Organizational culture - Essay Example

Thus effective leadership requires accomplishment and influencing. Leadership requires trust and commitment of others, which they can achieve through their own behavior and integrity. Leaders create and deal with change; leadership requires vision, direction, strategies, motivation and inspiring. The model of leadership developed by Kouzes and Posner is known as The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership. These qualities include modeling the way, inspiring a shared vision, challenging the process, enabling others to act and encouraging the heart (Wiley, 2000).

Developing and inspiring a shared vision requires leadership because it has to be realistic and credible (Nahata, 2001). If the vision is shared, the individuals can find their own roles, which contribute to their personal and professional growth. The strength of a leader lies in his ability to inspire others to give their best. For instance, there is always a resistance to change in the face of environmental pressure and uncertainty when it is caused by the organization culture, says Schein (Lakomski, 2001).

A leader plays a crucial role in such cases where he has to inspire them to understand and accept the vision or the corporate goals. The individuals have to be inspired to deal with the external and internal environment. The leader can transform the current stagnating culture into a productive culture. When the resistance to change appears to be non-rational, the dynamics of culture have to be understood. The leader would first need to unfreeze the old assumptions after which cognitive restructuring takes place.

Thereafter refeezing takes place which means that changed behaviors and new assumptions become embedded and reinforced as the new culture through which the organization can solve the problems. In this change model, the role of the leader in managing change becomes