HMEF5023

TAKE HOME EXAMINATION

MAY / 2022

HMEF5023

EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP

MATRICULATION NO : CGS02283506
IDENTITY CARD NO. : 850218-05-5508

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PART A

QUESTION 1

1. Leaders Set the Vision and Managers Follow It

When it comes to setting and executing a company’s mission and vision, manager and
leaders have different roles. Leaders are visioners. Most of them have a clear vision of
where they want their organizations to be in the future. However, they themselves are
not only ones responsible for making that vision come true. Here, the managers play a
crucial role. While the leaders may be responsible, through efficient leadership
communication, to transfer the company’s mission, vision and goals to the entire
organization, managers are responsible for keeping the employees aligned with the
core company values and goals.

Even though managers are the ones who can influence people to work towards the
same objectives, many employees agree that their company doesn’t do a good job
communicating the company’s goals. Moreover, employees want and expect to be
informed about how their organization is doing and where it is heading. Moreover, by
speaking openly about the company’s goals, opportunities, and challenges, leaders are
the ones who can build trust in the workplace. They can foster a productive work
environment where the employees feel empowered to share their own ideas, needs
and concerns. The more transparent leaders are, the healthier the work environment
becomes.

2. Leaders Think Ideas, Managers Think Execution

While a managerial culture emphasizes rationality and control, leaders are more about
looking for opportunities for improvement on the organizational level. They do so by
coming up with new ideas and driving the shift to a forward-thinking mindset. In
other words, managers always look for answers to ‘how and when,’ while leaders
look for answers to ‘what and why’. Therefore, the manager’s main responsibility is
to fulfil their tasks based on the leader’s vision. Their main job is to ensure that
people on different functions with different responsibilities operate efficiently,
productively, and feel like they can share their voice.

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They should always watch the bottom lie by controlling the employees and providing
necessary information, processes, workflows and tools so that employees are enabled
for success. Managers relate to people according to the role they play in the decision-
making process, while leaders, who are concerned with ideas, relate in more high-
level but empathetic ways. The main difference is simply between a manager’s
attentionto how things get done and a leader’s attention to what should be done to
achieve greater results.

As leaders always look for new ideas, they can also play a crucial role in driving
change within organizations. Moreover, a leader inspires positives, incremental
change by empowering employees to work toward common objectives. A leader’s
most powerful tool for doing so is efficient communication. Change communication
messages coming from leaders should get people prepared to do things differently and
give the reason why, while managers should continuously reinforce these messages.
Yet, many managers are not even aware of why a change is happening.

3. Leaders Inspire People, Managers Drive Their Success

While leaders have a great power to inspire people, managers are responsible for
driving their continuous success and positive work experience throughout employee’s
entire career journey. As managers held accountable for how successful and
productive their teams are. However, when people are not inspires by what leadership
has to say, there is little managers can do to help their people succeed. By developing
a personal leadership style through self-reflection, authentic communication and
continuous feedback, leaders can empower their workforce, get their followers’
attention and inspire them to pursue important organizational initiatives.

Employees work more effectively within workplace that support honest, open and
transparent communication. Yet, many organizations still neglect the importance of
two-way communication between leaders and employees. Instead, the information
flows one way, and employees don’t have the opportunity to join the company-wide
conversations.

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4. Leaders Look in the Future, Managers Work in the Present

One of the main differences between leaders and managers is that leaders are more
future-focused, while managers are more focused on the present. Therefore, the
manager’s most important goal is to achieve organizational goals by implementing
processes and procedures around budgeting, organizational structuring and staffing.
On the other hands, leaders tend to think ahead and capitalize on future opportunities.

However, the leadership’s vision of the future means nothing if it can’t be

transparently and clearly communicated to both managers and employees. As one of
the biggest drivers of employee engagement and experience in the workplace is the
feeling of purpose and the alignment of employees’ personal and professional values,
every leader should strive towards creating that sense of purpose among employees.

