The Concept of Leadership - Essay Example

LEADERSHIP Leadership Leadership is mostly concerned with the needs of people and the company that one is leading. Leadership styles are traits acquired from an early age in school and carried along all one’s life. Leadership styles are applied according to the demands and the need of the people, situations and problems facing an organization. An individual’s leadership style and management are not rigidly fixed in a particular area or attached permanently in ones personality. Most leaders have dominant leadership styles but those who succeed best are the ones who incorporate other leadership elements in order to achieve their goals. World leader and CEOs apply several good leadership styles and management that helps them succeed in their business ventures. The first one is charismatic. Oprah Winfrey who runs her own television show, got more than fourteen million follower on twitter can pick a book and make it the bestseller overnight. She is able to change social issues and stock market for better. Oprah uses her personality power to influence others. She inspires passion, believes more in herself than a group, act with energy and motivate others to move ahead (Dennig, 2010). Leaders can use this method to raise others into action, increase the position of a company in the market and to raise the morale of works. This creates a successful team connected to the presence of their leader. It creates risk that the team may fail to meet its objectives in the absence of the leader. The second one is charismatic which Richard Branson the founder of Virgin group applies. This group consists of more than four hundred companies ranging from space tourism to music. Being innovative helps one to take control of the situation and go beyond the normal course of action. One is able to able to see something that is not working and bring in new ideas into action. This style is used to remove dominant, intractable issues and create an environment for other workers to use innovative thinking to develop new services and product and apply innovative reasoning in solving problems. It increases the chances of taking risk, the team enjoys their work satisfactorily, and failures do not hinder progress and an atmosphere of respecting other people ideas evolve. The third style is being a servant. Herb Keller CEO of Southwest Airlines best demonstrates this. He took an interior office that had no windows instead of encouraging the local perception of an office as status symbol. Being a servant means putting the interest and services of others first, involving the whole team in making decision, providing the necessary tools to do the job required and letting the team receive credit on the work well done. This is best used when a leader is elected to an organization, community, team or committee and when anyone at the level of the team meets the demands of the group. It has several impacts on others. Organizational with such leaders are termed as the best workplace, creates a positive culture that leads to high morale of work and well suited for situations that meet tight deadlines and require quick decision. The forth, good leadership style is being a pacesetter. For example, Jeff Bezos created a transitional interface that set a booming pace in e-commerce where other online merchant followed his example. A leader set high performance standard for himself and team. Symbolize the behavior required by others. It applied when the workers are highly skilled and self-motivated, able to accept new project and work with speed. It also used where endeavor is the key and result important. It is not possible to sustain this method for long since the staff tires from the demanding pace. The result is delivered at a rate the team cannot keep up with. A company needs competent workforce to succeed in its business. There is several ways a company can develop an effective team of employees. An organization needs to determine its goals. For example if its aim is to improve its sales from the previous year, the company needs to employ competent and talented marketers. The next step is to identify the extent of the expected work. The team of workers must be qualified to meet the objectives of the company. When forming a workforce the following should be considered: Time limit to see if there time to train new employee or if it to promote the current one and revise the duties. Employee ability in terms of their expertise, weakness and strength and lastly, the culture of the company in promoting personal growth, autonomy, skills and accepting change is conducive in building a good workforce. An organization should provide additional training to its workers in terms of meetings, seminars, mentoring, weekend retreat, and web based training and team building exercise to improve their knowledge, cooperative effort and skills. Consistent training helps one to keep into practice what is learnt. The leaders should access the productivity of the company regularly by forming a method to measure the performance of employee, accommodate new staff, training project or resources scope. Developing an n effective workforce is a process. The leaders should use reinforcement method to promote productive behaviors and avoid counterproductive behaviors by using negative, positive, extinction and punishment reinforcement principles. Positive motivation involves recognizing attitudes, accomplishment and practices that lead t an effective team. Negative reinforcement involves situations where employees involve themselves in desired behavior to avoid negative outcomes. Extinction refers to the threat of firing or eliminating counterproductive behaviors. Leaders can use three strategies to improve the morale of their workers. The first one is listening to the employees issues and working on improving them. Employees’ feedback is encouraged and the organization should show it values their ideas (Mitchell, 2007). Leaders should be approachable, visible and well briefed in order to deal with employee question. A face-to-face interaction is encouraged whenever possible. Key messages should be used as part of regular and continuing communication. Managers should believe in and support all listening activities. Leaders need to understand listening activities that requires employee survey, employee discussion or focus group and management of discussion groups. The next step involves communicating solution to business issues and progress made to employees concerns. Companies should create an understanding of company’s future, which includes solution to business problems and the progress being made. Communication activities involve one on one dialogue, public forums and electronic media. The third stage focuses on the employee accomplishment and business success. This helps keep the morale of workers as high as possible. Recognition activities involve formal initiatives like offering small bonuses and rewards to countrywide recognized program. Informal gestures like thank you, congratulatory emails or thank you. Lastly is public recognition, which involves employee, contributing in a meeting with their group. Recognition encourages and motivates other peers to work for similar result. Diversity covers a wide range of dimensions that include cultural, religious, sexual orientation, gender, age, ethnic, race and abilities (Chisholm, 2010). There are several benefits of diversity at work. Companies can get a new market target in which to expand it sales efforts and get new employees. Respecting individual differences at workplace reduces lawsuits and raises marketing opportunities, creativity, recruitment and business image. Diversity is important for the success of an organization where creativity and flexibility are key s to competitive market. There are difficulties in managing a workforce filled with diversity. Managing diversity means accepting the differences in other people. It means recognizing the importance of diversity, promoting inclusiveness and combating discrimination. Managers are likely to face losses of employees and poor work productivity due to discrimination and prejudice and complaints and lawful action taken on the organization. Negative behaviors and attitudes are a barrier to the diversity of a company and can destroy working relationships and decrease the morale and work production. There are several strategies for dealing with this problem. First managers should understand discrimination and its effect. Second, managers should take note of their own cultural prejudice and biases. Diversity refers to the differences between people and not group. Every person is unique in the way he speaks or represents a certain group. Managers should be willing to change their poor management strategies in a company and learn how to manage diversity in a fair manner. There is no recipe for how one is to succeed (Law, 2010). Effort and persistence is needed to create a work environment that befits everyone. Leaders’ should have a safe environment for communication where everyone can express his issues. Gathering and meeting are the best for this where everyone has a chance to speak and create discussions. Managers should put up policies like mentoring programs where associates can get information and opportunities. Associates should be given constructive and necessary critical feedback to learn their successes and mistakes. Ethical leadership in an organization leads to efficient operation and decision making daily, improvement of product quality, improved financial performance and customer loyalty. Organizations use three different approaches to implement ethics initiatives. The first one involves companies using compliance to gain ethical conformity. Companies can use ethics in free relations to get extra media attention and improve their reputation. The third one involves use of value-based idea that uses the first two philosophies and focus on producing an ethical society through committed leadership. References Chisholm-Burns, M. A., Vaillancourt, A. M., & Shepherd, M. (2014). Pharmacy management, leadership, marketing, and finance. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning. Denning, S. (2010). The leaders guide to radical management: Reinventing the workplace for the 21st century. San Francisco, Calif: Jossey-Bass. Law, S., & Glover, D. (2010). Educational leadership and learning: Practice, policy, and research. Buckingham [u.a.]: Open Univ. Press. Mitchell, M., & Casey, J. (2007). Police leadership and management. Annandale, NSW: Federatiosn Press. Read More