Leadership Behaviour - Essay Example

LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOR by Student’s name Code+ course name Professor’s name University name City, State Date LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOR Introduction Emotional intelligence is a common feature of all management circles in the contemporary business practice. While there is still no clear definition of the concept of emotional intelligence, it can be described as the manner in which feelings are identified, managed and assessed in the management context (Zardeini et al 2012). In the current business world where more paternalistic methods of management are the order of the day, feelings are likely to be employed at work. The fact that the worker or group of workers may develop hatred or admiration for a particular manager explains the manner in which emotions are employed at the work place. An order or a directive by the manager may trigger various emotions among the various work groups. Since the groups are heterogeneous in composition, a single order is likely to trigger mixed feelings. The fact that a single instruction attracts varied feelings from the group members means that the members are different and that their emotional structures are different. From the emotions developed, the members are likely to perform differently. For instance where the worker is an optimist, he will take a difficult instruction as being a positive challenge. A pessimist on the other hand will view the difficult instruction as a sadistic challenge that is aimed at killing their morale. It is upon the manager or the leader to find ways of making the employees think positively. This is to say that the leader through leadership behavior skills will have to manage and control the emotions of the heterogeneous group (Andrew 2009). Managing the emotions of such a group calls for appropriate conduct by the leaders. The conduct of the leader is more likely to affect the behavior and actions of others if they use such managerial tools as rewards and motivation. Such motivation can take more than one forms. Leadership behavior and emotional intelligence Leadership behavior is the conduct of the managers and leaders aimed at influencing their conduct in the way that is likely to reflect organizational interest (Yang 2012). Management and leadership gurus have always argued that the conduct of the employees in a well performing institution reflects the behavior of the manager. For instance, where the employees act independently and work under minimal supervision, it is an indication that the manager in charge of such a group is one that is democratic and adopts the theory Y presumption in dealing with his employees. On the other hand, if the members of a group are always lazy and display laxity in the absence of their manager, it is an indication that the manager is a theory X leader who uses such things as punishments and threats of firing so as to gain the cooperation of the employees. Where the leader has such positive attributes as respect and trust, the workers will take him or her to be a role model. As such, they will associate his career with the positive attributes. This will make quite a number of the employees emulate the leader. As they emulate the attributes, they practice them and these impacts positively for the organizational performance. Leadership behavior can be understood differently in many organizations depending on the style of management embraced by the firm. From the foregoing, the essence of leadership behavior is to shape the workforce through managing their feelings. The conduct of the leaders can influence the kind of reactions expected from the members of staff. Emotional intelligence is a concept that has been studied for quite a number of decades now. According to John, D. Meyer and Peter Salovey (1990), emotional intelligence is the capacity to recognize and manage as well as asses the feelings of oneself as well as those of other people with whom an individual is contact. Many scholars have researched seriously on the various aspects of emotional intelligence. Whether emotional intelligence is an inborn feature or a learned trait has been a subject of debate among many researchers in the field of management. This has been the case with leadership. Some gurus and key scholars argue that leadership is an innate quality while others argue that leadership is learned in the course of interacting with others (Sorensen & Sagaris 2010). Whichever the case, emotional intelligence has four parts and goes through all the phases. The first phase is where the person perceives the emotions. This entails recognizing or identifying a particular feeling. This can be done through the direct observation of the conduct of a person. The most common way of detecting the emotions of a person is through the observation of the body language of the individuals. The second phase of emotional intelligence is trying to reason with the emotions perceived. This entails treating the individuals whose emotions have been triggered in accordance to their emotions. The third stage of emotional intelligence understands the perceived emotions. This involves the process of trying to establish the reason why the person has developed such emotions. The final stage of emotional intelligence is controlling and managing the emotions. This stage is concerned with emotional management. Transactional and transformational leadership When a political leader approaches the electorate with many heavy promises, he expects the people to vote for him. This is a give and take situation. The politician receives the votes and in return delivers his promises. This means that he performs his pledges as a way of giving back to the electorate. This is a good illustration of transactional management. In transactional management, the manager takes the position of the politician in the above analogy. He gives rewards for good performance. The employees take the place of the electorate in the above example. They perform well with the expectations of something in return- the rewards. This, in simple terms, means that the employees will not maximally exploit their efforts in the absence of rewards. The concept of transactional management was first explained by social scientist Max Weber and elaborated further by Bernard Bass (Leithwood & Sun 2012). The leadership style is based on these presumptions: that, motivation is a function of rewards; that workers put maximum effort to work where there is a distinct chain of command; and that conformity is the