Leadership Management - Assignment Example

Leadership Management Leadership Management A good leader motivates and guides employees to encourage them work towards achieving goals and objectives of the organization or group. Most employees would like to work in an organization with senior executives that are able to appraise the requirements of staff and adopt suitable leadership styles that befit the team members. The senior executives of Unilever Company exercise more than one leadership styles that energize and motivate staff across departments. They value democratic, visionary and pacesetting leadership styles. In democratic leadership, the managers allow employees to voice their opinions and views. The style encourages staff to participate in matters that affect them and the company. Also, the management can envision the future, reveal what could be, and encourage employees to perceive things way they unfold. In the other words, visionary leadership helps to achieve distant dreams. In addition, Unilever executives set the rate or pace of accomplishing the predetermined goals of the company. They exercise a pacesetting style of leadership to achieve goals of the company (Springer, 2013). 2. The leadership style differs from one organization to another. This is because of the adoption of different organizational structure and culture. In regard to growing specialization and division of labour, most people would like to work in an organization that has a functional structure with both adhocracy and hierarchy oriented cultures. A functional structure is easy to run and manage because similar portions of the organization are grouped together according to their purposes. In this organization, there are different departments entrusted with specific functions. Each department relies on the knowledge and talent of its workers. Therefore, teamwork plays a major role in this type of organization. An organization with a hierarchy oriented culture can focus on stability, efficiency and doing things right. Also, an adhocracy culture enables the organization to focus innovation, risk- taking and doing things first. These two organizational cultures facilitate team development, and employees’ participation and democracy. There is a strong interpersonal relationship due to teamwork and job specialization (Gerybadze, 2010). 3. In Unilever Company, executives embrace a high level of ethics. They know their responsibilities and emphasise the same to employees. They make sure that they follow set policies and make the right decisions. They hold every staff accountable to encourage them know what is expected of them ant take their responsibilities seriously by completing their job description correctly. These executives also encourage continuous work ethics training and professionalism. In ethics training, employees are taught how to react and act professional. They are honest and respectful to staff irrespective of their poor or good performance. There is trust between executives and employees as they are able to count on one another. Executives listen to issues of employees and provide immediate solutions. They manage time well and give payment and promised results within deadlines. Managers encourage employees to communicate to them freely using various means such as emails and face to face communication. With these means in place, employees feel important and free to express their concerns. The existence of these means facilitates effective communication across the organization (Lussier, 2012). 4. The motivation of employees stimulates enthusiasm to increase their productivity. A leader should create a cordial and positive workplace environment to promote the spirit of cooperation and teamwork. Recognition of workers achievements alongside with feedback and appreciation lead to increased commitment, confidence and inspiration for further achievement. Also, the leader should set effective communication means, allow involvement and participation, and take time to listen to staffs. A leader should lead through competence and experience, not through position or title. A leader should mentor workers, inspire them, and make partners out of employees. To promote competence, managers should take workers for training and development to acquire work-related and relationship skills. Further, employees feel motivated if the management offer them monetary motivations such as pay rise and bonuses. All these practices energize worker to increase individual productivity. With such motivational practices, the cases of high-labour turnover and call outs are significantly reduced (Goetsch, 2011). 5. The competitiveness and success of an organization depend fully on its ability to accommodate workplace diversity. An organization with a diverse workforce can supply a variety of solutions to prevailing problems in sourcing, service and resource allocation. Staffs from a diverse background have different ideas, experience and talents that stimulate innovation and sound decisions. A diverse collection of experience and skills gives an organization a broader service range that allow it to offer service to customers on an international basis. Also, diverse workforce provides a variety of viewpoints to form a pool of experience and ideas. With this pool, the organization can meet the business strategy needs and customers needs more effectively. Moreover, an organization that embraces workforce diversity has more effective execution than others. The diversity inspires workers to perform to their best and highest ability resulting in increased productivity and profit. Despite all these benefits, diversity faces some challenges. The cultural and language barriers tend to be drawbacks to diversity. These barriers lead to ineffective communication of objectives resulting to confusion, low morale, and lack of teamwork. Also, some people have a persistent resistance to change in that they are not ready to embrace diversity. The resistance inhibits progress by silencing new ideas. Therefore, the importance of diversity is always overlooked in such community. Another overriding challenge is the presence of negative attitudes and unethical behaviours in an organizations such stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. In this regard, potential workers from different background avoid securing jobs with such organization and if employed they may live in fear and stress leading to reduced productivity (Pride, Hughes & Kapoor, 2012). 6(a). In an effort to create a workplace environment that includes all workers, managers need to focus on individual awareness. Both workers and managers must be aware of personal biases. In this respect, the organization should conduct progressive training to change the negative attitudes and unethical behaviours that hinders diversity. Also, the organization should employ the strategy of increasing inclusiveness by learning about sensitive cultural difference, examining employees’ practices as well as counselling all workers. Further, managers may take the initiative of giving new workers an opportunity to work in activities that they are expected to advance. The organization also needs to include and perceive diversity as a cultural value of employees. The management should inform employees about the importance to embrace change because resistance to change can inhibit progress, success and productivity of the company. The main leadership theories are trait, contingency, behavioural, and power and influence. Under contingency theory, it is the situation that dictates the type of leadership style that should be applied and not the type of leadership in use. The behavioural theory argues that autocratic leaders do not consult anyone in making decisions while democratic leaders value team input when making any decision. It further states that laissez-faire leaders allow the team to make most of the decisions because they practice non-interference. On the other hand, the trait theory argues that leaders have certain attributes, and their style of leadership comes from these characteristics. Under power and influence theory, leaders are said to use specific tactics to have things done. One of the motivational theories is the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which categorise the basic human needs in this order; psychological needs, safety and security, social needs, self-esteem and self-actualization. Managers should take a keen interest in employees and help them recognize and meet their basic needs to inspire and motivate them (Miller, Catt & Carlson, 1996). 