The Concept of Managers as Effective Leaders - Assignment Example

Leadership and Management Name Institution Course Date Leadership and Management Q1. Discuss the concept of managers as effective leaders Leadership and management are two concepts that are often confused for one another as most people use the two concepts interchangeably. Although leadership and management share a lot in common, Waldman et al. (2001) notes that the two concepts differ in many ways. Leadership is a process of using the authority to influence others to work towards the achievement of a given set of objectives. One of the principal role of a leader is to develop a vision for a company and rally subordinates towards the achievement of the visions. Goleman (2000) argues that a leader has a duty to ensure that the followers are motivated to ensure that the vision is adopted. In the event of a crisis, a leader must ensure that the business practices are adjusted to address the challenges. For instance, a leader must ensure that a company take risks, come up with innovative strategies, and capitalize on strengths and opportunities while eliminating threats and risks that a company might be exposed. Additionally, leaders are also viewed as change agents for a company. Management, on the other hand, is the processes that ensure that an organization functions (Waldman et al., 2001). The processes that constitute management include planning, controlling, staffing, budgeting, measuring performance, job clarification and problem-solving. According to management guru, Henri Fayol, the work of managers is to make plans and forecasts, organize work, direct subordinates under them, and co-ordinate resources such as time, money and people as well as control the activities and human capital to ensure that organizational goals are achieved (Fayol, 2013). Managers as Effective Leaders Although it emerges that management and leadership are two different but related concepts, an effective manager needs also to be an effective leader to ensure organizational success. There are different leadership styles that are adopted by different executives in the running of an organization. The first is coercive leadership which involves a leader demanding instant action (Northouse, 2009). Second is authoritative leadership which is a leadership style where a leader making unilateral decision that subordinates are to follow. Third is democratic leadership, where a leader makes decision after consulting with the subordinates (George, 2003). Fourth is affiliative leadership, which involves a leader operates based on emotional bond and harmony that they develop. Fifth is pacesetting leadership, where a leader expects excellence and self-direction from its staff. Finally, there is coaching leadership which focuses on the creation of future personnel. However, Goleman et al. (2004) study found that only four of these leadership styles have positive influence on the subordinates with coercive and pacesetting having a negative effect on the employees. For instance, the study found that coercive and pacesetting styles are neither flexible not motivating. This implies that, for a manager to be effective, he/she must adopt an effective leadership style that has a positive effect on the followers. For example, Kraut et al. (1989) suggest that a manager must be able to communicate the vision of a company to the followers and be able to rally followers towards the achievement of those visions. This implies that a manager must be able to take his/her time to talk to the subordinates, share the vision of the organization with them and encourage them to work hard to ensure that the vision is realized. Practically, when Richard Branson founded Virgin Group, the first thing he did was creating a vision for the company, which he communicated to his followers and inspire them to work towards the achievement of the vision and this indicates a practical example of management through effective leadership. This means that, to succeed as a manager, one need to be an effective leader as this would ensure that a company has a vision and employees are motivated to do more than the minimum required and ensures that disorders and chaos are avoided. Leaders as Effective Managers Just like effective managers need to be effective leaders, so applies to effective leaders that also need to be effective managers to ensure organizational success. As earlier noted, the principal roles of a leader are to create a vision, inspire and motivate subordinates, encourage productivity and teamwork, empower, mentor and build relationships among others. However, a leader cannot succeed in achieving all these without being an effective manager. Instead, a leader must also be an effective manager to succeed (Northouse, 2009). This implies that a leader must be able to engage in managerial functions such as planning, budgeting, and staffing and problem solving to succeed to be able to sustain change. House (1999) observed that leadership without management cannot result in the achievement of sustainable change. This, therefore, means that a leader also needs to be a manager to ensure that the changes made and the strategies introduced are sustainable. For instance, merely being able to inspire people to follow the vision of a company or motivating employees to work had is not enough to ensure success. Instead, George (2003) suggests that a leader must begin by ensuring that a company has enough resources that include time, money and people to do a job to ensure success. For instance, before a leader can undertake a project, he or she must ensure that there is proper planning and that there are enough resources and people to undertake the project before embarking on project implementation and motivating staff. The Balance Needed between the Demands of Management and Demands of Leadership Leadership and management have different demands that often pull in the opposite directions. However, both are important for the success of an organization. On one hand, management has all to do with planning, budgeting, directing, staffing and problem-solving among others (Northouse, 2009). Leadership, on the other hand, is all about change. Leadership is about defining the vision for a company, inspiring people towards the attainment of the visions, as well as taking advantages of the opportunities and minimizing threats. It is critical to acknowledge that both are important for organizational success. For instance, lack