Leadership is the act of guiding people through a certain activity (Werhane, 2011). In the group study, there was a combination of beginners, managers and executives in their professions. The group was made up of four intelligent members with different professional expertise in their working fields.
One of the members was a retired military commander, then there was a recently promoted vice president of the company who had worked for ten years, the third member was the youngest in the group and lastly me. This combination of numerous professional stages gave the group a driving force to handle the presented challenges (Johnson & Johnson, 2012).
This led to proper management and running of the group because of leadership experience possessed by all group members; the leadership trait included proper delegation of duties and responsibilities. In reference to the book written by Johnson and Johnson (2012), they argued that professional experience comes with age where elderly persons are deemed to have a higher professional experience as compared to the younger generation.
Professionally, age is an indicator of authority, knowledge and experience. This is a simpler method of classifying professional titles and experiences. The elder group members displayed a higher experience and knowledge in handling group’s conflicts and maintained the smooth flow of the work presented at hand.
The combination of the old skills and new skills led to new ways of undertaking activities, which motivated members and as result increase overall performance. The conclusion that with age comes leadership abilities was drawn on the way the elderly group members handled their duties and responsibility assigned to them including offering guidance to junior members of the group (Johnson & Johnson, 2012).
Group members carried out several interviews as part of the tasks assigned to them by the overall leader. They included collecting data using questionnaires and each group member compiled a report of which the two veterans in the group presented a more professional report as compared to our report. This indicated the importance of having more experienced professionals in a group handling a specific task (Werhane, 2011).
Every member in the group acted as a leader even though we had an overall leader who was a retired military commander and me. According to the contingency leadership theories, styles of leadership are determined by several variables like the environment in which the leadership is carried in hence the best type of leadership is selected according to the environment (Werhane, 2011).
This theory discredits a single leadership style of management for all situations. A group’s success or failure depends on the available variables to be considered including style of leadership, nature of the situation, and the follower’s qualities (Johnson & Johnson, 2012).
The group was a formal group observing and obeying the set authority by the members even though most of the times we used to consult Jake and Julie on the way to approach some matters. Leadership support offered to me by the veterans helped me up my leadership skills and courage.
Groups tend to rely mostly on the members with adverse knowledge concerning matters affecting their management; this makes groups to be formal since they obey the authority vested in each member who is a leader. One of the youngest members created confusion between the retired military commander and I who were the authority holders by competing with us. Although informal authority is difficult to gain, it can easily be taken away.
References
Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, F. P. (2012). Joining Together: Group Theory and Group Skills. New Jersey, NJ: Pearson.
Werhane, P. (2011). Leadership, Gender, and Organization. Netherlands: Dordrecht Springer.