Distinguish between different types of leadership theories and demonstrate key leadership skills needed to deal effectively w

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Question 1: Distinguish between different types of leadership theories and demonstrate key leadership skills needed to deal effectively with elements of a disaster

There are various leadership theories that are in-line with the Earthquake Hämelandia, hence for the purpose of this report the following theories will be used. In addition, the theories will be connected to the leadership’s skills that are effective with all the facets of the disaster.

Trait Leadership Theories

This theory is based on the trait of an individual person. The theory believes that a leader is born with leadership traits, this are attributed to the leadership skills and knowledge of the leader or manager (Bennett, 2010). This theory assumes that all the leaders have to have certain skills in order for them to be able to lead others. For the case of the Earthquake Hämelandia disaster, some of the leaders such as Nathan (current Team Lead), Heidi (Current deputy lead), Taku (Head of security), Melanie (Mobile clinic leader), Tarja (Camp Management) were given their first task as soon as the disaster took place, hence this could be attributed to the skills that they already have and have shown. However, the following leadership’s skills must be on board for the disaster leaders to be able to manage it as well as lead others effectively: accept responsibility easily; leaders attending to disaster response should be able to respond easily when such situation happen, as for the case of Hämelandia disaster, effective and efficient leaders should have this skills to ensure the safety of help of the victims (Zook, Graham, Shelton & Gorman, 2010). Able to motivate others; in case of disasters of Hämelandia disaster magnitude, leader should be able to have skills to motivate others to work. A leader should be able to work under the clock to ensure more and more employees or workers are able to come on board to work in disaster situation in order to help people out of trauma of disaster as well as save lives. The last skills that this paper will elaborate as of the case of the Hämelandia disaster is high flexibility skills, since disaster come with various emergency issues a leader in charge should be able to change as pertained (Yates & Paquette, 2011).

Behavioral Leadership Theories

This theory speaks of leaders able to learn leadership styles not something that they are born with. The theory is divided into four styles. This division will help explain the difference that it shows on how Hämelandia disaster should be managed. Focus on the work: leaders with this style are based on how the leaders are able to organize other people so that they could be able to handle their jobs in the most effective and efficient manner. For the case of the Hämelandia disaster, the leaders were able to understand this style, this means they were able to implement this style under the behavioural theory, this is because they were able to organize others people to help in the management of the disaster. For example, I was able to handle the request from the BBC interviewer and advised him to have the doctors as the best person to handle the issues. This was because of technical that the doctor could only address, in addition chain on administration was worth to consider (Yates & Paquette, 2011).

Focus on the people: this means that leaders should ensure that employees’ demands are met, this is so since workers under favourable conditions are motivated to work, hence better production and increased job satisfaction. In the case of the Hämelandia disaster, leaders in charge with the disaster were able to conduct meeting in order to meet the demand of the workers in the field. They informed the staff how to handle the disaster as well as inform them of the changes in management as well as administration (Underwood, 2010).

Direct leader: this are leaders that make decisions on behalf of others and expect them to work based on the decisions made by the leaders. Hämelandia disaster did not follow this style rather it followed focus on people and focus on work. Participative leader: this is a leader who works with others to come up with a decision, early morning briefing and coordination meeting were used during the Hämelandia disaster to get the best approaches to handle the disaster.

Situational Leadership Theories

This type of leadership style depends on other styles of leadership. This leadership theory talks of change of one situation to the other, therefore a leader should be able to change according to the situation as it come. In the case of the Hämelandia disaster, leaders were able to change or to adjust from one case to the other as the event of the disaster help changed from one to the other. The theories also states that just having the different leadership styles does not add to the later concept of success, but the leader must also be able to apply leadership style to various situations in order to influence the others (Solecki, Leichenko & O’Brien, 2011). Hämelandia disaster leaders were able to influence other to come in numbers to be able to help the victims of the disaster, therefore, it is worth mentioning that leaders under these theories much be adaptive to varied situations as well as persuasive to encourage others to take part in a project such as the Hämelandia disaster case. For example, at the start of the disaster I was to address issue on gender and violence but was able to change the situation as took into consideration the flight of the clinic where it needed vast attention.

Management Leadership Theories

This is also known as transactional theories. The theory was developed based on the punishment and rewards for the work undertaken by employees. If employee are successful there are highly rewarded in various ways. In the case of the Hämelandia disaster, employees were reward, after the three some of the employees were assigned task, for example Year 2 associates were assigned work by the leaders while other Year 3 and 4 were also assigned task of higher level that expected but they were able to undertake this task with ultimate performance. This is a promotion to the associates hence a reward (Smith, 2013).

Relationship Leadership Theories

These theories is also known as transformational theories. It is based on the relationship between the leader and their followers or employees. The leader has the obligation of ensuring that others work for the group and not themselves. In the case of the Hämelandia disaster, the leaders had to motivate others employee to work as a disaster team and not for them in order to help the victims of the disaster. At the end the subordinates together with the leaders were able to help the victims of the Hämelandia disaster (Sever, Vanholder & Lameire, 2006).

Critically appraise Risk Management issues that affect management of Disaster Response

Mobilization of people

Staff that will help those in disaster and the nature of the victims is an issues that risk managers during disaster response is a case to consider when managing disasters in the world such as the Hämelandia disaster. Being able to mobilize employees that compose the risk management team is always a hard task as disaster are not planned events. The people are full of activities both domestic and workplace hence being able to bring these people together during disaster is a critical issues when managing risk. Therefore, management of people given such a case is a difficult task that needs special consideration during such events that happen without notice. As in the case of Hämelandia disaster, the risk management team had a credible plan hence did not face problem mobilizing its people (Patterson, Weil & Patel, 2010).

