Is the Performance of an Organisation Independent of the Organisation's Leader - Coursework Example

Leadership as a concept is getting wide spread recognition and business units wants leader who are able to guide their workforce. Business all around the world are looking for leaders who are able to mould their resources and bring the best out of them. All business units look towards leaders irrespective of the size of business. The growing importance of leadership can be adjudged by the fact that rising competition is compelling complicated decision thereby making it important that leaders continue to guide business and help the employees in difficult situations. Leadership presents different personality styles like brilliant, lonely, and imaginative and risk takers. It is hard to imagine organisations without leaders. Leaders are people who give direction to the workforce and ensure that strategies are made to help them face the difficult of situation. Leadership thus has a wide connotation and it arises due to different personality styles, attitudes, the basic concepts, relationship and self identity towards goal. The different styles and qualities thus help organisations to perform differently which becomes the critical success factor for each. A research conducted shows that leadership is a vast concept compared to management and leaders have broader roles to play. (Angelo, 2007, pg 61) Leaders ensure to use the surroundings to their effect so that maximum can be extracted from the employees. Leaders assume a much bigger role and try to integrate the different cultures, devise mechanism to motivate the employees, look towards different compensation plans and look at ways to ensure effective leadership. Thus organisations need leaders with different traits. A research says that the opposing style forms a part of the organisation and to be successful it is important to have all qualities. (Kumle, Kelly & Nancy, 2000, pg 1) This research thus highlights that both this qualities though different in their approach gives similar results. Another study shows that leadership differ on personality styles. According to a study leaders are brilliant, lonely, and imaginative and risk takers. (Yukl, 1989, pg 251) Thus, there is a difference in their style of working. This difference has given opposing views though at the end it is aimed at the same result. According to another study leaders have charismatic and transformational style. (James, 2006, pg 1) Managers use their position for the work and leaders’ persuade and motivate people to do something. This difference style among their working has changed the perception of work. The studies thus helps to identify different traits and qualities leaders possess and the manner it shapes the working of the organisation. Leaders thus have a different horizon. This will be demonstrated by different traits and qualities demonstrated by different leaders around the world. One of the qualities which leaders demonstrate is self confidence and the ability to communicate. This can be seen in the case of George Crocker, chief executive officer of Cerebos a mid size company in Australia which produces coffee. He along with his past leaders shaped the coffee company into a big one. George used “Innovation and globalization to shape the working of the coffee giant”. (Clapper & Collins, 2010, pg 1) The leadership traits present in George helped him to change the direction in which the company worked. “He was enthusiastic, self confident and able to clearly communicate with the employees”. (Clapper & Collins, 2010, pg 1) this can be seen from the very fact that he had a vision to globalize. This ensured Cerebos was able to operate in New Zealand. George ensured that culture was integrated in such a manner that it helped the group to achieve the best result. “People belong to different caste, country, creed, colour, and region which affect the manner in which they carry out their duties”. (Innah, 2009, pg 2) This showed his self confidence and the ability to communicate clearly. This trait presents in a leader thus helps to shape the working pattern of the organisation. Leaders differ in attitude towards work. Leaders are active, personal and visualize new ways to do things. These differences bring a change in framework. They look towards achieving goals through different path. Leaders have different relation with people. Leaders work with people and are collaborative; they remove differences and focus on things to be done. This difference in style presents a picture where task is achieved differently. Leaders also use different mechanism to motivate the employee and one such is the path goal theory. In this theory it is seen that “employees are motivated to work harder and they know that their hard efforts would lead to good appraisal and this appraisal will result in incentives like bonuses, promotions and so on and this would lead towards the satisfaction of employees as his personal goals will be achieved”. (Robbins, Judge, Millet, Waters-Marsh T, Organisational Behaviour, 2008, pg 143) This helps to keep the employee motivated and gives him a direction to follow This can be seen to be present in Virgin Blue Airlines where Richard Branson ensured “higher employee engagement to ensure that they are motivated and confident to complete the task in hand”. (Virgin Blue, 2010, pg 1) He made use of the house path goal theory and used this ensured that employees talent was recognized and they were compensated accordingly. For this he ensured that there was clarity in the job as to what needs to be done and a feedback process was present to bring the necessary changes. With increased engagement employees motivation was laid stress upon which finally led towards improving the organisation. This leads towards another trait which a leader should have and it is risk taking ability. For example, Ambani ensured that “an employee is given a specific goal he has to achieve it and the goal is made in such a way that it brings the best out of him”. (Jacob, 2008, pg 1) This ensured that employees in Reliance Industries were capable of delivering good performance. This gave Reliance the leverage to undertake new projects which were riskier like “the oil basin reserve project.” (Dalal & Basu, 2007, pg 1) This trait of his paid rich dividend and also guided him towards a path which could give maximum leverage. Leaders around the world are also seen to demonstrate transformational traits. This quality can be seen