Virtual Leader Essay Example for Free

Virtual Leader Essay According to the book, management is the process of working with and through others to achieve organizational objectives efficiently and ethically, as well as effectively. Before we started to learn the class material and before the Virtual Leader simulation began, I thought that managing others would not be too difficult. I mainly thought that with authority came power, but as we learned in class this is not the case. My initial perception was that employees under managers would comply with their manager’s requests without much hesitation since the manager would automatically have reward, coercive, and legitimate power. The Virtual Leader scenario was quite a learning experience as I was not too good at it to begin with. Beginning with scenario 1, I struggled getting Oli to accomplish the tasks that I wanted him to do. Even though I (Corey) was new to the company, I thought that I could get my ideas passed more easily since I was Oli’s manager. My pure authority over him was not enough to convince him easily. At the beginning of the simulation, Oli is noticeably overqualified and underpaid for his position and is showing little respect for his new manager. I learned after running the simulation multiple times that you have to â€Å"give and take† with Oli. If you support his ideas and encourage him, then he is more likely to support your ideas. You also have to keep him under control and negatively influence him if he was encouraging wrong ideas. As I did the next scenarios, I tried to apply original leadership style of using my authority to try and push my ideas through. Again, this was unsuccessful. As the scenarios continued and I (Corey) was no longer the highest position, my overpowering approach again proved to be the wrong approach. For example, I could not exercise my legitimate power in scenario 3 with Herman and Will because they were both superior to me in terms of position. I had to adjust my style as I did in scenario 1, and gain support from others by supporting them. These adjustments of my leadership style according to the situation is an example of the contingency leadership approach that we learned about in class. I especially had to change my leadership behavior in scenario 4 because I had the least amount of authority in the meeting. I had to take more of a back seat and wait for the other 3 members to bring up different ideas, support others’ ideas so I could gain their support, and then finally push my ideas such as â€Å"Keep Nortic Vendors†. My original assumptions of legitimate power is all a leader needs and that the best way to accomplish a task or an idea is to just keep pushing it without listening and supporting others is what made it difficult for me to achieve high scores relatively quickly. After analyzing my flaws and realizing what I was doing wrong, it made me realize that I should have been using the exact same leadership style that my former employer and CEO of The Motley Fool implements. As I noticed while sitting in during a meeting last summer, he did not do much of the talking. He would merely listen to and support others’ ideas that he liked and then propose his ideas once the time was right. Even once he proposed the ideas he would let other members in the meeting discuss his ideas first to get a sense of others’ opinions on it, and would then elaborate. If I had to guess, he would be brilliant at Virtual Leader. Virtual Leader really made me realize that leadership is more of a â€Å"give and take† relationship between the manager and his/her employees instead of an overpowering relationship. Employees do not want to be bullied and told what to do all the time, they want a leader who can encourage them and ultimately steer the company in the right direction, no matter where the ideas come from.