The Role of the Leader and Leadership Styles - Essay Example

Leaders of the Future Student name Course name Institution Date of submission Student Number PART 1: The role of the leader: Leadership comprise of the set of actions intended to bring effectiveness, order, and success in an organisation (Jiang 2014). Leadership is a process of influencing individuals towards attaining organisational goals. It also refers to individuals, who select, trains, equips, and influences followers, who possess divergent skills, abilities and talents. It influences the followers to focus their attention on attaining the objectives, and missions of an organisation, or to readily and passionately apply emotions, spiritual and physical energy towards coordinated efforts aimed at attaining the missions and objectives of an organisation (Mendes & Stander 2011). To achieve such an influence, a leader conveys a prophetic vision of the future in clear terms that resonates with the values and the beliefs of the followers to enable them understand and interpret the future, in terms of the efforts they apply at present. Concerning the relationship between management and leadership, while the two are not the same, they co-exist or go hand in hand. Additionally, while the manager’s job is to coordinate, plan, budget and organise, the leader’s job is to motivate and inspire. Additionally, the manager minimises uncertainties and ensures stability and regularity of the organisation. The manager also gets to implement the direction and vision the leader provides. He also coordinates, staffs the organisation, and handles day-to-day organisational problems. Therefore, while the manager seeks to maintain, the leaders seeks to develop. At the same time, while the leader inspires, the managers controls. Again, while the leader concentrates on people, the managers concentrate on the organisational systems and structures. Unlike the leaders, the managers consist of members of an organisation who take charge of work performance of other members of the organisation. Unlike the managers, they have formal authority to convert organisational resources into work outputs and to make decisions (Lunenburg 2010). At my organisations, there are basically three levels of authority and responsibility of a leader in terms of their management roles: the top-level, middle-level and bottom-level. The three are in line with the three-tiered organizational design. At the bottom-level, leadership is essentially supervision and allocation of tasks. In the middle-level, leadership establishes operational goals and coordination of efforts. At the top-level leadership layer creates a vision and sets corporate objectives (Lopez 2014). As observed, while there may not be an absolute definition of leadership, other than an individual who influences actions and behaviours, it is easy to conclude leadership is essentially a trait, since the leaders display different qualities, such as decisiveness, authenticity, and confidence. Leadership can also be viewed, as ability since the leaders has to have the capability to perform certain actions that make the followers to feel comfortable and confident. A leader is also a skill since the leader has to show competency in undertaking tasks from the start to finish. Next, leadership is behaviour since it influences the behaviours of others (Lunenburg 2010). Regarding the role of leadership, a leader has to show four key capabilities: visioning, relating, sense making and inventing. Sense making denotes that leaders play the role of interpreting developments in terms of business environment. On the other hand, relating describes the leaders’ capacity to build trusting relationships (Lunenberg 2010). Visioning shows that leaders play the role of communication a convincing image of the future of the organisation. Lastly, inventing denotes that leaders have to play the role of changing and the capacity to develop new ways of completing tasks. The leader also develops the teams understanding of its shared purpose and organisational direction. To ensure this, a leader has to understand the diversity of the members of the team and achieve unity of common directions and values without attempting to destroy the uniqueness of each member of the team (Lunenburg 2010). The leader can also attain this through innovative flexible means of training, motivating, supporting and providing each member of the team with the resources relative to the value of attaining the team objective, as well as the growth of the followers. In this way, the leader enables the follower to be innovative and to be self-directed, and to allow the team members to learn from his (the leader) mistake, successes and failures in the process of attaining the objectives. The leader achieves this through creation of trust and credibility with the team members through interaction and feedback (Jiang 2014). Leaders play an integral role in maintenance of integrity, fairness and consistency in action planning and decision-making. This is since leaders are visionary leaders who must lead by example. Leaders who demonstrate integrity, fairness and consistency to influence the action of others also influence the followers to demonstrate the same (Lopez 2014). Indeed, this signifies an authentic leaders who is able to balance both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, integrate personal life with work life with moral soundness and build team support with fairness and consistency. In this way, an authentic leader is able to empower the followers rather than centralise power. PART 2: Leadership Styles Leadership style refers to the ways in which leaders manage their projects. Based on the Charismatic or Visionary school of theory of leadership, two types of leadership styles exist: transformational