QUESTION 2

Situational leadership is a leadership style in which a leader adapts their style of leading to
suit the current work environment and/or needs of a team. The style of leadership is not
dependent on the skills of a leader, rather it is based on a leader’s ability to adjust to the
requirements of a team or organization in order to be a better and more effective leader. This
leadership style may also be referred to as ‘Situational Leadership Theory’ or the ‘Situational
Leadership Model’ and was originated by Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey during the
development of the book, Management of Organizational Behaviour.

A leader implementing a situational style of leading will evaluate an organization or team and
adjust their way of leading to meet the particular needs of the team or organization. A
situational leader implements adaptability and flexibility into their leadership and regularly
assesses the situation to ensure they are leading in the most appropriate and successful way.
A true situational leader is able to successfully assess their team and implement various
leadership styles to meet the needs of the team in each situation. These leaders offer support

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where needed and encourage growth and independence among their teams to promote
increased productivity and success.

Hersey and Blanchard develop this theory that suggests that the most effective leadership
style is affected by the circumstances leaders find themselves in. the argue that a leader’s
ability to lead depends upon certain situational factors. By understanding, recognizing and
adapting to these factors, leaders will be able to influence their surroundings and followers
much more successfully than if these factors are ignored. More specifically, Hersey and
Blanchard focused a great part of their research on the characterises of followers in
determining appropriate leadership behaviours. They found that leaders would have to
modify their leadership style as their followers changed in terms of their ability and
willingness to performance the required task. A leader’s relationship with the followers is
therefore likely to go through different stages as these abilities and willingness can change
over time.

Example 1:
A school leader must oversee the completion of a school project (English Corner Project)
with all his English teachers. All the English teachers have an ample experience completing
all tasks required for the project and they can also show confidence and the ability to take
responsibility for their work to be done successfully. Knowing these situations, the school
leader uses a ‘delegating’ style of leadership throughout the duration of the project and
delegates the tasks to each team ember with minimal supervision.

Example 2:
One of a most skill full teacher in a school suddenly begins underperforming on some tasks
given due to her health problem. Her school leader become concerned because he knows that
particular teacher is capable of much more than what she is currently putting out. The school
leader enact the supporting situational leadership style and set up a face to face meeting with
the teacher to find out the problem. When he has found out the issue is personal, he offer the
teacher a listening ear and mental healthy day off before coming back to work with full
speed.

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PART B

QUESTION 1

1. The Administrative Model

Given the severe limitation of the classical model, it should not be surprising that
more realistic conceptual approaches to decision making in organizations have
evolved. The complexity of most-organizational problems and the limited capacity of
the human bond make it virtually impossible to use an optimizing strategy on all but
the simplest problems. Herbert Simon was the first to introduce the administrative
model of decision making to provide a more accurate description of the way
administrators both do and should make organizational decisions.

Effective administration requires rational decision making. Decisions are rational

when they are appropriate for accomplishing specific goals and people typically try to
make rational decision. Administrative decisions are often extremely complex, and
rationality is limited or bunded for a number of reasons. Since individuals are not
capable of making completely rational decisions on complex matters, they are
concerned with the selection and implementation of satisfactory alternatives rather
than optimal ones. They recognize that their perception of the world is a drastically
simplifies model of the complex interacting forces that constitute the real world. They
are content with this oversimplification because they believe that most real-world
facts are not important to the particular problem they face and the most significant
chains of cause and effect are short and simple.

Consequently, they ignore many aspects of the situation and make choices using a
simplified picture of reality that accounts for only a few of the factors that they

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consider most relevant and important. That is, they operate in a world of bounded
rationality by limiting the scope of their decisions so that rationality can be approach.

