The Role of Leadership Development in Employee Performance - Essay Example

Leadership Styles Name: Institution: Date Introduction The old theory of leadership states that leaders are born and you can do very little in order to become one. With the passage of time the modern view of leadership has changed according to which an individual can become a true and effective leader through patience, persistence and hard work. Leadership is directed more towards the needs of people and is less associated with individual needs and wants. As the nature, role and goals of organizations and the dynamics of their environments have evolved rapidly in the past years, the need has arisen to adopt and implement an innovative mode of leadership which is not encumbered with a rigid structure and bureaucratic hurdles but is instead fairly democratic and fair to ensure the achievement of goals and improvement in productivity and performance. Leadership Any organization and the work it does is defined by the kind of leadership and the leadership style that is present at the company. People who form the leadership of the company are the ones who shape its success or failure. They are also the ones who shape the way in which business is conducted at the organization. They are the backbone of the company and the driving force behind it. Leadership is very important for the success and failure of the company. Those companies who fail to develop and create leaders or who lack some always struggles to achieve what it set out to. This is primarily because good leadership within the organization provides a sense of direction and someone to look up to. All good organizations have been lead by great leaders which eventually was the real reason behind their success (Black, 2003). Leadership styles There are various styles of leadership that are adopted by different kinds of leaders. This style reflects in the kind of work the company does. Consistent change in leadership will waste organization’s precious time to manage their resources while decision making should be made by carrying out thorough research in the field. Quality management would definitely become the cursor to induce high level performance in the organization and the leadership skills present in the company will reduce extra efforts of the management to work from the beginning. They will just only focus upon the formulation, implementation and evaluation of strategic change movement policies. All these efforts when applied together bring continuous improvement into the organization (Slocum, 2010). Every organization has its own way of working and only the correct style of leadership for the respective company in context determines the success and failure. For example, a company like Apple would have a Laissez-faire leadership style where the workers of the company are given full authority to practise their skills and come up with all kinds of innovation. A company like Apple thrives on the basis improving technology and innovation and hence it is imperative that the employees are provided with full autonomy and decision making that will help them to come up with new ideas and implement them. If a bank is discussed, for example, Standard Chartered, the systems and protocols are very well defined and structured (Bligh, 2006). This is a hierarchal system to every process that is done at the bank. At such an organization, the team leads usually adopt a democratic style where even though the team members are given authority, there is a well defined policy that they need to abide with. Every process at the bank is clearly defined with each and every step clarified for the employees. In such an environment, a democratic style is adopted which gives employees freedom but also ties them to the rules and regulations of the company. Trait Based Leadership The trait based leadership evolved from the common belief in the nineteenth century that leaders consist of in-born qualities that make them leaders. The quality of leaders cannot be attained as they must be naturally present in a leader (Slocum, 2010, p. 312). This theory was implemented in the trait based leadership style where a leader is successful and effective on the basis of his physiological, demographic, and social characteristics. Successful leaders have certain qualities that make them influential and inspiring. Such qualities are confidence, honesty, knowledge, emotional maturity, and leadership motivation (DuBrin, 2012, p. 143). These qualities of a leader tend to create an impression on the followers and build an inspiration for the subordinates who are pleased by the qualities and thus accept the leader. In this style of leadership, the personal qualities of the leader are rather pleasing and they engage a number of followers. However, there are no approved or implied traits that would make a leader successful. There are a number of traits and most of the times; it depends on the individual himself. The successful leadership isn’t based on certain traits. This is why there can be no value judgments as to what is right and what is wrong because every individual leader would have his own moral boundaries (Daft, 2010, p. 395). The example of the great leader, Mahatma Gandhi can be used here to describe the trait based leadership. He was a leader, who had the traits that made him successful, which include his outstanding motivational skills, his charisma and knowledge, and his authentic appearance for his purpose. His qualities made him the