Leadership Influence on Company Market Performance - Coursework Example

Leadership Influence on Company Market Performance Name: Institution: Introduction The essence of leadership is only appreciable when its impacts or influences are evident. However, these impacts or influences must be desirable if some relevance is to be associated with leadership. Also, leadership is needed if there is a team that needs guidance, direction and the assistance that leadership brings. Vitally, modern organization advocates for team work and thus the necessity of leadership. Now, the exercise of marketing is one activity that is literally unachievable with the efforts of one individual, yet teamwork will surely get the work done. It will be importance to mention that the marketing is a philosophy of business that challenges business concept. The business concept in question here is leadership, more precisely, marketing team leadership. Marketing t is a tool that emphasizes on institutional effectiveness in creation, delivery and communication of client value if organization goals are to be realized. Therefore, be it segmentation, targeting or positioning, all marketing concepts commonly rely on effective leadership. Impact of Leadership A point to note is that organizations and business companies set the leadership to head different departments of divisions for particular reasons. One general aim is to achieve some set mission, objectives, values or goals by which the company operates. This one alone evidences the fact that leadership is vital and establishment of such has the positive impact of keeping the organization a clear focus on things needed to be done. The idea is to create a minimum level of tolerance to unacceptable employee behaviour. Organizations often create marketing strategies (Ferell & Hartline, 2007) in line with guidelines drawn out of the goals, missions or values. However, these items and strategies are as a result of the leadership established. Therefore, the focus and clear perception of marketing activities and plans that leadership brings also give the organization the aptitude to help under-performing team members to correct their wrongs. Impressions of leadership are noticeable when looking at the different styles and approaches of leadership. A leadership style may either improve of deteriorate a marketing performance. Approach to leadership style centres on the actions of the leaders approaches they put into practice. A leadership style is the combination of traits, skills, and behaviours that a leader routines in their marketing activities in relation to people led. It is important to understand that whatever impact leadership will have on marketing performance, in a broader perspective, that impacts will be of a leadership biased to sales strategies bit of the whole thing. To start with, researches posit that for a company to succeed in achieving effective marketing performance, or any other organization objective thereof, the marketing and management strategies employed should match the leader’s style of leadership (Zen-Ruffinen & Kaynar, 2011). For fair comparison, an authoritative kind of leadership commands and sets clear expectations for the marketing team members in the organization. On the other hand, a democratic leadership buoys up feedback and input from leaders or the led, regarding marketing performance. Now that the base is set, one way in which leadership affect marketing performance relates to linking of job performance to valued rewards. This is really transactional leadership, which also has to do with ensuring that the marketing team members have access to the needed resources for the marketing activity. Basic leadership will dwell on simple subject reinforcement and a management-by-exception. However, modern leadership goes further towards more intellectual stimulation, inspiration, and facilitation of an enhanced charisma. The impact of this is the realization of a greater level of integration and interdependence, hence teamwork (Karamat, 2013), that are necessary for the new work environments as well as comprehensive competition. This, then, is not just transactional leadership anymore but rather transformational leadership which creates a strategic vision, communicates that vision by framing and modelling it by walking the talk. It is complemented by consistent leadership style, act and behaviour, to shape commitment towards the said vision. Durham et al. (1997) postulate that, desirable marketing performance is achieved when with transformative leadership. It is, in the modern society, evident how much leadership behaviours, and subsequently that of led staff, defines the successfulness of an organization’s marketing performance. The influence is that, proper leadership being an evolutionary process, it achieves the transformation of moving team members from just workers trying to completing tasks, to valuable and key team players. Complementary to this and close to an earlier mention, good leadership helps in maintaining singular focus on marketing operations. A leader would desire nothing short of a focussed team, especially one that envisages a taken path. Leadership brings order when suggestions and opinions of the led are heard and collected to help in decision making by the leader. However, it would be chaotic when everyone attempts to make decisions on how to go about the marketing