Collaborative Leadership - Coursework Example

August 2006 COLLOBORATIVE LEADERSHIP Introduction          Organizational settings have always required critical managerial inputs. Since most organizational tasks, processes and their sequences of steps are growing complex with heightened budgets and global dimensions there has been a felt need to review an important input, in addition to usual management task, for ensuring any organizations success viz. that of leadership. While a view holds that top management should assume and nurture leadership roles; it is the view here that management and leadership are two distinct functions and should be developed and treated as such. This paper looks at definition of leadership function in a typical commercial organizations milieu, distinguishes it from the management function ,summarizes qualities required of a good collaborative leader, explores the other theoretical constructs of leaderships, maintains specific view of preferred type of leadership and checks for the type of leadership needed for organizational success. Leadership versus Management     One view maintains that leaders are people oriented and their main task is to inspire people. Their chief functional output is a change and their capabilities are assessed in terms of controlling the process of this change. That is to mould and control change to suit organizations objectives. On the other hand, managers are task and process oriented and their main task is to organize such tasks and processes. Managements main output is work done in allotted time and costs. In plain speak management is assigned the task of producing and maintaining a degree of predictability & order; while leadership assumes the function of producing change under a constantly revised schemata of direction and vision. Leadership is the process of motivating others to work to meet specific goals and objectives. Leadership deliberately causes people-driven actions in a planned fashion for the purpose of accomplishing the leaders agenda, which in constructive scenarios match organizational agenda. Qualities of a Good Collaborative Leader Leadership physically comprises of an individual or set of individuals acting in common concert and sharing a vision. A set of qualities are generally stated in respect of good leadership. Such qualities hasten and fasten agenda achievement by leadership. Some of these qualities are stated below corresponding to their importance in an organizational setting: (a) A collaborative leader must have the capability to initiate, nurture and develop a vision and a concrete sense of direction in which to lead the organization. Leader must convince the entire team of his stance of an inspired shared vision. At least leader should be able to convey his vision to critical adherents. Visionary leaders enable people to feel they have a real stake in the project. They empower people to experience the vision on their own. It can be clearly seen that collaboration is the essence of leadership. According to Bennis “They offer people opportunities to create their own vision, to explore what the vision will mean to their jobs and lives, and to envision their future as part of the vision for the organization,” (Bennis, 1997). (b) An effective collaborative leader is expected to have high level of problem solving skills. He may share problem-solving responsibilities with the team but he must have a “fresh, creative response to here-and-now opportunities,” and not much concern with how others have performed them. (Kouzes,1987).Thus he would be capable of giving new solutions to complicated problems and lead in dead ends. (c) A collaborative leader must exercise a lot of empathy. There is vast amount of difference between empathy and sympathy. Although the words sound same, they, in fact have widely divergent meanings. According to Norman Paul, in sympathy the subject is principally absorbed in his or her own feelings as they are projected into the object and has little concern for the reality and validity of the object’s special experience. Empathy, on the other hand, presupposes the existence of the object as a separate individual, entitled to his or her own feelings, ideas and emotional history (Paul, 1970). Ability to put oneself in others shoes and appreciate situation from his angle helps critically in any situation analysis. Some views have even expressed the view that more empathy ensures greater identification with the vision of the leader as empathy extended results in empathy received. (d) A collaborative leader must be competent. While technical competence of highest order is not expected of a leader he must nevertheless possess complete know-how of the tasks his group members are attending to. Perhaps only then he will be able to nurture a vision and command in a collaborative fashion. The ability to challenge, inspire, enable, change and modify must be demonstrated if leaders are to be seen as capable and competent. Above stated can be considered as core or essential qualities. It is seen easily that all these qualities require the leaders to actively collaborate with his constituency either as output provider or as inputs seeker. There are numerous other qualities which contribute to above qualities and to the direct task of applied organizational change. Some of these are specific to the leaders