MGT Leadership and Ethics Unit 3 DB SA Second Week - Essay Example

Leadership and Ethics Number Part Describing the Two Leaders in Term of LPC and Situational Control Mary Kay can rightly be judged as a high LPC individual because she works by being closer to people and mentoring them and nurturing their talents and skills through equally nurtured interpersonal relationships. Bill Gates on the contrary may be passed on as a low LPC because he ascribes worth to social and economic values to performance. As touching situational control, Bill Gates is more concerned about making profit, achieving organisational goals and staving off competition than Mary Kay who also wants to nurture closely-knit intra-organisational relations, alongside Bill Gates’ goals (Nahavandi, 2006).
How the Two Leaders Are Similar
Just as Nahavandi (2006) points out, the two leaders are similar, in that they are very passionate about achieving organisational goals. Mary Kay is passionate to the point of nurturing intra-organisational relations to achieve it, while Gates is passionate about having employees being results-oriented.
How the Two Leaders Differ
The leaders differ in that Gates is a low LPC, unlike Mary Kay. The latter believes that nurturing intra-organisational relations with and among employees is key to achieving performance target, unlike Gates who sees personal touch among/with employees as peripheral to the achievement of actual organisational goals.
Factors That Make Each of the Leaders Effective
Both leaders are effective because they are passionate about the need to achieve performance target. Both are only pursuing these goals differently.
The Preferred Leader to Work With
From a personal standpoint, I prefer working with Mary Kay because closer intra-organisational relations are sacrosanct in the quest to horn talents and skills [this in itself wards off high turnover], build team spirit, strengthen organisational loyalty and nurture commitment to organisational goals and vision. All these are valuable factors to organisational stability, growth and success. Bill Gates’ great emphasis on brilliance is not all-embracing and his penchant for being rude at times may mean that he is totally not in control of his firm: desired talents may walk out on him eventually.
Part II: Reflection
From the foregoing, it is clear that Gates is a low LPC, as opposed to Mary who is a high LPC. Like Gates, low LPC may so much care about performance more than forging work-related relations. Although this may be meaningful in the attainment of organizational goals at face value, yet it is the most unfavorable approach to pursue. This is because, organizational success is a culmination of factors such as: teamwork [and teamwork in turn draws hugely from close-knight relations], effective talent management [which entails the democratization of the workplace, the enhancement of employees’ welfare and injective competitiveness in work performance at departmental and intra-personal level] and having a developed or distinct organisational culture. Gates’ exceeding emphasis on brilliance may be his Achilles’ heel: an organization cannot really be an assemblage of brilliance; and innovativeness also comes with mistakes, as is exemplified by the maker of a light bulb.
References
Nahavandi, A. (2006). The Art of Science of Leadership. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Read More