exercise (Rosenberg, 2001). Evidently, an orderly strategy and marketing plan, out of sound and informed decisions are vital for a marketing performance. Ideally, leadership gets everyone on the same page regarding work plan, tasks, methodology and generally what needs to be done to the marketing goal. That is, leadership skills can help correct poor business practices or internal conflicts. Differences among workmates, employees and employers, colleagues or even business partners seldom heighten pressures and cause cold relations. This is undesirable amongst team members if marketing objectives are to be realized. This is another point where leadership, sound and sensitive leadership so to speak, comes in to influence marketing performance. Relevant to this discussion, one of the causes of these differences and conflicts is cultural variations, or more precisely, lack of tolerance for other cultures. Rosenberg (2001) tries to enlighten this point by writing: Issues of different cultures among groups from different organizations and countries: A major issue of multi-cultural organizations is the tendency by individuals to invalidate the cultural practices of others that differ from the practices of their own culture. For example, Americans often regard the British as “cold” and “aloof” because of the cultural practice of saying “Sir”, “Ma’am”, “Please”, and “Thank You.” The “long” process of building relationships prior to conducting business common in the Orient may be evaluated as “wrong” by cultures used to “getting right down to business.” One way of handling such issues is a preliminary training to sensitize group members to cultural differences, e.g., learning the specific cultural practices of the other groups and learning how to appreciate and value the differences. Exchanging members between groups for long-term residential participation also can greatly contribute to cross-cultural cooperation. For example, companies in Partnerships often exchange employees on a long-term basis, ideally making it difficult on a daily basis to tell which company actually employs any individual team member. Rosenberg (2001, p.11). Consequently, the disclaimer would be that leadership can also have a negative impacts on marketing performance or even the overall organizational performance. However, this is majorly, seen with leaders who are excessively dormant or have become infatuated with just achieving goals. The effect of this is that one can end up overlooking the various details in the business organization. Also, the leader and the marketing team member may lose the will to help the dormant with accomplishing goals and objectives. Dominating leadership creates grim business relationships. Relevant Leadership Skills to Influence Marketing Performance To establish relevance, leadership skills can help change an employee’s mentality by instilling an ownership mind-set. This is so that the employee and team member develops the attitude of being responsible for the success or failure of the marketing performance. In doing so, there is much commitment and desire to achieve the best that there is. Employees who believe they have a direct owner-style relationship with the organization often find ways to improve their attitude and productivity. The fact that leadership style approach has basis on leadership skills and leadership traits makes leadership behaviour the most important component. Subject evaluation of leadership, by most communities, prioritizes behaviour and holds that a steady pattern of behaviour (Richard & John 2008) characterizes the leader. Studying and evaluation of leadership to behaviours makes decision of the appropriate style quite easier and almost obvious. The fact is that modern societies and workplaces are diversified by many factors and thus leadership at its best is necessary. Contextually, the goal of communication is to effectively pass and share information. When this is projected to the aspect of differences between the communicators, good communication skills becomes one of leadership skills. Following relatively is the ability to adjust and accept differences, like culture, understand the extents to which the aspects of life, like behaviour and reactions, are under conditioning by culture. These two collectively nurture the skills of identifying and solving problems in culturally complex setups. Most of the intercultural issues that will rise are evidenced by the chosen ways of communication. In a view, the importance of intercultural communication tries to bridge the gaps created by intercultural issues and differences. Intercultural communication skills are the answer to the complex issues that cultural diversification present to us today contemporarily. Communication is realized because of the relative cultures have defined the ways of communicating particular messages. Henningsen & Valde (2012) claim that this relation between the messages sent and the relative culture of the sender determine the response of the receiver. Intercultural communication is thus important to bridge language gaps, help organizations to bar conflicts and foster respect. Drawing attention to this an interesting observation, style approach leadership is actually a theory that attempts to classify and arrange the general approaches leaders use to achieve goals. These approaches are thought to be based on the assumptions of a