Ngan Tran Quang

The Learning Journal:

Week I – Leadership Defined and Approaches

Tran Quang Ngan

MSLNU15007

Intructor: Dr. Teresa Goode

The Concepts versus Discussion

Last week, I have joined the 3 classes of first course: Developing Your Leadership capability. This course help us to define and explain more clearly about how to react as a leader, what traits or skills we need to be as a leader.

The first class amazed me about how leadership impact through a long period of times. People know how important leadership was and to be a process of influences people to achieve goal was defined according to Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and practice. Leadership is a term for me, cannot understand directly but it’s a long time to realize how leading people become different. Sometimes, we realized leadership people by a specific form called assigned leadership, who has power and ability to affect other people than to be a real leader or emergent one. So, as Vietnam current situation, we faced with high inflation rate and having a bulky apparatus of government. That means we do have lot of assigned leaders but just a few of them can be emergent leaders.

Furthermore, leadership also divided into position power leadership and personal power leadership. And for the example above, Vietnam tends to be more about position power leadership. Dr. Teresa has given us the traits approach which is to identify and a guidance to be great leaders. In class Ms. Sang said that the most important major leadership traits is determination which can give people some characteristics like initiatives, persistence, dominance and so on… but beyond that, we can practice them as a skill. I remember what Dr. Teresa asked that, “How can we achieve the self-confident?” and Mr. Phu Le gave a no better answer that we can practice and prepare. So, we can feel better when we are in a situation need to be more confident. Thus, intelligence can be achieved by learning, self-confidence can be imitated or practice and so as to determination, integrity or sociability.

For developing my leadership skills, I remembered what Dr. Teresa has taught to us, “Think out of the box” which guide me so much in real life. Somebody will tell you a rule and ask you to solve the quiz. I think that, although the rule is important to solve the math, but that’s not everything. Why we don’t think that, the rule is a red line that we must not cross over, but we also have other directions to step in. Someone told that, “Silent is an agreement”; so if the rule don’t tell, this mean we can do it.

As illustrated by the model below, Dr. Teresa has given us about critical skills needed for an effective administrator. My question is that, “is there any chance that Middle Management will become Top Management?” And got so many wonderful answer; about Ms. Mai internship time, how she achieved skill during intern but no one trained, nothing she has faced before. And the thing is, top management need technical skill but no need to fully understand deeply. Just because the leader can compare, arrange and set a vision to the master plan. But now I understand which skill need to be enrich for a promotion.

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Source: Adapt from “Skills of an Effective Administrator,” by R. L. Katz, 1995, Harvard Business Review, 33(1), pp. 33-42

Real Experiences

I feel this course is interesting because I have opportunity to learn many experience stories. Having about 6 experience of working in team, I used to be a leader of team with more than 4 departments and nearly 80 people in sum. Now, I’m working as member and staff of the Office of Student Services for 7 members. One of my real experiences is my boss, head of the Office and leader of the team. She has more than 10 years’ experience in Education and about 20 years of many different jobs.