Application of Management Theory and Leadership Skills in Practice - Essay Example

Leadership Skills in Practice At the beginning of the 21st century, leadership still remains a complex issue involving administration, management, directing and control mechanisms. In business sphere, leading is the most basic of activity because it determines objectives and purposes. "Leadership processes are directed at defining, establishing, identifying, or translating this direction for their followers and facilitating or enabling the organizational processes that should result in the achievement of this purpose" (Zaccaro and Klimoski, 2001, p. 6-7). Effective leadership style is a unique combination of different principles and strategies aimed to motivate and inspire employees, manage and control their works in order to achieve organizational or project objectives and goals. More specifically, the attitudes of public leaders are conceived to be organized within the framework of either continental or segmental orientations (Hoyle and Wilmore 2002). Leadership theories are diverse in their nature explaining and establishing different view points on the problem of leadership skills and effective management. Following Boehnke and Bontis (2001) the transforming leader recognizes an existing need for a potential follower, but then moves forward seeking to arouse and satisfy higher needs (in terms of Maslow's need hierarchy) to engage the full person of the follower. The followers themselves may be converted into leaders. The main disadvantage is that the transforming leader is seen as a benevolent father who remains friendly and treats the employee as a child and a less experienced person(Barker 2001). The leader provides a model of integrity and fairness with people as well as being one who set clear and high standards of performance (Segriovanni & Glickman 2006). Other characteristics less frequently mentioned include: seeking others' highest good, treating others with dignity, showing respect for others and genuine interest in them. A transformational leader can be seen to be firm and to reprimand when necessary, to give autonomy to followers, to encourage self-development of followers, to be participative, to be willing to teach followers, and to mix easily socially with followers (Armandi et al 2003). The advantages of participative (democratic) leadership are that it allows greater independence to employees and values individual culture and uniqueness of everyone. Good administration is the hallmark of good management and the proper and efficient use of resources. Managers become leaders when their personality and character, their knowledge and functional skills of leadership are recognized and accepted by the others involved. The main disadvantage is absence of strong power and influence upon employees. Situational leadership allows organizations to overcome current problems and respond effectively to coming changes. Leadership may be exercised from any direction in the space, or any value location, depending upon the dynamic constellation of the pattern of unification polarization in the group at a particular time, thus, depending upon one's value system, leadership at a given time may be malevolent as well as benevolent. Servant leadership is marked by great responsibility towards society and his follows, the organization and customer. A person may be appointed or elected as leader with the expectation that he or she will lead in a particular direction or directions of behavior and value realization, but may find that to hold leadership under changing conditions of polarization and unification, he or she must deviate from the expected directions, at times even need to controvert them (Hoyle and Wilmore 2002). In contrast to other theories, servant leader does not respond effectively to economic and social changes limited by social responsibility and ethical issues. All the theories mentioned above, transformational and participative (democratic), servant and situational leadership, can be effectively used Tesco and its management. The effective leader for Tesco stores as the kind of person (with leadership qualities) who has the appropriate knowledge and skill to lead a group to achieve its ends willingly. Personality and character cannot be left out of leadership. These leadership functions need to be handled with excellence and this is achieved by performing those functions with increasing skill. Before examining the skills of leadership, it is worth seeing where certain qualities of leadership can be viewed as having functional value (Tesco Home Page 2008). Expertise that effective leadership is based on expertise and excellent communication skills. Leadership fundamentally involves influence. The ability to influence requires power. Influence processes and perceptions of power depend on communication. One important resource of leaders is vision, along with the ability to encourage and integrate individual visions into a compelling shared vision. The visions that leaders fashion and convey consist of symbols, of images, of language, of symbolic action. Visions, quite simply, are made up of communication. Both enrollment