Recommended Leadership Behaviors for Leading and Sustaining Change in the Project - Example

Recommended Leadership Behaviors for Leading and Sustaining Change in the Project According to Schein (1993), leadership behaviors should be looked into to keep the good progress of a change management process. These leadership behaviors may spell successes or failures during the project change management process. In this specific project, the recommended leadership behaviors are cognitive and automatic leadership behaviors, as advocate by Goleman, et al. (2004). The combination of these two types of leadership behaviors has been observed to help numerous organizations. It is found that in an organization, it is critical to develop emotionally intelligent leaders, expounds Goleman et al. (2004), that are automatic in their actions and implementation of management strategies. Emotional intelligence is essential for organizational leaders. This will guide the organizational leaders in the decision-making and in leading the organization towards the achievement of the desired goals and objectives. Usually the actions of the leader account for up to seventy percent of employees' perception of the climate of their organization (Peters and Waterman, 1982). The leader is the most critical part of the human resource. Success or failure of implementation of projects depends on the leader. Therefore, the leader’s emotional intelligence will be capitalized to lead and uphold change in the organization. There are four domains of emotional intelligence. These include self-management, self-awareness, relationship management and social awareness. The development of these domains will help enhance the emotional intelligence of the leader. Capacity-building for the improvement of these domains can be done through continuous education and training. Competencies generate various leadership approaches. A good leader maintains leadership styles appropriate for the organization. The leader can be flexible in his/her leadership style. Adopt what is needed in specific situation. One situation differs from the needed style as compared with the needed leadership style in another situation. The leader can be coaching, affiliative, visionary or democratic. Mourier (2001) construct an enhancement plan centered on learning. A plan such as this can be a tool by the organization to improve learning. The leader may develop a plan like this one by identifying innovative behaviors that may effect growth and development in the organization. Elements of the Organization’s Culture and the Strategies to Effectively Deal with Organizational Culture Issues to Ensure Success of Plan Organizational culture has several elements. These are the stated and unstated values, overt and implicit expectations for member behavior, company traditions, customs and rituals, shop talk, climate, metaphors and symbols, performance objectives and stories regarding the history of the group. The stated values are those that are spoken while the unstated values are those that are unspoken. These values can be found in every organization. The values can be developed in such a way that it can fit the organizational culture. The overt expectations for member’ behavior is the obvious, unconcealed, explicit anticipations. Implicit expectations for member’ behavior is the implied, unspoken, embedded anticipations. These expectations can guide in drafting policies for the implementation of the change management process. In the same way, the traditions, customs and rituals in the company can proved to be beneficial when effecting change. It will be hard if the propose change will conflict with the company traditions, customs and rituals. If this happens, employee resistance will be high which will greatly affect the introduction of change. Hence, there is a need to consider traditions, rituals and customs in implementing the desired changes. Shop talk refers to the usual verbal communication adapted in and about the organization. It is the organization-specific language. Examples of these are hi-tech, medical, construction, etc. Knowledge on this will help ease up in facilitating change. Climate is the feelings brought about by the interaction of members of the organization, with each other, with outside clients and stakeholders, and with their environment. It is a feeling by the employees based on their perception. The workers get these feelings any people they interact. These can be both leaders and peers, formally and informally. The feelings are transmitted through communication and exchange of actions with the management. In the same manner, the feelings can be made known to the employee through gestures and communication with their peers. Understanding the climate can provide indications on the changes that are needed. Metaphors and symbols may be unconscious. Sometimes, it can be found embodied in other cultural elements. Symbols are words, objects and gestures which derive their meaning from convention. At the level of organizational culture, symbols include abbreviations, slang, modes of address, dress codes and status symbols, all recognized by insiders only. Generating cultures that will encourage improvement in the achievement of performance objectives can be done by motivating, managing and rewarding high-performance. The concept of giving out incentives and providing better benefits usually generate possible results. Improvements in performance are likewise achieved. Organizations' leaders may use defined performance management processes and consciously plan to identify, develop, reward, and eventually enhance the individual talents within their employees. The history of the group is an essential consideration when effecting change. This history will serve as a background for the essence and relevance of the change to be introduced. The history of the organization will facilitate ease in generating assumptions. According to the MURF Systems, culture is so deeply rooted in the history of the organization (Organizational Culture Change, 2007). Help from a change agent outside the system is often advisable. This will facilitate view of reality as something they’ve constructed, and to see meaning in things they normally take for granted. It will be very helpful to integrate the individual into the totality of the organizational change management process. This way, the individual will adapt efficiently to the outside environment. This will consequently lead to survival. As groups find solutions to these problems over time, explains Geddes (2005), they engage in a kind of collective learning. This type of learning can generate the set of shared assumptions and beliefs. The end-user’s expectations and awareness are activities that should be accomplished by implementing strategies to make certain that the ultimate owners and end-users are en sync with the project team and its expected outcomes. Recommend Post-Implementation Management Practices for the Project’s Continued Success Organizational and cultural change, according to Doppelt (2003), is the key missing ingredient in the operationalization of sustainable development. It provides a theoretical framework and a methodology, says Doppelt (2003), which managers can use to successfully lead their organizations to embrace sustainability. After the implementation, several management practices may be adopted to ensure the project’s continued success. During the entire change management process, key performance indicators should be captured periodically and are used by management to alter or adjust procedures and practices. After the implementation of the change, these key performance indicators, as reflected from the outcome of the performance appraisal records of the employees, should be monitored and evaluated. Since the change proposed for this project is on the introduction of software and hardware to enhance the services of the company, history of the bug defects reported and captured during the entire change management process will be submitted to the business management for review. The history report on the issues, requests and concerns will be studied and analyzed. This will help the organization to come up with a baseline in case this will be relevant in the future introduction of change. This will also be important if enhancement on the next change management life cycle is needed by the organization. Business analysis is performed after implementation of the change process in order to determine the degree of success or failure, significance to business, resources that may be required in the future, and business justification. This is where a team of business managers reviews the key business impact indicators. Based on the impact indicators the relative success or failure of the change management process can be gauged. Technical analysis is performed to determine system dependencies, reliability, efficient technology resources / techniques, and future project estimates. This is where a team of technical experts and personnel reviews key technical impact indicators. Assess whether technology tools are utilized to provide auditability, versioning, and automation throughout the deployment process. The organization defines separate Information Technology environments and access controls. Hence, technical analysis can be a separate evaluation from the business analysis. After the implementation of the change management process, evaluate the implementation conducted if the change management process followed a logical order and was controlled to ensure the logical evolution of effective enhancements to environments. References Doppelt, Bob. 2003. Leading Change Toward Sustainability: A Change-management Guide for Business. Greenleaf Publishing. Geddes, Jill. High-Performance Culture: How Do You Measure Up? Ottawa Business Journal, April 4, 2005. Goleman, Daniel, Boyatzis, Richard and McKee, Annie. 2004. Primal Leadership. (1st ed.). Europe: McGraw-Hill. Mourier, P. and Smith, M. 2001. How to Succeed Where Most Companies Fail, CEP Press. Organizational Culture Change. MURF Systems. 2007. http://www.murfsystems.com/main/5/74/details. Peters, T.J., Waterman, R. H. 1982. In Search of Excellence. New York: Harper & Row Schein, E. 1993. Organizational Culture and Leadership. In Classics of Organization Theory. Jay Shafritz and J. Steven Ott, (eds.) 2001. 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