The Dirt Devils Leadership Development - Research Proposal Example

The Dirt Devils s of the team members: Leadership development paper Leadership is the back bone of the organizational success. Leadership and vision is deeply related with each other. The paper will discuss about the importance of the vision in the context of business leadership. This paper will follow a structured approach which will include introduction, problem statement, research questions, methodology, results and findings, conclusion and recommendations. With the help of this study a clear picture can be achieved about the importance of vision in the business leadership. Introduction Vision is an important trait for the successful business leaders. Organizational leadership is all about leading all the internal stakeholders of an organization. Vision of an organization represents the guiding stars of an organization and it is generally being set by the leader or founder of the company. It is the decisive factor that set the trend for a company (Marzec 2007). Leadership cannot be successful without the effective visionary approaches. Organizations across the world need clarified visions from their leaders. Business leaders share their visions and employees of the organizations follow those visions. Patterns of the businesses are changing very fast and with the increasing trends of competitions in the global market, importance of visionary leadership is also increasing. Vision is the starting point of the leadership success. Successful leadership requires proper communication at all the levels of the organizations. To communicate properly leaders need to be significantly confident about their ideas and that confidence comes with the help of visionary thinking. Visionary leadership helps the leaders to set achievable goals for their followers. Vision talks about what the organizations will be in near future. Without the presence of proper visionary leadership, organizations across the world cannot test the successes in their business endeavourers. Over the years, lots of experts have given stress on the visionary characteristics of the leaders. It has been noticed that exemplary leadership is incomplete without the visionary thinking. Business world has become significantly unstable. Under this situation forecasting or predicting the future is significantly important. Forecasting and predicting the future is not an easy task whereas it requires visionary measures from the side of the leaders. Problems Statement Problem statement provides simple and comprise description of the large problem. A problem statement is significantly important before finding the solution of any problem. It helps the researchers to understand the issue in specific ways. The fundamental objective of the problem statement is to focus towards the problem. Problem statement describes the challenge of the research. Here in this research paper the problem statement is to study the importance of vision in the context of business leadership and to see how vision is important for a business leader and how it can determine the success and failure in the business. This problem statement will help the researchers to conduct the research in a precise way to come out with effective solutions. Research Questions Research question is the most important part of any research paper. It helps the researcher to define the whole process and to guide inquiry and arguments. With the help of the research questions researcher creates the interests in the mind of the readers. Framing proper research question is the ultimate success factor for any research, failing to do it can cause faulty research. Here, in this paper there are three research questions which will guide the whole research process. Those research questions are 1) Why is vision important for a leader? , 2) What qualities should a vision have? , 3) How do leaders develop a vision? Methodology Methodology is an integral part of the research. A research cannot be completed without relevant research methodology. The methodology directs the researchers to adopt specific research method suitable for the study to find out the answer of their research questions. Methodology is a systematic process to gather information for conducting the research. There are mainly two types of research methods known as primary research and secondary research. Research methodology makes the readers to decide the way by which the research has been conducted (Nambisan and Mohanbir 2007). Secondary research is most appropriate for this study because of the descriptive and qualitative nature of the research questions. Secondary approach has made this research cost effective and due to this, researchers have able to complete the report without spending too much money. As the secondary approach has been taken, researchers are able to complete the report within short time by accessing secondary information easily. This approach has helped the researchers to frame their research questions in a clear way. Primary research could have taken significant time and it could have been more expensive. The researchers have collected their information from the website of the UCR Libraries. In their research process the researchers have done their research through the data base of Business & Economic subject. They have also used the databases of Factiva and Business Source Premier. Apart from all those sources researchers have taken the help of lots of other secondary sources those are