Poor Leadership Can Lead to Low Morale - Term Paper Example

Poor Leadership Can Lead To Low Morale The concept that poor leadership can lead to low morale and its negative effect to subordinates and individuals is no longer a new thing. There is a link that connects to the morale of an invidual and to the kind of leadership to where an individual or group is treated. In addition, based on the findings of experts, poor leadership has negative effects to the subordinates both to mental and physical aspects. By getting into the definition of leadership, it is said that leadership is a manner by which a leader will influence other people to do what he wants them to do without necessarily imposing and insisting authority. There are different ways by which poor leadership can be classified and it is based on the manifestation or outputs that can be readily observed from individuals affected by poor leadership. The thing that contributes to poor leadership of a person could be accounted to the approaches and leadership styles that the leader apply, that in general could be classified as abusive, aggressive, punitive or such that lacks leadership skills. There are traits and qualities that good leadership requires and that is not to the extent that the leader will insist and assert his superiority among people he handles. This type of leadership style is of coercive type, wherein person do not work because of love to their work, but are dependent to the dictatorial and authoritative character imposed by the leader. This approach is driven by the organisational position or power, and the same power make him to be untoward among members of his group. On this type of leadership, the tendency is for the leader to be so ridiculous with his treatment to his subordinates, making the mere work place as a place of torture. That will not eventually help to the improvement of the surrounding inviduals, nevertheless the downgrading of the morale of the group. The role of the leader according to Drucker (1985), is: ““..the lifting of people’s vision to a higher sight, the raising of their performance to a higher standard, the building of their personality beyond its normal limitations...” Therefore, the main requirement that is expected of good leadership is to be in state where the leader could help inviduals to develop positive outlooks, then then individual upagrading in relation to his task with gradual progressive changes, and the person’s over-all self confidence which is significant in carrying out organisational objectives. However, as the supervisor abuses his power, or act autocratically to his subordinates, the tendency is to weaken person’s self confidence, inject pessimism and will lead to individual’s downgrading. There are situations when supervisors degrade their employees through yelling, direct-threatening the employees of job termination, calling them in funny and ridiculous names, humiliating employees and the like. This kind of situation creates a stressful workplace on the side of the employees and will therefore be responsible to hamper their desire to strive achieving the goals and objectives of the organization. Such character being displayed by the leader will inject fear among members of the organization with higher probability. A leader who abuses power and become untoward to the people under him are termed to be doing workplace harassment, emotional abuse, bullying or workplace agression. In this case, the leadership becomes the problem, not the inviduals themselves but the leader. At this point, negative reactions that come from the members of the group is no longer the mere result of the shortcoming of the subordinate. The real problem now comes to the inability of the leader to establish a mutual and beneficial relationship among members of his group. Poor leadership produces greater impact with the leader’s bullying and bossy character most especially when the leader’s behavior is unpredictable to the employees. At this point, the problem of the employee is no longer the leader’s character, but that he do not exactly know when the same aggressive character of the leader will happen. This will introduce negative mind conditioning, knowing not exactly when another catastrophic encounter with their boss will take place (Mo nat, Averill, and Lazarus, 1972). The unexpected occurence of such situation produces a terrifying environment and an unenjoyable athmosphere to the group. The overall impact of abusive and aggressive supervision do not only mean a short term effect to the individuals, but at the same time, supervisor’s negative treatment might lead to unfavorable results to the subordinates, such as psychological distress (Tepper, 200), deppression, anxiety , and psychosomatic symptoms (Hoel, Rayner, & Cooper, 1999). This situation will not be promising to employees, because this would lead to low level of work enjoyment and performance, which will not be good in terms of carrying their tasks. The work area should be a place of enthusiasm to the employees and the manner by which leadership is being introduced could also be the determining factor by which it could be explained how poor leadership should be treated as serious issue. The perspective of the workers to their work and the manner by which they value their job can be dependent on the ability of the leader to communicate with the people around him. This is necessary in coming up to the dynamics of the group. The idea is, it is not only that abusive leadership do not only terrorizes the group. The fear injected by the leader to the group will lead the employees to intentionally withdraw their support to the leader, which as a whole, will affect the morale of the group (Tepper, 2000). But it is not only aggressive leadership that leads to low morale among employees or the