Leadership Competencies in Patricia Anderson and Phillip Mann - Coursework Example

Organizational Behaviour Name Institution Date 1. What leadership competencies do you recognise in Patricia Anderson and Phillip Mann? Justify your answer Very obvious was Patricia’s personality. Her conscientiousness was demonstrated by the urgency to succeed. To do this in a men dominated world, she knew that she had to do it right. This urge motivated her in her work and made her rise and become the CEO of ServCorp. Her personality gave her the understanding that survival in a man’s world meant that you had to be superior to the other male colleagues. Patricia also had drive. This is evidenced by her desire to succeed where other women had failed to succeed. To do this, she believed that she always needed to lead the way and was excited about the challenges she faced. She was also action oriented and could not tolerate inefficiency and mediocrity. To achieve her goals, she thought that her decisions must not be influenced by emotions. She had strong self concept. She had positive evaluation of herself and new that she could do it no matter what. This was a great motivation for her success at a time when women could not find their way to leadership. She also had high self esteem even in the eyes of her colleagues. Her integrity could be seen in the consistency with which she worked. She took bold steps to change the whole organization and remained with this philosophy in her struggle to improve the performance of ServCorp. She consistently embarked on ensuring change throughout the organization. Philip, on the other hand, came in as a highly competent infrastructure manager who had great experience. He had full knowledge of the business with great understanding of the external environment as well as good decision making. His understanding of external environment was shown by his many years in this position with many successfully completed projects. He had also travelled overseas offering services of adviser to other developing countries. His cognitive intelligence could be seen in his methods of work. He was known to find his new ways of solving problems. With his leadership motivation, he knew that the project at hand could never be a success without the total participation and collaboration of the team members. He therefore embarked on finding the reasons for the lack of motivation in his team and figured out a way to restore the cohesion in the team. To achieve this, Philip worked out a strategy where he decided to use tea meetings to bring his team back together. During the meetings, he demonstrated high level of emotional intelligence by the manner in which he managed to achieve effectiveness and openness within the team. He opened up to them to make them feel free then listened and understood their grievances promising to be honest with them if they became honest with him. His relaxed posture and attitude help ease the fear and negative perceptions in the team. He ultimately managed to accomplish the assignment within schedule and raised the team’s performance such that they worked like a well oiled machine, achieving their goals and taking on new projects. 2.       How were Patricia Anderson and Phillip Mann charismatic leaders? Justify your answer. Patience and Philip were both charismatic leaders. Patience came in and immediately made her presence felt throughout the firm. She had risen to high political level in a men dominated working environment but was still held in high esteem by her other colleagues in the industry. She inspired everyone wherever she was. When she came in at ServCorp, she embarked on bold decision making to achieve her goals and ensure the success of the firm. She managed to bring up a team that would change the performance of ServCorp. She attracted competent employees who helped her focus the firm into an effective self motivated machine that was inclined towards success. The negative effect of her approach was however felt when her replacement and termination of employees in the firm caused fear and distrust. The workforce became concerned with self defence than caring about their roles in the workplace. Philip came in at a time when his IT team was discouraged and unproductive. He showed his charismatic leadership qualities by influencing his team and completely changing their negative attitudes to achieve a well coordinated and self motivated team that turned out to be very productive. He first approached other managers and executive members of the firm to establish the reason behind the vicious spiral of decline that characterized his team. Equipped with this knowledge, Philip went ahead to use his other influencing and inspiring leadership qualities to reprogram his team. He first struggled to break silence between him and the team by making them not fear him but allowing them become his friends. He shared his personal experiences and attracted them to him. In this way, the group opened up and begun working as a team. He showed them that they were capable of performing as was evidenced by their qualifications. According to him, this was a dream team for any IT manager. He continued to motivate them through the weekly meetings during tea-time and through this, he managed to achieve his project in time, surprising even his boss. Although not specifically mentioned in the extract, one would believe that Philip’s influence was spread to other departments and this helped the firm lead the way among the government owned enterprises. 3. Can you recognise the elements of transformational leadership? Justify your answer. Transformational leadership is one which employs a set of behaviours in order to bring about change. Patience was one very transformational leader. She had great will to cause effect and be noticed. From the moment she joined the firm, she had the belief that her success would only come if she caused great changes and these changes were to come very quickly. In this way she demonstrated the first element of transformational leadership, creating a strategic vision. Her belief for changes showed that she had a specific vision in mind of how she wanted the firm to become. She believed that this new vision would be attractive and would give the company a new look. The new look was to have employees with vast experiences from commercial businesses. She wanted her staff to be focused on performance and money making as opposed to fostering ServCorp’s traditional ways of operation. Although there is no evidence to support the second element, communicating the vision, Patience went ahead to implement her vision through bold steps that involved people being offered redundancy or replaced. She chose new executive members replacing those who did not convince her to have capacity to perform. By doing this she was modelling the vision. Her approach however did not give desirable results since her actions were executed without communication and explanation. She therefore created fear and uncertainty in the work force with the ultimate result of demoralization and poor performance. The organization became ineffective with the IT department showing the failed efforts. This department was however rescued by Philip who employed a different approach in order to increase the performance of his department. In much the same way as Patience, Philip had a strategy and a vision he wanted to achieve with his group. He wanted to get them back on track. In this way he showed the first element of transformational leadership which is creating a strategic vision. In his approach, he communicated his vision to his team and encouraged them towards achieving it. He did this using his own personal stories to gain the trust of employees before explaining what he wanted with them. He also participated in the implementation of the strategy by constantly being close to his team and encouraging them. By this, he was walking the talk. While employees strived to follow the will of their leader, he encouraged them and gained their trust. He therefore managed to achieve a team that was now working like a well-oiled machine. The team also became highly effective, and used the tea meeting to relieve their stress of the time-challenged project they were working on. The last element of a transformational leadership is building commitment to the vision. Philip demonstrated this through his persistent communication and maintained contact with his team throughout the program. He also involved the employees in the program by listening to their opinions and perspectives and using these to further guide his approach. Read More