different books, articles and journal related with the vision and leadership. All the above discussions are clearly indicating that the researchers have collected information from different types of sources. The required data and information collected from the secondary research will be analyzed and discussed qualitatively to come out with key findings. Results and Findings This section of the study will discuss about all the results and findings from in-depth analysis of information collected from the extensive secondary research. There are enormous real examples of effectiveness and outcomes of visionary leadership. Former American President John F. Kennedy had a vision of putting human being in the surface of Moon. NASA had started their effort to establish that vision into the reality and eventually that vision came to the reality in 1969 when the mission Apollo 11 succeeded and first time ever human being was landed on the Moon. That mission was successful but the root of the success was deeply connected with the visionary thinking of the John F. Kennedy. Recently a social networking site called Face book have shorten the world drastically. Another example of glorious outcome of visionary leadership can be seen in the leadership approach of Mark Zuckerberg for his revolutionary foundation of Facebook. In the year 2013 revenue of the face book was US$7.87 billion (Bell 2007). In 2012 active users of the social networking site were more than one billion. The success of this social networking site was deeply rooted within the visionary leadership of Mr. Zuckerberg. He had the vision that long distances can hamper the relationship of friendship or interpersonal relationship. At the initial state of development of Facebook, he predicted that a time will come when the whole world will seek for an online platform through which people will be able to maintain long distance personal and social relationship. Due to that visionary thinking the concept of Face Book currently is one of the most successful realities of the modern day technology (Bielski 2005). According to the finding of the research, Warren Buffett with his visionary leadership has taken his organization Berkshire Hathaway to a new high. In 2013 revenue of the organization was US$ 58.5 billion. This business success was not at all fluke as it is the sheer result of the visionary thinking of the leader. During his school days the leader was significantly attracted towards the stock market. At the age of 11 only he bought 3 shares of Cities Service. That was the building block or starting point of his vision to become the most famous investor in the world. His visionary thinking has allowed him to acquire different profitable organizations across the world. Again, innovation icon, Steve Jobs had the significant visionary abilities that has made him a legendary figure and has made Apple one of the most recognized brands in the globe. He had a vision of “personal computer for everyone” (Gordijn and Diederik 2006). This vision changed the outlook of the whole computer industry. Still the vision of the leader is significantly deep rooted in the business culture of the organization. The leader with his visionary outlook did revolution in the domain of personal computer. With this leadership approach, Steve Jobs transformed the company from computer to smart phones following the trend or demand of accessing computer related services of the global customers. According to the Harvard Business Review, Steve Jobs was the number one visionary leader. During his tenure of leadership in Apple the leader was significantly successful. With its visionary leadership Apple was able to increase the return of share holders up to 35% and that hike was consistent. This was the result but the main visionary factor was to look after the interests of share holders and investors (Ihlenfeldt 2011). All the above examples are clearly indicating that vision is significantly important for a leader. From these examples of revolutionary outcome of visionary leadership approach it can be summarized that going through a proper vision is highly important for any leader. The leaders and their leadership endeavors cannot be successful without vision. Vision helps the leaders to prepare for the future in the present situation only. It is an inseparable part of the leadership. There are certain qualities which make a vision successful. Inspiration is an important quality of vision. Inspirational vision of leaders motivates the followers to achieve the organizational goals collectively which improve the performances of the companies. Being ambitious in their visions helps the leaders to set their goals effectively. Understanding the reality and realistic approach is also a significant quality of good vision. Clarity is an unavoidable quality of any successful vision. The founder of the Wal-Mart, Sam Walton had the clarity in his vision and his main objective was to offer lowest possible price to the customers and to achieve cost leadership in the global retail industry. Creativity is also an important quality that must be present within the visions of the leaders. According to Albert Einstein, creativity is far more important than knowledge. This quality helps the leaders to create their visions different from others and provides significant competitive advantages. Vision of the leaders must be descriptive. According to the research descriptive nature of the vision avoids any scope of confusions in the mind of the