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LEADERSHIP IN THE STUDENT COLLECTIVE

The student environment is the most favorable for the manifestation of leadership qualities not only of those students, who have them from school but also of those who have not previously shown such activity. In the struggle for leadership, the student group provides everyone with equal starting opportunities.

A student who effectively combines learning and social activities is more likely to become a team leader or its informal leader, a person who can influence the psychological atmosphere. The experience gained during the student years will be useful to the specialist in the process of performing professional tasks, management functions of various state or public organizations.

The goal of the paper is to explore leadership in the student group.

Methods

The study of the leadership phenomenon was manifested in the works of H. M. Andrieieva, R. L. Krychevskyi, L. I. Umanskyi, O. V. Evtikhova, S. R. Kovi, E. Berne, P. Baender, Y. Hellman, J. C. Maxwell, F. O. Khesselbain, D. Goleman, A. Meneghetti and other scientists.

The phenomenon of the university library, its organizational structure, the role in the formation of a modern young student leader, the reform of the higher education system have already become the subject of scientific attention of many researchers. This issue is considered in the works of T. V. Komarovska, H. Iu. Kudriashova, V. M. Markova, S. P. Halaktionova, E. A. Livadonova, V. H. Dryhailo.

Results and Discussion

According to F. Fiedler (1994), leadership is the behavior of an individual involved in the management of group actions, and leadership behavior is a specific action of the leader in the process of managing and coordinating the work of members of the group. The point of view is that the leader should have an advanced program of actions, according to which he/she with the group move towards the intended goal. He/she is forward-looking, has attractive plans and knowledge of how to implement them (Skalicky et al, 2020).

Ukrainian scientists H. M. Andrieieva (2003), R. L. Krychevskyi (1987), B. D. Paryhin (2013), etc. interpret leadership as a psychological phenomenon that occurs spontaneously and exists in the system of informal human relations (Krasnoshchok, 2021). Leadership is based on the process of interpersonal influence that occurs between the most active and influential members of a small group (leader) and less active, well-known members of the group (followers). The leader initiates group actions, directs the group to solve the tasks set before it. The consequences of influence in leadership are reflected in the change of views, behavior, individual personality traits, attitudes, motivation of group members.

As the study of psychological and pedagogical literature has shown, the issues of leadership acquired the status of a scientific and practical problem in the first half of the 20^th century and remain relevant to this day.

Leader and leadership were considered as a product not only of specific social conditions, situations, relationships, but also a set of bio-psychic qualities that ensure a person’s ability to power, leadership. There were distinguished 4 groups of leadership qualities: physiological; psychological or emotional; mental, or intellectual; personal, and business (Moroz, 2020).

Supporters of the leadership concept of behavior (Lewin, Lippitt, & White, 1939) identified three leadership styles: authoritarian, democratic, passive. Further interest in leadership is caused by the development of team concepts B. Paryhin (2013), A. Petrovskyi (1980), L. Umanskyi (1994), R. Krychevskyi (1987). A significant amount of work related to the problem of the relationship between leadership and management has arisen (Krasnoshchok, 2021).

B. Paryhin (2013) gave the following definition of a leader: “A leader is a member of a group who spontaneously plays the role of an informal head in a certain, specific, quite significant situation, to ensure the organization of joint collective activities of people for the fastest and most successful achievement of the goal.” It remains relevant (Moroz, 2020).

A leader is a person for whom all other members of the group recognize the right to take the most responsible decisions, to determine the direction and nature of the activities of the whole group (Hellman, 2014). The effective functioning of a group depends on the relationship between the formal and informal leader or leaders. Knowing about the real interpersonal relationships in the group, the teacher has the opportunity to direct them in the right vector. The leader is called to help in the educational process.

Leadership is a process of internal social organization and management of communication, the activities of members of a small group, carried out in spontaneously formed small groups. Each micro group usually has a leader. Depending on the direction of a particular activity of the micro group, there may be several leaders (initiator of parties, organizer of life, a fitness guide, movie buff, etc.).

It is worth noting that most researchers believe that the main psychological characteristics of a leader in the student collective are:

•interest in achieving the group goal;

•self-confidence;

•energy;

•social activity;

•initiative;

•emotional stability;

•mental abilities;

•organizational skills;

•friendliness;

•emotional attractiveness;

•empathy (Skirka, 2017).

