Behavioral Complexity

Identify a leader you admire and with whom you are familiar. You may select someone that you

know personally or someone you have read about enough to familiarize yourself with her history

as a leader.

Question 1.

What actions has this person engaged in that suggest she is comfortable using each

of the following approaches when working with and/or managing others? Try to identify as

many different types of behaviors as you can.

• A human relations approach that emphasizes collaboration, commitment, and cohesion?

• An internal process approach that emphasizes control and stability?

• A rational goal approach that emphasizes competition and productivity?

• An open systems approach that emphasizes creativity, change and adaptability?

Answer.

Throughout my career in the military, I have come across many types of leaders whose

leadership styles have spanned from using collaboration, commitment or cohesion or a mixture

of all these traits to achieve success their endeavors. But none has impressed me more

than the leadership traits that LCDR Warren Jacobs exhibits.

Haven been chosen to CDR billet, it was already challenging in itself. To make matters

worse, his predecessor left the office with a highly polarized workforce and work environment. There was no trust up and down the chain and most of the civilian employees were so disgruntled to the extent that they were already looking for work in other DoD agencies around. On his first day on the job, He held a meeting with all the managers and directors and in and short sentence he asked them, “what do you envision the workplace to be like and what can I do to ensure that you, as well as your staff would enjoy coming to work each day and working together to achieve organizational success”. Everyone was taken aback in total surprise. They have always been used to being given directions and their opinions not valued very much.

After listening to all their opinions, he took all into consideration...