how to successfully change an organization and allow for everyone involved to be accepting of the reorganization taking place. To allow for everyone to be on board with the changes taking place, it is important for the leader to change themselves to be able to effectively change others. In other words, the person must be comfortable with themselves prior to being able to help lead others. This also allows for a person to acknowledge what is realistic and not to over step their or the organization's abilities, which in turn will allow for failure. Due to the technical jargon contained within the article, it is apparent that it is written with the health care professional in mind. However, it is fairly easy to negotiate through it.


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