and situational leadership (Jiang 2014). The transformational leadership shows charisma, engenders pride, respect and trust and develops visions. It also offers motivation and inspiration through creation of high expectations and shaping out desirable behaviour. Transformations leadership also gives regards to the individual members of the organisation by paying attention to their interests and granting them personality and respect. It also offers the members of the team intellectual stimulation by challenging them with new practical ideas and designs or working (Lopez 2014). While transformational leaders tend to lead by relying on their personal traits, vision and inspiration, the situational leaders count on their intuition and scrutiny of a particular situation to exercise their leadership in a manner that is realistic, although depending on that specific situation. On the other hand, Situational leadership is based on the underlying situations encountered in an organisation at particular point in time – unlike transformational leadership style that relies on the traits of the leader. The situational leadership is therefore, contingent the idea that a leader has to adapts his leadership to each situation encountered (Lopez 2014). It is therefore, argued that both situational leadership and transactional leadership are efficient styles of organizational leadership although contingent on the work situation or environment. Seeking transformation of an organization means ensuring relative makeover. It also implies that the organisation is experiencing a change in philosophy or setting its work processes towards a new perspective of direction. Transformation leaders are effective in situation where a company specifically requires a leader who can head a new operation in situations where it in flux or getting on substantial changes. This is since transformational leaders tend to have strong passion and vision for attaining great accomplishments, although on short-term basis. In this case, however, a transformational leader has to have strong vision. This is specifically so because employees tend to feel more comfortable once they gain an insight into the organisation’s direction, and vision (Jiang 2014). Through passion, the transformational leader is able to convey his vision to the employees and the company. The significance of this is that in situations where the employees have low morale and the organisation needs to make significant changes in direction, the transformation leader conveys the direction by convincing the employees of the long-term vision and the things that must be done to attain it. To this end, the transformational leaders are highly regarded for having personal charisma that allows them to motivate and inspire workers to change their roles and to undertake tasks in compliance with new organizational philosophy (Lopez 2014). A range of factors relate to the concept of situational leadership, such as organizational culture, external relationships, group management and resources. Situational leader acknowledges culture where strong emphasis is placed on cooperation and teamwork. In this regards, the situational leader is likely to base his communication with certain employee on how effectively he fits into such team-oriented culture (Macartney 2014). In a different example, in situations where the company experiences less profitability and undergoes restructuring, the situational leader places emphasis on retention of best-performing employees and gives them better rewards to prioritise individual developments for success of the organisation (Danish & Usman 2010). Therefore, transformational leadership could be viewed as a single preferred leadership style. Conversely, situational leadership can be viewed as means of applying divergent leadership skills to motivation and inspire the capabilities of the followers (Macartney 2014). Theorists, such as Kurt Lewin posit that three leader behaviours or leadership styles exist: democratic, autocratic, and laissez-faire. Autocratic leaders tend to make one-sided, unilateral of independent decision and may therefore, dictate terms of performing tasks or recommend punitive feedback when employees fail on a duty. For instance, in situations where a situational leader is aware that the project deadline may not be attained, he selects the right people independently, assigns the task and clarifies to them the likely punishment, such as layoffs, unless the project is successful. On the other hand, democratic leaders believe in group decision-making to determine the terms of work and goals. Other than use punitive measures, they will use feedback to coach the employees. For instance, in a situation where the transformational leader is aware that a project deadline may not be met, he calls a meeting and suggests ways in which the deadline should be met. Before reaching a decision, he asks the members of the project team to brainstorm on alternatives before finally leading them into reaching a consensus on the right strategies (Macartney 2014). Lastly, the laissez-faire leaders allow the followers to have absolute freedom, and do little to monitor or give feedback. For instance, despite a transformation leader knowing of a likely project fail, he allows the team to pursue their own strategies and will only coach them on what should be done right. In other words, the team members are at liberty to seek their own strategies with minimal interference from the leader. John Adair’s proposed Action-centred leadership, which is a leadership model that centred on what leaders need to do to be more efficient. It proposed that leaders have to do three things: achieve task, create and maintain a team and lastly, improve the team members’ skills and proficiency. In this