and commitment mean that someone "wants" the vision. With enrollment, the person feels a part of the vision, voluntarily. But with commitment, the person additionally feels personally responsible for helping to bring the vision to reality. With compliance, the person just accepts the vision, doing what's expected, sometimes grudgingly, and often no more, without identification with the vision. As before, we'll do better with people at least enrolled in, and better yet committed to, a vision. But remember, enrollment is voluntary. People have the choice (Cole, 2005). Commitment will require more than mere choice. It will require, more often than not, ownership. I suppose that effective leadership can be 'specific to the particular situation' and its 'authority' can derive from: position (as in job title, rank or appointment), personality (as in natural qualities of influence) and knowledge (as in technical professional skills). I believe that effective leadership involves power. This type of power derives from the attribution that someone has superior knowledge or expertise on a particular subject of relevance. As such, "expert power" often can be a source of influence even without any conscious attempt to influence on the part of the "expert." Like the other "personal" sources of power, the real power of expertise lies in the fact that it originates from the attributions and beliefs of the person influenced. Because of this, commitment will be higher. Again like expertise, there may or may not be any conscious attempt to influence, and the power itself originates from my desire to act consistent with my perceptions of our relationship. Unlike the personal forms of power above, this one depends in part on a "position" for its influence. Sometimes called "legitimate power," this type derives from perceptions that someone occupying a particular position -- manager, parent, teacher, government official, and the like -- has a legitimate right to request or expect us to do something (Bolman and Deal 2003). That's why compliance is often a more likely outcome than commitment. Many positions in organizations provide the ability to control certain outcomes which are widely valued -- money, assignments, access to equipment, information, and so on. Like positional authority, just because I do whatever it takes to get certain rewards doesn't mean I am personally committed to what I've done. Foremost is the simple contingency of receiving valued outcomes based on behaving in a certain way (Cole, 2005). Inspiring can be explained as the ability to inspire energy, to enthuse others, that history records so clearly in the lives of great leaders (Charan et al 2001). Getting the best from people, achieving results through individuals and teams, maintaining consistent high performance, inspiring oneself and others into action - all depend on the skills of motivation (Zaccaro and Klimoski 2001). Understanding what moves an individual to action is crucial in a manager being able to engage the will to act. Motives (which operate the will which leads to action) are inner needs or desires and these can be conscious, semi-conscious or unconscious. Motives can be mixed, with several clustered around a primary motive (Zaccaro and Klimoski 2001). This can take the form of reward power, if information is valued and made contingent on certain behavior. But information power doesn't have to be contingent. It can simply be the control of information such that people are either made aware or unaware of certain things. People who occupy "gatekeeper" positions in informational networks are potentially quite powerful, because they can limit what others know and don't know about issues of relevance (Charan et al 2001). Like some forms of informational power, environmental design can be exceedingly subtle yet quite compelling in its effects. The same is true here, applied to features of our work environment. For instance, the physical layout of work areas will affect people's ability to converse during work. The technologies connected with particular jobs require that the jobs be done in certain ways, with little or no tolerance for variation or expressions of individualism (Cole 2005). Taking into account the nature and structure of Tesco business, persuasion will be an effective part of leadership. Persuasion has an undeserved reputation as involving mostly variations on either sneaky verbal trickery or glad-handed hard-sell. Although it can take the form of both, persuasion is essentially just the use of argumentation to alter people's beliefs. So the elements making up persuasive appeals include the use of factual and nonfactual evidence, logic, rational arguments, and appeals to self-interest, among other things. With persuasion, I'm going to try to convince you of something, on the assumption that if you become a "believer," then you will act consistently with those beliefs. And this will serve our mutual interests (Charan et al 2001) The whole mechanism of influence hinges on perception and communication processes. Accordingly, influence, just like communication, can be intentional and generally consistent with one's wishes, or