Analyst's Post.

Good evening!  I’m Rosana and this week I have been the analyst of my group. To do my work well, I’m going to answer the following questions:

1. What was the best part of the activity? The best part of the activity was when we finished the task, because we were very exhausted and stressed and we need time to study.

2. What was the worse? The worst part was when we didn't know how to present. We were arguing during twenty or twenty-five minutes, and finally we could decide it.

3. What was the best moment of the week (in the work of the group)? The best moment of the week was when we were searching the advantages and the disadvantages and we realized that each one found the same that the others. We started laughing, between jokes, and finally we continued with the work.

4. What was the worse? The worst part of the week for us was when we couldn't get to agree about the presentation, because we don't like to discuss and this little problem almost gets that we discuss.

5. What have you learnt? We have learnt the different types of leadership, and what are the advantages and the disadvantages of each one. Besides, we also learnt that, although a leadership can seem bad, it has got his advantages too. And the same with a leadership that seems good, later you can find that it has got his disadvantages.

6. What do you need to conserve -as a group- for the next weeks? Although there aren't more weeks, I am sure that we need conserve what we have learnt, because in a future we can need it when us be teachers. Of course, each one will have to decide what kind of leadership she wants to use in her job, and now we know what are the best and the worse things of each leadership.

7. What do you need to improve –as a group- for the next weeks? We need to learn that we have to divide the work in a better way, because we felt overwhelmed and we couldn´t concentrate at first, but at the end we complemented between us.

8. How THIS content is related to other contents in the course and in your degree? The main relation is with the previous task, when our stars had to represent a kind of leadership (authoritarian), and the stars of the other groups the others kinds of it.

And this is all! I hope that this information may be of interest.

See you soon!

Translator post.

Hello everyone, I am Raquel the translator of ''the little ants'', as you know I have to choose five key words and to provide a definition of them, but again as you know this week we have work the advantages and the disadvantages of these six leadership styles, so I have though that all of them are key words, so I have done an exception and I have describes all of them.

1. Democratic: This is a leadership style in which the leader take into account their followers' opinion in the decision-making process, so the play a more important role in the decision than other followers of others leadership styles can do and in this way the results are always more creatives. That's the reason why this type of leadership is the more effective, it have higher productivity and usually it is the best one because it cause less problems than others.

2. Autocratic: This kind of leaders have all the control in the decision-making process and the result are less creative because they never take into account their followers' opinion, they only take into account their own opinion. They are really clear about the thing that should be done, how they should be done, and exactly when they should be done. Also they establish very well the difference between the leader and the followers. It is only useful in a decision-making process when there is few time to decide.

3. Laissez- faire: In this kind of leadership the leader give to their follower all the control to the decision making process. They do not provide direction to the followers, it give to their followers a higher degree of freedom, while at the same time they offering guide and support when they are requested. The leader provide all the material necessary to accomplish their goals but he or she don't participate in the decision-making process.

4. Transactional: This leaders focus on motivate their followers trough out a system of rewards and punishments. Providing rewards to recognize the effort or the good performance, and providing punishment to improve the performance. They identify their followers' needs and given them rewards to improve their efficiency. Transactional style prefer working in teams to focus all their concentration in the task.

5. Transformational: The transformational leadership style depends on high levels of communication because leaders motivate their followers by th communication. The leader is not limited by the perception of their followers. They focus on transform the need of their followers and redirect their thinking. The leader work in the most important issue and delegate smaller tasks to their team.

6. Paternalistic: The paternalistic leaderships works as a father for their followers, taking care about them as a father would do with their children. And he or she receive as a result the trust and the loyalty of them. The relationship between leader and workers is totally solid. They help each other as a family when they have any problem.

To sum, I have to say that it have been the best activity in my opinion because it is really useful in our future as teacher to know how much types of leaderships there are and which we want to be, I think that the best one is the democratic leadership.

Enjoy it!

