Effective Communication and Leadership - Case Study Example

ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND PERFORMANCE Name: Course: Tutor: Date: Abstract Leaders are individuals who always do the right thing; this is according to Professor Warren G. Bennis. Leadership, on the other end, is an art of directing someone to do what you want because they want he want to do it, this is said by Dwight D. Eisenhower. Leadership skills can be used and applied in different situations and settings, in most cases, we find that leaders are seen in many sectors of the universal facets of the world, politics, economy, business management, organizational management and even in the education sector. Leadership is basically the ability to point out what needs to be undertaken, leading the way to the implementation of the project and seeing to it that the mission and objectives are achieved. In this paper, we are going to analyse what makes a great leader, leadership skills and how we can learn from great leaders. Elon Musk, the founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX is the focus of our discussion. An analysis of his leadership skill and qualities will help shed light into unmasking the qualities needed of a leader. Leadership: Focus on Elon Musk founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors and Space X. Introduction Elon Musk is a South African born Canadian-American business leader, who is a certified engineer, inventor and investor. Elon is the self-made billionaire who has actually built himself from scratch without losing his vision of his life achievements earlier in life. Having grown from a humble background in South Africa, he studied in Waterkloof House Preparatory School for lower primary education. He then joined Pretoria High School for his secondary education, which led him to join Queens University in Kinston, Ontario. Later on, he joined University of Pennsylvania and for his PhD, he joined University of Stanford where he majored in Applied Physics. However, he later dropped out after two days and went on to start his entrepreneurial aspirations in the Internet, renewable energy and space engineering (Strauss, 2008). Elon Musk developed his leadership skills and has built it over the years through founding and co-founding many companies that grew and developed to global status. Companies like Zip2, PayPal, SpaceX and Tesla Motors have all contributed to the development of great leadership skills that Musk possess currently. Leadership is brewed out of experience and learning, a great leader is a great student, the ability to lead comes from the individual’s ability to learn and hear people out (Strauss, 2008). Leaders help people do the right things, they do this by setting a direction, developing an aspiring vision of the future, through the creation of something new and guiding people through the change. Elon Musk can be considered as a transformational leader, he has demonstrated transformational leadership through the years. The “transformational leadership model initially proposed by James Mac Gregor Burns and later on was developed by Bernard Bass highlights that the ability for visionary thinking and bringing about a visible change is the fact that creates a difference between a transformational leader and a managerial leader (Bomey, 2015). According to transformational leadership, leaders should have the ability to have a visionary thinking of the future ahead, he/she should be able to motivate and inspire people to engage the future, he should be able to manage the delivery of the vision and finally ensure that he coaches and builds a team that will actualise the achievement of the dream. All the above leadership skills define any transformational leader. The paper will analyse the above qualities in relation to Elon Musk to check for the correlation of success to the above leadership skills (Sparks, 2015). Leaders help in creating vision of the future, which is achieved through the imagination of what you can achieve. In business, a vision has to be realistic and is achieved through creating a depiction of where you want the business to be in future. Leaders have the ability to have a clear sight of where they want to be in the coming future, which is developed through analysing the current business situation, the challenges and the strengths of the business. By so doing, gives him/her the base to actually see the trend the business has to take in order to be a strategic business leader in the industry. Vision helps to provide direction, it helps one set priorities and even gives one a marker for what and where the business needs to reach in the coming future (Strauss, 2008). Through analysis of the Porters Five Forces model, it helps leaders analyse their current situation, which helps one rethink how the business industry is going to change; and the way their competitors in the business will react to the evolution. A leader looks at ways they can successfully innovate in a bid to save the business and their chances of succeeding in future market places. A great leader is able to give a forecast of the future and envision the future of the company in the case that their state of operation is not adjusted to suit incoming changes in the business industry. Leaders are problem solvers as they look further ahead and are not always satisfied with the way things are in the current state (Iszatt-White & Saunders, 2014). Elon Musk during the development of his second company, X.com, which was a financial management web software that dealt with email payment, he saw what he needed to change in his business in order for him to survive the ever changing technological industry. X.com dealt with email payment of transactions and it helped many businesses quicken their transitions. Hence, made