unintentional and not necessarily consistent with one's wishes. Lots of times, what we would call "leaders," in the best sense of the term, take very passive, even unwitting roles. So the notions of "leader as active agent" and "leader as hero," are not just limiting. Often they're downright misleading and overlook real leadership (Bolman and Deal 2003). My experience as a leader helps me to understand the role and importance of positive human relations and interaction between a larder and his followers. In some case, power and influence can involve the threat or actual administering of certain negative outcomes, such as reprimands, suspension, and the like, or the threat or withdrawal of certain positive outcomes, such as pay, choice assignments, and such. Everyone knows the main trade-off with coercion: you make many more enemies than friends with it. At best, any compliance will usually be only grudging. And at worst, the resistance will be much more creative, explicit, and costly. Influence tactics appealing to legiti Macy trade on implicit or explicit references to external sources for their "oomph" -- for example, to the fact that I'm your boss, to "the rules," or to "company policy," or to "the law." If the target of influence buys the legitimacy of the request in a given context or role arrangement, then compliance is quite likely. And depending on the nature of the request, maybe even commitment will be likely. But if the request is seen as exceeding the legitimacy of the context, then a backlash effect may be likely. Then not only will compliance suffer, but genuine resistance and even hostility can arise (Bolman and Deal 2003). To an effective leader, a person should understand close relations between promises and pressure. Promises and pressure each take the form of an exchange: the promise of rewards in exchange for compliance with a request, or the pressure of punishment in exchange for noncompliance with a request. They mainly involve clarifying the particular contingencies for which someone will receive either valued rewards or important punishments and following through on the claim. Unlike both persuasion and reciprocity, which operate more or less on "internal controls" of those who are influenced, promises and pressure each require that people be watched, so as to administer the carrot or the stick. The dependencies and sentiments this arrangement creates can consume lots of energy and time. . All of these are variations of "straight talking" applied to everyone. In many cases, words and a personal example are crucial for employees and the organization in general. Where there is low morale, people are 'switched off' in terms of the energy devoted towards the task that has to be done. Their attitude is one of indifference or defeatism (Zaccaro and Klimoski 2001). In sum, the map of effective leadership for Tesco is based on four leadership theories: transformational and participative (democratic), servant and situational leadership. Depending on the circumstances, and especially upon the degree of crisis, a leader needs to know when to cut off the debate and to initiate the action phase. Intuition is sensing situations as they really are when the evidence is incomplete. It can be distorted by anxiety or fear, and it should always be tested by reason or experiment before being accepted. Theories of leadership and my personal experience as leader show that effective leaders should; adopt different techniques and methods of leadership, depending upon their personalities, their peoples and their times thus they use similar techniques and skills which help them to achieve personal success and inspire their followers. The higher value placed upon the individual has led to much more emphasis on education and training, motivation and personal development. Leadership is probably more caught than taught. Three main characteristics show that motivation and development of employees are at the heart of effective leadership. A good leader provides the right climate and the opportunities for these needs to be met on an individual basis and this is perhaps the most difficult of a leader's challenges. Bibliography Armandi, B., Oppedisano, J., Sherman, H. 2003, Leadership theory and practice: a "case in point. Management Decision. 41 (10): 1076 - 1088. Bolman, L., Deal, T. 2003, Reframing Organizations- Artistry, Choice and Leadership, Jossey Bass: San Francisco. Charan, R., Drotter, S., Noel, J., 2001, The Leadership Pipeline How to Build The Leadership-Powered Company, Jossey Bass: San Francisco. Cole, K., 2005, Management -Theory and Practice, Pearson: Australia. Hoyle, J.R., Wilmore, E.L. 2002, Principal Leadership: Applying the New Educational Leadership Constituent Council (Elcc) Standards. Corwin Press. Segriovanni, Th., Glickman, K. 2006, Rethinking Leadership: A Collection of Articles. Corwin Press; 2nd edition. Tesco Home Page. 2008. Retrieved 12 October from www.tesco.com Topping, P., 2002, Managerial Leadership, McGraw-Hill: New York. Zaccaro, S. J., Klimoski, R. J. 2001, The Nature of Organizational Leadership: Understanding the Performance Imperatives Confronting Today's Leaders. Jossey-Bass. Read More