Critique Four of Ten Leadership Mistakes Mentioned in Pater Paper (2014)

Executive Summary

This report has been designed by Mhd Anwar Karj, 2015. The report critiques four of ten leadership mistakes mentioned in Robert Pater paper (2014) with the topic of “Overcoming the Top 10 Leadership Mistakes – Change Your Game to Achieve Game – Changing Results”. Karj believes that some of the approaches considered by Pater as a mistakes may used by leadership in specific situations. Based on Karj research, he has highlighted some situations where the leaderships may use “Arrogance, Complacency, Command and Getting in your own way” approaches, and found that the “command” used as main tools by military leadership and autocratic leadership, the “getting in your way approach” is used by the directive leadership as well, while “arrogance and complacency” are used in many situations.

Introduction

Karj generally agrees with Robert’s 10 highlighted mistakes that prevent leaders from being more effective. But, he believes that such approaches may used by some leaders in specific cases. Accordingly, Karj is here below going to critique Robert opinion in four of them.

Arrogance

As per Karj practical experience, sometime the leadership power and taking decision on spot may be understood as arrogance by his some inexperienced followers; Power allows leadership to help people and give back. Now usually, leaderships with power are arrogant; arrogance is what makes leadership want power in the first place. But, leadership can only get power if he cares about himself first. Then, arrogant leadership does is taking care of himself. Then, he helps others.

Vasco, (2014) discussed the same in his article stating that there is nothing wrong with being arrogant, provided leadership doesn’t cross the line. The problem isn’t arrogant leaderships; it’s when they cross a line where they absolutely don’t help others at all and truly want everything and anything for themselves, here is the leadership mistake.

Karj agrees with Vasco and believes that being arrogant, in a good way is one of the most powerful and interesting character traits the leadership may have. By taking care of himself first, he has charisma, he gain more critical thinking, he prioritize himself, he starts to challenge conventions, and he create his own initiatives in this world.

Moreover, leadership may use an arrogance behavior with his some followers who meet his humility disrespectful. Many people would agree that a modest leadership has an inner confidence that does not need to be flaunted; a sign of strong character.

Leaderships are very aware of their own talents and achievements and they knew they were the best at what they did. At the same time, they don’t have any problem at all to tell about their credentials and doing so from a very proud perspective.

Justin, (2010) stated that “If you are struggling with your own confidence and self worth, maybe it is time to err on the side of being arrogant. Build yourself up from the inside out so that you recognize your strengths, talents and achievements and begin sharing them with the world”.

Complacency

As per Karj practical experience, the leadership may use this approach when further motivation may cause in concentration of the followers. In other hand, and as per the quality management principles outlined by Deming and Juran, (2000), improvement happens continually and not continuously. Means, the leaderships need enough time to implement what they improved by self confidence approach, such time needs to implement what we have in hand effectively.

Command & Assume

The leadership may use commands with some of his followers who misunderstand his positive approach. As per Karj experience, many followers prefer to work according to the leadership command and specially those who don’t have a self confidence.

In other hand, the leadership has to use commands when faces an emergency case required an urgent action. In such cases and specially those related to safety incidents, no time for listening and delegating.

Moreover, and as discussed in Molossian Naval Academy web site, the Military leadership influences others to accomplish the mission by providing purpose, direction, and motivation. Command is the authority a person in the military service lawfully exercises over subordinates by virtue of his rank and assignment or position. The basic responsibilities of a leader are: Accomplishment of the mission and the welfare of the soldiers. The most fundamental and important organizational technique used by military is the chain of command. The chain of command is the sequence of commanders in an organization who have direct authority and primary responsibility for accomplishing the assigned unit mission while caring for personnel and property in their charge.

Karj would add that the Autocratic leadership use command as well as a classical leadership approach, and the corporate equivalent of dictatorship or tyranny, as highlighted by N Nayab, (2011), this leadership style is marked with the leader having complete authority and the followers obeying the instructions of the leader without questioning and without receiving an explanation or rationale for such instructions. Autocratic leadership creates a centralized chain of command with heavy involvement of the leader. This leads to the formation of a hub and spoken type of organizational structure that helps in many ways, such as: getting things done quickly and anticipating problems in advance, and better realization of consequences of an action by one section on other sections.

Getting In Your Own Way

The leadership may implement an action by his way when deal with inexperienced followers and no time for listening. Means, the leadership may use this approach for short term action and not for long term. In other hand, this approach is used by the directive leadership who tells his followers what needs to be done and giving appropriate guidance along the way. Moreover, this approach may used when the task is unstructured and complex and the followers are inexperienced. This increases the follower's sense of security and control and hence is appropriate to the situation.

Conclusions

In view of the scenarios highlighted by Karj above, it is proved that the ten leadership approaches considered by Pater as mistakes in his paper are not absolutely a mistakes, even some of them are not used in specific situations only, but are main tools used by leadership as we seen in the “command” being used by the military leadership and autocratic leadership and “getting in your own way” being used by directive leadership. Therefore, Karj recommends categorizing these approaches under different suitable title which can be important topics for future researches.

References

1. Bright Hub Project Management. 2011. A Critique of the Autocratic Leadership Style. By N Nayab. [online] Available at:

http://www.brighthubpm.com/resource-management/75715-a-critique-of-the-autocratic-leadership-style/

2. Elite Daily. 2014. The Ecological Arrogant: It’s All About Being The Nice Bad Guy. By Vasco Patricio. [online] Available at:

http://elitedaily.com/life/culture/ecological-arrogant-good-dick/ 

3. Ignite Your Essence. 2010. When Being Arrogant is a Good Thing. By Justin Popovic. [online] Available at: 

http://www.igniteyouressence.com/success-articles/when-being-arrogant-is-a-good-thing/ 

4. Molossia. 2010. The Molossian Naval Academy. [online] Available at:

http://www.molossia.org/milacademy/leadership.html