influential leader that he was born to be and established his great legacy. Centered Leadership Women in the business world normally hold similar educational qualifications and skills to their male colleagues. In fact some women even outperform the men around them yet positions in the top most hierarchical level are commonly filled by men (Chin, Lott & Sanchez-Huckes, 2008, pp. 25-30 ; Bronznick & Goldenhar, 2008, pp. 3-6). In almost every large corporation, the number of women holding strategic positions is tiny compared to the number of men. (McKinsey Company, 2010) realized how this creates an overall shortage of capable business leaders. She set out to interview up to 85 successful women in order to understand what it takes to stay in leadership positions and grow as a leader. Her findings were published in the McKinsey Quarterly (Barsh & Smet, 2009, pp. 1-3). This project gave birth to what was called ‘Centered Leadership Model’ (MKinsey&Company, 2007). Ever since it was launched and implemented, another topic that has aroused ever since in the corporate world is if this leadership a style could also be adopted by men. The conclusion of the research stated that five capabilities are at the heart of every leader. They all seek meaning in their work and use their strengths to inspire and serve a bigger purpose. It is inspiration that keeps us going. It allows one to find what interests them. They can then use this to push all limits. The inspiration and motivation helps in providing the right amount of energy, passion and the right attitude. (Barsh, Mogelof and Webb, 2010) They manage their energy, i.e., understanding how and when they are physically and mentally energized and using that knowledge to channel their energies accordingly. Getting to the top of hierarchy in today’s world is extremely hard, hence, aggressively managing the energy levels is vital for any leader. They hold a positive frame of mind and careful selection of frames in viewing the world makes a huge difference in terms of the end results. A correct frame of mind is important to make the best of decisions in any business. Being optimistic and not afraid however the world looks through the frame. To generally hold a realistic view of circumstances but stay confident and resilient during uncertainties. They believe in connecting, creating networks, building relationships and identifying how someone can help them reach their goals. They are unafraid to take on the opportunities they get and engage in taking risks. It may seem at a glance that adopting these characteristics is useful regardless of gender but because these results are based on the experiences of women, it can help them understand better the importance of the strengths needed to be successful leaders (Barsh & Yee, 2011 ; Barsh, Emeritus & McKinsey Company, N.D). For e.g., women often opt out of work to focus their energies on motherhood. However, mothers who are in leadership positions understand ‘energy flows’. By being engaged in activities they enjoyed, they did not feel as drained out or exhausted when reaching home. Women who focus entirely on motherhood, also lose out on professional networking even though making connections in different industries can be very helpful in order to succeed as business leaders (Barsh, Cranston & Craske, 2008, p. 38 ; Chandler, 2011, pp. 4-5). Women’s emotional state of being tends to vary more than men’s (Husu, Lasa & Vanhala, 2010, p. 300). Because of the pressure to manage both the office and home effectively, women tend to consciously stay in positions to avoid the added stress and responsibilities that come with higher managerial positions. However, the centered leadership model emphasizes the importance of being optimistic about future outcomes and how a positive frame of mind is an essential characteristic of influential leaders (Barsh &Lavoie, 2014, pp. N.D). Participative Leadership Just like other leadership styles, participative leadership is one of the affective leading styles. It is very affective in organisations having great number of staff and workers. In an organisation that has a great number of workers, it is difficult for the manager to handle and manage the work as well as the employees (Hersey, Blanchard and Johnson, 1988). In such a situation participative leading style becomes a good tool to increase the productivity and to manage the work load properly. Basically participative leadership involves every appropriate worker in a task or a job. It’s just like a team that is organised for a specific task. Participative leadership style increases the involvement of others in any task. This increases the interest of the workers and they feel sense of attachment and ownership to the work. Through this way the workers focus on the work more efficiently and do the work by their own will (Huang et al., 2010). After the objectives are outlaid by the manager the workers participate in the task with their own creative ideas, once the objective is clear the workers do not have difficulty in achieving the goal. This is one of the positive aspects of participative leading style. It involves the employees in the decision making part up to an extent from where the employees get the vivid view of what the goal of the organisation is. One of the most common mistakes made by the executives or the managers is the lack of sharing of objectives. Managers hesitate to explain the objectives of the organisation to the workers because of different reasons. These