Leadership: A Model of the Effective Leader - Essay Example

Leadership Tomorrow’s leaders require unique skills and knowledge to meet increased competition and complexity of future organizations. As an employee of the tax and management consulting company, I feel that future leaders need a strong sense of responsibilities and unique vision of growth opportunities and possible threats. Leaders need to reinvent themselves and develop new, more effective approaches to organizing, and quite another to accomplish it. Large-scale organizational transformation is a developing art that has yet to produce any clear formulas for success, but more and more attention is being turned to executives as the principle agents of change and adaptation. It is increasingly common to assume that leadership plays the crucial role in an organizations successful adaptation to a changing world. Power and politics are a part of organization life in my organization. It is possible to determine thee types of power: expert, referral and coercive power. The most important factor of success is that the leader uses consultants and professionals as guides and teachers. With fewer vested interests and less baggage, they are also in a good position to help managers challenge their own worldviews and routines. Yet the use of consultants must be approached with caution. Often they have only a superficial understanding of the situation at hand, not being a long-term member of the organization. Because they frequently move on to new opportunities before the change is completely implemented, they may assume more of a short-term perspective than executives and managers do (Charan et al 2001). In order to balance the increasing demands placed on an individual, the leader introduces new ways of work and tries to establish informal communication between employees. The field has developed a number of change technologies designed to help organizations move toward new ways of operating. In many respects, these are difficult to separate from the role of leadership in the change process because they either explicitly or implicitly make key assumptions about the leadership style of the organization. For example, large-scale community meetings aimed at producing change seem to assume that leaders want the involvement of people in the organization, and that the leaders role, to a substantial degree, is to lead the community toward a consensus about what the change should be (Cole, 2005). A model of the effective leader: one larger-than-life person comes into the organization and saves the day—he (in these studies they are predominantly male) is the knight in shining armor. But in reality the leaders success may depend on many others, including members of the top management team; the inherent complexity of large organizations usually requires the knowledge, skills, and abilities of more than one person. Even the best vision in the world will not make a difference unless the leader can achieve the buy-in and motivation of the rest of the organization to implement it. As the business world becomes more complex, the efforts of a single leader are likely to be less important then the coordinated efforts of a leadership team in conjunction with a motivated employee base. The leader then needs to create an organization structure that will support the new vision. The leader must select and hire top-notch people who have the skills necessary to bring the new vision to reality. If the vision involves globalization, for example, this might involve hiring or promoting people who have international experience (Hoyle and Wilmore 2002). The leader must also create a reward system that encourages behaviors appropriate for the new vision. For example, if the vision requires more focus on the customer, then employees must be rewarded for actions that improve customer satisfaction. In other words, the leaders most important role may be to design an organization that supports the vision (Charan et al 2001). Uniqueness of a tax and management consulting company is that it follows ethical and moral principles based on accounting codes of practice and internal industry rules. The role of the leader is to introduce these principles into practice. Given these concerns, more attention in recent years has been directed toward understanding the fundamentals of effective leadership. But in difficult times, as the tide recedes, such a companys efficient managerial character would fail to compensate for its lack of foresight and vision (Hoyle and Wilmore 2002). In these cases, management is not enough—these companies require effective leadership. Management gains commitment to performance through contractual arrangements, leadership through empowerment. As the corporate world has become better aware of these essential distinctions, more and more resources have gone into training and educating about leadership competencies (Cole, 2005). The many issues related to future leadership can be structured around multiple themes. They include leader behaviors for effective change, sources of change, different change strategies, whether leadership really matters, and the development of change leaders. Most leadership scholars emphasize the importance of developing a vision or direction as the first step in leading change (Hoyle and Wilmore 2002). Politics of the organization is critical in making sure that everyone is moving in the same direction. It is, however, an open question whether a vision is really necessary for leading change. n some organizations this is a top-down process announced by the leader; in others it involves lower-level employees. Nor is it very realistic to think of vision as something relatively set or static; it may make more sense to think of a vision as something dynamic that evolves and develops over time (Cole, 2005). Decision-making is one of the most difficult and complicated processes as it involves environmental uncertainty and objective assessment of reality. Leader in my organization prefers to use “win-win” approach which helps to find the best solutions and preserve interests of all parties. Which alignment strategies build buy-in versus passive acceptance of a vision? Does real buy-in require the involvement of employees in the development of the vision itself? It is quite conceivable that change is not a sequence that starts with a vision and proceeds in a series of linear steps (Hoyle and Wilmore 2002). Instead it may best be thought of as a dynamic, evolving process. However, we also know that in order for such autonomy to work employees must have access to the resources necessary for implementation and to information about the competition and the financial situation of their organization; without these they are likely to feel helpless in bringing about change. Also, rewards may be particularly helpful in building a sense of ownership (Cole, 2005). The leader of my organization is engaged in actions or behaviors that symbolize the commitment and energy the leader has toward change. These may speak strongly and take on almost legendary status (Charan et al 2001). As organizations and the business environment become increasingly complex, it becomes more difficult for any single executive to lead. Today, as a result, more emphasis is being placed on the top management team—a group of senior executives who work together to lead the company. Often it includes the top executives from finance, marketing, operations, and human resource. Such a team brings a great range of skills to the leadership challenge, and this diversity often provides unique insights not available to any one executive (Hoyle and Wilmore 2002). In general, leadership does not prevent or necessarily argue against the importance of others in an organization stepping forward and providing leadership supportive of CEO-led change. Several authors argue that change needs to be led by individuals throughout the organization. In essence, they argue for shared leadership and a bottom-up orientation to change. Although this does not totally conflict with leader-led change, it certainly puts it in a different context. In essence, it argues that leaders need to enroll others in the change process and that an organization without emerging leaders is likely to be poor at the initial change process. Further, they are particularly unlikely to demonstrate sustained organizational effectiveness (Hoyle and Wilmore 2002). In many respects this makes sense, because most leaders dont have much experience leading large-scale change efforts. A few move from company to company doing their thing at each, but most grow up in a single organization and get only one shot at leading a major change effort. Unless they sit on the board of another major corporation that underwent change, they are unlikely to have even seen a large-scale change effort unfold. Most companies do not have a staff support group capable of helping a leader manage the change process. At best, an internal organization development group may exist that is capable of managing small-scale changes in different parts of the organization, but typically it too has no experience with large-scale change. Thus it is not surprising that, increasingly, change-consulting firms offer to assist leaders with large-scale change (Hoyle and Wilmore 2002). In sum, the ability to balance the increasing demands placed on the leader is achieved by professional skills and knowledge of the leader, his expert power and unique approach to decision-making. With the realization that organizations once considered paragons of management effectiveness are faltering in the face of dramatic competitive challenges, many begin to suspect that the roles involved different skill sets. Nevertheless, and despite the claims of many firms and consultants, it remains open what the best role is for them in supporting organizational change—and, indeed, how much value they add to large-scale change efforts. Increased global competition, rapid technological change, and international capital markets are creating demand for change leadership. These forces, combined with the complexity of new and more global organizational forms that unite organizations through alliances, joint ventures, and mergers and acquisitions, make the job of leadership increasingly difficult. Bibliography 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. Read More