Decision-Making, Knowledge Sharing and Trust and Their Importance to Leadership Development - Coursework Example

Leadership Name of Student: Name of Course: Name of Instructor: Date of Submission: Leadership Leadership is focused on providing guidelines to a group of people. It entails establishing institutions and clear ways in which activities in organizations or any other entities are to be carried out. Leadership is an important aspect of any organization since it has a direct influence on the success of activities undertaken (Cappelli, Singh, Singh & Useem, 2010). Organizational leadership takes various forms. The approach taken by a leader is dependent on the nature of an organization and the specific micro and macro environmental factors affecting it. The importance of leadership has led to various researches on the topic. A key topic on this research is how to make a good leader. The following essay will discuss the importance of values, flexibility, knowledge & learning, team skills, communication and personal development in the development of good leaders. The essay will also discuss leadership, decision making, knowledge sharing and trust and their importance to leadership development. How to be a good leader The question about how to make a good leader is very much common. Ideally, every person wants to become a good leader while every organization needs a good leader. The following section will discuss several aspects that make a good leader. One of the elements that make good leaders is continuous personal development. On this point, it should be noted that leaders are made and not born as some professionals and scholars would like to argue. For a person to become a good leader, he/she must uphold the need for personal development. The continuous reevaluation of a leader’s effectiveness followed by the establishment of appropriate strategies to work on the weaknesses identified is encouraged. The making of a good leader is a function of the experiences and interactions that a leader has with the internal and external environments. From this argument, it can be acknowledged that personal development is an important element that leads to the development of a good leader (Smith, 2006). The other element that makes a good leader is the development of appropriate values needed in a leader. Values are a set of traits that are upheld by an individual. Leaders are supposed to use their values to influence people to follow them (Russell, 2001). Ideally, the level at which subjects trust their leaders is dependent on the inherent values that are exhibited by them. Some of the values that are desirable in a leader include confidence, ethics, honesty, integrity, transparency, compassion, regard for others and time consciousness amongst others. Therefore, leaders should work on the development and apprehension of appropriate values so as to develop their leadership abilities. Flexibility is another important element that makes a good leader. Flexibility is defined as the ability of a leader to change his or her approaches according to the changes that occur in the micro and macro environments. On this point, it is important to acknowledge that the modern world is highly dynamic. The high dynamism requires that a leader analyses the environment and comes up with appropriate strategies to enable him and his subjects to manage the changes (Hackett & Wang, 2012). Leaders should be visionary in that they ought to have an ability to use the available resources and knowledge to make sustainable decisions. Learning is also important aspect that leads to the making of a good leader. The need for a knowledgeable leader cannot be underestimated. On this point, it is worth noting that the ability of a leader to make great decisions is based on the knowledge that he/she has. A leader should be prepared to learn from his own experiences and also from his/her subjects. A good leader should also be prepared to use the knowledge of his or her subjects to make decisions on important matters. Continuous learning is a good way by which leaders can gain knowledge. Good management strategies that go along with good leadership should be used to manage human resources appropriately hence enabling leaders to benefit from tacit knowledge that is inherent to human resources. Great team skills are also a major requirement for a good leader (Lee, Gillespie, Mann & Wearing, 2010). Ideally, leaders cannot be called leaders if they do not have subjects/followers. So as to be able to get things done, the leaders need to be able to interact and work together with others in harmony so as to achieve the desired goals and objectives. With the gradual change of organizational management to horizontal management systems; there is a rising need for team work and team spirit in organizations. For this reason, team management activities that includes delegation, constitution of teams, organizing, controlling and motivation should be developed in leaders’ so as to empower them to manage in the growing management and leadership practice. Lastly, communication is an important aspect required in a good leader. Communication enables leaders to disseminate information to their subjects and also receive it from them (Wim, 2005). Effective communication leads to the creation of a shared vision in an organization. Communication enables leaders to sell their ideologies to the subjects that lead to the building of consensus and harmony in the undertaking of an organization’s activities. It also leads to the development of a good relationship between leaders and their subjects which is good for the general success of an organization. Leadership Styles and Theories There are various leadership styles and theories that influence the activities of a leader. The approach taken should be aligned to the strategy of an organization, environmental factors involved and expected changes in the future (Cappelli, Singh, Singh & Useem, 2010). Some of the main leadership styles include the directive, transactional and transformation leadership styles. In the directive leadership style, the success of leadership activities is based on the ability of the leader to direct activities. According to Ekaterini, (2010), the ability of the manager to attain the desired organizational objectives by instructing the subordinates on finite details of operation is important in directive leadership. Directive leadership style is not able to lead to the creation of good leader- subject relationship; hence has a negative impact on the ability of organizations to reach their objectives. The use of directive leadership style reduces