Exception in getting xpath to a web element: org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.UnexpectedTagNameException: Element should have been "select" but was "a" - selenium

Question

There is a dropdown with 9 options in it, all of anchor (a) type. Selecting an option from the list, changes its class & other attributes dynamically.
This is how the html code looks like:
<select data_old_value="Email" id="ActionType-db5ff710-2a01-11e8-9c5f-22000aa79843" name="ActionType-db5ff710-2a01-11e8-9c5f-22000aa79843" onchange="RuleWizardIns.RuleActionChanged($(this))" style="width: 103px !important; height: auto !important; display: none;" aria-disabled="false"><option value="Email" selected="selected">Send Email</option><option value="TaskCreate">Create Task</option><option value="AddActivity">Add Activity</option><option value="AddToList">Add To List</option><option value="LeadUpdate">Update Lead Fields</option><option value="TagLead">Tag Lead</option><option value="StarLead">Star Lead</option><option value="UnStarLead">Unstar Lead</option><option value="Webhook">Call Webhook</option></select>
<option value="Email" selected="selected">Send Email</option>
<option value="TaskCreate">Create Task</option>
<option value="AddActivity">Add Activity</option>
<option value="AddToList">Add To List</option>
<option value="LeadUpdate">Update Lead Fields</option>
<option value="TagLead">Tag Lead</option>
<option value="StarLead">Star Lead</option>
<option value="UnStarLead">Unstar Lead</option>
\<option value="Webhook">Call Webhook</option>
</select>
<span>
<a class="ui-selectmenu ui-widget ui-state-default ui-corner-all ui-selectmenu-dropdown" id="ActionType-db5ff710-2a01-11e8-9c5f-22000aa79843-button" role="button" href="#nogo" tabindex="0" aria-haspopup="true" aria-owns="ActionType-db5ff710-2a01-11e8-9c5f-22000aa79843-menu" style="width: 103px;" aria-disabled="false"><span class="ui-selectmenu-status">Send Email</span><span class="ui-selectmenu-icon ui-icon ui-icon-triangle-1-s"></span></a>
<span class="ui-selectmenu-status">Send Email</span>
<span class="ui-selectmenu-icon ui-icon ui-icon-triangle-1-s"></span>
</a>
</span>
I tried to get the control on Update Lead Fields option by using below code, but unfortunately its not working.
Select ActionType = new Select(driver.findElement(By.xpath("//select[#data_old_value='Email']/following-sibling::span/a")));
ActionType.selectByVisibleText("Update Lead Fields");
I'm getting below error:
org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.UnexpectedTagNameException: Element should have been "select" but was "a"
And there is no ui for select attribute as you can see from below image:
https://d24cdstip7q8pz.cloudfront.net/t/t20170511180558/content/common/images/Untitled.png

Answer 1

A Select object can only be created by getting the WebElement with tag is "select" that's what the errormessage is about. I created an C# example which I tested giving expected result.
Driver.Url = ("https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/select");
var valuesSelectElement = Driver.FindElement(By.Name("select"));
var selectElement = new SelectElement(valuesSelectElement);
// To select an option by value
selectElement.SelectByValue("value1");
// To select an option by text
selectElement.SelectByText("Value 2");
var options = selectElement.Options;
//To click on one of the options
foreach (var option in options)
{
if (option.Text.Equals("Value 3"))
{
option.Click();
}
}