leader, about features that motivate team members to accomplish goals (Richard & John 2008). The theory attempts to identify a range of general approaches leaders use to influence goal achievement. The ability to relate well with other people is a central element of leadership besides just having an exceptional intelligence quotient. The most important role of a leader in an organization is to make the organization’s team effective and enhance their performance at work (Blatt & Camden, 2007). All of this is fixed in the direction of achieving organizational goals and objectives. Currently, there is much knowledge about how much leadership influences organizational team performance comparative to the team underlying aspects. Nonetheless, little is known about leadership policies that facilitate this desired team performance and objective attainment. Effective team performance depends on several ultimate factors and one of them is relationships, which is the centre of discussion as a vital leadership skill. This implies that the organizational team members need to assimilate their individual actions (Brower et al. 2000) in ways that brings out the best of workplace relations. This leads to the other item or perception of relational leadership. It is about leading a team while considering the social aspect of the members of that team, the significance of sociology in leadership is inevitable. Sociology can alter a person’s perspective of the environment and world around them. That system questions the importance of sociology, its contribution to personal lives and to institutions. The basic components of sociology is about the origin, development and structure of humans and institutions in society. Leadership and People Modernity knows that leadership is not just about directing and commanding people around but also having the ability to manage, if not resolve, conflicts between personnel. It is, in consequence, important to include a discussion on people and conflicts, relative to the expected actions of a leader towards organizational conflicts. Research shows that useful information is only gained by dint of effective listening, which is an indispensable leadership skill. On condition that there is a basis for high levels of both intrapersonal and interpersonal communication, Chen and Starosta (2000) debates, there will be enhanced efforts of the leader against the problem of conflict management in modern organizations. Effective listening improves trust between staff and the leader (Robbins, 2000; Stein, 2010) and it also reduces conflicts. More so, it boosts knowledge and understanding of the ways of motivating others. Aside from this, a good number of people openly believe that they always listen meritoriously.  Consequently, very few people think they need to grow their listening skills. Most conflicts result of the unconsciousness that people have with regards to the detail that effective listening is an attribute that is learnt and vital for comprehensive communication (Whetten & Cameron, 2002). The practice of effective listening is quite easy to learn and so organization members should opt to foster the habit of listening. Conflicts are commonly intrapersonal, interpersonal (March, 2011) and societal. The question that most studies and researches are yet to address today relate to the extent to which leaders can go in helping resolve them. Actually, intrapersonal conflict is the most challenging one. According to Wilmot and Hocker (2011), conflict is the struggle between two or more interdependent entities over perceived irreconcilable differences in beliefs, values, and goals. Conflict presents both a test and a true opportunity for every leader who can look at it creatively and make the best out of it. However, it becomes really challenging and sometimes a grave problem when particular persons in the organizations are more than frequently caught in conflicts that arise between the organization’s stakeholders. Generally, conflicts are disruptive, stress-causing and should be avoided at all costs. A good leader will look at the subject in a uniquely different way. It will help him/her in and identifying opportunities for growth out the conflicts. Conclusion International marketing is an essential indication of the development and growth of a particular organization. It also justifies the management, marketing and planning or decision-making strategies that the organization employs. As realized from the discussion above, these realization of goals and desired marketing performance greatly depend of good leadership. Thus, the essay achieves the objective of establishing, first, the fact that leadership influences marketing performance, and secondly, the ways by and extents to which leadership impacts marketing performance. Also the essay appreciates the relevance of effective leadership skills to paint a broader picture of the subject matter. The essence of these skills is grown by detailing ways in which they also influence marketing performance and thus organizational performance. References Blatt, R., & Camden, C. T. (2007). In J. E. Dutton & B. R. Ragins (Eds.), Exploring positive relationships at work: Building a theoretical and research foundation (pp. 242-264). New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum. Brower, H. H., Schoorman, F. D., & Tan, H. H. 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