Leadership as an Interactional Process - Case Study Example

Introduction

This paper is a reflective journal in which I relate three personal incidents tracing how my knowledge on leadership has progressed over time. Initially, I will give a summary of my interpretations on leadership. I will then present the three incidents referred to above.

The first experience encompasses a situation where I failed in bringing on change as a leader owing to a misinformed notion of leadership that I employed at the time. I was not directly involved in the second experience. I will recount cultural issues that my brother encountered while working overseas. In the book, “Leadership can be taught”, Parks (2005) highlights a proposition that for anyone to become a leader, he or she must go through different experiences over time to determine their high points and flaws when ratifying leadership. During the course, I have gained substantial information on leadership. I now have a clear understanding of what could have caused failure in the two incidents I mentioned above. I also have awareness on how to moderate the negative influences of cultural diversity that affected the second incident. The knowledge I have gained during the course gets reflected in the third experience which is a recollection of a more productive leadership experience I encountered recently.

Early Understanding of Leadership

My father worked as a supervisor in a milk processing plant. Often, I accompanied him to work, not because I was interested in his work, but because I liked the once in a while special treatment I got during those days. In his car, I got to play my music of choice, and it was the only time I could escape household chores. Besides, I liked the free milk and cheese that always came with the trip. It was the same routine over and over; I vowed to take all the milk I could and eat as much cheese as my tummy could hold. However, after two packets of milk, I could not take any more, so I spent the rest of the day watching my father work. From the parts of the conversation I grasped, I could tell that, as the team leader, my dad set goals that his team members were required to achieve. This environment gave me the impression of a textbook understanding of leadership.

I assumed leadership to be a collaborative practice in which leaders and followers participate in conjoint interactions to achieve shared objectives (Levy, 2004). This correlation between leaders and their supporters stemmed from an individual-based assessment of leadership (Uhl-Bien, 2006). There’s an implication that leaders are organisational assets who impose their individual will on the subordinates and expect them to conform to these requirements. To ensure the followers comply with the leaders’ demands, leaders employ interactive communication processes (Tourish, 2014). This kind of communication ensures that leaders clearly explain their tasks clearly and that they are well-understood by their followers (Cunliffe&Eriksen, 2011). Likewise, if subordinates come across unanticipated glitches, they will be helped out and directed. An organisation’s effectiveness gets measured regarding how efficiently the information provided used in decision making (Frankel, 2008). With excellent communication, information provided is complete, and feedback on the choices is available. As a result, there will be a highly efficient organisation performance.

First Reflection – Introducing Change

I joined the English Association in my first semester in college. In my second academic year, I was elected as the team leader. The English Association comprised of people with various talents some of them including, debate, drama, recitation, and writing. As the team leader, I was tasked with making sure the team had enough items in each category for presentation at the Inter-School’s EPYA (English Professionals of the Year Award). I considered some techniques to improve our performance so that we could increase the number of awards the school bagged this season. I devised a two-phase system to allocate roles and responsibilities for my team members. In the first phase, I assessed my team members individually to understand their high points as well as their flaws. In the second step, I applied my system by dictating objectives, duties and what I expected from them based on their strengths. Every team member was assigned a particular set of tasks, and everyone worked tirelessly in a bid to achieve those goals. However, the goals were not met since the team had difficulty comprehending these new duties. I, therefore, failed to lead change.

I realised that my ineffective assignment of tasks had resulted in my team’s poor performance. I did not have a comprehensive concept of leadership roles, so I lacked appropriate means to lead change. As a result, I had set the team up for failure. This incident concisely lays emphasis to the individual creation and control of the order in the adaptation of a system to assign tasks (Uhl-Bien, 2006). In an attempt to resolve my team’s poor performance, I laid too much emphasis on the individual culpability. In retrospect, I should have considered the likelihood that my team members might have felt better if I had involved them in the decision-making process. When a team leader values the team members’ contributions, the team members tend to be committed to the decisions made (Korsgaard, Schweiger, &Sapienza, 1995). I also failed to consider my team members’ capability to handle the tasks I had assigned to them and their willingness in taking up the jobs. I merely cared about dictating the goals to the team members.

Communication was linear and leader-centric (Bathurst &Ladkin, 2012) – that is, it centred towards me. For example, in one group meeting, a conversation ensued between me and some of the team members.

