Impact of Leadership Styles on Employees - Term Paper Example

Bin Yan Burt ENG 1004 22 February Impact of Leadership Styles on Employees Introduction A famous philosopher, Ken Blanchard describes a leader as a person who uses their influence on people to accomplish tasks other than authority. This means that to become a great leader in the contemporary society one has to motivate group into performance. However, due to the complexities of varies personal and cultural background cultivates the different aspects of leadership styles. An individual uses variety of styles to ensure that they maximize group or team ability to achieve goals. The best style to use should be able to enhance the individual or team achievement and shape the person to become great leader. In the intricate business world, operational activities have changed tremendously in the 21st Century. This is due to the level of educated members of the society who are aware about their rights and ethical practices. In addition, concern by the public about the organization operational activities that affects their social and environment. Strategic management is the systematic method of continuously evaluating the business environment and establishing measures that increases its productivity. The enterprise can combine its different function so as to enhance it smooth operation. This involves the practices on the various organization levels such as management; marketing; finance; entrepreneurial and corporate. Engaging the ethical issues in their mode of conduct brings about good reputation in the public. Leaders have discovered that through emotional intelligence they inspire passion in the people that they manage (Goleman et al.15). Purpose Understanding the complexities of interpersonal skills can be challenging to an individual. Nonetheless, it provides useful information on how to effectively motivate people to perform their duties without supervision. It can be undermining for a manager to lack skills to adequately control and coordinate their team in a work environment. There several theories that have been developed to guide an individual on effective leadership styles. This entails the easier motivation and engaging different individual to be committed to achieve set goals and targets. Choosing the favorable leadership style provides a win-win scenario for the manager. This means increased productivity for employee and leader is viewed as an achiever. Task-oriented and relationship-oriented leaderships are two styles that lets the leader to uses his skill to achieve certain goal of his team. This paper discusses on the different perspectives entailed on the leaders’ role based on the styles as well as its impact on group performance. Task-oriented leadership can lead the team to prove high quality of work or achieve the deadline. Relationship-oriented leadership can provide the leader an opportunity to communicate with his team members and get strong connections with each other. Every team contains with different characteristics, a leader has the responsibility to choose the right style of leadership and lead the team to provide the best achievement. Task-oriented leadership styles Leaders have entrusted a group of people to command and establish that they adequately perform their duties. Task-oriented leadership requires the leader to have a strong faith and the power to lead their team. By using this management style, the person in charge has to push every members of his team to do the best they can so as to achieve higher performance. They are more likely to focus on the solutions or how to achieve the goal thus to make sure everything is under control (Manktelow 134). In addition, leaders will give less concern about members’ feelings and social connections. This kind of leadership style suits big companies, such as Google, Apple and Tsingtao beer. This is because these companies have large numbers of employees therefore leaders unable to have one on one communicate. As a result the employees are motivated through set goals, rewards or punishments methods of managing. Nevertheless, task-oriented leadership can always provide a high quality work to all customers. For example, company leaders will always plan ahead by giving well structure and organized work for employees. This results in a non-competitive but high pressure work environment for workers to meet the deadline (Griffin 110). Consequently, due to the high value of performance there some down falls to task oriented leadership. It includes dissatisfied of employees as management is not concerned about their well-being. The over control of the employer on the freedom of the employees can cause demotivation and high turnover (Manktelow 135). Relationship-oriented leadership style On the other hand, relationship-oriented leadership style is slightly different than task-oriented leadership. This style is more focus on feelings, satisfactions, motivations and connections for all team members (Griffin 114). Leaders will spend time to communicate their team members. This is to make sure they have management support. It also encourages employees due to the trust and gained respect. For instance, being close to team members could make them to express feelings and ideas from the team thus increase team productivity and performance. Specifically for Chinese culture, employers are always high above all employees, by using relationship-oriented leadership could gain more trust and decry resignation. Learning environment can be enhanced by the mode of communication between the employers and their employees. The working environment engagement increases the distribution of resources, knowledge and information widely and freely. Social structures formed for employers to understand the learning capacities of their employees so as to be able to ensure the proper program can accommodate all employees. Social connection collects resourceful ideas on how to improve the leadership methods and learning forums for the employees involved (Stubbs 88-90). This style of leadership could give team members more well-being and more motivated than task-oriented leadership. Within a satisfaction environment, workers tent are willing to take more risk and welling to work together as one unity team, because they believes the leader will give support if needed (Anzalone 23). Relationship-oriented leadership is better to use in small group of team, such as classroom, small group, coffee shop, individual businesses. Because with small amount of employees, employers will have enough time to establish well connections, by doing so the leader can also become more affinity, which is a very important skill in this cold world. In regards to performance, relationship-oriented leadership is less perfect than the task-oriented. Because the leader had been focused on the working environment and couldn’t spend enough time on discipline, thus it causes the team pass the deadline or gives minimum performance (Manktelow 136). Transformation of leadership styles from the traditional authoritative has enhanced the team engagement and performance. It provides freedom of expression for employees as well as management can gather intelligence on how to increase productivity. For example, policies have been implemented through the use of relationship oriented leadership styles. Task-oriented and relationship-oriented leadership style contains different leadership skills; task-oriented can improve the performance of the team, to keep everything under control and high quality, but less satisfy of the members. Relationship-oriented leadership style gives team members a comfortable and trustable environment, but without a good quality of work and managing time. It is important for leaders to understand the consequences of their management styles and roles. Conclusion Organizations have focused on methods of increasing their competitive advantage through maximizing their employees’ talents. Incorporating leadership styles that boost the productivity of team and enhances work performance provides a good working relationship. In the Chinese culture, they target on improving their quality of work and team performance. In this regard, task-oriented leadership style has been favored among many companies in China. The dynamic trend of work organizations as well as the increased need of employee satisfaction has forced companies to understand the styles to motivate teams. Public and investors have been attracted to corporates that have good reputation and high productivity. This means that the employee turnover should be monitored thoroughly as it contributes to how the company is viewed by the public. Management needs to learn the employee dynamics so as to conform to the standards that enhance their proper governance. This is critical in ethical practices which main objective is to have an open method of running business. This is with the aim of having good and stable relationship with public and stakeholders that sustain the company existence and survival. It also gives the edge in the global competition so as to lead in the different market territories. As much as the Chinese leaders are culturally bound they have open their world to adapting to new methods that engages their employees in the work environment. This has contributed to China business emerging with high reputation globally. Works Cited Anzalone, Chris. “Differences between Task-Oriented Leaders & Relational-Oriented Leaders". Demand Media. Retrieved 3 November 2012. Bartlett, C. A. & Ghoshal, S. (2002). Building competitive advantage through people. MIT Sloan Management Review. http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/building-competitive-advantage-through-people/ Griffin, Ronald J. Ebert, Ricky W. (2010). Business essentials (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. pp. 135–136. Goleman, Daniel, Richard Boyatzis and Anne McKee. “The motivation to change.” Primal Leadership: Unleashing the Power of Emotional Intelligence. Boston: Harvard Business review press. 2013. Print. p.114. Manktelow, James. Leadership Style. Mind Tools. Retrieved 2 November 2012. Stubbs, Michael. Language, Schools and Classroom. New York. NY, Routledge publishers (2012). p. 88-90. Read More