leadership case i have worked with different supervisors during my time in the ar

Case: I have worked with different supervisors during my time in the Army; some of them were great and some, not so. Bad leaders made me consider what I shouldn’t be when in leadership position. The leaders that would get my highest ratings had such qualities as: clear communication, intelligibility, shared vision of goals, understanding of importance and power of a team as a whole. I have to say that throughout my experience in the Army, I had met a few good leaders among hundreds.
Since its military structure, many leaders use transactional style. Transactional leadership, meaning that there is authority figure that can reward and punish his/her subordinates, (Yoder-Wise, 2015). Following the rules or playing the ball is only way to have work done and since there is little input from subordinates, low job satisfaction, and low morale follows (Yoder-Wise, 2015). I have met leaders that should’ve never been leaders in the first place. For example, some leaders that had transactional style had been too passive, not involved in decision making with subordinates, had engaged in stealing credits from the subordinates if the job was done extremely good; or harshly blamed them when mistakes occurred and even had tried to pass blame for their own leader’s mistakes. Consequently, soldiers had big trust issues to the authority, low morale, high rate of poor performance, getting in trouble for breaking the organizational rules. However, I always remember excellent leaders I’ve met who used transformational style. As Yoder-Wise explains transformational leader are inspirational and motivational. In my experience I have noticed some similar characteristics among these few good leaders: they had many years of experience, loved the job or mission, liked and valued people, were open minded, flexible and actively practiced empowerment, so all the team members exercised some form of autonomy, had motivation and were praised for good work. For example, a leader of one airborne unit was extremely assertive, very strong and particular about how he wants the goals to be achieved. Among his multiple characteristics was attention to detail at the same time ability to see the bigger picture. As author of historical novel Napoleon, states, he, [Napoleon] had “the ability to undertake the most ambitious and the most difficult enterprise, being alert to all the little things and not getting confused or lost in them, at the same time to see the trees and the forest, and almost every branch on every tree”[translated from Russian]. These words exactly describe my first sergeant K., who is role model of a good leadership. I’ve seen whole unit, about 50 people, that were under his transformational leadership, had never gotten in trouble, such as DUIs or being tested positive for illicit drugs or other wrongdoings. His goals were to have the work done, to improve soldiers fitness level, to reduce misconducts. All of these goals were achieved after spending three months on a mission. The unit was recognized for its best performance among other three, many soldiers were promoted to higher rank and a battalion commander had recognized the leader as one of the best non-commissioned officer (NCO) who can be trusted to train future sergeants that are the backbone of today’s Army. Also I noticed that team members were close, supportive and respectful to each other, which led to often spending time off together.

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