in James Strong, chairman of Woolworths who was “able to make his subordinates realize the importance of working, design a compensation package which helped to motivate them and ensured that development was on the personal front also”. (Woolworth, 2010, pg 1) This has been inferred on the fact that Woolworth is looking to enter into China and India and this has been possible because the workforce has been able to deliver on the promises made. This has been due to the transformational quality demonstrated by the leaders who understood the employees better. Leaders also seem to use the trait theory. This suggests that “leaders demonstrate traits of being adaptable to different situation, understanding the social environment, dominant and assertive”. (Cherry, 2010, pg 1) This can be seen in Wal-Mart where the leaders demonstrated this trait by banning good used as packaging materials from China when they came to know that China while producing the goods were harming the environment. (Wal-Mart, 2008, pg 1) Thus the assertiveness of the leader to act and take decisions shows the trait theory and provides a mechanism through which leaders are able to mould the performance and working of the organisation. Another important trait demonstrated by leaders is the ability to use reward and punishment through the reinforcement mechanism. For example, Azim Premji of Wipro Technologies ensured that “a combination of reward and punishment is used to compensate employees to ensure that their behaviour are directed in the correct direction and yield positive results both for the organisation and employee”. (Barnett, 2010, pg 1) He also ensured punishment for employees who faltered on their job thereby using coercive traits to bring the best out of them. This thus helped to ensure that the employees who were capable of delivering a good job performed well. Leaders also demonstrate contingency theory through the behavioural model. In this model leaders show consideration and also initiate structure. On the consideration front leaders give the leverage to the employees to work in a better way by empowering them and on initiate structure leaders ensure that the goals set were achieved by making the necessary changes. (Contingency Theory, 2010, pg 2) This has been the case with Virgin Airlines where empowering employees has shaped the manner in which task was carried out and shaped the environment. Leaders role has also grown to be “a communicator” (Fizel, 1999, pg 1) and passing on relevant information to the top management and from the top management to the employees. This has ensured that communication is complete. Also, chances of miscommunication are reduced and the process is faster. Another model which leaders are seen to use is the Fielder Model. This is on the backdrop of using all powers i.e. “legitimate power, informative power, personal power, referent power and expert power”. (Lakshman & Shukla, 2005, pg 1) The ability of leaders to influence the workers and ensure that they work in a directed way helped him even punish and use his dominant powers to achieve the goals. Thus this model is widely used and is a tool which helps to achieve the work for the organisation. Leaders at all levels like top level managers, middle level managers and lower level managers in small or large organisations ensure that activities are carried out efficiently by people. (Gable & Martin, 2005) This ensures effective communication and proper strategy as managers communicate among themselves. These traits help the leaders to ensure that work is completed as per the requirements. Thus leaders provide the basic push which is needed for the organisation to grow. They are people who provide the basic guidance and based on it organisations are able to mould their behaviour in such a manner that the objectives which has been set is easily achievable. So, leadership is a process to achieve things and is “considered both an art and science”. (Reh, 2010, pg 1) It is considered both as “art is looking into getting the work done in the most effective way and science is the process of achieving it”. (Reh, 2010, pg 1) As leaders also look in getting the best possible way to a problem has widened its scope. This has increased the burden on managers and made them execute more responsibilities to achieve their task. The toughest thing here for a leader is to manage people. As things and people are managed through people so a leader uses his maximum time to manage people and his task is more concentrated on management of people. This can be seen from the different motivational tool the leader uses to manage the workforce. For example the efficiency level of certain employees fall when they continue the same work again and again but, when they are temporarily shifted to other job their efficiency increases. For this employee change is the drive which motivates him. (Smith & Robert, 1994, pg 23) Leaders find out this drives and work towards those to achieve best results. Thus, we see that leaders act as a guide to employees in the organisation and helps employees decides their course of action by properly guiding them and achieve the task to achieve the goals. This is making leaders ensure that employees’ talent are recognised and put in the best way to achieve results. More and more responsibility is ensured on the shoulders of the manager. He needs to ensure proper coordination and ensure that the goal is accomplished. Leadership is thus a very important constituent for any organisation. The growth of an organisation largely depends on leadership qualities. It is difficult to gauge which leadership model and traits are the best as it varies according to different situations and identifying the best out of them is difficult. Leaders need to ensure that they have a mix of different models and traits to be able to deliver better results. This helps the organisation to ensure that the efforts are properly directed. Along with this it is important that a leader is able to bring the necessary changes on all fronts to be able to meet the rapidly changing demands. Thus, organisations which have leaders are seen to perform better as they have a direction and a force which guides them. Increasing competition and dissolving boundaries have made organisations to look towards people who are efficient and organisation use the traits demonstrated by top leaders in the industry to guide their workforce and ensure better management. 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