Answer

Analysis of a Theoretical Framework for Leadership

Eric Harvey’s The Leadership Secrets of Santa Claus presents a democratic leadership style that entails the participative values of a leader. The leader values the teams input and boosts their morale through empowering them. For instance, Santa empowers his team members, the elves, by encouraging them to go past the red wagons (Harvey, 2003). By doing so, Santa helps and encourages them to learn and grow.  The democratic leadership style entails participative leadership values that do not involve the use of force, but the leader values the input of the members (Amutha, 2017). Santa demonstrates this leadership trait by complimenting the elves on their work so far then introduces the need for change and explains why it is necessary allowing them to raise their concerns about it in a discussion.

Additionally, Santa adopts the democratic leadership style as a vocation by relying on teamwork and collaboration to get things done. For instance, in the book, the author tells the reader that Santa listens to the Elves (Harvey, 2003). Effective leadership is necessary to get things done. Taking time to listen to what the members have to say as well as being considerate about their sentiments is essential in democratic leadership. Besides, teamwork includes motivation whereby Santa devised a strategy to help each of his members see the differences that they are making by putting a smiled on every child after they get a present. There is no motivation as big as knowing that one is making a difference. Santa’s leadership traits involved not taking any member for granted as every individual in his team was special and thus he respected the time they spent on the job, their efforts, and talents. As such, he developed an attitude of fair and even distribution of work and giving positive feedback to make each of them feel good and motivated.

The motivating factor, involvement of subordinates, and skill and participation sharing are the most attractive qualities that I would seek to emulate to be able to inspire followership. According to Kilicoglu (2018), the motivating factor contributes to the development of an organization, as well as, of individual team members and taking into account their input and ideas make them feel special. For instance, this form of leadership is nowadays common in libraries where there is a close cooperation between the leaders and staff (Chukwusa, 2019). How effective a leader is can be determined by the success of an organization. Whereas, the successful rate of an organization is usually linked to the satisfaction level of employees. According to Ego and Madubueze (2019), leaders who incorporate the democratic style of leadership often attain better performance from their members than those that do not. Motivating employees, encouraging participation, and involvement would indeed inspire followership and encourage performance.

Alternatively, I would attempt to overcome the extreme attitude of gratitude that would make them lose the respect they should have towards me as their leader. Gratitude is essential in life but too much of it would ruin the work, as the members would lose the respect that they should have for their leader. Santa would share the milk and cookies as a form of gratitude. However, on my part, I would develop forms of encouragement for motivation but not allow them too much access on my position. It is essential to model the expected behavior in the workplace for members to be able to follow the rules and live up to the organizational expectations.