business efficient, but this was never enough for Elon. Therefore, he went ahead and later on developed PayPal, an online-payment portal. PayPal has since grown to global standards and is still used currently as the best option for online financial transactions. This can actually give a practical example of a leader’s visionary thinking. He developed the idea with X.com and later on went to greater heights (SpaceX.com, 2015). Elon’s ability of peering into the future with a telescope is a quality that all global leaders should possess. People like Elon Musk have a vision that is revolutionary while the ordinary man has a vision that is evolutionary. For example, the state of California plans to set up a high speed railway line that will aid in reducing time taken travelling from Los Angeles to San Francisco (Blanken, 2013). The reduction will be to three hours with speeds of 200 miles per hour. However, Elon Musk is giving a different response to the traffic problem. By developing a high speed rail called a “Hyperloop” that is set to bridge LA and San Francisco in thirty minutes, the travel speed is considered to be 800 miles per hour. According to Elon, this is the definition of revolutionary thinking for the sake of making life better for humanity. Self -Confidence There are other skills that leaders should possess is the ability to have confidence in their systems and beliefs. The greatest leaders out here have the biggest and unshakable self-confidence, they believe in one-self. As a leader, you should be able to believe in yourself, you have to direct other people into following the path you have chosen for them. It becomes useless to lead people if you do not have the heart to go through what is required in terms of actualizing the project. Confidence portrays itself in the face of the leader and workers look upon the confidence of the leader in order for them to believe in what they are engaged in (Smith, 2014). Elon Musk has shown great confidence in himself because he has gone all the way in financing his own ideas into thriving businesses. He has invested over $100 million into SpaceX, $10 million to Solar City and over $55 Million in Tesla Motors Inc. In reference to this, it is evident that a great leader has a great believe in themselves. As such, they can risk all their cash and source of livelihoods to work out their projects into making them a success. Confidence is the key to everything out here. A leader should possess a great amount of confidence in his business, the methods of operations and his members of staff. Having confidence in your workers is very essential for the attainment of business success. If employees believe that you trust in their abilities to handle certain tasks they will have the confidence to actually handle the tasks on their own (Mainwaring, 2014). Confidence in the methods undertaken by the business to work out their goals should be believed in by the leader. If you are not confident of the methods and procedures that have been put in place, it is the duty of the leader to reshuffle them in ways you want them to work out. Business success is all about having confidence in the business, the people and the methods undertaken to actualise one’s dream. Perseverance Leadership is all about knowing how to persevere in the case of unexpected changes in the business. Perseverance in the business world is a skill that one should innately have or else giving up is just a step away. Keeping faith in the success of the business is very important, the ability to survive a loss and rising up from the ashes, much more experienced and learned from the occurrence of the disastrous situation. Elon Musk, for instance, has shown a great deal of perseverance in many of his attempts to get his space shuttle to launch to earth’s orbit. The first time, the launch failed because the engines caught fire and the second attempt the shuttle did not go as far onto the earth’s orbit (Roth, 2014). These two attempts did not take down the great Elon Musk, but rather, he later went on and initiated a third attempt to get into space. In his third attempt, he was successful having learned a great deal of lessons from his first two attempts. It was in June 2010 that his rocket named Falcon made a successful launch to the earth’s orbit. This can actually tell you the features of great leaders and having perseverance is the key to success in the business world. The goal is never to give up too soon in your dreams (Strauss, 2008). Integrity Integrity is another aspect of great leadership spectrum of qualities. The best and most effective leaders operate with high levels of integrity. The ability to repay credit and the ability to hold on to your word to the latter is a key feature in a trusted leader (Cardinal, 2015). Leaders who are not loyal to their friends and business partners often miss out on business opportunities and better deals that would propel people them to move forward in their business arena. Integrity is all about taking the high road. In the case of our investor and inventor Elon Musk, integrity is a vital part of his nature. During the founding of Tesla Motors, he had invested over $55 million of his own cash into the investment. The problem is that Tesla Motors could never actually grow without more cash as a lot of cash went to manufacturing costs. Consequently, Elon decided to borrow a loan worth $400 million from the government. This cash helped Tesla Motors to grow to what it is at the moment (Tesla.com, 2015). He later repaid the loan to the Department of Energy and the members of congress who helped actualise his ambitions. Integrity is very important in the business world; it is people who invest in you. More so, people like to invest their cash in someone they can trust will deliver to