Leadership Influence on Organizational Effectiveness - Coursework Example

Leadership Influence on Organizational Effectiveness Name: Institution: Introduction Leadership is an important variable that greatly influences organizational performance depending on how it is executed. There have been extensive studies on leadership skills, attributes, models and theories too. Nevertheless, there is still much to be comprehended regarding the ways in which leaders and leadership affect organizational performance. At the workplace, every person at any level has some level of power to influence certain factors concerning the organization due to their strengths, interaction with co-workers and knowledge. However, people in leadership positions have their power to influence more pronounced than how their followers would. They put forth much more influence in more, if not all the areas within the organization. The nature of leadership makes it more embedded to personality, differentiates it from manager and encourages more contact with followers and the organization’s operation. Even with all these, some studies and researches suggest that leaders have limited but very effective influence on organizational performance. Therefore, the paper seeks to evaluate the ways through which leaders affect organizational performance. Complementary to this objective, the paper also includes discussion on the contextual meaning of leadership, influences appropriated by a suggested leadership theory and influences of leadership style. Leadership The role of a leader refers to their authoritative position within the hierarchy of an organization. On the other hand, the functions of a leader refer to those activities and processes assigned to a leader, that are meant to guide the organization towards achieving its goals and objectives. Leadership, therefore, refers to the person whom others are under their guidance and direction to advance the effectiveness and production of the organization. According to Bass et al. (2003), a leader has four main functions to perform for the group, organization in this case, to be effective. Keeping the employees focussed on organizational goal attainment, clearly defining the goals for the group, coordination activities and roles of each group member towards a common goal and maintaining morale within the organization to keep the members, employees, interested in staying with the organization. Effect of Leaders on Organizational Performance Influence is actually a summary of the effect of leadership which is plainly the ability to get others, employees of an organization, to willingly follow given directions. The activities and function of the employees directly relate to the outcomes and performance of the organization. Therefore, if a leader has influence on the employees then they also have indirect influence on the resultant performance of the organization. Leaders of a group understand their human side of work more than other authorities who are not in direct contact with the subject staff and hence their behavior respective for the organization (Greenberg & Robert, 2000). The level to which a leader influences the performance of an organization can be used to evaluate their effectiveness. This is important for organization shareholders and managers, yet beyond the scope of this paper. This aspect relates to leadership skills and style which will be expounded on later on in the discussion of exploration of the Contingency Theory of leadership. Bohn (2002) tries to answer the research question by suggesting that a leader’s behavior in the workplace has impacts on the performance of their groups, and hence the organization. There is a direct relationship between a leader’s behavior and the overall performance of the group. Leaders have the ability to organize teams, keep employees focussed on objective realization, showing vision and ultimate organization success. All of these show in their behaviors in the workplace. Their behaviors impact the output of the employees under their guidance (Luthans, 2005). Leaders have the responsibility of aligning and engaging the organization’s workforce to articulate the designed strategies and plans with clear directions. It is thus important for leaders to always be aware of their behavior and actions in the workplace. These behaviors should be those in line with the code of ethics given that the behavior of a leader has a direct impact on the outcomes of the organization (Kinicki & Robert, 2006). According to the Contingency Leadership Theory, a leader’s behavior should be to strengthen subordinates' expectancies that improved performance leads to valued rewards, reduce barriers to their goal attainment and provide coaching that makes work easier for the employees. Leaders have direct influence on the degree of opportunities for debate open for the employees and organization members. They have almost total power to choose between allowing the ideas, sentiments or thoughts of an employee to be heard by other authorities. Good leadership gets the involvement of the other group members in idea contribution and innovations on how to improve the group's output. This is about the relationship and ease of communication between the leader and their group members. It creates a climate of some nature within the organization that either spurs or kills innovations from the employees. According to Subramanium and Youndt (2005) , the created climate is the leader’s capital relative to employee innovativeness. Modes and ease of communication from an employee to a leader determines the climate within the organization which in turn significantly affects the employee’s willingness and ability to creative and innovative for both personal and organization’s growth and development in performance (Kinicki & Robert, 2006). This aspect is relative to the Leader-Member Exchange Theory of leadership which emphasizes on the relationship between a leader and a follower. It takes an approach where the two work out an effective relationship of roles and interactions. Aside from employee-leader relationship and communication, there are other key elements for organizational effectiveness that drive employee interest in engaging in the organization’s operations. Leaders almost control employee engagement since they assign different employees under their control to different roles. Therefore, the factor of having ability to convene a group of employees with a variety of