The Role of Leadership toward Changes - Research Proposal Example

REPORT: LEARNING CONTRACT PROPOSAL Introduction In the modern business context, organizations of all levels are challenged to compete against competitors in their domestic and international areas. That requires modern business leaders to change their ways of managing companies, thus to increase trust, credibility toward their workforce and implement innovations through others in order to be more successful (Sims & Quatro, 2005). While the notion of leadership has been the subject of thousands of books, papers and publications, it is proved that effective leadership can most likely provide flexibility and ability to respond to ambiguous situations of the ever changing organizational landscape (Van Maurik, 2001). Literature review Liu (2008) states, that in order to understand the role of leadership toward changes, the two approaches, rooted in the leadership literature and in generating followers’ support for change, should be utilized. Thus, rooted in the leadership literature, an approach sees that charismatic leadership is effective during times of change. DuBrin (2015) considers that it is the transformational leader that possesses such personal characteristics that enable the leaders to be the most effective. Agreeableness and extraversion are the main personality factors that are able to increase their interpersonal relationships. Northouse (2012) states, that charismatic leadership describes leader as the one that advocates change of others and thus the concept if consistent with the society’s notion of how it perceive leadership. As Liu (2008) declares, that there is also a perception that leaders of not highly transformational approach are still able to manage the change initiative and therefore should call for commitment to the specific change that is corresponding to their change-specific behaviors. Within the academic literature there is a need to speak about other important approaches to leadership such as trait, behavioral, and situational approaches. Fleenor (2006) speaks of the trait approach to leadership as the one that was the earliest theories, however, was not fully articulated. He also states that there are only few traits that distinguish between leaders and followers. In such context, leaders are perceived as people with higher level of intelligence, extraversion and ability to adjust their actions and decisions to the changeable conditions. Derue, Nahrgang, Wellman and Humphrey (2011) consider that there is a need to look beyond leaders traits and consider how these leaders’ behavior impact their effectiveness. Such notion bears a behavior paradigm of leadership research. There should be an understanding of what traits distinguish leaders from other people and since traits cannot be independent, it requires researchers to study this question carefully. Derue, Nahrgang, Wellman and Humphrey (2011) speak about how relative validity of leader traits can differ by the leadership effectiveness. Under this approach, such criteria as demographics, task competence, interpersonal attributes and relative validity of leaders’ traits are essential. McCleskey (2014) defines that effective leadership requires realization of every concrete situation within the business environment, and then an appropriate response would be suitable for the leader. Such understanding is associated with the situational leadership that is evolved from the task-oriented versus people-oriented leadership continuum (McCleskey, 2014). Kaifi et al (2013) displays the essential role of situational leadership as it is composed of directive and supportive dimensions that allow a leader to apply each of them in the particular situation. The orientation on people is more vivid with the situational approach as successful completion of certain task requires a leader to find out what ones’ subordinates need and to adapt to these needs at the same time support people for optimum outcome. Though theory is criticized for its narrow attention on the situational variable, it still contributes a lot on leadership effectiveness since it highlights the leaders need in adaptation to different situations (Seyranian, n.d.) Leadership area of interest: Workplace diversity The new era in operating businesses has brought new vision to its leaders of how human systems should be understood in order to make a business more successful. For that purpose, managing the workforce has become the number one question of the twenty-first century. In addition, demographic changes in the workforce composition and customer diversity along with the globalized markets have increased leaders’ need in knowing the needs of their workforce (Kreitz, 2007). It is up to the HR professionals to make it organizationally useful to manage the motives behind the interest of the certain company in diversity of human force and identify the specific ways that such diversity will benefit. Llopis (2011) reports, about the importance of diversity management that it plays in the ability of organization to grow its activities within the fiercely competitive global environment. He also states that few lessons from the diversity officers can be taken. Thus, the leader should live the diversity of the company by not only taken into account the demographic peculiarity of people but also in providing support authentic support to people that work for the company. Besides, there is a need to include more holistically operating in the general management and operational capacity to provide the diversity to become the embedded mindset. Gap analysis Management and leadership diagnostics help an organization staff and its partners to help leaders to assess gaps within such organization. It is done for the purpose of development of leadership and management skills, knowledge and abilities. Different diagnostic tools can help to identify and determine what these development needs are. Workforce planning can be used as the process for addressing gaps between the workforce of the day and the needs of human capital of the future. That requires the foundation of strategic human resource decisions or skills that enable a good leader to be strong about managing staff in its different functional areas such as human resources, budgets, program staff. Thus, in order to utilize the workforce planning skills, there is a need to set the strategic direction, analyze the workforce, develop an action plan, implement this action plan and then monitor and evaluate it. In order to make a gap analysis of leader’s knowledge, a criterion validated certain questions will be useful. Leader development system (n.d.) recommends designing a questionnaire in order to measure what one knows about good leadership. The questionnaire can cover such areas as coaching and counseling, communicating, conflict resolution and performance management, problem solving and decision making. Burgoyne, Hirsh and Williams (2004) state, that in relative knowledge, there is a connection between leadership capability and the individual performance, and there is also an understanding of the mechanisms that impact leadership capability on organization performance. Realizing of how to use these mechanisms will be a great practical and theoretical significance and very cost effective way in obtaining value of leadership development.  