The Relevance of Leadership Theories in Context to Professional Experience - Essay Example

? Leadership of the of the In this paper, the researcher will shed light on leadership characteristics such as traits, behaviors, knowledge, and skills which can be used by a leader to influence attitude and thinking process of followers. Leadership style of the workplace supervisor of the researcher has been selected as example leader in order to address key deliverables in the research project. Practical evidences of leadership style of workplace supervisor have been cited in order to answer different questions in the assignment. Theoretical arguments like transformational leadership style, organizational power dispositions, leadership constraints etc are being also discussed in the paper in order put theoretical depth in the discussion. Concepts like influence of stress, tactics to implement change etc are being also discussed in order increase robustness of discussion. In the later part, the paper has taken help of motivational theories in order to describe the influence of workplace supervisor on driving motivation among subordinates. At the final part, self reflective analysis has also been incorporated in order to address learning outcomes. In many occasions, theoretical arguments of various research scholars are being incorporated in order to understand leadership behavior of the leader in the example. Introduction In this essay, the researcher will shed light on the relevance of leadership theories in context to his/her professional experience ore in simple word, this essay will analyze the leadership traits that the researcher want to possess in order to succeed in future professional settings. Important thing to mention that the paper would not perceive leadership as mere positional aspect rather focus of the paper will be to analyze leadership traits, skills, knowledge, and behaviors which play vital role in influencing subordinates to achieve higher performance. Context of the paper will be analyzed in the next section while personal findings of the researcher will be discussed in respect of various leadership theories and this will be the key agenda of the paper. Researcher will use the professional experience gathered while working in a service organization and judge applicability leadership theories in context to personality dimension in the service organization. Context As a leadership example, the researcher will use the leadership characteristics of his/her workplace supervisor in order to take example from professional life. During working in the organization, leadership traits and behaviors of workplace supervisor significantly impacted performance outcome of researcher and that is the reason why leadership characteristics of workplace supervisor has been selected as pertinent aspect in the paper. Another important thing is that the researcher has sufficient emotional distance with workplace supervisor and relationship is purely professional in nature hence there is very little scope for intervention of subjectivity or biasness while discussing the influence of workplace supervisor’s behaviors on thinking and attitude of the researcher. Discussion and Analysis Vardiman, Houghston & Jinkerson (2006) defined leadership as the juxtaposition of skill, communication ability, influencing characteristic and attitude which can be used by a particular organizational individual to influence subordinates. Vardiman, Houghston and Jinkerson (2006) argued that position based power to direct action of others should not be perceived as leadership rather leadership is defined by the behavior, interpersonal skill, attitude of a very individual which make him or her leader. Alas, Tafel & Tuulik (2007) also found that leadership depends heavily on personal traits like relationship with subordinates, collaborative attitude, coordination skill; personality etc and leaders need to have these characteristics in order to influence or motivate subordinates to achieve performance objectives. Now the question is whether workplace supervisor’s characteristics can be justified in as example of exemplary leadership? Before answering the question, the researcher will briefly discuss about exemplary leadership in order to prepare background of the answer. According to Kouzes & Posner (2011), there are five ideal leadership practices such as, 1- Model the way- leaders should actively involved in their action and also make example of commitment level in front of subordinates, 2- Inspire a shared vision- leaders should have the vision and also have the capability to encourage other subordinates to share the same vision in order to achieve objectives, 3- Challenge the process- leaders should posses the open mind to welcome change and innovation, 4- Enable others to act- leaders should encourage team working culture and influence team members to achieve greater performance benefits through working collaboratively and 5- Encourage the heart- leaders should have the transparency to provide reward and recognition to the performance of team members in order to develop belongingness among employees. In such context, Day (2002) pointed out three important dimensions of leadership skills such as 1- building self efficacy, 2- developing and utilizing specific set of