subordinates. Lack of leadership on the contrary, could also be treated as a serious issue. It is expected that the leader should be the most influencial person within the group. Impliedly, the ability of the leader is to become the role model. This in conjunction to the fulfillment of organisational goals. However, when the group feels that there seems to be no leader at all, the tendency is for them to assume of doing the work alone without anyone to guide them, or the worst is not to work at all. For reason, authors term the lack of leadership skill as “passive leadership”, or a kind of leadership that is derived from both the laissez-faire and the management-by-exception styles (Bass & Avolio, 1997). In this kind of leadership, for example, the leader will not assume his responsibility to act into a particular situation not unless the situation has been introduced to him or everything is in serious trouble (Bass, 1990). This kind of leadership, though it may not be authoritative, still produces negative effects in the organisation. Instead of influencing and motivating people to do particular goals, the leader will not pay attention to problems not unless there is someone that would initiate to tell him that a particular problem is taking place. The value of the leader is to play as the head of the group, and as the head group his primary responsibility is to be analytical in looking after the welfare of the group. Therefore, we could not exclude the involvement of the leader in every situation that the organisation faces, most especially when the situation involve the people under him. When the involvement of the leader is inadequate, then negative outcomes can be found from the mere members of the group who were not properly lead. The action of the leader will determine the over-all function of every members. This could be achieved when the leader knows the people he handles, knows the field where he is assigned, and has the ability to face situation that might lead to the loose of the morale of the group. In dealing with problems, the leader in order to reach with the need of the group is to consider the group as another mainstream of suggestions and solutions. The decision making will be centralized which is the essence of active leadership (Likert, R., 1967). . The best way to make the group move is to give them the sense of value, that they are not excluded in making decisions, but are considered asset to the development of the group or the company. What makes poor leadership, really roots up with the inability of the leader to gain the support of his follower in an effective leader and member relations, his lack of establishing task structure, which will give direction, standard and control to subjects, and the passive approach or the failure on the leader’s part to be proficient with the proper exercise of his power or position (Fiedler, F.E., 1967). In the idea introduced by Fiedler, he attempts to show good leadership in terms of understanding three factors that relates to leader, the member and their task. The first option is the kind of leadership that focuses on the the relationship among the subordinates, and then the task follows. The mere intention of this kind of leadership is to first get the support of the subordinate which will be helpful for them to be proficient to the task that will be delegated to them. This is similar to the situational leadership style mentioned by Hersey and Blanchard (2007), wherein the focus of the leader either to the task or to his relationship with the group. In varying levels, relationship oriented and task oriented leadership approach can be both effective, provided that the leader first analysed the situation, and out of the observation choose the best approach that he could apply to the group. It happens to become poor leadership when the leader do not think anymore or do not give way to his people’s perception, emotions and capacities. The group loses morale when there is no mutual relationship that exist between the leader and the follower, thus goals and objectives are sacrificed. But the concentration of effective leadership do not only confine with maintaining a beneficial relationship with the group. In order to carry out the objectives of the company, the next thing that should be done is to focus on the determined task that every member of the group plays. The failure to make the group understand the value of their work, will lead to their inactivity, which on one way or the other could also be blamed to the leader once his role is not being actively played. The morale of the group deteriorates because the group sees how the leader do not actively participate to the development of the group or if not, with little involvement. The leader should be instrumental to provide social help to his members and ensure that despite of the pressures that the members encounters, the leader do not fail in giving them the necessary social support. In this part, the leader should focus, not only on his personal relationship with the inviduals but at the same time to understand how he will motivate and support the members in fulfilling their task. This will help the members to work in a properly guided manner which will produce far-reaching effects, beneficial to the leader, to the member and to the whole task wherein both are entitled to work collaboratively. The amount of influence that the leader produces to the members plus the relationship that exist to both will prevent going into troublesome situation that will affect the morale of the group. Somehow, this will also be helpful in reducing the tension of the work. In this case harmonious relationship between leader and the member will be the platform for improvement in an invidual and group level. Poor leadership actually exerts discouragement among