reasons may differ from one situation to another. But it is observed that mostly the cause is the office politics, personal objectives and other unprofessional thing. Participative leadership eliminates elements of personal opportunity, as it involves every appropriate person, the work in the organisation becomes fair, and no worker or employee is left behind or discriminated because of personal choices and believes (Huang et al., 2006). Just like every other leading style participative leading also has a certain boundary. This boundary draws the outline for the leader to which he/she has to involve or allow the workers to participate. It is necessary to know that the workers should be allowed to get involved in any decision making up to a certain extent, excessive access to the administration rights or decision making authority can lead a project to failure. This is the reason that decision making authority is kept with only the executives. The basic idea behind participative leading style is that when a worker is given a decision making authority, he/she takes the job seriously and as their own. They feel a sense of confidence and trust (Kim, 2002). It feels good when you are trusted in a big organisation. Usually the decision making power is given only to the executives of the organisation, but when participative leading style is adopted then decision making power can be given to the mid-level management as well. Participative type of leadership is not restricted to just one style of handling the workers, but it has many different levels of employee’s involvement in the decision making (Krause, Gebert and Kearney, 2007). The leader can create his/her own level of administrative rights, but the discussed levels are the general levels that can be applied in every business sector organisation. Every strategy or a system has its flaws as well as its advantages. Same is the case with participative leading style. Participative leading style may seem very effective in every organisation, but it is not so. Every organisation has its own rules and regulations, norms and values. In some companies there is no scope of leading styles such as the one discussed. In big and multi-national organisations there are many workers and different teams, but not every organisation has a work force of hundreds or thousands of people, in such organisations it is difficult to apply the participative strategy (Luftman, Kempaiah and Rigoni, 2009). There should be a team having at least 5 to 6 members of equal qualification, and then the team leader can apply the participative techniques. As it is difficult to find many workers with the same qualification in a small organisation, therefore it seems challenging to apply such strategy. Carrying participative leadership style can be tricky at some points. Participative leadership style demands the leader to be very humble, polite and emotionally stable (Yukl, 2002). If a person is not calm and subtle than it might be difficult for him/her to carry on with this type of leadership attitude. To posses this attitude one has to burry down his/her emotions, so that work load doesn’t bring up the temper. Conclusion A successful leadership is essential in improving organizational performance and productivity. Thus, a number of leadership theories have been propounded, studied, evaluated and compared over the past few decades which when applied in organizations have been seen to have improved the success of the organization. When a manager was perceived to be a strong leader who inspired and motivated employees to perform their best and have his personal goals and self-worth aligned with the organizational goals and productivity, employees were seen to be highly motivated and committed to achieve their performance goals. Every leader whether he/she is transactional, transformational and charismatic possesses vision, confidence, courage to make changes and introduce changes and above all the willingness to make sacrifices. They all can change the present and future of the business industry (Barsh & Smet, 2009). There is an important role of leadership development in employee performance which includes the importance of joint efforts and shared goals to enhance productivity. In addition, leaders do a better job than mere managers at troubleshooting, inspiring employees and adapting to different situations. Leaders have greater flexibility and are open to taking initiative, even risks. The qualities of leaders, which also illustrates their important role, are that they take charge and promote change, practice what they preach, praise improvements and successes, help clarify the larger picture and vision of the company, help employees in continually learning and growing, and being a strong team. References Barsh, J and Lavoie, J. (2014) “Centered Leadership: Leading with Purpose, Clarity and Impact”, Crown Publishing Group, pp. 1-336. Barsh, J. and Smet, A. D. (2009) “Centered leadership through the crisis: McKinsey Survey results”, McKinsey Quarterly, pp.1-3. Data retrieved from: http://www.tlileadership.com/uploads/2/8/1/8/2818280/mckinseyleadership.09.pdf Barsh, J. and Yee, L. (2011). Unlocking the full potential of women in the US economy. Wall Street Journal. Data retrieved from: http://www.economiapersonal.com.ar/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/unlocking-the-full-potential-of-women-in-the-us-economy.pdf Barsh, J., Cranston, S. and Craske, R. A. 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