natural role preferences significantly influences the overall performance of the organization. When a team of employees gets stuck on this basis, it is because some become uncomfortable with their current assigned roles (Milton & Westphal, 2005). The figure below illustrates some the elements that impact employee engagement which then influences customer experience and ultimately organizational performance. Figure 1 Organizational Effectiveness From this it is quite evident that a successful team and leader require a group of members who can willingly and competently take on other roles when needed to. Notwithstanding that, leaders still influence how much employee engages and commit to their work and also control resources available for the realization of ideas and strategies (Hernez-Broome & Hughes, 2004). Accurate articulation of organizational strategies and plans require competence and benevolence from a leader. With such, the leader helps create a healthy workplace where there is equal weight given to performance and personal dignity. This implies that leadership requires or enhances development of particular traits necessary for productive leadership (Reference, 2000). It counters the myth of the born leader and entails that anyone can learn the most important traits of positive leadership. So then also, leadership is not a one-man-show intrinsic subject but discussion of ideas and challenges to improve leadership effectiveness and hence organizational performance (Hollenbeck, McCall & Silzer, 2006). Leadership Style and its Influences Leadership style is about consistency in cross situational behaviors and it refers to the way in which leaders relate to and interact with subordinate staff under their leadership. In this context, leadership style refers to the manner in which a leader influences the behavior of their subordinates. The style also engulfs how the leader makes decisions regarding group direction and the way he or she balances between goal achievement and group maintenance which refers to employee retention. Generally, leadership style is about the method that a leader uses to accomplish the four main functions. Evidently, this has a direct influence on the performance of the organization (Kouzes & Posner, 2002). The efficiency and performance of the organization depend on the output of each department controlled by its leader, performing its job effectively and thus contributing to the success of the whole firm. The way in which the leader delegates duties, communicates, makes decisions and interacts with employees affect the performance of the whole institution. To start with, leadership style affects communication and productivity amongst employees. A leadership style that is bureaucratic slows down communication with more concern on policies and following guidelines rather than the information. Effectively, it hampers communication and bar employees from getting direct instructions and information needed to work and achieve objectives. Resultantly, such factors distort the information, distribute the distortion throughout the organizations and make it inaccurate and ineffective, which translates into poor organizational performance. Secondly, employee input is definitely very valuable in creating more efficient methods of work and productivity improvement. Nevertheless, it is also under the influence the leadership style that a leader adopts. The style affects the effectiveness of employee input in the sense that democratic leadership allows room for input from employees in terms of their ideas and suggestions. Therefore, it uses relevant information free of distortion due to bureaucracy, to improve processes of work. While completely dismissing employee input are dangerous to employee morale, allowing employees to do whatever they want in terms of work processes creates procedural problems throughout the whole organization. This is situational and requires fore-planning or implementation of contingency plans. Thirdly, employee morale is an essential determinant that influences organizational performance relative to human resource management. Employees with low or without morale will care less about the outcomes of the organization and eventually lose focus on achieving the objectives of the organization. Low morale produces unhappy employees which reduce productivity level and comes with employee retention problems. The main causes of poor employee morale include misunderstood expectations, wasted potential, high employee turnover and lack of open communication. It is evident that these causes directly relate to the functions of a leader, who has to respond to them for desired outcomes from the company (Lye, 2007). Conclusion In an organization, all people at all levels have some influence over the resulting outcome of the whole organization. However, leaders have more influence because they are in direct contact with the employees and resources of the institution needed by these employees. The lead and guide these employees and so influence their activities within the company. Since the activities of the employees in terms of work processes translate into organizational outcome, it then implies that leaders have an indirect impact on the performance of the organization. The discussion achieves its objective of determining the level of influence that leaders have on organizational outcomes. It finds that leaders decide how much resource support employees have access to, the influence the workplace climate, culture and morale of the employees as well. Not only their activities and behaviors have influence but styles of leadership that they adopt also affect the performance of the organization. References Bass, B. M., Bruce, J. A., Dong, I. J. & Yair, B. (2003). Predicting unit performance by assessing transformational and transactional leadership. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88. 207–218. Bohn, J. G. (2002). Relationship of perceived leadership behaviors to organizational efficacy. The Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 9 (1). Greenberg, J. And Robert, A. B. (2000). Behavior in organizations: understanding and managing the human side of work. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. Hernez-Broome, G., & Hughes, R. (2004). Leadership development: Past, present, and future. Human Resource Planning, 27 (1). 24–32. Hollenbeck, G. McCall, M. & Silzer, R. (2006). 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