Management And Organizational Behaviour Assignment - Essay Example

? LEADERSHIP Management and organizational behaviour assignment ………………… ………………………… …………… Introduction Leadership is a highly valued commodity and an extremely significant element that individual careers and fate of organizations are determined by the effectiveness of leadership and leaders’ behavior. Leadership is considered crucial for organizational success and as most researchers argued, leadership is an extremely critical element (Lussier and Achua, 2009, p. 4). Leadership has gained wider attention from researchers worldwide and all different studied show that there are different theoretical approaches to explain the dimensions and complexities of leadership. Some experts have conceptualized leadership as trait or behavior whereas some others viewed leadership from an information processing perspective. It has also been studied quantitatively and qualitatively. This piece of research paper described leadership styles in relation to the theoretical approaches and management concepts regarding leadership. This paper considers leadership qualities of two leaders in Microsoft in order to find what specific qualities made them successful in their organization and to examine how consistent they were in their leadership behavior. Leadership Style of Two senior Managers in Microsoft Steve Ballmer Steve Ballmer is the CEO of Microsoft, one of the leading technology companies of the world. Steve Ballmer is one of the most successful and highly influential leaders of recent years. He has played several significant roles in the success stories of Microsoft since he has become the CEO in 2000. Bill Gates, a very victorious leader of all times with a number of highly valued qualities like intelligent, visionary, passion, risk bearing, innovation and continuous learner, has long been the CEO of Microsoft, and when he left the company in 2000, Steve Ballmer became the CEO of the company and took his own ways and strategic steps forward to lead the company and the people in a way that he feels more effective. When it comes to his leadership styles, he is a different and perhaps a very successful leader as he gives greater emphasis on customer focus and this is considered to be a strategy to grab newer market opportunities (Wilcox, 2010). A successful leader is one who finds newer ways to find organizational success, influence his subordinates and help them perform their task to achieve the organizational goal. Steve Ballmer has recently introduced cloud computing and he has been very enthusiastic to speak about it to be a technological move to grab new marketing opportunities. Cloud computing has been designed and developed to enable businesses to communicate and do information processing in virtual system with no physical interaction with a computer (Katz, 2011). A leader is one who leads an organization, influences his people, introduces some thing new that is highly important for the success of the organization, brings new strategies to achieve targeted goals, incorporates people, process and technology to better manage the resources and make effective use of available resources for activating organizational success. In recent years, Steve Ballmer has been implementing different and effective strategies to lead the organization and its people especially to help them get accustomed with the changing business contexts and overcome its complexities. Introducing new ideas and focusing on customer satisfaction were some of very different ideas that identifies the leadership qualities of Steve Ballmer. Jean-Philippe Courtois Jean-Philippe Courtois has been the CEO of Microsoft Europe, Middle East and Africa and the company promoted him to lead its international sales, marketing and other services as the President of Microsoft International and senior vice president of Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft.com, 2005). Jean-Philippe Courtois is the leader and top level manager to handle global sales of Microsoft, marketing and services of Microsoft international. His managerial role spans around 100 subsidiaries that are spread in over 240 countries excluding the US and Canada. Jean-Philippe Courtois has been a successful leader when he was working as CEO for Microsoft Europe, Middle East and Africa and his successful career has helped him get promoted to be the president of Microsoft International. The worldwide public sector and communication related business under Microsoft are some of his major responsibilities. According to the words of Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, the company is very fortunate to have a leadership team with deep business and international commercial experiences, especially with leadership qualities of Jean-Philippe Courtois, that can help the company drive a new wave of growth and development for the company in its future (Microsoft.com, 2005). When Jean-Philippe Courtois was appointed in 2005, company expected that it will be a step forward to focus on both company’s mature and emerging markets throughout countries worldwide. When it comes to the leadership qualities of Jean-Philippe Courtois, he has been very influential team player and greater visionary that in turn have helped the company achieve greater success. Leadership styles, Approaches and Success Factors There are various views regarding leadership. Many researchers believe that leadership is an inborn quality whereas others believe it to be a skill that can be trained and developed. Researchers have explained leadership as transformational, charismatic, situational and transactional in relation to the personal, behavioral and other qualities of the leader. A leader thus may be charismatic, or transformational, or transactional or situational etc. Charismatic leader is one who gains his leadership quality from some unknown, highly-respectful and god-given gift to him. The leadership skills, talents and abilities of charismatic leader is thus more seemingly divine (Sashkin, p. 56). All those leaders who were found to be charismatic and were later studied as charismatic leaders have been successful in making an emotional impact on their people and