physical personality such as integrity/honesty, intellectually stimulating, energetic /enthusiastic, self-confident/cool under Pressures, charismatic etc.These traits evidently would further improve the quality of his interactions with his group. In addition certain other qualities describe leaderships specific ways of behavior within the project team such as assertive, dominating and motivating. Theories of Leadership Literature review suggests that there are several theories or styles of leadership. Those who accept the verdict, that leaders are born and not made, maintain,"... that there are certain inborn qualities such as initiative, courage, intelligence and humor, which altogether pre-destine a man to be a leader ... the essential pattern is given at birth" (Adler, 1991). Two leadership theories based on this view are the Great man/woman and the Trait theories. The great man/great woman theory, accordingly to Wrightsman, involves its followers believing that major events, both nationally and internationally, are influenced by those persons in power." A sudden act by a great man could, according to this theory, change the fate of the nation" (Wrightsman, 1977). The trait theory expands further on this conjecture, by concentrating on the personal characteristics of the leader. The theory cited traits believed to be qualities of leaders to include all aspects of physical, personality and cognitive factors, including height, intelligence and communication skills. "The research on trait theories of leadership has shown that many other factors are important in determining leader success, and that not everyone who possesses these traits will be a leader" (Adler, 1991) As interest in the trait approach to leadership waned leading to new behaviorist theories. The most widely publicized exponent of this approach was the Managerial Grid, which explained that there, was one best style of leadership, by various combinations of two factors regarding a concern for production and people. The situational approach suggested that the traits required of a leader differed, according to varying situations. To put it simply, the leader was a person who was in the right place at the right time. "Rather than a great man causing a great event to happen, the situational approach claims that great events are the product of historical forces that are gong to happen whether specific leaders are present or not " (Adair, 1984). The interactionist theory proposed that both the characteristics of the individual, and the situation in which the group found itself, accounted for who would become the leader. Resulting from this theory was the view that leaders are both born and made. Thus, one can learn how to become what Cohen has called an "uncrowned leader," a person who exerts influence over others but lacks positional authority (Cohen, 1990). Preferred style of leadership Based on the above theories styles of leaderships have emerged. These styles essentially owe their names to dominance of certain leadership qualities. For instance Autocratic Style (assertion and domination qualities) Collaborative/Participative Style (Empathy, delegation, motivation etc qualities).As complex activities of todays organizations would involve the entire staff complexities develop requiring a lot of problem solving and designing capabilities. It would essentially involve not only a substantial amount of information but also several people to collect and organize such information as well as those who expect to use it. A high amount of creativity and integrating skills would be expected of the organizational leaders apart from a generous input of their own core competence. As seen above leadership traits fed on collaboration with constituency. If a leader adopts collaboration to develop his own traits then he can leverage very effective on this developed collaboration when he actually leads with policies and statements. He can involve the very same constituency in giving specific inputs on situational problems in the organization. Such inputs would be realistically and a grass root approach would ensure almost instantaneous inputs without informational distortions. Thus collaboration must be spread out to the lowest rungs of the organization. Similarly while devising solutions for situational problems collaborative inputs can best describe what the constituency desires and what could be the best solution. Collaboration at these two critical levels will free constituency of workers not only from their problems in an open environment but also motivate them as active participants in decision making. This may finally lead to their structured empowerment. Foregoing indicates that a collaborative style of leadership may work well most of the time in any organization. References Adair, J. The Skills of Leadership. England :Gower, Aldershot Kants. 1984. Adler, R.B. &Adler, R.B. Rodman, G. Understanding Human Communication. Fort Worth, Texas :Holt Rhinehart & Winston. 1991. Bennis, W. Learning to Lead. MA:Addison-Wesley, 1997. Cohen, W. A. The art of the leader. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 1990. Kouzes, J. M. The Leadership Challenge. CA :Jossey-Bass Publishers. 1987. Norman, Pual. Parental Empathy. Parenthood. NY: Little, Brown. 1970. Wrightsman, L.S. Social Psychology.2nd Edn. Monteray, California :Brooks/Cole. 1977. Read More