them the goal they all want to reach. Trust is very important and as a leader, you should be trustworthy and very accountable of your spending in the business sector. It is important to always take a chance to ride the high road in life and to achieve big, it is important to take the high road and swim with the sharks of life. Learning through Mistakes The ability to learn and move on in life is a very important skill key business leader should adopt. Continuous and consistent learning should be a priority. Putting into consideration, effective business leaders like Elon Musk are always generating new ideas that transform into great businesses, which help alleviate many problems and challenges faced by the society we live in. Elon musk is always developing new ideas almost every day. His ability to do so comes from his reading culture. He has a constant reading habit that has made him be more experienced and intellectual when it comes to tackling existing business problems (Venkataraani, 2014). Through reading, one is able to get insights of new ideas and is enlightened of the problems and challenges facing the society of today. To become a great business leader and innovator, one should be able to piece two ideas together to actually come up with a suitable and functional solution for the society. This kind of working mechanism helps one to leap forward in business and life in general. Elon Musk is identified as a visionary leader since he has the ability to see into what the society will need in the near future. He has actually helped out in providing solutions that the planet seriously needs. He has managed to develop sustainable solutions in a clear and retrospective way that is purely developmental and forward moving. He is considered as a great builder and his main business partner is his brother. He has portrayed the ability to work on projects with people and bring in like-minded individuals on a single sitting. At SpaceX, all the engineers and designers are all working under one roof, which has helped them to have a common strategy and understanding of the goals needed to be achieved (Venkataraani, 2014). Leadership is not a smooth walk in the park and leaders have to be conscious and considerate. They should be aware of what is facing their employees and customers. Leaders should be able to intervene between problems that face customer-employee relationship. It is very important that solutions be devised fast enough to satisfy the customer and hence, it encourages customers to retain-ability. Leaders should be able to direct their employees where they are deemed to be incorrect or even when they are being strict to the set strands of the organization (Mainwaring, 2014). A leader should be able to find ways to offer the best solution that the customer needs without giving false promises. Leadership is not very different to management of worker as it is all about giving the direction and the solutions to the problems that come their way. Managerial functions are mostly left to C.E.Os to offer stability and guide employees in executing the required goals. Basically, the management are the main agents of order and control in an existing business. There are quite a number of key responsibilities of leaders in the revolutionizing of business to empires. Motivation of Employees Leaders should be able to motivate and inspire their employees to believe in what they do and what he or she is proposing to them. Having a vision is the bedrock of leadership, there should be a factor of motivation to actually help realize the vision (WSJ, 2015). At the beginning of any project, there is always heightened enthusiasm for the business thus; it is easy to wind people into engaging in the project. In the long run, when things are toughening the employees start developing ears of the actually realization of the goals, some may think that it was delusional. It can be difficult to find ways to keep the vision inspiring in the long run, but when this occurs, big changes should be made to the project. As leader, you should be able to recognize this fact and motivate employees in ways that they will not forget the big picture. The organizational interests should much with the individual’s needs, set goals and personal aspirations of the workers. It is through the constant reminder of the benefits of the feats that need to be achieved. The restating of the vision is important to remind people of the initial enthusiasm they initially had. Leaders should take time to frequently remind their employees in an attractive and a motivationally engaging way. Motivation can be achieved by a leader through a natural appeal and a charismatic way of stating issues. People listen to leaders who have earned the credibility to talk to them and make them listen. It is relatively easy to motivate people and lead them in the direction that you want them to follow (Iszatt-White & Saunders, 2014). Management of Activities Leaders should be involved in the management of the vision. Leaders should ensure that all the necessary facts of the vision should be handled perfectly and properly managed by themselves personally or by the people he/she trusts. That is, a manager or group of directors to whom he delegates most responsibilities. This group of individuals should ensure that the vision and set goals are achieved successfully with no flaws or take downs. To ensure proper management of the set goals, the team that is involved in working the vision should have performance goals that are all linked to the overall vision (https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMM_52.htm). The use of management approaches like “Management By Wandering Around (MBWA),” are important in helping out in understanding the responsibilities of each and every department, this