8600-308 Understanding Leadership

Unit Overview

8600-308 Understanding Leadership is a unit within the ILM Level 3 module that builds the ability of the learners to understand principles of leadership that influence their development of personal leadership behaviours and skills. A leader must be able to possess skill sets that put them in a place where they can influence their subjects and develop the relevant behaviours that support their duties and responsibilities within the organisation, which are to ensure that various goals and objectives are achieved.

Lower levels of leadership within the organisation face challenges with the aspect of developing autonomous leadership abilities and styles that support the organisational goals and objectives due to the influence of the senior authorities within the organisations and the lack of relevant information to support the process of building the desired leadership traits and styles. This unit presents this learner with the opportunity to access the relevant information that they require to establish themselves as unique leaders and contribute to the organisational activities and processes.

The main purpose of 8600-308 Understanding Leadership as a unit in ILM Level 3 is to develop knowledge and understanding of leadership, including the leadership styles and behaviours and their relevance in different organisational contexts hence ensuring that the leaders are able to effectively play their roles within the organisation. The unit is taught in 6 hours of guided learning and has a credit value of 2 in the completion of the general ILM Level 3 module.

Suitability of the Unit

8600-308 Understanding Leadership is designed to improve the knowledge and understanding of the learners on critical principles and skills of leadership. As such, the unit is highly suitable for leaders within the organisation. It helps them to understand the different models and styles of leadership that can be used within the organisation to achieve various goals and objectives. Additionally, the leaders are provided with a set of techniques that they can use to assess their leadership qualities and behaviours to ensure it is aligned with their duties and responsibilities and contribute to the accomplishment go organisational goals and objectives hence making them productive in the areas of responsibility.

This unit is designed to meet the learning needs of first-level managers, junior managers and supervisors within the organisation. It helps them to develop autonomous leadership skills despite the influence of the senior authorities that helps them to accomplish tasks assigned to their teams or individuals they lead. Additionally, the unit also helps them to develop behaviours that create an influence over the individuals they lead, making it important.

However, this unit is not limited to this group of leaders. Other leaders, such as middle managers, can use this information as a building stone to higher responsibilities within the organisations. Other stakeholders, including general employees and external consultants, must also exhibit high standards of leadership capacities, and this unit contributes to building the theory and practice required to achieve this standard.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of the unit, the learners should be able to:

• Describe the factors that influence the development of leadership behaviours and styles in workplace settings

• Explain the impact of the leadership styles and behaviours in creating a positive or negative effect on the individual and group behaviour within the area of responsibility

• Assess personal leadership styles, behaviours, and potential within the context of the organisation by using a specific leadership model

• Align the leadership styles and behaviours identified to the organisation's culture and working practices using feedback collected from others

• Identify effective measures to improve personal leadership behaviour and skills in the context of the identified leadership model.

Key Learning Ares

This unit focuses on improving the ability of learners to improve their leadership potential and ability. It builds an understanding of the principles of leadership and further provides opportunities that can be used to effectively develop leadership styles and abilities that improve personal performance. Some of the areas of focus within this unit include:

Leadership Styles

This area of learning lays the basic principles and foundations of understanding leadership within the organisations. In this area, the learner is helped to understand the roles and responsibilities of a leader and different leadership form of management, which helps them to understand the need for each aspect.

The learners are also introduced to various leadership models that include trait, contingency, situational, distributive, transactional/ transformational or servant oblique leaders and the various contexts that these leadership skills are applicable within the organisations. This subject covers the tasks, performance culture, and relationships that are developed within each leadership model. Lastly, the learners are introduced to leadership behaviours and sources of power that facilitate the authority that the leader expresses within the organisation.

Leadership Qualities

This area of learning provides the learners with the understanding of different qualities that an individual need to develop to ensure they are able to fulfil their roles and responsibilities as leaders in their areas of responsibility. The area covers critical information that includes the process of identifying, developing and choosing appropriate leadership qualities to suit the leadership styles and behaviours that have been selected in accomplishing the roles of leadership. It also helps to understand the role that trust and respect plays in effective team leadership within the organisation. And uses supervised practice and simulation exercised to build ability to express leadership abilities.  

Evaluation

8600-308 Understanding Leadership uses different forms of evaluation to ensure that the Learning goals and objectives are effectively achieved and facilitate the implementation of learned principles within the organisational context. The evaluation is conducted using the written assessment as a summative tool of evaluation where the learner is required to respond to questions on leadership.

Simulations and supervised practices, on the other hand, are sued to provide the formative assessment of the ability to apply the skills being learned within a practical setting. The assessor is able to assess the learner in the context of an organisation to determine the practical application of leadership principles in influencing organisational goals and objectives.