of a structured management and control is a recipe for chaos is a business and this indicates the importance of management to business success. At the same time, lack of effective leadership can result in lack of motivation on the part of employees, which affect productivity and creating chaos and disorder (Stordeur et al., 2000). Similarly, management without leadership results in a situation where an organization ends up not knowing where it is going, thus resulting in not change while leadership without management also results in difficulty in achieving sustainable change. Therefore, striking a balance between the demands of the two is necessary for organizational success. Q2. Leader’s Role in Creating a Vision Leaders play a big role in ensuring the success of an organization. One of the key functions of leaders is the creation of a vision and the strategies to achieve the vision. A vision is a statement that defines where an organization wants to be in the long-term. George (2003) states that creating a good vision for a company is important for the success of a company because a vision acts a roadmap of where a company is going. When effectively articulated and followed, everything in an organization responds to the prevailing challenges in a manner that moves a company into the future instead of maintaining the status quo. Peter Drucker argues that a good vision must link the present to the future, inspire people and promote commitment and give meaning to work (Drucker, 2012). In this regard, it become clear that vision plays four major functions that includes linking present to the future, inspiring workers and garnering commitment, providing meaning for work and sets the standards of excellence. A leader, therefore, has a role of creating a vision that is capable of engaging the imagination and inspiring people. Amazon is one of the companies that have a good vision statement that reads, “Our vision is to be earth's most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online” (Amazon, 2016).The success of Amazon in the e-commerce industry is attributed largely to this vision statement. Today, Amazon is one the world’s largest e-commerce company. This vision statement was effective considering that it defined to the employees where Amazon hopes to be in the future, which is to build a place where people can shop online. This statement inspired the people who are working hard to ensure that this vision is achieved. On the contrary, Enron is an example of a company whose vision failed to work. Enron’s vision statement read, “To become the world's leading energy company—creating innovative and efficient energy solutions for growing economies and a better environment worldwide.” Although the vision was good on paper, the failure of the Enron leaders to inspire workers to work towards the achievement of this vision resulted in the company engaging in scandals that eventually caused the unfortunate demise of this company. Q3. Evaluate how empowerment and trust through ethical leadership impacts on organizational practice Companies are increasingly recognizing the need to conduct businesses in an ethical manner and that ethical cultures are cultivated through ethical leadership. Companies that conduct businesses in an ethical manner stands to benefit from increased efficiency in decision making and operations, increase employee commitment, customer loyalty, improved product quality and financial performance. However, empowerment and trust are some of the major ingredients of ethical leadership that impacts on the organizational practice. Empowerment involves giving the subordinates the authority to take control over their lives and jobs. Empowerment is considered a critical aspect of ethical leadership because it recognizes the independence of the employees to take control over their lives and what they do (Lok & Crawford, 1999). This impacts positively on organizational practice as it increases the employee morale and commitment to the organizational goals. Consequently, this results in increased productivity, which eventually results in organizational success. Like empowerment, trust is a critical component of ethical leadership. Trust is an important component of ethical leadership it helps in building a positive relationship between a leader and the subordinates. According to House (1999), there is greater trust when workers view an organization and its leaders as ethical. Similarly, studies indicate that stronger relationships exist in organizations with higher levels of trust. Additionally, trust is an important aspect of ethical leadership it helps build a business environment, where people are treated with respect (Breckenridge, 2000). Therefore, it is very important for leaders that hope to drive their companies to success to consider adopting ethical leadership that focuses on empowerment and trust as these elements have been shown to have positive influence on the organizational practices. Q4. Evaluate How personal energy, self-belief and commitment impacts leadership style The leadership style that a leader adopts has a huge impact on the motivational level of employees and how work is done. Leaders adopt different leadership styles which vary from one leader to another. Schubert (1988) defines leadership style as the style used by a leader to provide direction, motivate the staff and implement organizational plans. Common leadership styles include pacesetting, authoritative, affiliative, democratic, coercive and coaching. Coercive is a leadership style which involves a leader demanding instant action. Authoritative leadership is a leadership style where a leader makes unilateral decision that subordinates are to follow. Democratic leadership is where a leader makes decision after consulting with the subordinates (Bass, 1997). Affiliative leadership is that which involves a leader operates based on emotional bond and harmony that they develop. Pacesetting leadership is where a leader expects excellence and self-direction from its staff. Finally, coaching leadership is that which focuses on the creation of future personnel. Personal energy, self-belief and commitment are some of the variables that affect the leadership style adopted by a leader. Personal energy ranks among the major factors that affect the leadership style that a leader adopts. In this respect, it is very important for leaders to understand the amount of energy that they give or withdraw from the companies. Goleman (2000) shows that personal energy affects leadership style in the sense that, if a leader’s personal energy is low, they are less likely to adopt a leadership style that empower employees or motivate them to work hard. In fact, management gurus warn that, if a leader is not careful, low energy levels might make an organization to lose its energy to perform and accomplish its goals (Breckenridge, 2000). On the other hand, when a leader has high energy, they are likely to adopt a leadership style that energize and inspire confidence and performance in an organization. For instance, Bass et al. (1993) show that leaders with high personal energy tend to adopt transformational leadership style that focuses on the use of energy to inspire and motivate subordinates to success. Self-belief is another variable that has an influence on leadership style. An effective leader is that person who has a strong sense of self belief and also believes in the ability of other members of the team to deliver. As such, Breckenridge (2000) noted that, leaders with a strong sense of self-belief adopt democratic, participative, coaching and affiliative leadership styles. This is because such leaders not only believe in themselves, but also on the ability of the subordinates to deliver. As such, they are more willing to involve the subordinates in decision making and even delegating some roles to the employees because they strongly believe in their abilities to deliver. Contrastingly, leaders with low sense of self belief often do not believe on the ability of the team to deliver. Such leaders, therefore, are more likely to adopt authoritative, coercive, and pacesetting styles of leadership, according to Goleman (2000). Additionally, commitment is a variable that also has a huge influence on the kind of leadership style that a leader adopts. Leaders who have a strong sense f commitment to an organization and its success are more likely to adopt transformational, democratic, affiliative, coaching and participative leadership styles because they aim to build good relationships and inspire followers to success. On the contrary, leaders who are not committed to an organization tend to adopt an authoritative and coercive leadership styles. Distinction between two leadership styles A leadership style is a style that a leader uses to motivate employees, provide direction and implement plans. Although there are many styles of leaderships that a leader can adopt, Kurt Lewin and colleagues identified three leadership styles namely authoritative, participative and delegative leadership styles (fig. 1) (Billig, 2014). Source: Billig (2014). Authoritarian leadership is that style of leadership where a leader makes decisions unilaterally without involving the subordinates. Under this leadership, the leader makes decisions independently with the belief that the decisions are necessary for the circumstances regardless of what the members of the team feel. Accordingly, the input of the subordinates are not sought in the decision making process; rather they are expected to implement the decisions as directed by the leader. The other is participative (democratic) leadership style. Participative leadership is a style of leadership where a leader involves the members of a team in the decision making process though the final decision still lies with the leader. Under this leadership, subordinates are given a chance to provide their views and opinions as to how an organization needs to be run. Practical Value of a Leadership Style to a Manager in Achieving Organizational Objectives It is important to understand that none of these leadership styles is superior to the other since the suitability of these leadership styles vary from one situation to another. Practically, authoritarian leadership work well in crisis management or in instances where a company needs urgent turnaround. Authoritarian leadership is also appropriate for use where employees are naturally unmotivated and dislike working as suggested by McGregor Theory X (Daft, 2007). In such situations, intervention is necessary to get things done. Democratic/participative leadership is appropriate in situations where employees enjoy working, are self-motivated, creative and enjoy taking responsibility as suggested by Theory Y (Daft, 2007). Additionally, participative leadership is appropriate for situations, where the members of the team are knowledgeable, and skilled. However, personally I would recommend the use of participative leadership style to help achieve a successful outcome for an organization. This is because participative leadership has a lot of motivational effect on the employees, which encourages productivity, minimizes absenteeism and turnover, thus resulting in organizational success. This is unlike authoritarian leadership that can generate chaos and disorder in an organization, thus affecting organizational performance. How Situational variables influence the choice of leadership style Ekaterini (2010) argues that no single leadership style is appropriate for all situations. Rather, the leadership style that a leader adopts depends on the situation at hand. It is for this reason that leaders often use different leadership styles depending on the situation at hand. For instance, in cases of emergency, a leader might have to use authoritarian leadership to save the situation. It is for this reason that military leadership is often characterized by authoritarian leadership style, notes Ekaterini (2010). At the same time, a leader might opt to use democratic leadership style in situations, where there is a need to build consensus or support. Whenever there is a conflict in a team, this often makes leaders adopt affiliative leadership style. However, in situations where the leadership feels the need to enhance the competence of the staff, this often force leaders to adopt coaching as a leadership style while visionary or charismatic leadership is influenced by the need to have clear direction (Cairns, 1996). References Amazon. (2016). Amazon. Retrieved from http://www.amazon.in/ Bass, B. M. (1997). Does the transactional- transformational leadership paradigm transcend organizational and national boundaries? American Psychology, 52(3), 130-9 Bass, B. M., Avolio, B. J., Chemers, M. M., Ayman, R. (1993). Leadership theory and research: Perspectives and directions. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Billig, M. (2014). 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