How Does Organisational Structure Affect Leadership Skills - Essay Example

A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF CONTEMPORARY LEADERSHIP SKILLS REQUIRED FOR A LARGE MULTI-DEPARTMENT ORGANISATION Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction challenging 3 Factors modern leaders are considering 3 Organisational structure affects leadership skills 8 Modern trends of leadership skills 10 Theories of leadership 11 Outcome of insufficient leadership skills 12 Conclusion 13 Reference 14 Introduction challenging Leadership skills can be defined as the trait of an individual to make reasonable decisions and motivate others (Adair, 2010). Leaders develop realistic goals and guide their followers in terms of achieving those. Difficult situations faced by the teams can be solved with the help of effective solutions or strategies. Such strategies are increasing the compatibility among the teams and multidepartment organisation. Leadership skills are helping team leaders in evaluating, and developing the performance of employees. Leaders are able to deal with the different challenging situations faced during the operational process1. Making decisions and implementing those in organisations is the responsibility of the managers and leaders. Organisations are facing intense challenge in the global market and they are supposed to create more strategies to increase compatibility. In the current study, contemporary leadership skills are critically evaluated on the basis of the multidepartment organisation. Factors modern leaders are considering Globalised business activities are increasing competition among different firms. Multidepartment firms consist of employees from different backgrounds, so managers face various complexities in order to implement strategies among the team members. Therefore, leaders must implement cross cultural development strategies and increase interaction among the employees. According to Pinnington (2011), trustworthiness is one of the important factors of developing leaders. Some leaders think that trust among the employees will help in merging decisions and strategies for operations of employees. Leaders must treat the employees equally. Such trait of the leaders will remove workplace fatigue among the employees and they will feel more valued2. Dennis (2014) stated that humble behaviour is expected from the leaders so that they can guide employees and discuss strategic goals. However, ego and arrogance of leaders or managers will create complicacy in leading their peoples in multiple departments of the organisation. Dion (2012) has argued that leaders must communicate with the employees and team members to identify problems and develop solutions. Fluent communication will help leaders to reduce the gap between employees and management. Leaders must be activist in nature so that they can present a feasible solution to any problem faced by the organisations3. Allio (2012) stated that analytical skills are required to manage people or team members and different circumstances faced by a multi department firms4. Leaders are taking initiative for meeting any type of challenges faced by the organisations, by judging the conditions. According to Adair (2010), there are certain differences between the leadership and management skills. In the multidepartment organisations, leaders are using more of their leadership skills than managerial skills. Leadership and management skills are contrasted to show the relevance of usage of both in the multi department organisations. Area of difference Leadership skills Managerial skills Core ambition Changing the operational process Keeping constancy in the operational process Aim Leading employees to achieve objectives Administrating employees operational works Core peoples Leaders are group oriented Managers are subordinate employee oriented Goal seek Leaders are having long-term goals Managers are imposing short-term goals Orientation Organizational vision oriented activity Objectives oriented guidance Approach Leaders sets route for the followers Managers set strategic plans with features of achieving5 According to Bell (2014), modern leaders have both leadership and managerial skills. Multi department organisations like Tesco, ASDA, Ford, and Nike are promoting leaders with both managerial and leadership skills6. Leaders of those organisations are controlling the employee performance according to the organisational goals and objectives with an effective interaction. Employee management process includes guidance, communicating and dissemination of knowledge, which will increase skills and performance of the employees in the multi-department organisation. Hersey and Blanchards model states that leadership skills are natural trait of the human being. In the multi-department organisation, team members are crucial for the operational performance7. Individual employees can guide or influence others with their performance, ideas and role playing. Leaders will distribute strategies among the employees in three phases such that managers and employees can be involved in the leadership structure by taking roles. Secondly they are required to distribute roles and finally, leaders must set time schedules and synchronise stages. According to Dennis (2014), employees can develop their leadership skills in terms of developing role dissemination. In multi-department organisation, employees can be segmented into internal and external groups. Internal group members are those who are involved in the direct operational process, whereas, External group members are mainly those employees who are not related to the operations directly. For example, sales representative or local sales persons are the external employees of any organisation. Efficient leaders pay more attention and provide support to the internal group members. Leaders are communicating and guiding their followers or employees to achieve organisational goals and objectives Pinnington (2011) explained that multidepartment organisation’s managers are imposing “Leader-Member Exchange Theory” so that they are able to achieve operational success8. In this type of leadership theory, team members are employing trustworthiness uniformly among each other. Leaders must be able to control and monitor the activities and performance of employees. Leaders are guiding employees with the real life instances9. Communication skills are one of the most important factors of leadership in large multi-department organisations. According to Bell (2014), communication is essential for disseminating goals, objectives and guidelines for the followers. There are different types of communication that are adopted by leaders in order to exchange views and beliefs within the employees. Vertical Communication: Vertical communication technique is used by the managers of multi-department organisation, so that they can communicate objectives and roles of employees. Leaders are adopting both downward and upward message to communicate with employees. They will be evaluating employee’s performance in order to implement performance appraisal techniques. Downward Communication: Leaders are required to communicate information to their followers. Multi-department organisation is responsible for disseminating operational strategies and direction among the employees. Organisational goals and objectives are disseminated among the employees in downward hierarchy manner. Leaders must communicate the requirement and objectives to their direct followers. This policy will increase the flow of the order transmission in the large multidepartment organisations10. Lateral Communication: Lateral communication is the most effective communication option for the large multidepartment organisations. This type of communication increases the rate of interaction among the employees of different departments. Employees are able to