Instead of competencies, leadership qualities are a new direction in leadership development (original) (raw)

Wisdom Based Leadership Competencies

Wisdom has always been expressed in concise, easily understood and widely accepted sentences. Most wisdom statements have a historical context and reflect a hard-won insight. Not surprisingly, they often describe aspects and characteristics of exceptional leadership. This paper discusses how leadership related wisdoms were collected, presents a method to arrive at the logic behind them and to reveal, through groupings and numerical analysis, the core leadership competencies underlying those wisdoms. The wisdom sources were historical documents, statements made by seasoned construction professionals in leadership seminars, and a survey of National Academy of Construction members. The collected wisdom statements were filtered through graduate students engaged in acquiring leadership skills, members of the SLC Construction Honors Society, local industry professionals, and members of the Leadership Research Advisory Council active in Arizona State University. The filters were a technique to ensure that such a highly perceptive audience understood and accepted the wisdoms and the underlying logic. A wisdom development model was created to better understand the wisdom process. The authors make the argument that to create and improve leadership competencies in people, the logic behind the leadership based wisdoms and the related core competencies must become a recurring source of educational discussion.

Navigating complex challenges: creative competencies for contemporary leadership

The authors propose how creative leadership can be developed and used to deal with complex challenges. Creative leadership means making shared sense out of complexity and chaos and the crafting of meaningful action. The authors' research has identified six creative leadership competencies, which are discussed in the article, namely: paying attention, personalising, imaging, serious play, collaborative inquiry and crafting.

Leadership: emotional intelligence, passion and . . . what else

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to present the outcome of a business and management cohort's contemplations on leadership qualities that can be considered applicable under practically all circumstances. Design/methodology/approach -The subject scope was organizational leadership. The methods used were written interviews. The topic was approached by: explaining the general disconformities of leadership qualities, depending on situations and followers; examining leadership students' perceptions on generally applicable leadership qualities; clustering the listed qualities; and presenting a model. Findings -There are some leadership attributes that are generally applicable, regardless of situation and followers. The findings listed in this paper are not exhaustive but should rather be used as a pragmatic tool for further research on the topic. Research limitations/implications -The population used for data was limited, as it consisted of business and management students with a leadership emphasis. The themes to be collected were also limited, due to the pre-set restriction for each student to list only one additional leadership quality. The findings were only gathered from one cohort, later enriched with additional interview findings, and might provide increased themes when extended over multiple courses in multiple semesters, or when applied in additional qualitative or quantitative studies on the topic. Applying this study on other populations for a greater foundation in findings. Practical implications -There are some qualities that work in leadership all the time and everywhere, and leaders could use this list as an encouraging reflection onto their practices. Originality/value -In these times when all leadership sources claim that successful leadership is as dispersed as the situations and natures of followers, this paper provides a refreshing viewpoint that there are qualities in existence that will enhance a leader's performance, regardless of the nature of the constituents.

Leadership Competencies: Are we all saying the same thing?

Proceedings of the 45th annual conference …, 2003

Inquiring Thinking Communicating Risk Taking Principled Caring Open-Minded Well Balanced Reflective Committed Confident Cooperative Creative Curious Empathetic Enthusiastic Independent Integrity Respect Tolerance Surprisingly, this is not an established leadership framework but rather a list taken from a 4 th grade student profile guide. While a simplistic example, it illustrates both the universality of the competency concept and the potential confusion when associating a simple list of traits and processes with leadership.

Concepts and Conceptions: Leadership Competencies

National Clearinghouse for Leadership Programs When I was in high school, I attended a retreat where we received letters from loved ones. One of these letters was read out loud. As an introvert, this was an absolutely miserable experience for me. But that is a topic for a different issue of Concepts & Connections. I remember my teacher proclaiming one line in my letter very clearly: "If I were to choose one word to describe you, it would be resilient, like a diamond." Admittedly, my vocabulary was not (and still is not) very large, so after the weekend I went home and looked up what resilient meant. Webster gave me a pretty good idea, but I believe that my lived experiences brought my definition to a higher level and gave my diamond a new sparkle. I hope this issue of Concepts and Connections provides answers but also new questions around leadership resiliency allowing you to see your diamond with brand new sparkle. Editing this edition of Concepts & Connections allowed me time to reflect on how I have grown and how resiliency exists in leadership and my life. I hope this piece is as timely for you as it was for me and we hope you enjoy, reflect, and learn from this edition of Concepts & Connections.

Leadership Competencies: Time to Change the Tune?

This article indicates how the competency approach to leadership could be conceived of as a repeating refrain that continues to offer an illusory promise to rationalize and simplify the processes of selecting, measuring and developing leaders, yet only reflects a fragment of the complexity that is leadership. To make this argument we draw on two sets of data: a review of leadership competency frameworks and an analysis of participant reports from a reflective leadership development programme. A lexical analysis comparing the two data sets highlights a substantial difference with regards to the relative importance placed on the moral, emotional and relationship dimensions of leadership. The implications of these differences are considered, as are ways in which the competency approach could be aligned more closely with the current and future needs of leaders and organizations. In particular, we argue that a more discursive approach that helps to reveal and challenge underlying organizational assumptions is likely to be more beneficial if organizations are looking to move beyond individualistic notions of leadership towards more inclusive and collective forms. Methodological issues are also raised around the comparative analysis (both semantic and linguistic) of apparently incommensurable texts.