the members of the team. When support from the leader do not exist or if it exist but in abusive state, then the group might have the tendency to develop a low morale to the type of job that they are doing. The leader should be the first one to show support from the members (Barling, Bluen, and Fain, 1987). Going into the smallest unit of the society, the family, the role of the father is to keep the family intact, achievable by playing a perfect father figure. The established family relationship, will be helpful in creating a strong family tie and respect from the side of the offspring. This is what we call the paternalistic idea of leadership (Likert, R.,1967). The paternilistic way of leadership is thinking for the welfare of the group, treating it as his own family. It means the leader should be supportive to his members in the fulfillment of their duties and tasks. In response to the support given by the leader to the members will sprout the loyalty of the group both to the leader and to the company. It should be always regarded that the well being of inviduals are effected during practices of abusive supervision or dictatorial leadership (MacEwen & Barling, 1988). The work environment should not become a place of stress for the inviduals but for their upbringing, and disregarding this issue is disregarding the prevention of loosing morale. The strongest sense of improving workers is the amount of charisma that the leader introduces giving value to motivate and persuade people (Bass, B. M.,1990). A poor leader will not think of other people’s welfare but himself as the source of orders. The question is not gaining authority alone but respect, participative than self served. When people perform their job not because of giving value to work but dicatated, then that is poor leadership. There are leadership styles that concentrates mainly on transactional basis, wherein a person will be treated with the reward or punishment based on their performance (Fiedler, F.E., 1967). Application of reward and punishment to the team based on their work, could in the brighter side provide motivation for the workers to strive hard in conjunction with their responsibilities. However, being to much concentrated to this kind of approach do not ensure that leadership is already good. On the other hand, if over-used it might also corrupt the morale of the team. Loyalty will be motivated by benefits and not because of integrity which is more important. This kind of motivation, will surely result to negative effects. The best way that the leader could be active in performing his duties to the group and at the same time help the uplifting of individuals under him is to be analytical in understanding situations that the group really needs. At this time, to avoid poor leadership is not to be stagnant into a single type of leadership approach, but on the broader sense requires flexibility. When the morale of the group is at great risk, the initial reaction is to sort out to what part of leadership is lacking or in trouble, and once recognised device ways on how to get solutions to particular problems. There are forces that naturally led to leader’s action which are, of the situation, of the follower and of the leader (Tannenbaum and Schmidt, 1958). These three are always part of the consideration in handling the group and to avoid arguments between the leader and the members. The point is understanding not only what the leader like, but getting things solved in the manner that will not compromise beneficial relationship. It is understanding the range of situational factors that holds the group and decisions will be derived based on what will be more acceptable to all of the members of the team. It is always required that the team and the leader unites in a particular goal, and they are sure of doing things right for the sake of the company. This is where the leader should influence the members of the team, and it could not be applied when the leader becomes the stressor to the members. The experiences that leads to the members to reject the leader is when they do not enjoy the manner by which the leader manages them and at that extent poor leadership leads to trouble. It is not only that they reject the leader but withdraws their integrity of performing their job with dedication. The stressful effect of poor leadership is a discouraging factor that destroys the morale of the employees. There are many factors that are going to be considered in handling a group, or in an exercise of leadership. However, one thing is for sure, that there is a strong link that connects between poor leadership and group morale. The thing that make these two connected is that poor leadership can surely be a factor to the degradation of the team members. Although the situation is another factor that will be considered, still, the handling of the leaders to the subordinates can be observed of having a strong effect to every individual of the team. These effects are always associated with the different leadership approaches applied, whether of abusive type or of passive type. In broadly understanding how people can be handled effectively is to always put in consideration the relationship that exist between the leader and the member plus the situation wherein everybody is going to decide. This kind of relationship is the invaluable tool to keep the morale of the group with compentency and purpose. References: Monat, A., Averill, J. R., & Lazarus, R. S. (1972). Anticipatory stress and coping reactions under various conditions of uncertainty. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24, 237–253. Tepper, B. J. (2000). Consequences of abusive supervision. Academy of Management Journal, 43, 178–190. Hoel, H., Rayner, C., & Cooper, C. L. 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