fundamental objective of followers. Transformational leadership is the opposite of transactional leadership and can be explained by the following analogy. When a mother is bringing up her child, she will do anything to ensure the young one is comfortable. She will provide the kid with food and nurture it to be a good person in future. When the mother does all these, she expects nothing in return. She is doing it to ensure a good future for her child. Similarly, transformational managers do not expect anything from either the organization or the employees. They work hard in trying to introduce change for the better (Jahangard et al 2012). The type of leadership follows the following steps: coming up with a vision, improving the mission, promoting the vision, establishing strategies and leading the implementation of the change. The key presumption under this approach is that a person with a vision and enthusiasm is an achiever. Participative management Participative management is a style of management that relies heavily on the feedback of the employees in order to make decisions (Hendriks 2009). As the name suggests, the employees participate in the decision making process of the organization. When a manager intends to introduce some kind of change for example, he or she gives the idea to the employees who work under him. The employees are allowed to evaluate the proposed change for a reasonable duration. After this, they are allowed to react to the proposal. Their reaction is a big determinant of whether or not the change will be adopted. As such, they are taken to be part and parcel of the decision making body of the organization. The managers of that adopt this method of management generally go by the perspectives of theory Y. This theory assumes that the employees will perform best if treated as adults and shown some kind of regard. They are most efficient when given the freedom to do things out of free will and to exercise some degree of discretion. The feedback of the employees in this form of management style is acquired through such processes as brainstorming. This style of management is associated with one major setback. The demerit is that the employees will feel discouraged and demoralized if their opinions are not acted upon. This will make them feel despised or looked down upon. Another setback is that this approach makes the decision making process slow due to the time consuming brainstorming sessions. Democratic management Like the participative form of management, this type of management is a theory Y kind of management. The employees are held in high regard and the managers actually work with the employees. They exercise free will in handling some actions and can reason with the managers. This form of management does not work with punishments and threats of firing but rather consultation and joint participation (Harms and Cred 2010). Under this model, delegation is a common feature. The managers give some degree of decision making authority to the employees. The employees manage themselves and work under no supervision at all. The major setback of this management style is that it can make the employees feel neglected as the manager may develop a tendency of being absent all the time. The issue of delegation is also associated with such weaknesses as inefficiency of the workers. As mentioned earlier the groups and teams at the place of work are not homogeneous. This means that the manner in which one employee may conduct himself is not the way another worker will conduct themselves in the absence of the manager. This means that while some will be more efficient, others will be extremely lazy and slow. The total effect is that the whole team will be affected by the inefficiencies of the lazy ones. The production rate will be low due to the slow pace of the activities (Lopez-Zafra et al 2012). It is however worth noting that the concept of delegation is an important training ground for future managers. The employees to whom power is delegated make good leaders. Leadership behavior and emotional intelligence in context Leadership has been described as the function of influencing people to do that which the party exerting such influence wants to achieve. For instance the managers in an organization are the leaders and in the process of performing their duty of leadership, they direct people towards desired channels that are capable of enabling the organization achieve its goals. Leaders therefore have to apply the concepts of leadership behavior and emotional intelligence in various managerial scenarios as a way of having the employees work as a team and not as a fragmented patchwork of personnel (Evers & Hofmeister 2011). The various scenarios and examples are discussed below: Conflicts Conflicts are an inherent part of every organization in the contemporary business world. It is however worth noting that there are two types of conflicts. There are the positive conflicts and the negative conflicts. The positive conflicts also referred to as the constructive conflicts are those that work for the progressive well being of the organization (Birknerová 2011). On the other hand the negative conflicts also referred to as the destructive conflicts are those that work against the betterment of the organization. The management encourages constructive conflicts among the departments as well as between the employees of the organization. Such conflicts are usually associated with the struggle for limited resources of the organization. In the long run competition arises among the various departments of the organization. Such competition makes the departments work extra hard so as to prove to the management that the department deserves the resources more than any other department. The fundamental connection between the said conflicts and emotional intelligence is that the competitions among the departments and the employees are associated with such feelings as envy and admirations .Much as envy is a socially unacceptable type of emotion, it helps in establishing the spirit of competition. Managing such emotions helps the managers control the emotions so that they do not degenerate in to enmity but instead act in the best interest of the organization. Looking at it from the negative side, the emotional intelligence of the managers can be used in settling the negative disputes. Such negative emotions are detrimental to the performance of the workers in individual capacity as well as in their capacity as group members. Rapport building Building a rapport is the first step towards achieving effective