subordinates by appealing both at their hearts and minds. Charismatic leadership and transformational leadership are considered quite similar in some behavior. Transformational leader is one who is able to inculcate and develop an innovative ideas and bring changes to the organization by recognizing the needs, requirements and individual concerns of the subordinates. A transformational leader influences his people at their heart by solving their issues, overcoming their troubles and helping them find better path to improving the overall performance of the tasks they are responsible to do (Daft and Lane, 2009, p. 424). A transformational leader is thus one who focuses mainly on the difference between leading for change and leading for stability (Griffin and Moorhead, 2009, p. 335). A leader with better vision, change attitude and greater enthusiasm to influence his people are some of the qualities of transformational leader. A transactional leader is one who is much concerned about the task-related requirements and jobs of his people. In order to ensure his followers are performing the expected tasks, the leader may arrange appropriate rewards and try to meet their individual as well as social requirements as well (Daft and Lane, 2009, p. 424). Situational leaders are those leaders who act according to the situation. They work properly according to the best situation they find for an activity or for an organizational requirement. Leadership Approaches of the two leaders and the success factors Both Steve Ballmer and Jean-Philippe Courtois seem to be transformational leaders because their leadership approaches and attributes are very similar to that of a transformational leader. Steve Ballmer’s leadership traits and transformational approaches are evident from his positive attitude towards bringing change, implementing new techniques and developing new product ideology like cloud computer etc. Similarly, the leadership success and easier way to influence the subordinates that Jean-Philippe Courtois showed while he worked for Microsoft Europe and Microsoft international are very evident that he is more likely to be transformational. As Marshall and Coughlin (2010, p. 2) emphasized, transformational leader in an organization is one a) who establishes a very clear vision, b) shares and communicates that vision with other people, mainly with subordinates in order them to follow it willingly, c) provides information, knowledge and methods to realize that vision and d) coordinates and balances the conflicting interests of all relevant stakeholders. In simple terms, a transformational leader will be highly successful in transforming the vision to a reality. A transformational leader provides strong sense of vision and enthusiasm that an essentially help others increase their confidence, aspirations, performance, trust and commitments. These leaders have ideas and very particular sense of direction that can be activated by communicating them to others, developing excitement in order to accomplish the shared values and dreams. Most of the transformational leaders are found to be successful in using their personal reference and emotion to arouse the enthusiasm, confidence, faith and trust of their followers. Martin (2006, p. 47) identified that transformational leaders produce leadership behaviors that fulfill four main functions. These four functions are- Idealized leadership provides vision and a sense of mission, instilling pride among the people and helping them gain trust and respect, Inspirational motivation being communicated with high expectations and by expressing important purpose in simple ways, Intelligence and careful problem solving being promoted by intellectual simulations, and Individualized consideration that gives personal attention to all the people, treating people individually, and giving them coaching and advises etc. Bryson (2006, p. 143) noted that transformational leader creates and makes sense of change. He is not only a leader but also a successful change manager. He will be able to implement change successfully and also to manage resistance to change that occurs from people in the organization. Transformational leaders are expected to create a changing environment especially to keep the organization ahead of its competitors. In order to implement a change successfully, they must study the competitive and other business environments surrounding the organization, conduct situational and organizational analysis, make connections and apply intuitions etc. In an recent business contexts, change and change management have become extremely significant components of effective management practices. Change is considered to be an opportunity as well as a challenge to get it implemented with no obstruction. Bryson (2006, p. 143) also noted that a transformational leader is one who thrives for excellence and delivers more accurate results. Though they are able to recognize that there often will be hard times and catastrophic occurrences in organizations, they are mentally ready to share bad news and show courage to handle them properly. These leaders make their organizations ready to handle these circumstances and deal with such occurrences by identifying and planning actions in order to overcome potential harms. According to Bryson (2006, p. 143), transformational leaders are those who create an achieving atmosphere in a way that others are encouraged to exceed their expectations about themselves. These leaders show passion, commitment and willingness to make a personal investment in people, process, technology and the organization as a whole. They do not behave in a way of monopoly in ideas and formulating strategies, but they seriously consider others’ views, ideas and visions so that others feel respect and trust. When it comes to the leadership behaviour and attributes of Steve Ballmer and Jean-Philippe Courtois, it is very clear that they have become successful leaders with their passion, vision, intelligence and their ability to influence others. Steve Ballmer started giving greater importance for customer satisfaction as he realized that a business cannot stay long unless it values customers and its customers