LDR 711A Week 8 Personal Leadership Model Example

Instrumental, Relational and Shared: A Scholar-Practitioner's Integrated Model of Leadership for Airport Operations

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

LDR/711A: Leadership Theory and Practice

Week 8 Final Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Cascade Valley Regional Airport, its people and the model's examples are composites written for a model paper.

For seven weeks, Marisol Vega has held each family of leadership theory up against her daily work as operations chief at the invented Cascade Valley airport. Skills, especially social judgment, explained managers' performance during an ice storm. Situational decision research accounted for her orders landing well with snow crews and badly with airline partners. Relational theories showed that information followed relationships, and followership research revealed leadership from people without authority. A charismatic new director inspired staff but left instrumental gaps. A runway near miss tested values-based leadership. And an interagency team showed shared leadership working across organizations. This paper integrates these findings into a personal leadership model.

The Challenge of Integration

Meuser et al. (2016) used network analysis to map how leadership theories connect in published research. They found that the field had many theories with some connections, with transformational, charismatic and leader-member exchange theories at the center, but that true integration, combining theories into coherent frameworks, was still in its infancy. They encouraged scholars to build integrative models that explain how different leadership processes relate.

Development Over Time and Levels

Day and Dragoni (2015) reviewed leadership development research and proposed organizing it by outcomes over time and across levels. At the individual level, development involves growth in self-awareness, leader identity and skills; at the collective level, it involves shared mental models, team capacity and social networks. Development unfolds over long periods and depends on experience, feedback and support, and individual and collective development interact.

Values Can Be Practical

Hannah et al. (2014) tested whether newer genre leadership theories, such as authentic and ethical leadership, are idealistic rather than practical. In studies with military and organizational samples, these approaches predicted important outcomes, such as follower performance and moral behavior, and their effects were not reducible to older pragmatic styles. They argued that the dichotomy between idealism and pragmatism is false.

Element 1: Values as Foundation

The model begins with values: safety first, honesty with staff and partners and care for passengers and employees. The near miss showed that these values must hold under pressure. Hannah et al. (2014) support treating values as practical drivers of performance, not ornaments.

Element 2: Instrumental Competence

Second is instrumental competence: technical knowledge, scanning for operational risks and facilitating others' work. The storm and the charismatic director's tenure showed that inspiration without instrumental work leaves organizations vulnerable. Marisol's strength here is real and should be maintained as her role grows more strategic.

Element 3: Relational Investment

Third is investing in relationships before they are needed. Exchange quality with partners determined information flow during the storm. The model commits Marisol to meeting every new partner early and maintaining regular contact with all.

Element 4: Situational Choice of Process

Fourth is choosing a decision process to fit the situation, using the factors of the normative decision model: who holds information, whose commitment is needed and how much authority she has. Directive processes suit safety decisions within her control; consultative and group processes suit decisions involving partners.

The model's central rule is simple: decide alone where you hold the authority and the facts, and convene others where they hold either.

Element 5: Enabling Shared Leadership

Fifth is enabling others to lead: building shared purpose, support and voice, as in the irregular operations team, and encouraging proactive followership among staff. This element reflects the collective level of development described by Day and Dragoni (2015).

How the Elements Connect

Values guide all decisions. Instrumental competence earns credibility, which supports relationships. Relationships make consultation and shared leadership possible. Situational choice determines when to lead directly and when to enable others. Shared leadership, in turn, develops other leaders, extending the model beyond one person.

What Each Element Borrows

Each element draws on specific research. Values rest on the ethical, authentic and servant leadership literature from Week 6. Instrumental competence draws on the skills model from Week 2 and the critique of charisma from Week 5. Relational investment draws on leader-member exchange and followership from Week 4. Situational choice draws on the decision model from Week 3. Enabling shared leadership draws on Week 7. Making these sources explicit allows each element to be revised as evidence accumulates.

Where the Model Differs From Popular Prescriptions

The model does not place inspiration at the center, as many popular frameworks do. Marisol's experience, supported by the instrumental leadership research, suggests that in operational settings credibility comes first from competence and reliability, and inspiration follows when people see the work matters. This ordering may not hold in every organization, which is why it is stated as a proposition rather than a rule.

Applying the Model to a New Situation

Next spring, a runway reconstruction will reduce capacity for three months. Under the model, Marisol will decide alone on safety sequencing, consult airlines and the tower on schedule impacts, use relationships to prepare partners early, rely on the irregular operations team for passenger communication and keep operations staff informed with honesty about disruptions.

Propositions to Test

The model yields testable propositions. First, disruptions handled after early partner contact will produce fewer conflicting passenger messages than those without. Second, consultative processes for partner-dependent decisions will produce higher partner compliance than directive processes. Third, as shared leadership density in the irregular operations team increases, passenger complaints during disruptions will decrease.

What Would Change the Model

A scholar-practitioner states what evidence would revise the model. If disruptions handled after early partner contact showed no improvement in message consistency, the relational element would need rethinking. If directive processes produced partner compliance as good as consultation, the situational element would be simplified. Recording these tests in advance guards against interpreting every outcome as confirmation.

Boundary Conditions

The model was built in a mid-size airport with many independent partners. It may fit less well in organizations with tight hierarchies or in crises requiring immediate unilateral action. It also depends on time to build relationships, which a newly arrived leader may lack.

Limits and Self-Critique

The model draws on a small number of events and on Marisol's own interpretation, which may be biased. It also underplays inspiration, an area where she is weaker; the transformational critique suggested inspiration matters even if it is not sufficient.

Development Plan

The plan focuses on the model's weakest element and on spreading its strongest one to others. Marisol will seek 360-degree feedback annually, track the propositions through disruption records, work with a coach on connecting operational work to larger purpose and mentor two managers in enabling shared leadership.

Conclusion

Leadership research remains only partly integrated, development unfolds across time and levels and values-based approaches can be practical. Marisol's model combines values, instrumental competence, relational investment, situational choice of process and enabling shared leadership, each grounded in research and tested in her own practice. Treated as a working hypothesis, with propositions to test and limits acknowledged, the model reflects the scholar-practitioner's task of using theory to lead and leading to improve theory.

References

Day, D. V., & Dragoni, L. (2015). Leadership development: An outcome-oriented review based on time and levels of analyses. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 2, 133-156. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-032414-111328

Hannah, S. T., Sumanth, J. J., Lester, P., & Cavarretta, F. (2014). Debunking the false dichotomy of leadership idealism and pragmatism: Critical evaluation and support of newer genre leadership theories. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 35(5), 598-621. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.1931

Meuser, J. D., Gardner, W. L., Dinh, J. E., Hu, J., Liden, R. C., & Lord, R. G. (2016). A network analysis of leadership theory: The infancy of integration. Journal of Management, 42(5), 1374-1403. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206316647099