2. The Incremental Model

Although the satisficing strategy is well suited to dealing with many problems in
educational administration, occasionally some situation requires an incremental
strategy. When relevant alternatives are difficult to discern or the consequences of
each alternative are so complicated as to elude prediction, even satisficing does not
work well. For example, to what new activities should a school administrators allocate
more resources? The answer to this question is probably more adequately addressed
by considering only alternatives that differ marginally from existing conditions. The
underlying assumption of the strategy is that small incremental changes will not
produces major unanticipated negative consequences for the organization.

Besides that, the process is best described as a method of successive limited

comparisons. Deciding does not require objectives, exhaustive analysis of alternatives
and consequences or a priori determination of either optimum or satisfactory
outcomes. Instead, only a small and limited set of alternatives, similar to the existing
situation, is considered by successively comparing their consequences until decision
makers come to some agreement on a course of action. The incremental model also
greatly reduces the number of alternatives. The strategy considers only alternatives
that are very similar to the existing situation, analyses only differences between the
current state and proposed outcomes and ignores all outcomes that are outside the
decision maker’s narrow range of interest.

3. The Classical Model

Classical decision theory assumes that decisions should be completely rational. It
employs an optimizing strategy by seeking the best possible alternative to maximize
the achievement of goals and objectives.

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According to this theory, there are a few steps in the decision-making process. Firstly,
is the problem is identified and followed by the goals and objectives are established.
Next, is where all the possible alternatives are generated and the consequences of each
alternative are considered. All the alternatives are then being evaluated in terms of the

goals and objectives. The best alternative is then being selected which is the one that
maximizes the goal and objectives. Finally, the decision is implemented and
evaluated. The classical model is an ideal, rather than a description of how most
decision makers’ function. Most scholars, in fact, consider the classical model an
unrealistic ideal, if not naïve. Decision makers virtually never have access to all the
relevant information. Moreover, generating all the possible alternatives and their
consequences is impossible. Unfortunately, the model assumes information-
processing capacities, rationality and knowledge that decision makers simply do not
possess, consequently, it is not very useful to practicing administrators.

4. The Mixed-Scanning Model

Mixed scanning seeks to use partial information to make satisfactory decision without
either getting bogged down examining all the information or proceeding blindly with
little or no information. This adaptive satisficing is ‘a mixture of shallow and deep
examination of data which generalized consideration of a broad range of facts and
choices followed by detailed examination of a focused subset of facts and choices.
Higher-order, fundamental decision making is combined with lower-order,
incremental decision that work out the higher-order ones. Mixed scanning unites the
rationalism and comprehensiveness of the administrative model with the flexibility
and utility of the incremental model.

The mixed-scanning model has its roots in medicine. It is the way effective physicians
make decisions. Unlike incrementalism, doctors know what they are trying to achieve
and on which parts of the organism to focus attention to. Moreover, unlike decision
makers who seeks to optimize, they do not engage all their resource on the basis of an
initial diagnosis, or wait for every conceivable bit of personal history and scientific
data before beginning treatment. Doctors survey the symptoms of a patient, analyse

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the difficulty, initiate a tentative treatment, and if it fails, try something else.
Educational administration can skilfully employ all of these adaptive techniques, all
illustrate flexibility, caution and capacity to process with partial knowledge. When
time is limited or the decision is not that important, truncate adaptive satisficing may
be appropriate, in which case, both the range and number of facts and choices are
limited and the analyses are not as deep or penetrating.

QUESTION 3

1. Creativity Can Be Stimulated by the Leaders

Giving employees creativity training and tools that help them think more creatively is
a good thing provided they are realistic about it. They will not radically change
anyone’s creativity, but they could help everybody moderately improve their creative
thinking skills. The result is that creativity training is unlikely to unleash a flood of
radical new product ideas that will make their company to work better by working
more creatively. People will have lots of smaller creative ideas that translate into
incremental improvements that reduce costs, increase income and make their
organization a better place to work. Individually, these ideas may not seem like a lot,
but collectively, they do good things to the bottom line.