are satisfied with the goods and services that the company delivers to them. Wilcox (2010) expressed his concern regarding Ballmer’s strategy of extensive focus on customers and his leadership style. As he wrote, under the leadership of Ballmer, Microsoft changed employee evaluation and compensation metrics and all such variables are tied to customer satisfaction strategy that has been given greater emphasis by him. But from a marketing and management point of view, his focus on customer satisfaction is essentially an effective strategy that can contribute much to the company mainly in helping it achieve the competitive advantages. Steve Ballmer introduced cloud computing and he proclaimed it to be a technological advance and a market revolution for the future of Microsoft. As a leader, he transformational as he implements change and communicates it to both his people and customers. Cloud computing technology, Xbox 360 Kinect and Nintendo Wii are some of the recent major technological development of Microsoft under the leadership of Steve Ballmer (Katz, 2011). He has thus been a change manager, a talented visionary, an intelligent problem solver and so on. These leadership attributes and personal or behavioral approaches prove that Steve Ballmer was more seemingly a transformational leader. Jean-Philippe Courtois has been a very influential and successful leader when he was the CEO of Microsoft Europe and this success has helped him become the president of Microsoft International. His leadership success, ability to implement change, skill to transform his vision to reality and the way of influencing others are some of the transformational leadership attributes he showed. Consistency of the Leadership Styles A leader is expected to be consistent in his leadership styles. Employees or the people that a leader leads are looking for consistent leadership qualities in their leader. Weiss and MacKay (2009) stressed that employees value consistency of leadership above all. If a leader is consistent in his leadership style, all other attributes like toughness and autocratic can up to n extent be tolerated by the employees. Employees like consistency in leadership and they are constantly looking for consistency in the leadership style of their leaders (MacDonald, 2007, p. 159). If a leader adopts mixed leadership styles or he is adopting different leadership strategies at different times, his people will be confused and often they wont be able to get accustomed with the way their leader handles a particular circumstance. Normally, it takes time to a team to study the route and styles their leader follows for different situations. Different organizations have their own particular style of management and leadership. If different leaders take almost different ways to lead the organization, that also will cause confusion among the subordinates. Consistency in leadership and management is thus a key element to leadership success. Steve Ballmer and Jean-Philippe Courtois were very consistent in their leadership styles and this can be understood from the effectiveness of their leadership styles and qualities. Steve Ballmer has been passionate, visionary and change manager and he always tries to follow that same route. Jean-Philippe Courtois has also been consistent because he has been a successful leader when he was working as CEO of the Microsoft Europe and he has later also been found to be the same when he was appointed as the president to the Microsoft International. Conclusion Leaders make change. Change brings opportunities and helps organizations achieve its goals like gaining sustainable competitive advantages. Both Steve Ballmer and  Jean-Philippe Courtois have significant roles in the success of Microsoft especially in its recent years. Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft and Jean-Philippe Courtois, the president of Microsoft International are very successful leaders who have deeply influenced thousands of employees and other people in the organization. These two leaders were able to transform their vision to reality and therefore they are transformational leaders. They brought newer ideas, they developed visions, they conveyed proper messages to their people and they made change in the organization. They remained very constant with their leadership style and that has been another important element to their leadership success. References Daft, RL & Lane, P (2009), Management, Illustrated Ninth edition, Cengage Learning Griffin, R. W & Moorhead, G (2009), Organizational Behavior: Managing People and Organizations, Revised Ninth edition Katz, J, 2011, Ballmer Says the Future is in the Clouds, Microsoft chief executive touts cloud computing as the future of business communications, Industryweek.com, Retrieved 30th April 2011 from http://www.industryweek.com/articles/ballmer_says_the_future_is_in_the_clouds_24081.aspx?SectionID=4 Lussier, RN & Achua, CF, 2009, Leadership: Theory, Application, & Skill Development, Fourth edition, Cengage Learning MacDonald, RW, 2007, Beat the system: 11 secrets to building an entrepreneurial culture in a bureaucratic world, John Wiley and Sons Marshall, E & Coughlin, JF, 2010, Transformational Leadership in Nursing: From Expert Clinician to Influential Leader, Springer Publishing Company Martin, B 2006, Outdoor leadership: theory and practice, Illustrated edition, Human Kinetics Microsoft.com, 2005, Microsoft Appoints Jean-Philippe Courtois President of Microsoft International, Microsoft News Centre, Microsoft.com, Retrieved 30th April from http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/jun05/06-20JPCHollowayPR.mspx Sashkin, M& Sashkin, M.G (2003), Leadership that matters: the critical factors for making a difference in people's lives and organizations' success, Berrett-Koehler Publishers Weiss, A &MacKay, N 2009, The Talent Advantage: How to Attract and Retain the Best and the Brightest, John Wiley and Sons Wilcox, J, 2010, I have lost confidence in Steve Ballmer's leadership, Company’s News, Betanews.com, Retrieved 30th April 2011 from http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/I-have-lost-confidence-in-Steve-Ballmers-leadership/1276886190 Read More