skills in order to influence behavior of followers and 3- motivating subordinates to achieve performance objectives. The researcher has worked under the supervision of workplace supervisor for more than 3 months and during the tenure, workplace supervisor showed leadership skill in different occasions. For example, during mid of the year, customers service department received numerous complaints regarding poor quality after sales services and rude behavior by service personnel. In such context, my workplace supervisor conducted group meeting and asked every team members to point out cause and solution to the emergent problem. I can remember that workplace supervisor worked with team continuously in order to develop solution to the customer complaint issue and finally developed the solution. My workplace supervisor spoke to each team member and encouraged each team member to perform well. Even, the workplace supervisor rewarded me in front of team members to recognize my performance during the task. Consideration of the example reveals the fact that the workplace supervisor used all the 5 leadership practices such as working with us throughout the project (Model the way), sharing the vision statement with us through periodic communication (Inspire a shared vision), developing new solution to handle customer complaints problem (Challenge the process), encouraging us to work in teams to reach solution to the problem (Enable others to act) and recognizing my effort in the project by doing transparent performance evaluation and rewarding my effort (Encourage the heart). Due to such justifications, leadership behavior of workplace supervisor can be served as an example of exemplary leadership. Yukl (2010) stated that leaders can use different organizational power indices to influence behavior and attitude of subordinates. They defined these power indices as, Referent Power- using interpersonal skill and coordination ability to manage working of team and creating admiration driven influence for subordinates to move in the direction of leader, Legislative Power- using the power of higher organizational position to influence decision of subordinates, Reward Power- providing financial and non-financial reward to subordinates to motivate them to follow direction of leader, Expert Power- using skill and expertise to influence the behavior of subordinates and Coercive Power- using threat or punishment to influence decision process of employees. Figure 1: Sources and functioning of organizational power (Source: Rahim, Antonioni & Psenicka, 2011) According to professional experience, workplace supervisor used referent power backed by communication, coordination and interpersonal skill to assemble us and encouraged us to work under a dynamic team environment. Up to certain extent, my workplace supervisor was successful in using organizational power and positional power to influence our action in workplace. Kavanagh and Ashkanasy (2006) stated that leaders can be constrained by external and internal environmental factors such as organizational structure, culture, knowledge sharing, changing business trend, political environment, shift in social balance, technological trend, legal issues etc. In this case, the workplace supervisor was constrained by factors like 1- bureaucratic structure of the organization which does not allow the workplace supervisor to implement innovative approach easily, 2- lack of technological resources of the company create problem for workplace supervisor to use state of art technology to communicate idea to stakeholders and 3- lack of support from top level management to develop knowledge sharing culture created problem for my work place supervisor to encourage knowledge sharing among team members. Kavanagh and Ashkanasy (2006) stated that leaders might use influence tactics in order to overcome environmental constraints. In this case, the workplace supervisor used negotiation with top level management to implement proposed change to improve quality of service delivery to customers and also organized periodic meeting with team members to remove constraints regarding knowledge sharing. These tactics helped the workplace supervisor to reduce frequency of customer complaints up to certain extent. However, the workplace supervisor should have focused more on implanting new communication technology which might help the leader to communicate the vision to division members in comprehensive and holistic manner. Periodic team meetings, gathering information from external environment, dissecting the information to meaningful knowledge, sharing knowledge with team members, monitoring performance of team members, rewarding performance of team members etc were used my workplace supervisor in order to develop high performing team. Grojean, et al. (2004) that there is close relationship exist ethical behavior of leaders and their influence on subordinates. Grojean et al. (2004) also stated that leaders can influence psychologically meaningful moral, value system and ethical responsibilities among subordinates. For example, my workplace supervisor discouraged us from involving any unethical activities like fooling customers by wrong promises, engaging in financial fraud, behaving rudely with customers and co-workers etc. One day, workplace