Team Leader (I): I hope everyone has finished working on their presentation.

Team Member 1: I have not done my essay. The topic was a little complicated because I am an Art student. I don’t know a lot about nutrition, but I am trying my best.

Team Leader (I):So, you have done nothing presentable yet? Have the rest of you done anything comprehensive?

Team Member 2: I am almost through composing the recitation, but I need help in the final stages. It has been hard getting anyone to help since everyone is busy with their responsibilities. I am trying my best, though.

Team Leader (I): Okay. So, no recitation either. Has the debate team come up with enough points to support their motion?

Team Member 3:Only two of us have debating experience. We are still trying to train the other three on the basics of public speaking. We have all the points ready. We just need to work on our presentation.

Team Leader (I):All I keep hearing is excuses. The debate team is lagging behind just like the rest of you. Am sure the drama team is going to tell me the same thing. Or, so you have a different story?

Team Member 4:We are meeting this afternoon to get our scripts…

Team Leader (I):What?

Team Member 4:I have them ready, and the lines are very easy to understand. I think we can start reading our parts tomorrow…

Team Leader (I):Okay. Is any of you interested in winning the EPYAs this season? Success requires completion of all items to get entered in the competition.

Team Members: We will try harder this week.

Team Leader (I):Okay… I think you should work harder to complete the tasks on time. In next week’s meeting, we will get an update on the progress. I hope the results will be less embarrassing.

Scrutiny of the communication process demonstrates that I completely dominated the meeting. Some of my replies were arrogant and condescending. I also used ‘okay’ as feedback which implied that the team members were just recounting instead of emerging as contributors to generate actual dialogue (Cunliffe&Eriksen, 2011). I was inconsiderate especially when I cut off Team Member 4 while he was talking. I did not try to understand the reasons for their difficulties in finishing their tasks. I dismissed the explanations as excuses and shifted the discussion. Looking back at the conversation, I questioned my understanding of leadership within a change process. I was keen to improve my leadership skills so that I could become an effective leader in coordinating my followers so that the staff of competent leadership passes from one person to the next (Bathurst &Ladkin, 2012).

I held the premise that leadership and change go hand in hand (Ladkin, Wood, &Pillay, 2010). I also believed that leadership was the core aspect of a change process (Kotter, 1996) requiring managers to be in full control of the situation (Follett, 1949). Instead of applying a one individual expertise approach to achieving change, I should have used the collective intelligence of my team members (Heifetz &Linsky 2002). Heifetz and Linsky (2002) assert that corporate change should manifest in the perspectives of the collective intelligence of team members at all levels in the organisation. Particularly, the leader should have a clear understanding of the activities taking place from employing open dialogue processes in which all concerns and requests get aired; to reassessing and ensuring continuous action depending on the subordinates’ responses.

Looking at the incident from this view, I made my first mistake when I failed to create an open dialogue process to facilitate discussions between the team members and myself as their leader and also to help in dealing with the team’s problems. I adopted an authoritative approach partly owing to the lack of coordination while proposing my changes. My tactic was individualistic where I tried to ‘control the environment through behaviours facilitated by linear conceptualisation, for example, chain-of-command and line manager’ (Bathurst &Ladkin, 2012, p. 101). If I had used an open dialogue process facilitating my team members to discuss the issues they were facing (Heifetz & Laurie, 1997), the process might have been less challenging. According to Heifetz &Linsky (2002), change is more likely to happen if followers assume responsibility to deal with issues. Nevertheless, leaders must also have active listening skills because sometimes, the messages from their team members are not eloquent enough; their ideas might not get expressed as clearly as the team leader would want (Heifetz & Laurie, 1997). I think in my situation; I should have listened to my team members more actively during meetings. I should also have considered their grievances and addressed them, which would have given them a sense of respect and belonging (Cunliffe&Eriksen, 2011). According to Baumeister and Leary (1995), team members who feel respected tend to develop interpersonal relations that result in increased motivation and performance. My attempt at leading change should have, therefore, shifted from an individual-based process to a fundamental social-relational process; or simply from polyphonic mode of communication to dialogue (Uhl-Bien, 2006).