will help in micromanagement of issues that come up. Change should be managed effectively by leaders, this ensures that the changes needed to actualise the vision are put in line. Consequently, ensures that all the functionalities needed are executed so when they are all sampled together, all the ingredients for change are available with the necessary people to back it up (Cardinal, 2015). Coaching and Team Building Coaching and team building is very important in the road to achievement of the stated vision. Team building is a very important aspect of getting loyal, dedicated and committed workers (All about Team Building). To develop a great achievers team, the leader should understand team dynamics. Team work dynamics are easy to implement with the use of approaches like Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing theory developed by Bruce Tuckman. This approach takes in the factors of FORMING a strong team by choosing individuals to play certain roles. Then the next aspect of it is STORMING, which is executed in ways that the participants are informed of how they are going to work things out. In addition to the roles they will handle, the goals needed to be achieved and development of communication pathways all forms objectivity in the team (Anderson, 2015). Next is NORMING, this is the making of a casual way of carrying out activities and is the creation of a business culture of conducting activities. Norming creates a commonality between the peers in the team. The culture developed helps in making relationships work comfortably and easily (Bomey, 2015). A great leader ensures that all the members have the necessary knowledge that will help them execute their responsibilities with ease and comfortably. This can be done by creating a communication pathway that employees will be able to communicate to him and also give a response back to the team (Anderson, 2015). The imparting of skills and knowledge to employees involve training and coaching of people to improve their own personal and team performance in overall. Leadership is also spotting the leadership ability in people and seeing the abilities of other individuals. Long term success can be ensured through the identification of leadership qualities in members of the team as these individuals will propel progress even in the absence of the leader. Organizational Effectiveness Leadership goes all the way with organizational organization in conducting of business activities. Organizational effectiveness in the achievement of set goals is the means by which the organization takes in undertaking their activities. The results they get out of this process is a determinant factor for the success of an organization. Effectiveness is a tricky bit, but it can be achieved in organizations through monitoring of organizational activities, from logistics, production, and co-ordination all the way to profit making. As long as an organization is making money, the methods put in place to ensure this does not matter, what matters is the effectiveness of each and every department in the organization. The organizational goals should be properly stated and explicit (Bomey, 2015). The goals should be of a manageable number, too much expectations of employees creates disorder. A great leader with a big vision should be able to come up with ways to actually subdivide all the jobs that need to be done. The subdivision or division of labour entails dividing tasks to smaller bits, which helps in executing and management of the required responsibilities. Business leaders should ensure that the goals set must be SMART, in the sense that they are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. Business set goals should be SPECIFIC, people should know what they are actually supposed to do to achieve the vision. MEASURABILITY of the goals should be seen in the light that the goal can be achieved through a given amount of investment, the investment should be realistic. People should be able to know how much input power is required, the level of commitment, the seriousness of the matter and the value attached on the level of importance. The next bit is ATTAINABILITY of the idea; the chance of success in the implementation of the project is very important. Business leaders should never be delusional, one should analyse the project in mind and discuss it with other likeminded individuals in order to arrive at the conclusion of the attainability of the organizational objectives. RELEVANCE of a given business idea should be the key to execution of the business idea. It is important to actually ensure that the idea can work perfectly in the current situation of the business. Goal setting should be TIME-BOUND in the sense that they should take a given amount of time. The lack of stipulations for undertaking certain activities can actually drag the project a long way further hence, causing lag backs and time wastage. Visionaries and business leaders should ensure that their ideas are SMART (Cardinal, 2015). Conclusion In spite of all the above, it is evident that the strongest factor distinguishing Musk and his vision plus the transformational leader is what is called on ethical standards, moral convictions, and values. According to Northouse, transformational leadership and pseudo transformational leaders like Jim Jones rely mostly on coercive power use that have helped leaders enact change. Reference List: Anderson (2015). Understanding communication. A key to leadership success. University of Chicago. Anthony, L. (2015). Effective communication and leadership. Demand Media. Retrieved http://smallbusiness.chron.com/effective-communication-leadership-5090.html Bomey, N. (2015, May 6). 5 secrets behind Elon Musk’s Style. Detroit Free Press. 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