supervisor even rebuked one of the co-workers for fooling a customer by wrong promises. Due to such ethical dignity, interpersonal skill and collaborative attitude, leadership style of my workplace supervisor is an ideal example for me to follow and develop myself to become an ideal leader in future context. On the basis of the research work of Avolio, Walumbwa & Weber (2009), merits of the decision-making style of my workplace supervisor are 1- the leader in the example is very much responsive in making decision, 2- the leader consults with other team members to gather information and make a more informative decision and 3 – the leader has the courage to take responsibilities for the outcome of the decision. Van Knippenberg and Hogg (2003) defined transformational leadership as the leadership process where leaders use knowledge, persuasiveness, resilience, interpersonal skill, cordiality, communication skill and coordination capability to motivate followers. On the other hand, in case of transactional leadership, there is no bonding between leaders and followers rather leaders conduct constant supervision of working of subordinates and believe reward and punishment are the key drivers to improve performance level of workers. My workplace supervisor was very much involved with subordinates and very much empathetic towards need of subordinates and empowered us to make decision in contingent situation. Therefore, leader in the example can be described as this person possessing transformational leadership skill. In the mentioned situation, stress played vital role as the cause of shaping the leadership style of workplace supervisor. My workplace supervisor had the stress to manage large teams, achieve performance objectives and satisfy the demand of top level management. In such situation, the leader in the example used transformational leadership style to address these stress variables and improve performance of teams. Herzberg, Mausner, & Snyderman’s motivation theory or motivation-hygiene theory is most relevant to describe influence of leadership behavior of workplace supervisor in motivating us to perform in better manner. For example, the leader in the example used Hygiene factors such as diversified work practice, job empowerment, knowledge sharing culture etc and motivators such as recognition, personal development opportunity to motivate us. Leadership example presented in the paper not only increased our commitment level but also encouraged us to perform well in customer complaint reduction project and at the end of the project, we were successful Conclusions and Reflections It is evident from the above discussion that leadership is multidimensional issue and a leader has to be empathetic towards team members in order to make knowledgeable and informative decision. From personal viewpoint, doing the research paper has increased my understanding about the relevance of leadership theories in practical settings. Doing the research project has also helped me to gather understanding about importance of transformational leadership and how transformational leadership can be used in real life business situation. In short, doing the research project will help me to develop leadership skills that might help to handle emerging challenges in future professional environment. References Alas, R., Tafel, K., & Tuulik, K. (2007). Leadership style during transition in society: Case of Estonia. Problems and Perspectives in Management, 5(1), 50-60. Avolio, B. J., Walumbwa, F. O., & Weber, T. J. (2009). Leadership: Current Theories, Research, and Future Directions. Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 421-449. Day, D. V. (2002). Leadership Development: A Review in Context. Leadership Quarterly, 11, 581-613. Grojean, M. W., Resick, C. J., Dickson, M. W., & Smith, D. B. (2004). Leaders, Values, and Organizational Climate: Examining Leadership Strategies for Establishing and Organizational Climate Regarding Ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 55(3), 223-241. Herzberg, F., Mausner, B., & Snyderman, B. B. (1959). The Motivation to work. (2nd ed.). New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. Kavanagh, M. H., & Ashkanasy, N. H. (2006). The Impact of Leadership and Change Management Strategy on Organizational Culture and Individual Acceptance of Change during a Merger. British Journal of Management, 17(1), 81-103. Kouzes, J. M. and Posner, B. Z. (2011). The five practices of exemplary leadership. (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons. Rahim, M. A., Antonioni, D., & Psenicka, C. (2001). A Structural Equations Model of Leader Power, Subordinate’s Styles of Handling Conflict, and Job Performance. International Journal of Conflict Management, 12(3), 191 – 211. Van Knippenberg, D., & M. A. Hogg. (2003). A social identity model of leadership effectiveness in organizations. In: B. Staw and R. M. Kramer (eds), Research in organizational behavior, 25, 245–297. Greenwich, CN: JAI Press. Vardiman, P., Houghston, J., & Jinkerson, D. (2006). Environmental leadership development. toward a contextual model of leader selection and effectiveness. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 27(2), 93-105. Yukl, G. (2010). Leadership in organizations. (7th ed.). London: Prentice Hall. Read More