Most relevant leadership theories Each of leadership theories takes an individualistic perspective of the leader, hence, an emphasis should be paid to what a concrete person is capable to handle. Bolden, Gosling, Marturano and Dennison (2003) put an emphasis on the trait approach as it identifies the main characteristics of the successful leaders. For personal leadership development such traits as alert to social environment, self-confidence and energetic are important in building good leadership qualities that also enable a person to be aware of right decision making and leading others. Such approach as 360-degree leadership survey process helps in understanding of how people receive and respond to 360-degree feedback. Drew (2009) states, that 360-degree feedback survey provides scores on a range of questions relevant to their leadership role for individual leader’s staff, peers, supervisor and the leader oneself too. Another leadership theory appropriate for individual leadership development is the situational theory that captures such behaviors as task and relationship behaviors. Its importance for future leader success lays in the concepts of guidance and support that one is capable to provide to others. Moreover, situational leadership theory helps leader to provide an amount of social and emotional support in accomplishing a specific objective and managing in the organizational environment. While behavioral theory contains certain assumptions form the trait theory, it enables the leader to learn what specific traits make one a good leader. These are traits oriented either on task or on people. The task orientation enables leader to initiate, organize and gather information for proper task execution. Being oriented on people a good leader is capable to focus one’s behaviors on achieving better results which depend on workforce. These can be different encouraging initiatives, listening and coaching.  Learning goals To develop knowledge of different leadership styles and behaviors of trait and situational theories- Evaluation of knowledge obtained. To analyze and identify the impact of traits on the ability to make decisions- To conduct self-assessment on using Myers Briggs Typology Indicator Profile To identify and analyze such general personality traits as self-confidence, emotional capability, self-evaluations that contribute to successful leadership- To pay employees a reward and recognition for work well done. To identify the task-related personality traits: internal locus of control, flexibility and adaptability- To manage procedure creation within certain department and adapt it to the changeable conditions. To increase agreement and efficiency in the management team- To learn about team members. Action plan April- Identify exemplars of two leaders to learn from; read a biography and make a research about the leader. Conduct SWOT analysis for leadership traits and behaviors. March- Start-up challenge for identifying varied experiences May- Master skills in rhetoric. Make a self- assessment and assessment on SWOT conducted in April. June- Develop a plan for seeking a feedback from subordinates. Pass the training in improving leadership skills and abilities. July- Arrange a team building session. References Bolden, R., Gosling, B., Marturano, A. and Dennison, P. (2003). A review of leadership theory and competency frameworks, Centre for leadership studies, Retrieved from http://business-school.exeter.ac.uk/documents/discussion_papers/cls/mgmt_standards.pdf Burgoyne, J., Hirsh, W. and Williams, S. (2004). The Development of Management and Leadership Capability and its Contribution to Performance: The evidence, the prospects and the research need, Lancaster University, Retrieved from http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130401151715/http://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/RR560.pdf Derue, D., Nahrgang, J., Wellman, N. and Humphrey, S. (2011). Trait and behavioral theories of leadership: an integration and meta-analytic test of their relative validity, Personnel Psychology, 64, 7–52, retrieved from http://www.personal.psu.edu/seh25/DeRueNahrgangWellmanHumphrey2011.pdf Drew, G. (2009). A “360” degree view for individual leadership development, Journal of Management Development Vol. 28 No. 7 Dubrin, A. (2015). Leadership: Research, findings, practice and skills, 8 ed., Cengage Learning Fleenor, J. (2006). Trait approach to leadership, Encyclopedia of industrial and organizational psychology, SAGE Publications Kaifi, B. et al (2013). The Importance of Situational Leadership in the Workforce: A Study Based on Gender, Place of Birth, and Generational Affiliation, Journal of Contemporary Management, Academic Research Centre of Canada Kreitz, P. (2007). Best Practices for Managing Organizational Diversity, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford University, Retrieved from http://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/getdoc/slac-pub-12499.pdf Leader development system, (n.d.). Edge training systems, Retrieved from http://www.edgetrainingsystems.com/TrainingServices/ACT365.aspx Liu, Y. (2008). The Effects of Transformational and Change Leadership on Employees’ Commitment to a Change: A Multilevel Study, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 93, No. 2, Llopis, G. (2011). Diversity Management Is the Key to Growth: Make It Authentic, The Forbes, Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/glennllopis/2011/06/13/diversity-management-is-the-key-to-growth-make-it-authentic/ McCleskey, J. (2014). Situational, Transformational, and Transactional Leadership and Leadership Development, Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, Volume 5, Number 4, Retrieved from http://jbsq.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/June_2014_9.pdf Northouse, P. (2012). Leadership: Theory and Practice, 6 ed., SAGE Publications Seyranian, V. (n.d.). Contingency Theories of Leadership, SAGE Publications, Inc. Sims, R. and Quatro, S. Leadership: Succeeding in the Private, Public, and Not-for-profit Sectors, M.E. Sharpe Van Maurik, J. (2001). Writers on leadership, Penguin UK Read More