respect, transformational leadership centres on giving contingent rewards to achieve task, create and maintain a team and lastly, improve the team members’ performance. Additionally, a transactional leader will reward employees for attaining certain performance standards. On the other hand, situational leaders will most often take a punitive action when tasks are not being performed as required, create and maintain a team and lastly, improve his team’s performance. PART 3: Culture and Motivation Organisational structure, or framework of leadership, is a significant factor that enables an organisation to meet its missions and objectives. Typically, an organisation may be structured in terms of functions, where functions to be managed are divided into processes, such as marketing, customer service, operations, finance, public relations, or location, where the regional units take charge of certain operational processes, or product, where the organisation is divided into specific products provided. This also means that the organisational structure can affect the span of control, which is the number of individuals assigned to direct supervision of departmental head, manager or supervisor. For instance, a large company, such as British Petroleum (BP) uses hierarchical structures, which requires that varied levels of employees report upwards to a team leader, who later reports to the operational management. Under such a situation, the organisational structure affects the number of employees that can be assigned to a team leader. While the team leader may directly supervise 10 employees, a broad chain of command narrows the span of control. Such a structure would limit communication with the employees. A narrow span of control in typical hierarchical organisational structure contributes to communication problems due to many layers between the top-level management and front-line employees by limiting open communication. In regards to building trust, Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) posits that trust, fairness, and reciprocity are important components for effective functioning of a market economy. Hence, leaders need to build a culture of trust since it is the right thing to do to promote the overall well-being of their enterprises (Shahid & Azhar 2013). The key things a leader might do to establish a culture of trust and respect include encouraging open communication between the management, colleagues and teams, as well sharing important information openly regarding the challenges and success. The management should also animate the principles of integrity by matching actions with words. This also means that the management should live up to the values it advocates. At this stage, the leadership should also inspire employees in leading by example (Shahid & Azhar 2013). The management should encourage clear communication to keep the workforce abreast and to enable them pay attention to important facets of the organisation. At this stage, the management should communicate the significance of ethics and integrity. The management should also commit itself to attaining its promises and pledges. Rather than over-commit, it should be realistic and in most case, accept accountability for conducts, as well as act ethically. The organisation’s leadership should also be credible, as well as engage in honest conversations (Shahid & Azhar 2013). Diversity in a team covers a range of aspects, such as language, religion, experience, expertise, race and age (Angouri 2009). Pooling individuals with diverse experiences and skills can strengthen the productivity of the team and its responsiveness to diverse situations. Less experienced employees are able to learn from the experienced ones while the more experienced ones polish their skills. This also means that it leads to on-the-job learning and growth. It also serves to break the barriers of xenophobia and ethnocentrism. Hence, employees become all-rounded members of a team. Content theories centred on aspects within an individual that strengthen motivation, direct, sustain or curtail behaviour. They mostly consist of theories that are concerned with motivating employees. For instance, Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theorises that people have five categories of needs that can be grouped in a hierarchy. The theory argues that needs have to be fulfilled in a hierarchal format (Tsai 2011). Once each successive need is satisfied, a person moves up the pyramid. Additionally, the higher a person moves up pyramid, the more the motivating factors move from the external environment towards internal needs. At the first level are the physiological needs, such as food, shelter, and clothing. The second level consists of safety needs, such as security. At the third level are the relationship needs, such as love and companionship. At the fourth level are the esteem needs, such as feelings of admiration, of proficiency, and self-sufficiency. At the fifth level are the Self-actualisation needs (Tsai 2011). Process theories describe and analyse how individual’s behaviours are directed, encouraged, sustained or curtained. Examples include the goal setting, Vroom’s expectancy, and equity theory. Vroom’s Expectancy Model posits that, people are likely to choose subconsciously between certain courses of action depending on their attitudes, beliefs, and viewpoints due to their desire to seek pleasures and evade pain. In which case, employees have varied skills, competences and experiences, and as a result need different motivation, interest, self-esteem, and self-confidence (Isaac et al. 2001). References Angouri, J 2009, "Managing Cultural Difference and Struggle in the context of the Multinational Corporate Workplace: Solution or Symptom?" 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