communication (Tatlah et al 2011). The parties between whom the message is being conveyed must establish a sense of trust between them before they can exchange ideas and get effective feedback. The process of building confidence in one another is the process we refer to as rapport building. To build a rapport one must possesses powerful interpersonal skills as well as strong emotional intelligence skills. Reading the emotions of another person is important in achieving effective communication as it will help the party reading emotions act accordingly. This way the emotional party can gain trust in the other person and open up. This way, a powerful rapport is build establishing the channels of communications. Leadership behavior is as well important in the establishment of a powerful rapport. The leader through his conduct can influence a person to feel free to open up for communication links (Angermeier et al 2009). The authoritarian manager for example cannot establish reliable rapport with his subordinates through his dictator like tendencies. On the contrary, the participative and theory Y manager can easily gain the trust of the subordinate since such a manager will behave in a manner likely to make the juniors feel almost equal to the manager. As such, confidence is established and rapports become easy to establish. The significance of these two concepts in the building of rapport is paramount since effective communications is the blood and bone of every organization in the contemporary business world. Team building In regards to A team is an organized group of individuals pursuing a common objective. Teams are usually heterogeneous as they comprise of people with varied personalities (White et al 2012). The people in the teams are likely to react quite differently to various situations. Take the example of an optimist and a pessimist. They will judge a situation differently since the optimist is a potential risk taker while the pessimist has risk evasion tendencies. The proper application of the skills of emotional intelligence can help in making the teams more cohesive. The skills of emotional intelligence will usually help the manager iron out the disparities in the reaction s that arise among the group members especially during the introduction of change. The application of such concepts as emotional intelligence coupled with change management and leadership behavior, reduce chances of resistance to change. The employees have a tendency to resist change. This is because of many reasons such as fear of the unknown and fear of losing their jobs (Hsin-Kuang 2012). Boosting performance Since the introduction of aspects of emotional intelligence in the work place, there has been discovered to be a very strong link between the performance f the organization and feelings of the employees (Weichun et al 2012). In trying to improve the performance of the organization, through influencing the feelings of the employees, the organization resorts to motivation. Through motivation, the employees feel appreciated by their employer. The motivated workforce is more efficient in going about all the organizational duties. The emotions of the employees can be influenced by such types of motivation as monetary rewards and promotions. The leadership behavior can as well modify the emotions of the employee to suit the objectives of the organization through the application of such concepts as participative management (Miller 2011). The way in which the employee acts reflects his or her feelings. In order to act in a manner likely to help in the achievement of the organizational goals, the manager’s conduct should be in line with such goals. Conclusion In conclusion, it is worth noting that from the foregoing discussion, leadership behavior and emotional intelligence are important concepts in contemporary business practice. The management of any organization in the contemporary business world realizes that the presence and acceptance of emotions at the workplace is a reality. The emotions impact on the performance of the organization differently depending on how such emotions are managed. If the management of the organizations learns to moderate the feelings employed at the place of work, they are likely to encourage constructive conflicts. Such conflicts come with various benefits such as stronger teams and healthy competitions among the various departments of the organization. Additionally, emotional intelligence is associated with effective communication as it helps a great deal in the building of rapport. The concept of emotional intelligence has also been associated with team building and better performance. When applied together with the innovative idea of leadership behavior, emotional intelligence is one of the most effective management functions. Leadership behavior as described in the above discussion is the manner in which the managers and leaders conduct themselves and go about their activities. The way in which they handle the other members of the workforce creates a big impression in the minds of the juniors. The leadership behavior is a very important concept when it comes to the establishment of a proper and working communication relationship. Other styles of management such as participative management are among the most effective in the contemporary practice. This is because the employees in the world today are very much aware of their right to be involved in the decision making at the operational level. The autocratic and authoritarian leaders are a thing of the past and cannot work effectively in contemporary business practice. Democratic management is a key to proper and workable relationships between the employer and the employees as well as the link between the stewards of the organization and the work force of the company. Transformational leadership is quickly replacing transactional leadership. This is because the difference between transformational and transactional leadership denotes the distinction between a leader and a manager in that order. This is because fundamentally, the transformational leader challenges the status quo while the transactional leader strives to maintain the status quo. Reference list Andrew, Damon P.S. (2009) The Impact of Leadership Behavior on Satisfaction of College Tennis Players: A Test of The Leadership Behavior Congruency Hypothesis of the Multidimensional Model of Leadership. Journal of Sport Behavior. Vol. 32 Issue 3, P261-277. Angermeier, Ingo; Dunford, Benjamin B.; Boss, Alan D.; Boss, R. 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