Overview Of Creighton University's Leadership And Organizational Behavior

The well-known management consultant Peter F. Drucker once wrote “management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things” (1). Unfortunately, many business professionals consider management to be synonymous with leadership. However, if one truly examines the behaviors and characteristics of being a manager with those of being a leader, he/she will discover that indicates the terms are not interchangeable. Creighton University’s Leadership and Organizational Behavior course allows students to understand the differences between managing an organization and leading an organization. This paper will examine the weekly learning that took place during the eight week course, my current views on leadership and identify my personal

My initial thoughts on this subject identified similar to Drucker’s in that management of people versus leading people are two different concepts. A manager’s primary duties are to guide direct reports in completing their work assignments. On the other hand, a leader’s primary duties are to provide a vision for the entity to pursue so that it remains a viable organization in the future. Further, a leader provides the insight necessary to solve complex problem and provide unique ideas for the organization to pursue. In my pre-reading discussion response, I identified that an individual could simultaneously be a leader and a manager or that he/she may only be a manager. An interesting thought that was not considered is the scenario where an individual is a capable leader by providing unique ideas and problem solving abilities but may not possess the ability to effectively manage

The article “Employee Motivation: A Powerful New Mode” (4) identified a new concept for me in which four emotional drives influence employee motivation. These drives, classified as the drive to acquire, the drive to bond, the drive to comprehend and the drive to defend expanded on my initial thought of employee motivation. While my pre-reading responses describes the four emotional drives, I found that the article identified trust in two ways. The drive to bond acknowledges that individual employees seek to develop mutually rewards relationships with other employees while the drive to defend examines trust from the standpoint of the employer to employees. I think this is an excellent way of viewing trust as I have experienced professional situations where employees were aligned with each other on a decision while the employer was misaligned on the same topic. Ultimately, the each employee must make a decision on who to trust and how to go about resolving situations where trust does not