Leadership Process and Organisations - Essay Example

Leadership Process and Organisations Introduction The leadership role in most cases changes significantly in high performance organisations. I believe that the change in leadership roles is true for supervisors and executives. Often, leaders consider changes to the high performance as a program or technique which others need to implement. However, they fail to realise the extent to which they must be involved and make change themselves. In organisations, high performance is way of thinking of how to manage the business. Therefore, the transformational process is started through defining how the management needs to carry out some aspects in the organization. Patience in leadership The current business environment is more complicated and fueled by many things that are yet to be known. Every leader feels some pressure when it comes to generating results, building effective teams and creating a high performance environment. At the same time, most employees get tired of uncertainty and the necessity to perform better with less. It therefore causes workplace dissatisfaction. The added pressure on employees to deliver without knowing their eminent future not only tests their patience, but also that of the leaders (Bass, 2009). Patience is always a virtue and good leaders need to practice it. More so today, where everybody is getting more and more frustrated, either at work or with societal issues. Efforts to practice patience are being tested than ever before. Therefore, leaders need to do more in order to make up for followers that lost their patience along the way. Leaders need patience since they deal with people and not machines. In contrast with machines, people have so many quirks. Mostly people are reluctant when it comes to change. People will develop political affinities and alliances. People have their preferred ways of doing things, pet projects and favourite friends. It therefore takes patience to work with people effectively and accomplish the set objectives and goals. Even though some times there is a need to be impatient in order to push an agenda, a good leader needs to understand that patience is the secrete weapon behind getting things done (Hughes, 2012). The leadership process The third step of leadership process is development of strategy and vision. In this step, key leaders will develop and adjust the business strategy as well as the direction the organization is taking. During this process, the vision and strategy of the organization is reviewed depending on the business realities, redefining and refocusing the strategy so that it fits competitive and marketplace demands (Boonstra, 2012). During this process, the following accomplished: Understanding the demands of the business environment that exists currents Forecasting the future business situation Defining the organisation’s future market and how the organization will be valuable to its customers Clarifying a mission that is motivational and inspirational Defining principles by which people will have to conduct themselves Setting short-term performance goals Identifying the main competencies that help the organization succeed in the long-run Creating a long-term business focus and identifying the anchors that differentiate them from the competitors Setting short-term performance goals Identifying performance initiatives and coming up with a master plan that can implement the strategy (Dansereau & Yammarino, 2009). The process of developing a strategy for the organization mostly needs a series of in-depth explorations and discussion sessions. The process needs a period of weeks or months to be accomplished. The accomplishment of this process depends on motivation, size and the complexity of the organization. Precisely, this process needs to be tailored towards the needs of individual organization. In most cases, senior management of the organization will get out of this process being very clear with the strategy of the organization (Bryman, 2013). During the assessment, the organization identifies the main result areas and the current performance in the identified areas. In strategy development, the management will identify the key results areas, what their goals are and how they can measure them. With this data, the management outlines the process of monitoring, tracking and integrating performance in the organization depending on the current issues. The issues include clear expectations, common initiatives, and the constant performance metrics. With this, there can be change in recognition, performance management systems and reward (Ortigoza, 2011). Leadership Process Model Basically, leadership is all about setting the direction and assisting other people to do the right thing. Particularly, leadership tends to be a long term process where in real and practical situations, the actions involved have consequences (Boonstra, 2012). The leadership process was developed by Jon Pierce and Randall Dunham. The interpretation of this model is illustrated below. Figure 1: The Leadership Process The model illustrates how a leader, followers and the context can effectively combine to change the outcomes. Also, it shows how the outcomes can feed back and affect the followers, leaders and the context (Mendenhall & Stahl, 2001). Transformational leadership Transformational leadership is a leadership style that inspires positive changes in followers. Transformational leaders are enthusiastic, passionate and energetic. Not only are they involved and concerned with the process, but they also focus on helping group members to succeed (Bass, 2009). Benefits of transformational leadership The transformational style of leadship draws on assorted apporoaches and capabililities to leadership. In so doing, it creates various advantages for the organisation where it is applied. A leader who uses this approach will tends to possess integrity, clearly communicates his objectives and goals to the followers and generally sets a good example. The leader always expects the best from the followers. In addition, the leader inspires his or her followers to look to look beyond their their personal interests and focus mainly on the needs and interests of the team. The leader also provides work that is a bit stimulating and takes time to takes time to recognise work that is properly done and good people (Ortigoza, 2011). Transformational leadership greatly lowers customer and employee turnover costs. To the organisation, this form of leadership provides the leaders with the ability to retain customers and employess. A transformational leader will always with his or her people fully and tries to satisfy their needs alongside the organisation’s needs. The followers mostly feel like they are a corporate fit and they stay with the organisation when they report to a transformational leader. Less turnover is an implication of less hiring and training, which is a big saving for the organisation. When a transformational leader interacts with the customers in a similar effective manner, the customers will remain attracted to the organisation. In so doing, the cost of looking for new markets in minimised since the organisation does not need to look for new customers. The other benefit of this form of leadership are the new initiatives attached to it. Using managers who have skills in transformational leadership to manage roles aimed at bringing change will yield good results. As the leader responds to both the dynamic changes in the organisation and the team, he or she empowers the followers to make changes in themselves and to equally realise their full potential. Doing so will obviously provide the organisation the advantage of better employee performance (Day, 2014). Generally, every organisation needs to train its employees in case it wants good results. Putting transformational leaders in charge corporate training will improve the outcome of the existing team. It further equips new members for better work. A transformational leader will better the effectiveness of the team when he or she engages in corporate learning, which is an obvious advantage to the organisation. According to Boonstra (2012), transformational leaders are always good when it comes to providing intellectual stimulation, culture building and individual support. They are also good at vision-building, modelling positive behaviour and holding high performance expectations for the team. 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