exchange views with their colleagues on the barriers they have faced during the operations. In addition, employees are able to manage different obstacles and barriers. Experienced employees can share their opinion and knowledge among the new recruits11. Multidepartment organisations are using the vertical and lateral communication technique to maintain proper flow of information. On the contrary, absence of sound communication policy will reduce the scope of getting success in the competitive markets. Organisational structure affects leadership skills Leadership styles are contradictory in nature due to the organisational structure of the different type of the organisations. According to Pinnington (2011), there are four types of leadership styles that are adopted by different organisations as per their structure: Directive, Supportive, Participatory and Goal oriented leadership styles, are popular among different industries and organisations. Directive: This type of leadership delegates the managers with the highest authority in meeting organisational key themes and objectives. Leaders must have the power to control the external threat faced by a business. They are also responsible for developing the skills of the employees or team members. However, in the global multi-department organisation, such leadership is quite complex. Managers or leaders are imposing formal authority among the employees or the team members to obtain best teamwork. Supportive: This type of leadership skills will not lead the employees with authority. Leaders will control the internal environment with the help of guidance and skill development. On the contrary, such leadership have certain limitations, like it is irrelevant for the multidepartment global firms where employees are selected from various backgrounds. These leaders are having feeble formal power to control the employees. Such leadership style is imposed on the organisations which have lower efficient teams12. Participatory: Leaders are involved in the strategic decision making or operational activity. This type of leadership is adopted in the retail firms to ensure most internal control on the operational activity of the employees. However, such leadership will be developing complexity in the organisational structure. Leaders are having moderate formal authority on the employees or the subordinates. This type of leadership is inappropriate for the manufacturing firms. Goal oriented: Such leaders are implementing managerial authority on the employees. Goal oriented leaders are concentrating on controlling the external conditions. Leaders are looking for high skilled employees. However, Lawson (2006) argued that such leadership style is relevant for the structured organisations like the Tesco, Nike and Harley Davison. Leaders impose strong formal influence on the employees. Modern trends of leadership skills Empowerment: Leaders must be developing certain strategies to empower the employees. Employing equalitarian approach, value addition in employment, active participation of employees will motivate them. Thus, performance of the employees will gradually increase13. Coaching: Leaders are giving instruction to the followers to maintain a proper operational flow. They are also disseminating knowledge among the employees along with guiding them to achieve organisational goals and objectives. In addition, this leadership skill will ensure proper efficiency among employees of large multidepartment organisations. Monitoring: Monitoring is a part of performance evaluation of the followers or team members. This process will identify the gaps and difference between the goals and objectives of the organisations. This process will ensure more efficiency among the group of employees. Listening to followers: Leaders are communicating with employees or followers to go through their expectation, perceptions and needs. This policy will help leaders and managers to increase the ability of employees and develop more compatibility in the operational forces. Employees will feel more valued if the leaders are paying attention to their needs14. Two-way feedback: Leaders are imposing orders, guidance and requirement among the employees and collecting feedbacks from them. Thus, leaders will be able to employ more efficiency among the groups and teams. Workplace will become friendlier with the help of such communication technique. Theories of leadership Modern leaders are adopting different type of theories to lead their followers. Leaders are rapidly using the trait theory in terms of controlling the traits of followers. This policy increases the performance capacity of employees. According to Dion (2012), Behavioural theories are adopted by the leaders to control activity of followers. Mainly, leaders are using two types of leadership theories like the Role Theory and Managerial Grid model. Dion (2012) stated that some leaders are using participative leadership theory for controlling and leading people. Leaders can use either Lewins or Likerts leadership styles for imposing participating leadership. On the contrary, leaders can also use situational leadership theories to control the employee leadership. The major situational leadership theory or model adopted by the leaders are Hersey and Blanchards model, Normative Model of Vroom and Yetton and Path-Goal model15. According to Allio (2012), multi-department leaders are using contingency theories to lead and control employees. However, major multi-department organisations are using Transactional Leadership theory. Leaders are using Leader-Member Exchange model to enhance performance. Outcome of insufficient leadership skills Leadership skills must be developed according to the organisational and market requirements. In absence of effective leadership skills, organisations will be facing certain issues or problems for inadequate control over the employees. Achievement of organisational goals and objectives are quite tough in absence of a leader. Followers must be empowered, inefficient leaders will make the employees feel insignificant and undervalued. Thus, motivation of employees will be low to provide higher efficient operational work. Restriction of developing efficient leadership skills Modern multidepartment organisations are increasing the goal seek traits among the leaders. Such traits require the analytical skills, evaluation skills and decision making skills. Organisational goals are getting more complex in the multi-department organisation. Delegation of tasks is crucial for the leaders, but they can face the limitation of the lower employee skills and efficiency. Leaders are required to set more effective goals and role delegation as per employee efficiency. Thus, employees will be feeling more valued and motivated16. Conclusion The current study provided a detailed idea on the contemporary leadership skills in the multidepartment organisations. It is observed that leaders in the global firms are guiding the employees as per organisational objectives in terms of increasing their skills for developing quality of products and service. It is observed that leaders of multidepartment organisations are adopting transformational leadership style in terms of guiding employees more effectively. Such leadership style will increase communication ability of organisational leaders. Thus, they are able to interact with followers and assess their performance very well. Reference Adair, J, Develop your leadership skills. in , Philadelphia, Kogan Page, 2010. Allio, R, Leaders and leadership – many theories, but what advice is reliable?. in Strategy & Leadership, 41, 2012, 4-14. Bell, C, The Impact of Participative and Directive Leadership on Organisational Culture: An Organisational Development Perspective. in Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, , 2014. 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