Groups Leads

I think my leadership style changes dramatically from work to school, and from there onto family. In the family, we have strong independent folks that all have a good head on their shoulders and are used to running things. I have to use consultation and rational persuasion. Rarely is pressure, exchange, inspirational appeal, etc. going to get you anywhere. In school, you are starting usually from a blank slate for an assessment from your peers, especially when it's a group in which you aren't really friends with any of the members. You are driven to establish a standard for yourself and you may push forward consultation and ingratiation, perhaps some coalition building and rational persuasion. It's tough to use pressure in either of the previously mentioned situations, for me, but it applies perfectly to work situations. I use upward appeal in addition to the aforementioned tactics. At work, however, what you are able to push for leadership is dependent on your ranking, environmental factors (age vs. the person/people you are working with), and perception based on past work history. Here, I believe, your transformational leadership skills apply especially.

I can learn from applying particular tactics with my closest relatives (parents/sister) and move those over to application at work (since I see them, in many cases, for more hours than my own family... they somewhat resemble a second family to me). The work lessons can then be applied to class related groups, as in my opinion, it is tougher to influence those of a older generation than our peers.

I feel I am usually in the same role with family and work. And do find myself, more often in the smaller collaborative groups for school, in the same roll. As the groups get larger, however, I begin to step back more to allow more time for the appropriate skills needed towards the task and those involved to be assessed. It's useful as people that would like to take the lead volunteer more often, but I have also found the opposite to be true (blind square) when the appropriate questions are not asked and people remain ... uninvolved.

I have found that one of the most effective bosses I had at work always kept his schedule, or did his best to keep it no matter what was going on around him. This give him a consistent image that seemed approachable to most of the people working with him, and his organizational skills even championed him as being capable of taking on time to hear out his subordinates. That is probably the single most relevant observation I have made about an effective leader in our group, and something I would like to work on evolving myself.