The Vost Inspirational leader in the Coca-Cola Company - Assignment Example

Working in the Coca-Cola Company Inspirational leadership is not the same with monetary charisma. “Inspiring is more of a process than an event. It is cultivating habits of brilliance that manifest themselves daily through modeling the five attributes of an inspiring leader i.e. attitude of service, affirmation, attentiveness, availability and authenticity”, (Bass, B.M. & Avolio, B.J.. 1994). I trust that my judgment on my human resource manager is right. I base my judgment on the fact that an inspirational leader encourages his/her followers, and also believe in their potential, where the leader helps them to grow. The most inspirational leader in my Company, Coca-cola, is the human resources manager. The most important inspirational characteristics of a leader that he demonstrates are several, many of which are based on ethics. He demonstrates responsibility in making sure that moral standards and ethical conducts of the company are adhered to. His leadership becomes more inspirational because he strives for competence in following the company’s rules as well as striving at positively transforming people as well. He is honest and transparent in all his dealings and also seeks to correct those who are under his leadership whenever they seem to be moving away from the desired goals. This makes most of his team members, from all the other company branches to consult with him before taking any major decisions. His honesty in all his undertakings makes us all feel inspired to act like him. In as much as he is goal-oriented, he is people-oriented as well. He also never uses his power as a human resource manager to serve his own interests, but for the good of others and the company at large. Authenticity is an attribute that the Human resources Manager in my place of work that he demonstrates without compromise. He is genuine, which makes the employees want to believe and trust in him. According to different answers from “the development of a new transformational leadership questionnaire’’ (Alimo & Alban, 2001), when leaders break promises or fail to honor commitments, they reveal themselves as being inauthentic thereby loosing credibility. The Human Resources Manager has won my trust as an inspirational leader because he undoubtedly understands that trust rests upon a foundation of authenticity, whereby to gain trust he must consistently align words and deeds, while showing a degree of transparency. (Alimo & Alban, 2001) The other leaders (in particular sales and marketing manager and finance manager) are trusted as well. This trust has been developed over time. They seem to be sensitive of their decisions and considerate of their decisions’ impacts on others. They generally motivate us to place the company interests and needs ahead of our own. They engage the company employees in intellectual and emotional commitment between the employees and themselves thus making both parties are equally responsible in the pursuit of the company’s goal. Leading teams, mentoring, self-leadership, and online leadership are some roles of a contemporary leader. In the company, self leadership is more commonly used where these leaders striving at inspiring others to work towards the leaders vision for the company. Their transformational leadership qualities stimulate the other company members towards gaining a sense of personal competence that allows them to be self sufficient in their duties by empowering and encouraging them. However, these leaders need to improve in organizational communication. Better communication will be necessary in making known their values and ethics and thus make it easy for them to be effective in effecting the desired outcomes. At times, the leaders in the Coca-Cola Company are faced with the challenges of having some team members who fail to believe in them. This leaves them feeling disrespected. In this regard, they need to practice their influence power on the other employees who will consequently infiltrate the desired changes on the defecting employees. If that fails, they should sack them. This will seem ethical on the other employees, and therefore gain the respect and admiration of employees with the satisfaction of knowing that they did the right thing. That goes back to the question of effective communication, where they will have made it clear of what they want and expect from the employees to avoid causing mistrust which might jeopardize teamwork, honesty, ambition, quality, efficiency, dedication and accomplishment that the leaders would have worked so hard to attain. There are instances that power is used to influence outcomes within the company. As power is described as the measure of an entity’s ability to control the environment around itself, including the behavior of other entities (Thomas, K. & Velthouse, 1990), it becomes evident that a leader in a particular setting can manipulate the results he/she desires. In my company, I have seen the General Manager coercing the junior managers in different meetings. The most common example is the statement he always makes, “kindly remember that this company belongs to all of us, therefore make sure you dance along with the rest, lest you find yourself dancing alone”. I believe the word “dancing alone” is often used to threaten the junior Managers that they could loose their jobs if they fail to do what the General Manager wants done. This misuse of power constraints the junior managers to take relevant actions that would otherwise result into great benefits for the company, thereby limiting the scope of attainment of the desired results for the company. There are also instances when the junior managers have used their different types of powers to influence outcomes, sometimes for the good of the company, as well as for their own benefits. For instance, the head of finance has at several occasions used his positional power to limit use of company funds for unnecessary meetings that would have cost the company in hotel bills, instead of being held in the company’s meeting hall. The human resources Manager also use his referent power to attract others in building loyalty to the Company. This is usually as a result of his charisma and interpersonal skills that make him to be admired because of the traits that creates an opportunity for interpersonal influence. The Human Resource Manager desires to have the other employees identify with his personal qualities where they gain satisfaction from being accepted followers of their leader. The person in charge of the beverage production, who also heads product research, has at many occasions found to abuse his expert and information power in having the Finance manager disburse funds aimed at research. The Finance Manager must oblige because the expert power held by the Beverage production Manager is usually highly specific and limited to the particular area in which the Beverage Production Manager is trained and qualified. Sometimes, this use of powers by the Company leaders brings confusion to the company. I would recommend that several consultative meetings be held for the leaders of different departments where they are sensitized at the benefits of putting their different forms of powers into beneficial uses to bring about good to all the employees as well as the Company at large, instead of being self centered. Strong political skills can assist people to use their power effectively (McQueen, E.2006). These organizational politics are used in Coca-Cola Company in different ways in pursuit of individual agendas and selfish interests disregarding their effects on the company efforts to achieve its goals. For instance; the production development department agreeing to speed up production of a beverage prototype because the marketing department has learnt that a competitor is ahead in its activities of product development. A manager can also get into the habit of whistle-blowing taking the form of going to high authority bypassing the organizational hierarchy of company authority. The junior staff also plays politics where they withhold information in order to gain access to executives so that they can build better images and increase centrality. The major factors that contribute to that kind of political behavior is selfishness and disrespect to the authority. Unprofessionalism is also a factor since the senior managers seem to encourage that behavior whenever they receive information from juniors who have bypassed the relevant hierarchy of company authority. This is also an ethical degradation on the part of the Management team. There exist conflicts in the methods used for different operations. There is usually a conflict whereby unapproved methods are used to bring about the approved outcomes on simple situations e.g. There have been used some questionable methods in the pursuit of the valued outcomes in the production unit, where suppliers are hoarded or order excessive amounts of raw materials to ensure steady production operations. Based on that, I would recommend that the management get into the practice of encouraging free communication with the junior managers in order that the reasons that make those conflicts possible can be straightened without pointing a finger at any one, but rather work as team. References McQueen, E. (2006). Making Political Ethics Come Alive. Business Communication Quarterly, 69(2), 158-170 Thomas, K. W. and Velthouse, B. A. (1990) Cognitive Elements of Empowerment: An 'Interpretive' Model of Intrinsic Task Motivation. Academy of Management Review, Vol 15, No. 4, 666-681. Bass, B.M. & Avolio, B.J. (Eds.). (1994). Improving organizational effectiveness through transformational leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Alimo-Metcalfe, B. & Alban-Metcalfe, J. (2001). ‘The development of a new Transformational Leadership Questionnaire’. The Journal of Occupational & Organizational Psychology, 74, 1-27 Read More