Natasha Nicole

• Leadership is the ability to positively influence people and systems under one's authority so as to have a meaningful impact and achieve important results.
• The six competencies for leadership are: creating shared meaning and providing direction towards a vision, mission, goal or end-result; effectively listening and articulating messages to provide shared meaning; developing personal relationships that help others develop trust, integrity, and ethical decision-making; continuously developing personal knowledge, skills and abilities through formal study, experience, reflection, and recreation; shaping processes and structures to allow for the achievement of goals and outcomes; and influencing others to take action in a desirable manner.
• Personal leadership characteristics include accountability, courage, humility, integrity, creativity, perseverance, and well-being.
• Leadership theory and practices include rational-legal leadership, traditional leadership, and charismatic leadership.
• The theory was initially introduced in 1969 and revised in 1977 by Hersey and Blanchard.
• As managers work with different individuals in different stages of careers and maturity, it is their responsibility to adapt to their leadership style to the individual and the situation.
• Contemporary and Emerging Leadership Theories build on or enlarge traditional theory by attempting to answer questions raised, but not answered, by earlier approaches.
• Choosing a leadership style should not be driven by personal preference, but rather needs of the subordinates.
• Many of the theories we classify as “emerging” were proposes in the 1970 and 1980s and have been around for many years, but still considered “emerging because of the difficulty that researchers encounter in testing social science theories, it often takes decades to establish empirical evidence as a theory’s value.
• Situational Leadership is one of the better-known contingency theories of leadership offers important insights into the interaction between subordinate ability of leadership style and is taught in many executive management seminars.
• The major proposition of situational leadership theory is that effectiveness of task and relationship-oriented leadership behaviors depends upon the maturity of a leader’s subordinates.
• The model defines four levels of follower maturity (readiness): Unable and unwilling, Unable but willing, Able but unwilling, Able and willing.
• According to situational leadership, leadership styles might vary from one person to another, depending on the “readiness” of subordinates, which is characterized by their skills and abilities to perform the work, and their confidence, commitment, and motivation to do it.
• Situational leadership theory is often used in practice, but has been criticized on both theoretical and methodological grounds, including ambiguity, a lack of consistency and incompleteness, as well as mixed empirical validation.
• Blanchard and Hersey defined four leadership styles that best address these four levels of maturity (readiness): Directing, Coaching, Supporting, Delegating.
• Philip Crosby established Philip Crosby Associates in 1979 with the belief that quality is free.
• Philip Crosby's first book, "Quality is Free", sold about 1 million copies.
• The essence of Philip Crosby's quality philosophy is embodied in what he calls the Absolutes of Quality Management and the Basic Elements of Improvement.
• Philip Crosby's Absolutes of Quality Management include: Quality means conformance to requirements, not elegance, Quality is judged solely on whether requirements have been met, nonconformance is the absence of quality, Requirements are ironclad and must be clearly stated so that they cannot be misunderstood, Requirements acts as communication devices, Setting requirements is the responsibility of management, Once requirements are established, then one can take measurements to determine conformance to those requirements, There is no such thing as a quality problem, Problem originate in functi
• The only performance standard is "Zero Defects (ZD)" according to Philip Crosby, which is a performance standard, not a target, and the theme of ZD is do it right the first time, focusing on preventing defects rather than just finding and fixing them.
• Basic Elements of Improvement include Determination, Education, Implementation, and Comparison.
• Philip Crosby's philosophy is more alike than different to Deming, Juran, and Crosby, as they all view quality as imperative to future competitiveness in global markets, make top management commitment and absolute necessity, demonstrate that quality management practices will save, not cost money, place responsibility for quality on management, not the workers, stress the need for continuous, never-ending improvement, acknowledge the importance of the customer and strong management/ worker partnership, and recognize the need for and difficulties associated with changing organizational culture.
• Customer requirements, as expressed in the customer's own terms, are referred to as "the voice of the customer".
• Internet users frequently seek advise from other users on strength and weaknesses of the products, share experiences on service quality, or pose specific problem they need to resolve.
• Comments Cards and Formal Surveys are approaches for gathering information.
• Focus Groups are an approach for gathering information.
• Direct Customer Contact is an approach for gathering information.
• Field Intelligence is an approach for gathering information.
• Complaints are an approach for gathering information.
• Internet and Social Media Monitoring are approaches for gathering information.
• Another approach to Field Intelligence is for employees to observe customer behavior.
• Field Intelligence involves any employees who come in contact with customers, such as salespeople, repair technicians, telephone operators, and receptionists, who can obtain useful information simply by engaging in conversation and listening to customers.
• The effectiveness of Field Intelligence depends on a culture that encourages open communication with superiors.
• To do Field Intelligence well, organizations need to build awareness of the need to gather information, develop a system to feed information to a central collecting place for analysis and dissemination.
• Complaints allow an organization to learn about product failures and service problems, particularly the gaps between expectations and performance.
• The internet and social media such as Facebook offer organizations a fertile arena for finding out what consumers think of their products.
• Field Intelligence requires training employees who have frequent direct contact to actively listen to the voice of the customer and feed information back through the system, making review of the information a standard part of the company’s management review process, and ensuring that the right individuals take action and follow up.
• Field Intelligence is perhaps one of the least-exploited approaches to listening and learning.
• Creating a customer-focused organization takes hard work and discipline, and must be built on good policies, good people, and good processes.
• A customer-focused organization focuses on four key processes: customer commitments, customer contact and interaction, selecting and developing customer contact employees, and service recovery and complaint management.