In addition, attending to victims and being able to bring them on board during disasters is also a hard affair that needs serious evaluations. Most of the victims are always injured if not medically unfit while others are always confused or traumatized as a result of such a disaster. For example, Hämelandia disaster risk management team had critical evaluated the best strategies and programs that they easily employed hence able to manage the victims.

Resources

Resource allocation is one of the hardest tasks when dealing with disasters in the world. The resource range from financial resources, social resources, and political resources. The ability to mobilize resources to be able to meet the demands of a disaster situations sounds easy, but the aftermath are always complex. Since disasters are unplanned events, it is always hard to plan the amount of funds to be used to manage disasters hence an issue of great interest amid risk management teams. Therefore, private and government disaster response agencies are always on board to allocate a share of their budget to disasters (Mete & Zabinsky, 2010). This is done in this accord to ensure that disasters are handled with ease. In addition, in case the state is not able to manage a disaster, the risk management team calls for international assistance such cases are called “National Disasters”.

Social Cost

The social impact that come with disaster is always the biggest issue to consider when undertaking such a process of risk analysis and management. As for the case of the disaster risk analysis most of the team of experts are not able to articulate the procedure to ensure that people affected during the disaster are helped. In most cases this is known as social welfare support. For the case of the disaster such as the Hämelandia disaster, there were various victims that faced social problems. The cost of social welfare was overboard and the people could not be able to integer the exert cost needed. This is because some of the victim’s family were traumatized with the issue and also needed social support.

There are various issues that come with critical appraisal of disaster risk management concerns. However, the above are the main issues that occur frequently in most cases during disasters.

Critically evaluate Management Skills needed for assessment of priorities, allocation of resources including manpower and co-ordination of activities in disasters

Risk analysis skills: In order to be considered as one of the best risk manager one should be able to poses a risk analysis skills. This has been one of the key issues that raise problems when determining the resource to allocate ad the priorities to give to risks. A good risk analyst will be able to take into consideration all the facets that come with the risk and able to allocate the right resources needed. In addition, there are various reasons why this skill is needed, priorities are essential in every business not forgetting that it adds value to coordination of resource such a personal during disasters (Guha-Sapir, Vos, Below & Ponserre, 2011).

Communication skills:

The ability to be able to effectively with others members in the disaster is one of the skills highly needed when conducting a risk management. Effective communication will help the team to communicate with others and resource allocation will be easy and will be done in the most efficient way (Cutter, Burton & Emrich, 2010). Without communication there will be limited coordination of issues hence a cause of problem when managing disasters. Therefore, risk managers should have excellent communication skills.

Personal Reflection of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Most victims were faced with the after effects of PTSD. Most of this patients were even not the actual victims or the primary victims but the families and friends of the primary victims. The cause of PSTD was mainly due to death or serious injuries of the family members or friends. Although we hard to place a lot of care to the primary victims were faced with PSTD, we were able to undertake home victims to counsel them and to referrer them for further assistance if there cases were worse. A good number of the victims were able to pick up normality after sometime but most of them could not be able to. The victims underwent various checks up to ensure that they meet medication or diagnosis needed of them. There was a follow up team that ensured all the PSTD victims were in their best health after treatment.

References

Bennett, P. (Ed.), 2010. Risk communication and public health. Oxford University Press.

Birkmann, J., Buckle, P., Jaeger, J., Pelling, M., Setiadi, N., Garschagen, M., … & Kropp, J, 2010. Extreme events and disasters: a window of opportunity for change? Analysis of organizational, institutional and political changes, formal and informal responses after mega-disasters. Natural Hazards, 55(3), 637-655.

Cutter, S. L., Burton, C. G., & Emrich, C. T, 2010. Disaster resilience indicators for benchmarking baseline conditions. Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, 7(1).

Field, C. B. (Ed.), 2012. Managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation: Special report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cambridge University Press.

Guha-Sapir, D., Vos, F., Below, R., & Ponserre, S, 2011. Annual disaster statistical review 2010. Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters.

Lindell, M. K., & Prater, C. S, 2003. Assessing community impacts of natural disasters. Natural Hazards Review, 4(4), 176-185.

Mete, H. O., & Zabinsky, Z. B, 2010. Stochastic optimization of medical supply location and distribution in disaster management. International Journal of Production Economics, 126(1), 76-84.

Patterson, O., Weil, F., & Patel, K, 2010. The role of community in disaster response: conceptual models. Population Research and Policy Review, 29(2), 127-141.

Sever, M. S., Vanholder, R., & Lameire, N, 2006. Management of crush-related injuries after disasters. New England Journal of Medicine, 354(10), 1052-1063.

Smith, K, 2013. Environmental hazards: assessing risk and reducing disaster. Routledge.

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Yates, D., & Paquette, S, 2011. Emergency knowledge management and social media technologies: A case study of the 2010 Haitian earthquake. International Journal of Information Management, 31(1), 6-13.

Zook, M., Graham, M., Shelton, T., & Gorman, S, 2010. Volunteered geographic information and crowdsourcing disaster relief: a case study of the Haitian earthquake. World Medical & Health Policy, 2(2), 7-33.