Creative Leadership - Essay Example

Creative leadership and how it relates to the U.S. workforce Leadership concepts and tasks are continuously evolving. This is a result of the changing needs of the business as a response to external environment such as competition and globalization. Traditional managerial roles are shifting to more creative and dynamic responsibilities. John P. Kotter has shown leaders about the shift from "change management" to "leading change" (Coyle and Kossek, 2000). Kotter maintains that one leader is not enough in initiating change. In the context of globalization, all members of the organization should respond to the needs of the organization and do it in a creative way. Secondly, communication and vision is very important. This guides the behavior o the members and allow them to make sense of the changes that the organization need. Finally, he also argued that empowerment of all members is very important in making changes more effective. The more involved people are in the process of change, the more effective the change will be and the more lasting it will be for the company (Coyle and Kossek, 2000). There are different forms of leadership that can be applied in implementing business goals and strategies. There are lots of valuable leadership forms, which many leaders could use. They represent the most effective and the least effective leadership strategy. To name them as most ineffective is not to say that they could not be use. These forms of leadership can be used however it must depend on the context. Leaders must find ways of diversifying their leadership styles to ensure that they are applied appropriately to certain situations. Leaders would need to balance authority and democracy in their leadership styles (Goleman, 2000). There is a need to have the sensitivity and emotional capacity to recognize what would be the most appropriate leadership strategy that is being called for by the situation. In many cases using just one strategy cannot generate effective results. One of the important components in leadership is also recognizing the potential of an assigned leader. Characteristics of the leader have been known to be very important in the achievement of goals. This is very important in the context of public school system where implementations of projects are assigned to specific leadership. According to many psychological studies, which aim to recognize the character behind some of the effective leaders in successful organizations, emotional intelligence is very important for many leaders (Goleman, 2000). This has been widely reviewed in many literatures. According to Goleman (2000) this emotional intelligence can be reflected on the ability of leaders to have the necessary social skills. This means that they must be able work well with their people under different circumstances to ensure that there are no barriers to communication. This would help the problem to be resolved immediately and for improvements of the programs be initiated efficiently. They must also have high levels of motivation, which would allow them to do things through initiative and exceed the expected results. They must be really flexible as well to the call of the times and the moment. Finally creative leaders should be able to know their limitations and admit that they cannot possibly do everything. B. F. Skinner is considered the Father of operant conditioning, and he maintains that "Operant conditioning is a type of learning where a given behavior is followed either by reinforcement (leading to the strengthening of that behavior), nothing (leading to the weakening of that behavior), or punishment (leading to aversion to that behavior)." (Learning Theory and Christian Leadership). Leaders must know how to deal with problems creatively. Part of the creative leadership is to signify new challenges for managers. There is a need to redistribute the power within the organization and make managers as influencers rather than controllers of subordinates. That is where the creative aspect comes in. This shift in leader's perspective could result in the ability of the subordinate to inculcate citizenship behavior. Boerner et.al. (2007) defined citizenship behavior as an "extra-role behavior." There is a need to take note on the term 'citizenship,' which is becoming an important part of manager's function today. This means that membership in organizations today should be viewed as a function of citizenship, which thus require new functions for managers as leaders. Vogelar (2007) also used the similar perspective in terms of leadership. This he called "leadership from the edge," which the study defined as the ability of the follower to authorize initiatives that would resolve issues real time. This would mean that the decision making process is distributed across all members of the organization thus enhancing their power in the organization. The impact of this kind of leadership is that lower level employees would be given sufficient responsibility. In the process each subordinate is encourages to make initiatives in resolving key issues thus enhancing their innovativeness and creativity in resolving key organizational problems. This perspective however has a distinct characteristic. This makes leadership available for everyone making each member of the organization a leader within the organization (Vogelar, 2007). These new forms of leadership open new functions for managers such as the need to motivate employees. Motivation plays a very important role in the ability of the employees to take creative steps in resolving key issues in the organization. While this structure enhances motivation of employees, the challenge for managers is the ability to sustain the motivation and commitment of employees to their tasks in order to make self-leadership works in the organization. The emerging perspectives in leadership could definitely offer some valuable insights on the trend and development in the discourse of effective leadership strategies. These characteristics based on many studies on the minds of great leaders and extracted from the best leadership practices show three major components that are necessary in effective leadership and achievement of goals: emotional intelligence, communications, and group efforts. This ability of the leader to be just about anyone based on the need of the situation is a very difficult task that would require emotional maturity. Leaders must be able to balance their need to implement the project effectively and the need of their team to feel that they are important and that what they are doing is good and in line with the goals of the organization. Secondly, they would need as well to have the openness such that communication would freely flow within the team or organization. Leaders must be able to instill to their followers that he can listen to and that their comments and suggestions are very important. The inability of the leader to be open and to imbibe an environment where people can practice their creativity would only cause many problems unanticipated previously for the project. Finally, there is a need to present to subordinates and followers that the goal is a group effort. The importance of the ability of a leader to imbibe a sense of team and group would facilitate better working rapport for all. This is also very important in opening the lines of communication for examination and evaluation of the project effectively. WORKS CITED Boerner, S., Eisenbeiss, S.A., and Griesser, D. (2007). Follower behavior and organizational performance: The impact of transformational leaders. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 13(3): 15-22. Retrieved April 24, 2008 from Infotrac Academic ASAP database. Coyle, J. and Kossek, E.E. (2000). John P. Kotter on what leaders really do. Human Resource Planning, 23(1), 45. Retrieved April 24, 2008 from Infotrac Academic ASAP database. Goleman, D. (2000). Leadeship that gets results. Harvard Business Review, 78(2),78 90. Retrieved April 24, 2008 from Infotrac Academic ASAP database. Learning Theory and Christian Leadership. Retrieved April 24, 2008 http://www.xenos.org/classes/leadership/learningtheory.html Vogelar, A.L.W. (2007). Leadership from the edge: A matter of balance. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 13(3): 27-40. April 24, 2008, from Infotrac Academic ASAP database. Read More