Of course, these people are not limited to having incremental improvement ideas.
They will also have occasional big ideas that benefits the company too. But they will
have these ideas irrespective of whether or not you give them creativity training,
everyone has big ideas from time to time. What matters more is the they take those
ideas seriously and develop them if they have merit.

2. Creativity Can Not Be Strategically Planned

As with intelligence, memory, physical strength and most human characteristics,
one’s creativity sits on a spectrum that ranges from seldom having original ideas to
overflowing with ideas and probably on to schizophrenia and being unable to
distinguish between imagination and reality. Moreover, one’s mental abilities are
presumably interconnected and define their personality, strengths and more. Let’s

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imagine a highly numerate and moderately creative financial analyst with an
exceptional eye for detail.

If a person can strategically plan and some how give their massive creativity a boost,
it would adversely affect their other mental strengths and weaknesses in ways they
can not guess. The creative boost might affect their numerate and analytical abilities.
It might encourage the person to play with numbers and seeks unique patterns which

might encourage them to play with numbers and seek unique pattens which might
make them a better theoretical mathematician but would probably reduce their ability
as a financial analyst. If this person has a great reputation, changing his or her mind
makes them more creative would be doing their no favours.

3. Imaginary is Important
Highly creative people tent to be on the outside of multiple social groups but seldom
entirely integrated into any one group. So, do the same with teams. Encourage
creative people to be on the edge of multiple teams, attend meetings, help solve
problems and make suggestions but do not expect them to be deeply involved in team
activities or performing tasks. Their remit should be to advise and support with
creative input. And, by being on the edge of multiple teams, they can be expected to
see and exploit potential connections between different teams’ activities. Therefore, it
is a good way to invite our creativity through imaginary. This is to help us solve
problems even those problems seem to be outside of their arears of expertise.

4. Scratch Pad of the Mind Pad

It makes more sense to hire people to do things they do best. Moderately creative
accountants, HR staff, IT teams members, marketers and managers can all do
excellent work and will feel less stressed if they are not being pressures to be more
creative than they feel comfortable being. Instead, hire creative people to be creative,
marketing people to do marketing, HR people to HR and so on. Doing so gives
management more control over the level of creativity in the organization. If a person
wants a lot of creativity, they need to hire a lot of creative people and give them a lot

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of freedom and authority. If the do not want a lot of creativity, they just need to hire
only one consultant to be creative sometimes.

5. Unconscious Mind Is Not Supernatural

If a person really wants to boost the creativity of their organization, they need to hire
people especially to be creative. These might be full time employees whose job
description focuses on creativity exclusively. They might be consultants hired
specially to help them solve their problems and achieve goals through creativity.
These people must be naturally highly creative people. Their greatest skills are their
unique thinking,

original way of looking at situations and alternative perspectives. Most likely, they
would not fit comfortably in their corporate culture. But that’s okay. They see things
differently, do things differently and find different solutions to their problems. In
short, they add creativity, whether they want it or not. Hiring highly creative people
like this to be accounting, IT, HR or administrative employees is unlikely to work if
most people in these divisions are like everyone else in their divisions in terms of
background, education and experience. Moreover, promoting them into managers is
simply unlikely to happen.

QUESTION 4
1. Accommodating Style
The accommodating style is the opposite of the competing style and it resolves the
conflict by giving in to the opposing party. The person might need to use an
accommodating conflict style or attitude when interacting with someone with strong
or abrasive personality. Acknowledge ad accepting someone else’s views or
perspectives is an important part of teamwork, especially when the other party is an
expert or more experienced than you. However, it is also crucial for them to know
when accommodating someone else might be detrimental to them or their team’s best
interest.

Accommodation is for situation where they don’t care as strongly about the issue as
the other person, if prolonging the conflict is not worth their time, or they think they

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might be wrong. This option is about keeping the peace, not putting in more effort
than issue is worth, and knowing when to pick the battles. While it might seem
somewhat weak, accommodation can be the absolute best choice resolve a small and
move on with more important issues. This style is highly cooperative on the part of
the resolver but can lead to resentment.