Stars - Alba Velasco and María Mula

Hi everyone, we are Alba and María, and this week we have been the stars of our activity. The task has consisted on doing a presentation explaining the advantages and disadvantages of six types of leadership: authoritarian, democratic, paternalistic, laissez-faire, transactional and transformational. Here you have some of the main characteristic of each type:

 -Authoritarian: It can be effective in work environments where decisions need to be made quickly but in fear of followers being unproductive, authoritarian leaders keep close supervision and feel this is necessary in order for anything to be done.

- Democratic: This style of leadership encompasses discussion, debate and sharing of ideas and encouragement of people to feel good about their involvement. However, in situations where roles are unclear or time is of the essence, democratic leadership can lead to communication failures and uncompleted projects

-Paternalistic: The relationship between these co-workers and leader are extremely solid, although like a parent would have to, sometimes the employer must spank the employee.

 -Laissez-faire: Laissez-faire leaders allow followers to have complete freedom to make decisions but it can sometimes result in a lack of productivity, cohesiveness, and satisfaction.

 -Transactional: Transactional leaders are effective on work team. On the other hand, the main disadvantage is that they are more concerned with following existing rules than with making changes to the organization.

 -Transformational: The main objective is to work to change or transform his or her followers' needs and redirect their thinking. In addition, transformational leadership can reform organizations.

With this activity, we have learned that there are many types of ways to guide a team. In addition, some of them are more effective than others and we have discovered that our type of organization (in The Little Ants) is democrative, we have got good things but like always we have to improve in other aspects of organizating our work. We have liked a sentence of one of our classmates: “a leader must form leaders, not followers”.

See you next week!

Journalist Post

Hi, readers. I’m Blanca and this week I have had the role of journalist. This role is very interactive, because when the members of the group and I were giving their ideas for the exposition, were talking about the new task or doing the Prezi for the presentation, the Pearl Tree and the advantages and disadvantages of the different styles of leadership, I also had to take photos and videos of that. So that, I must say that I enjoy this role very much.

I also had to comment other blogs from people of the class and a blog from outside the class. These were the comments:

The first comment in a blog was in The Teachleaders’ one:

And the last one was in a blog from outside the class. The post in the blog is written by Trisha Vivona:

 

On the 6^th of May, we decided to divide the different documents we need to learn and understand the different styles of leadership. The facilitator (Esmeralda) decided that Alba, María Dolores and Rosana get the advantages and disadvantages of the Wikipedia’s page.

 Raquel and María had to do the same with the document: “A definition and illustration of democratic leadership” of John Gastill. 

 




Finally, Esmeralda and I had to analyze “Leadership Styles” of the Encyclopaedia of Educational Leadership and Administration.

In the weekend, we all study a bit more of the task of the week trying to understand everything.

On the 12^th of May, we put in common some ideas and we decided to do a Prezi for our presentation.

The next day, on the 13^th of May, we had the presentation of the task of the week.

María and Alba were the stars of the week and the people in charge of defend our work of the week in front of the class. Here you have a video of the presentation we have today. I hope you enjoy it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48WYxSMpRBU&feature=youtu.be

                                     Teachleaders:                                   Give me 7:

This task was related to the one of the next week, but in this week we have gone deep in it. I have learnt new things I didn’t know, so I must say that the subject of Organization has been very useful for me and for my knowledge all this semester.

This is our last task, so I have to express thanks to Linda, for show us that there are other ways to learn and not always the same; for example: memorizing. Now, it’s time to think in the Organization’s exam and portfolio, and how to improve in everything that we have done.

See you!

Curator Post

Hello! I am María Dolores, the curator- farmer this week, I will show the references that my group and I used for this task and also you can see a pearl-tree, there, I would show our task of this week.

This week the task consisted on searching the differences between leaderships, Linda sent us two documents to extract the differences and also a link to Wikipedia. According to this, our stars presented our work.

Here I put a link to go to my pearl-tree where I show you a summarize of our work:

http://www.pearltrees.com/#/N-u=1_1829700&N-p=113430925&N-s=1_11608658&N-f=1_11608658&N-fa=10717305

About the references, we used prezi where we showed our presentation of the disadvantages and disadvantages of leadership.

http://prezi.com/umdojmefzddn/untitled-prezi/

Here I will include the link which Linda sent us to consult the different leadership:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership_styles