The leader in the student group must be able to make decisions and avoid unfavorable situations or, conversely, to create a favorable set of circumstances. He/she has the greatest psychological impact on the group as a whole and its individual members, when he/she acts as a coordinator, organizer of group affairs. To regulate relations in the group as a whole, the leader must be objective, friendly. He/she does not support competition between individual students or informal groups that may be formed in the group; takes into account the characteristics of each student; he/she is fair (Skirka, 2017).

Researcher R. M. Stogdill (1950) believes that every leader should have a list of important qualities, in particular, he identifies the following groups of qualities:

•personal qualities – adaptability, self-confidence, authority, desire for success;

•physical qualities – active, energetic, healthy, strong;

•abilities – contact, ease of communication, tact, diplomacy;

•intellectual qualities – the mind, the ability to make the right decisions, intuition, creativity (Hellman, 2014).

One of the most popular interpretations of leadership is related to the assumption that leadership is one of the aspects of the process of role differentiation in the group, which serves as a function of the dynamic interaction of personal qualities and the social system. The study of the role differentiation of leadership was first made by researchers R. Bales and F. Slater (1957) in the process of working with small groups. During the experiment, the behavioral reactions of the subjects were recorded by observers using the scheme of interaction analysis developed by R. Bales, which can focus on 12 types of behavioral reactions of the individual in the group. The selected 12 types of behavioral reactions were divided into two groups: emotional (positive and negative emotional reactions from the group interaction) and aimed at solving the problem (making their suggestions for solving the problem or activating other participants to find a solution, picking up the participant’s idea and its detailed development, etc.).

The researchers were able to find in an experiment with small laboratory groups the presence of two fundamental leadership roles in the group: a business or instrumental leader and an expressive or emotional leader, which was called role differentiation of leadership. Scientists have proven, that the distinguished roles of leaders are related to various aspects of group functioning. The role of a business or instrumental leader is aimed at solving the tasks facing the group, and the role of an emotional or expressive leader is aimed at strengthening intra-group integration (Skalicky et al, 2020).

R. Bales, F. Slater (1957) explained their phenomenon of role differentiation of leadership as follows: group members make an unequal contribution to the group task, the subject, the most proactive in this activity, is an instrumental leader; other members of the group, realizing the fact of inequality of contribution to group activities, begin to perceive the instrumental leader as a source of tension that causes them frustration. To solve the emotional problems of the participants, the group nominates another leader – emotional or expressive, whose task is to create a favorable psychological climate of intra-group interaction (Han, Lee, Beyerlein, & Kolb, 2018).

In the experiments of R. L. Krychevskyi (1987), conducted in natural conditions, with natural groups, it was found that the role differentiation of leadership is observed in a high level of motivation of group activities, that is in conditions of high legitimacy. These experiments did not record any antagonism between instrumental leaders and other members of the group, moreover, instrumental leaders had high marks and according to the indicators of emotional leadership, there were cases when both leadership roles were realized by one person (Savytska, Iotova, & Madzhar, 2020).

L. Carter’s (1951) experiments showed that in addition to the two fundamental leadership roles, other leadership roles arise in different situations of group life, depending on the group’s solution of any specific tasks. However, L. Carter (1951) during the experiment did not give a specific name to leadership roles. This was done by L. I. Umanskyi (1994), who described the following leadership roles: leader-organizer (integrates the group), leader-initiator (initiates group activities), leader-generator of emotional mood (analog of the role of expressive leader), erudite leader (specialist in solving intellectual problems), leader of emotional attraction (analogous to the “sociometric star”), leader-master, craftsman (performs any activity well) (Skirka, 2017).

Researchers K. Backman and P. Secord (1964) expressed the idea that the change in the role differentiation of leadership is directly dependent on the success of the group in solving the problem. If group members do not enjoy the process of working on the task, there is a high probability that the group has a role differentiation of leadership (Skalicky et al, 2020).

The modern mission of the university library in the formation of leadership competence involves the transition from the issuance of books for temporary use to the organization of access to the necessary information resources and as a consequence the development of the necessary analytical leadership skills.

Conclusions

To form students’ leadership qualities, the teacher needs to know the socio-psychological features of leadership.