A critique of leadership and team management style in the light of Vip Essay

A critique of leadership and team management style in the light of Vip model and other current theories - Essay Example Few decades back, dynamics of a household were rigidly defined as father entrusted with the role of a bread winner, and the mother assigned to be the housekeeper. It was, most assuredly, regarded a woman’s duty to ensure that her husband and children were well taken care of. However, the shifting social, economical, and financial conditions, along with the increasing cost of living, has vastly evolved the thinking process, and has resulted, in many families, both parents working for livelihood. In addition, the deteriorating family structure, increasing poverty, and decreasing sense of security, has also resulted in children, from an early age, suffering from confidence and self-esteem issues. The severity of this situation can be realized from the fact that between years 2004 and 2008, eight hundred new children centers were inaugurated in UK and thirty percent of them were opened in extremely disadvantaged communities (Siraj-Blatchford and Manni 2007).This highlights the sig nificant role played by the nurseries and other early year’s centers in the support and growth of their respective communities. If a center succeeds in providing a safe, secure, and a neutral learning environment to its children, it not only provides peace of mind to parents, but most importantly leaves an indelible mark on children’s lives, and molds them to become better individuals. As the beginning proverb hints, taking proper care of a child requires a collective effort, which can only be possible with appropriate leadership and guidance. Therefore, to run a successful early year’s center, a manager is required to have certain specific attributes. My interview was based on three themes, which were Vision, Implementation/Operational, and People Manager/Team Management Skills of the managing practitioner. These themes were based on the â€Å"VIP Model,† which was proposed by Mark Hollingworth (2003, p. 34). According to Hollingworth, a true leader is i n fact a ‘VIP,’ which stands for ‘Visionary, Implementer, and a People Manager’. These three primary leadership traits, in the light of other theories as well, will be mostly explored in this portfolio. Various other themes, such as handling parent-staff interactions, curriculum setting, goals of the center, etc. were also considered, but after careful consideration, it was deduced that Hollingworth’s three categories encompasses majority of the themes. For example, parent-staff meetings is a part of ‘people manager’ category, curriculum setting falls in the ‘implementation’, and goal setting is definitely an element of the ‘vision.’ As shown in Appendix A, The format adopted for the interview was semi-structured, consisting of mostly open ended questions. The justification of using this format was to get a deep insight into the mind of interviewee, and to judge his leadership style according to VIP model and ot her contemporary management theories. In addition, the interview was designed and conducted with the intention of â€Å"establishment of rapport, identification of follow-up questions, and avoidance of leading questions’ (Partington 2001, p. 4). The conversation was carried out with utmost neutrality, empathy, and without any judgmental and sarcastic connotations. On the whole, the interview was primarily structured to find out if Mr. John Smith, our interviewee, has characteristics of becoming a VIP. It should be noted that, due to confidentiality, the real names of our interviewee and care center are not revealed in this report. The significance of having a ‘