employees and leaders can communicate their visions effectively. Findings are clearly indicating that all the above qualities are significantly necessary for the creation of good vision. The research also reinforced that presence of all these qualities can be significantly decisive for the leaders to come up with the expected business performances. Leaders develop vision with the help of different steps. In the first step business leaders observe the whole business world and they watch, listen, wonder, pay attention and ask different questions to get answers of every query in detail. In the second step the leaders reflect about the whole matter. During this step leaders take the help of personal stories as the source of inspiration through which they visualize the whole matter. In the third step, leaders write down all the reflections to avoid any mistake. In the fourth and final step business leaders come up with their finally created vision. The finding is also reinforcing that due to this well structured and elaborated step by step approach business leaders can create and communicate their vision properly across the length and breadth of their organizations. According to the findings all those steps are important for the leaders to develop visions. All those steps are interrelated and have cascading effects on each other. Conclusion It is easy to conclude that visionary outlook can provide significant advantages to the leaders across the world in terms of resolving issues and taking their organizations towards the growth path. The research has categorically indicated that different successful business leaders across the world have tested organizational success with the help of their visionary characteristics. Ability to predict or forecast the future has separated them from ordinary leaders. Vision is the integral part of the leadership. Without the help of vision leaders cannot get success for the long term basis. The research also has indicated that a suitable business vision must have certain qualities and all those qualities are significantly important for the creation of sustainable and successful vision. During the course of this research one thing was clear that leaders follow a systematic approach to develop their visions. They follow certain interconnected steps to come up with their visions. The research results have given significant stress on the deep rooted relationship between leadership and vision. The paper has pointed out that visionary leaders can inspire and motivate their followers to perform well for individual as well as collective purposes. It also articulates that long term vision is significantly essential for the business leaders and can be the game changer for the organizational success or failure. All the above findings are appropriately answering the research questions. Therefore, it can be stated that that the objective of the research has been achieved. Recommendations Here, in this section of the study different recommendations has been given. The above discussion clearly indicates that vision is essential for the leaders. Business leaders irrespective of any size of their business can have a long term vision for the future. Business leaders need to assess their business environment continuously and then should come up with their visions. The leaders can divide their visionary goals into some short term goals also, which will help the leaders to communicate and implement their visions. Leaders should include varying interests of all the followers into their visions. It will help the leaders to share their visions with the followers and followers will feel inspired and motivated. According to the finding of the research creativity in the vision is highly recommended. Creative vision from the side of the business leaders will help the organizations to stand out of the rest. The vision of the business leader should be ambitious but at the same time it needs to be realistic in nature. To gain the long term sustainability in the business there is no substitute of quality vision from the side of business leaders. According to the finding of the research vision can be developed with a structured approach and every business leaders should follow all the steps systematically without skipping any single step. It is often being noticed for achieving the short term goals business leaders across the world compromise with their long term visions abut it is major issue in modern startup businesses where at any point of time, leaders or founders should not compromise with their visions. Works Cited Bell, Anthony. "Using Vision to Shape the Future." Hesselbein & Company (2007): 17-21. 3 July 2007. Print. Bielski, Lauren. "What Makes a Good Leader?" American Bankers Association (ABA) Banking Journal (2005): 21-26. LexisNexis Academic. 3 July 2007. Print. Gordijn, Ernestine H., and Diederik A. Stapel. "When Controversial Leaders with Charisma are Effective: the Influence of Terror on the Need for Vision and Impact of Mixed Attitudinal Messages." European Journal of Social Psychology (2006). 3 July 2007. Print. Ihlenfeldt, William. “Visionary Leadership: A Proven Pathway to Visionary Change.” AuthorHouse (2011): 112-115. 1 October 2011. Print. Marzec, Morgan. "Telling the Corporate Story: Vision into Action." Journal of Business Strategy 28 (2007): 26-36. 1 July 2007. Print. Nambisan, Satish, and Mohanbir Sawhney. "A Buyers Guide to the Innovation Bazaar." Harvard Business Review (2007): 3 July 2007. Print. Read More