with an increase in the manager’s education level. On the other hand, it increases with an increase in the manager’s age (Ekaterini, 2010). Transactional leadership emphasizes on the need for leaders and subordinates to constantly discuss issues before the making of any decisions. However, the final decision is made by the manager; having taken into consideration the opinions of other stakeholders in the process. This leadership style is very instrumental in enabling the leaders to establish good relationships with their subjects. This approach leads to the establishment of a shared vision in the organization since all the stakeholders own the decision made. This leadership style is quickly being adopted in modern organizations as the regard for the input of human resources in the success of an organization becomes more apparent. On the other hand, transformational leadership is the use of inherent personal abilities and skills by a leader to influence the direction of the subjects and ultimately that of the organization. Transformational leadership relies heavily on the ability of the leader to influence the subordinates to follow his or her ideologies (Stone, Russel & Paterson, 2004). For this reason, the leader has to exhibit great skills and ability that make people trust him/her. The destiny of an organization is normally on the hands of the leader; hence requiring that the leader factors in sustainability issues in his or her strategies. A good example of a great transformational leader is Steve Jobs who used his skills and abilities to influence the growth of Apple. Decision Making Decision making is an important element in influencing the success of an organization. According to DavenPort, (2009), decision making has become a very important process in modern day organizations owing to the high level of market dynamics involved. According to (DavenPort, 2009), leaders can improve their decisions by considering four basic decision making steps. The first step is identification. On this step, leaders are supposed to make a list of all the important decision that need to be made and the specific time that they should be made. The decisions then need to be prioritized according to their level of importance to the organizations. The next basic step is to develop an inventory that assesses the main factors that go with each decision (DavenPort, 2009). Inventory management skills are needed in this step. The classification of inventory into various groups according t their importance to the organization is needed. A good inventory analysis approach that can be used is the ABC analysis that categories inventories into class A, B and C. Class A items require a lot of financial and human resources. These inventories should be not be acquired in excess since they hold up an organization’s liquidity. Category B items have medium impacts on the organization’s resources. Class C items have minimal impacts hence can be acquired in excess. The analysis of inventories needed for each decision made ensures that the organizations resources are optimally used. The third step is intervention. Under this step, the leader comes up with clear roles, polices, processes, behaviors and systems that should be used to address each decision (DavenPort, 2009). Decision intervention ensures that each decision made is executed in a clear manner hence leading to the achievement of pre-outlined goals and objectives. The last step in the improvement of decision making in an organization is the institutionalization of the decision making process (DavenPort, 2009). Under this step, the organization stipulates who is to make which kind of decision and the level of consultation that is supposed to occur. Decision making should take into consideration the changes that occur in the market and the need to create harmony and a shared vision in the organization. Knowledge Sharing and Trust Knowledge is also an important element in leadership development. It is important to acknowledge the fact that knowledge is one of the most important assets to an organization (Lee, Gillespie, Mann & Wearing, 2010). Knowledgeable organizations have a better chance to succeed in the market than those that are not. Knowledge is closely related to innovation. Innovation focuses on developing new and unique products or new ways of doing things. On this point, it is important that innovation is a big part of the success of major companies such as Apple, Toyota, Samsung and Google. For an organization to be knowledgeable, it has to have a knowledgeable leadership. A knowledgeable leadership in one that has its facts right; hence it does things in the right manner. There are two basic types if knowledge; tacit and explicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is knowledge that has been documented hence can be easily retrieved from where it has been stored (Bhardwaj & Monin, 2006). For this reason, leadership development should focus on retrieving knowledge from appropriate sources and utilizing it to make positive impacts on organizations. Leaders should make use of the available information on various elements affecting organizations and consequently leading organizations to success. On the other hand, tacit knowledge is that which is contained in human resources (Herschel, Nemati & Steiger, 2001). An organization can only tap into this knowledge by providing its employees with an appropriate environment to use their abilities. For this reasons, leaders should work on building good relationships within organizations so as to provide good platforms for the exploitation of explicit knowledge. Conclusion In conclusion, it can be acknowledged from this essay that leadership has a direct relationship with an organization’s success. The essay discussed how to make good leaders. It was identified that the development of appropriate values, personal development, flexibility, learning, team skills and communication are key elements that lead to the development of good leaders. The essay also identified three main leadership styles namely transformational, transactional and directive leadership styles. It was seen that each style has specific impacts on an organization. The adoption of any of them depends on organizational dynamics. The essay also discussed about the importance of appropriate decision making in leadership development. It outlined four basic steps of improving decision making namely; identification, inventory, intervention and institutionalization. Lastly, the essay discussed the importance of knowledge in leadership development. 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