Example:
In a school annual dinner, the theme colours for the event are being choose and
discussed. Teacher A is adamant that blue is the best choice. Teacher B thinks that
green is slightly better, but decides to let Teacher A chose the colours, to avoid
arguing about two choices that she thinks are both fine.

2. Avoiding
This style aims to reduce the conflict by ignoring it, removing the conflicted parties or
evading it in some manner. The team members in conflict can be removed from the
project they are in conflict over, deadlines are pushed, or people are even reassigned
to other departments or tasks. This can be an effective conflict resolution style if there
is a chance that a cool-down period would be helpful or if they need more time to
consider the stance on conflict itself. Avoidances should not be a substitute for proper
resolution, however, pushing back conflict indefinitely can and will lead to more
bigger conflicts down the line.

To avoid confrontation and conflict, some managers will delay making a deadline or
avoid making a decision. They might physically separate the opposing parties or
remove themselves from the situation altogether. However, often the deliberate delay
will cause unresolve conflict to cause resentment and frustration among the
employees. Conversely, in other situations, it can give both parties time to potentially
readjust their attitudes and perspectives and the conflict could resolve on its own.

Example:
Teacher A and Teacher B are collaborating on the innovation project where the
deadline is looming and they ae increasingly unable to agree on changes. The deadline
is pushed back and they both are given the day to work on other school projects. The

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space to take a break from each other, as well as the extra time to complete their
project, allows them to cool down and resume in a more collaborative mindset.

3. Compromising
This style seeks to find the middle ground by asking both parties to concede some
aspects of their desires so that a solution can be agreed upon. This style is sometimes
known as lose-lose, in that both parties will have to give up a few things in order to
agree on the larger issue. This is used when there is a time crunch, or when a solution
simply needs to happen, rather than be perfect. Compromise can lead to resentment,
especially if overused as a conflict resolution tactic, so it needs to be used sparingly.

When someone address conflict with this style, they encourage each side to make
some significant sacrifices. By definition, this means that neither side gets exactly
what they want. Ideally, after compromising on one or more minimal issues, both
parties could then agree on the larger issue. This can foster short-term productivity,
but it rarely completely solves the underlying problems.

Example:
Class 3 Melur students want to have their year-end class party. Therefore, there was
an argument mong the student on the flavour of the cake that they are going to order
for the class party. Some students choose chocolate flavour, some choose orange
flavour and a few go for vanilla. To solve this problem, the teacher has to interrupt
and take her own decision. This problem was ended up after the teacher says that the
flavour of the cake for their class party is going to be red velvet.

4. Collaboration
This style produces the best long-term result, at the same time it is often the most
difficult and time-consuming to reach. Each party’s need and wants are considered,
and win-win solution is found so that everyone leaves satisfied. This often involves all
parties sitting down together, talking through the conflict and negotiating a solution

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together. This is used when it is vital to preserve the relationship between all parties
or when the solution itself will have a significant impact.

The collaborating style tries to find a solution that truly satisfies everyone involved. If
a person wants to use collaborating, they need to listen and communicate with both
parties involved in the conflict. After taking the time to understand both sides of the
issue, they will need to facilitate both parties negotiating a solution together.
Implementing this style can often be time-and labor-intensive, but it frequently
produces the most satisfying long-term results. The collaborating style is an important
asset if they are seeking to create and maintain successful professional relationships.

Example:

Rina owns a tuition centre that is managed by her best friend Tina. Rina and Tina
usually agree on almost all the business-related decisions. However, Tina disagrees
with Rina regarding who to hire as the teacher in the tuition centre. As the owner,
Rina has the authority to overrule Tina’s opinion. However, she chooses to sit down
with Tina and discuss a solution that will please both o them. After several weeks of
negotiation and open communications, they hire two teachers for their tuition centre
for a trial period.

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