Second Reflection – Cultural Change

My brother had been working as a team leader when the organisation he worked for decided to open a contact centre in Delhi. He was asked to go along with the manager to help train the new team. The team consisted of 14 Indians, 2 Africans and an Italian. Before the contact centre began operating, the manager asked my brother to work on some initial communication and technical training aspects. He was also requested to work on administration tasks in connection to the new team. Working with people from diverse cultures came with inadequate levels of cooperation and ineffective communication which affected the group’s performance overall performance negatively (Mannix& Neale, 2005).

My brother and I have always been close, so we talked every day. From what he told me, he encountered a multitude of communication challenges while dealing with a multicultural group, for example, issues concerning opinions, ideologies and decision-making (Thomas, 1999). Whenever he had trouble in clarifying something, he was inclined to talk to the Indians and ask for help. I remember worrying about him because cultural diversity in the group made him frustrated. He began losing confidence in himself, and he was dissatisfied with what he accomplished. Looking back at his situation prompted some questions. I wondered how cultural diversity in a group impairs processes, and why working in diverse groups causes emotional conflict and behaviour changes.

I assumed that cultural diversity related to positive corporate performance (McMillan-Capehart, 2005) and that it leaned towards improving honesty, creativity and a broader skill base (Østergaard, Timmermans, &Kristinsson, 2011). However, my brother’s experience enlightened me on the negative influences of working in a multicultural environment.

Østergaard et al. (2011), define cultural diversity as an assortment of individuals from different group affiliations of cultural significance (p.489) within a social system. Analysis done by Brunow and Blien (2014), proved that a team’s performance is lower when diversity is higher which could get attributed to the fact that higher diversity demands greater interaction and communication between individuals (Østergaard et al. 2011). In a multi-cultural team, members have different socio-cultural factors which may result in misunderstandings and consequently, lower communication effectiveness (Thomas, 1999). The subsequent stress can affect an individual emotionally which affects the team’s performance and subsequently, that of the organisation as well (McMillan-Capehart, 2005). The affected persons may experience emotional conflict which McMillan-Capehart (2005, p.491) terms as ‘interpersonal disputes characterised by anger, frustration, and other negative feelings’. In retrospect, I understand why my brother was so emotionally affected when he had trouble conveying different ideas and when his team members misconstrued his ideas. From this experience, I believe that miscommunication and emotional conflicts are two main negative influences in a multicultural work environment.

Nevertheless, the similarity-attraction theory states that groups with socio-cultural similarities, including attitudes, opinions and ideas are more likely to attract and like each other (Mannix& Neale, 2005). Mannix& Neale (2005) further state that it is common for team members to avoid communicating with people whose beliefs differ from their own as a way of reducing conflict. In my brother’s case, when he faced language barriers, or when he had different ideas from other team members, he usually went to the Indians because he had worked with Indians all his life, so he had no difficulty relating to their culture or language. In a multinational organisation and with today’s globalisation of markets, it is inevitable to work with people from different cultures. It raises an issue of how an individual can work with people from various cultural backgrounds without negative influences on communication (AytemizSeymen, 2006).

Berry (2005) defines acculturation as a dual process that helps team members establish and enhance contact with other cultural groups. Acculturation gets accompanied by tasks such as learning, sharing and understanding other people’s culture in areas including language, and social interactions among others. According to Peterson (2004), before mutual adaptations take place, the team members must first grow their cultural awareness of the others group. My brother’s mistake was in his neglecting and failure to increase his knowledge about the culturally-different members in his team. Had he done that, he would have understood his team members’ behaviour and sync his perceptions with theirs.Non-verbal cues are also quite important where a person’s language ability is limited (Rogers &Steinfatt, 1999). Communicating with the Italian and the two Africans was a little difficult owing to language barriers. Instead of avoiding the completely, my brother could have tried more active types of body language to signal his emotions or reactions.

Conclusively, minimising negative influences while working in a multicultural work environment requires improving our knowledge on the other people’s cultures (Peterson, 2004), and using of non-verbal cues to communicate emotions (Rogers &Steinfatt, 1999).