6(b). In managing and motivating individuals and group behaviours, the leaders should use the following approach; appreciation, incentives, performance measurement and relevance. Leaders should praise best performing workers both in private and public to appreciation. The appreciation fills the self-esteemed need of employees and would want to maintain the same behaviour. The use of incentives is fundamental to team cohesion and success. Incentives and rewards encourage workers to perform their jobs at high levels of personal success. Leaders should be able to make members of the team feel relevant. Leaders should make employees realizes that they are connected to their jobs and are important. The relevance of employees to work should be focused on their responsibilities and personalities as well as the organizational goals. Moreover, leaders should employees’ performance measurement to motivate and maintain morale of members of the group. Performance measurement and feedback makes employees work harder to improve or maintain the previous performance. 6(c). In managerial planning process, the managers should first identify and establish goals of the company. The objectives of the organization should be described in qualitative or quantitative term. Secondly, managers should identify the available resources and allocate each goal the human and financial resources associated with its completion. Thirdly, managers establish the goal-related task by matching each goal with tasks associated with its achievement. Fourthly, managers prioritize goals and tasks. The important tasks and goals should be approached and tackled first. After prioritization, managers create assignments and timelines. In this case, the company establishes timelines and assign individuals to execute tasks. Evaluation methods are afterwards established for evaluation of the progress toward task and goal completion. Finally, managers identify alternative courses of action to serve as a contingency plan if the plan in action is off the track. Business level strategies are applied when company makes decisions to create, maintain and use its competitive advantages to beat competitors and increase the sale volume. On the other hand, corporate-level strategies operate when the company finds business opportunities outside its industry and decides to diversify. When a new business becomes operational and part of the company then the managers considers applying corporate-level strategy. 6(d). The leadership style and perception of the leadership vary from one culture to another to fit the global cultural difference. Therefore, in the international business world, executives and organizations face an escalating need to have an insight of the nuances and subtleties of leadership because it is exercised in dissimilar cultures. In this view, leaders should be flexible and adapt themselves to fit different cultures of places of work across the world. 6(e). Ethical behaviours involve acting in ways that are consistent with what the individuals and society think are good values. Ethical behaviour brings about unanimity in the culture of the organization since all individuals carry themselves in a respectful and diligent manner. Also, ethical behaviour acts as a form of motivation for employees as they are rewarded for following the ethics structured by the organization. Further, the employees can avoid getting themselves into troubles by observing the laid down ethical behaviours of the organization. Ethical behaviours bind individuals to react and act professionally to issues and task at hand. Ethical behaviours in globalization create some of the ethical dilemmas such as brain drain, natural resources, jobs, health and financial dilemmas. Ethically, professionals should serve their countries first. However, globalization has made these professionals leave their countries to look for a greener pasture causing brain drain problem in their home countries. Also, the globalization has led to international financial institutions that help other countries to develop such as IMF and World Bank. However, ant-globalist and protectionists such as Pat Buchanan are not happy. These ant-globalists think that Americans suffer from commands of the international economy, and therefore they strongly oppose these global institutions. Further, ethical behaviours minimize the ambitions of some countries such as china, Germany and japan from controlling the natural resources (Edwards, 2001). 6 (f). There are many ways to improve communication in an organization such as the use of reliable channels such as; meetings, memos, emails and face to face talks. Also, the manager should repeat the important message from time to time and focus on listening, and receiving the information across as expected. The manager should handle and solve the communication problems quickly and effectively. In the management of the conflict, an individual should focus on the present and prioritize the relationship rather than winning an argument. Besides, a person may opt to engage into a negotiation and willingly forgive. It is also prudent to let go of something if cannot reach an agreement. A person can also learn how to quickly relieve stress and manage emotions. There are various actions that an organization can take to develop a strong organizational culture such as employee development and motivation, performance appraisals, and succession planning. Also, the organization can engage into goal alignment and management to make goals reflect the culture of the organization. In an effort to improve organizational ethical behaviours, managers should empower employees and allow them have control over their jobs. Also, managers should improve the communication procedures and policy to allow smooth and frequent flow of information between staffs and managers. In addition, managers should enforce consequences set down for violation ethics policies. Managers should regularly review and change rules and procedures in place to match with the global ever changing ethics and standards. References Springer, M. L. (2013). Project and program management: A competency-based approach. Gerybadze, A. (2010). Innovation and international corporate growth. Heidelberg: Springer. 161. Lussier, R. N. (2012). Management fundamentals: Concepts, applications, skill development. Mason, Ohio: South-Western. 74. Pride, W. M., Hughes, R. J., & Kapoor, J. R. (2012). Business. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning. 253. Goetsch, D. L. (2011). Developmental leadership: Equipping, enabling, and empowering employees for peak performance. Bloomington, Ind.: Trafford. Miller, D. S., Catt, S. E., & Carlson, J. R. (1996). Fundamentals of management: A framework for excellence. St. Paul, Minn: West Pub. Co. Edwards, M. (2001). Global citizen action. Boulder: Reiner. Read More