Third Reflection – Shared Leadership

Last semester, I joined a study group to partake in discussions in different areas in my course of study. At the end of the semester, my group gave a presentation on the interactive model of communication to the rest of the class. Our group consisted of two Indians, a Kenyan, an Italian and, a Fiji national. I initiated the group work by implementing a shared leadership process where I encouraged everyone to get involved in practising development initiatives (Scott & Caress, 2005). All team members participated in offering ideas, asking questions, making decisions and executing tasks (Allison, Misra, & Perry, 2014). There was a cooperative atmosphere with effective communication and minimal challenges. Commitment and social interaction among the team members were splendid. The overall leadership experience was positive and quite pleasant. I wondered how shared leadership often relates to positive organisation results.

According to Gibb (1954), shared leadership can either be distributed or focused. Focused leadership gets created by an individual institution or agency whereas distributed leadership emanates when two or more persons take up leadership roles.

In my experience, shared leadership was understood to be ‘a growing team property that emerges from the distribution of leadership connections across various team members’ (Carson, Tesluk, &Marrone, 2007, p. 1). Shared leadership emanating from individual colleagues in the group influences other team members engaged in the same activity regarding motivation, direction and support (Carson et al., 2007). My experience of shared leadership began with me encouraging the other team members to participate. When all group members are moving towards a common goal, a steering group is formed. In such a group, the members are accountable for their responsibilities of setting objectives and making decisions (Carson et al., 2007). Where a shared sense of ownership exists, there is likely to be a commitment towards work among the members of the group (Jackson, 2000).

When the team members execute their tasks in the leadership role, new structures and more leaders emerge (Allison et al., 2014). They further suggest that organisations adopt coaching and decisive communication among peers. The two policy framework encourages team members to bring out different ideas and values to ‘help in shaping their open conversations regarding response, problem-solving and conflict resolution’ (Cunliffe&Eriksen, 2011, p. 36).

Miles and Watkins (2007), however, claim that shared leadership takes a lot of time because where there are many leaders, it is challenging to reach consensus. In my case, our group took longer than the other groups which depended on sole leadership taking charge within a controlled environment (Bathurst &Ladkin, 2012). Shared leadership encouraged open communication as consequently, positive experience in our pursuit and execution of tasks. I learned that power can get shared while still maintaining authority. I was able to enhance my communication, listening and comprehending skills in teamwork which helped in the maintenance of an active group environment (Allison et al., 2014).

Conclusion

Leadership is critical in all organisations (Carson et al., 2007). My initial understanding of leadership portrayed a leader as an all-powerful individual who controls the entire environment through behaviours facilitated by linear conceptualisation such a chain-of-command and line manager (Bathurst&Ladkin, 2012). Furthermore, Bathurst and Larkin (2012) claim, viewing leadership as a single responsible role within a hierarchy deprives human freedom of a sense of inventiveness and ownership of issues which was the cause of my failure in my first leadership experience.

In a global setting, a pipeline communication model in multicultural teams leads to rising in disputes and misconceptions. These issues occur because people from different cultural backgrounds have different socio-cultural variations. As a result, these people have different perceptions, attitudes and communication patterns. Consequently, the shared vision of a common goal might and most likely will not be transferred from one person to another (Thomas, 1999). In my second incident (My brother’s experience in Delhi), the lack of effective communication due to language barriers often caused the team members to misunderstand each other leading to emotional conflict and subsequently, poor performance. Peterson (2004), acclaims that in culturally diverse groups, for the members to reduce the negative influences, they should adopt behaviours which enable them to communicate with various cultures through learning. Rogers and Steinfatt (1999) give non-verbal cues as an example of a method to help in counteracting language barriers and promote effective intercultural communication.

Throughout the course, my knowledge in leadership improved significantly. The module had helped me develop my critical thinking. It has also helped me diverge from an initial viewpoint of leadership as individual entities to socially construed entities in which tasks get allocated as collective responsibilities; I understand that leadership is an interpersonal exchange rather than an interpersonal relationship (Uhl-Bien, 2006). I also understand that for a leader should welcome open dialogue processes rather than delivering a monologue discourse (Cunliffe&Eriksen, 2011).

I see leadership as an interactional process where leaders and followers influence and learn from each other. For a leader to empower his followers to set goals and limits, he should be willing to take suggestions as much as he is giving tips, and hence the shared leadership model. In my third leadership experience, I learned that I could share power while still maintaining authority. I also learned to initiate constructive criticism and discussion to work in tandem with other people. In simple terms, leadership incorporates democratic values such as inclusiveness and participation to ensure team effectiveness, efficiency and job satisfaction.