Leadership has become very important topic in modern organization in the drive for success where this report mainly focused on becoming an effective authentic leader in a firm. This report first looks at clearly defining what leadership means and whether there is a difference between leading and managing. Furthermore some key important roles leaders play have also been identified.
As there are many areas to consider in developing as a great leader, report only focuses on key topics like what are some key leadership styles and what are the situations to use them, using power and influence ethically, improving creativity and innovation and understanding culture for effective leadership. Moreover these topics have been discussed using various sources of references such as books, journals, newspapers and case studies.
2. What is Leadership?
Before moving on further it is very important to know what leadership means where according to Dubrin (2008, p. 2) leadership can define as "the ability to inspire confidence and support among the people who are needed to achieve organizational goals".
Leadership is not framed to a particular level thus should develop throughout every level of the organization. However complexity of situations may increase at the top decesion making levels which require more effective range of leadership skills.
2.1 Leadership and Management
When people talk about leadership the first impression comes to mind is about someone who effectively manages everyday operations of an organization. However, there is a difference between management and leadership approach as shown in Appendix-3. Management consists of the rational evaluation of a situation and organized selection of goals and purposes where leadership can be a special application for the management. According to Bass & Stogdill (1990, p.383), "Leaders should manage and managers should lead", in simple a good manager these days a good leader, likewise, a good leader will also be a good manager. This is not an easy task but these leaders who can effectively balance administrative aspects and interpersonal aspects of business can be the key for some organizations to flourish over many years.
2.2 Roles of a Managerial Leader
Leader play key roles in an organization which could enhance the capacity to lead where few important roles described by Dubrin (2008) are;
Negotiator
Negotiating require persuading people by communicating through the right medium and voice effectively and forging a single convincing vision that everyone can get behind. This include making deals is very difficult in business context where a leader has the ability to bargain with supiriors to gain funds, facilities, bargain with suppliers for services, delevery times and bargain with other units of the organization for their support.
Coach and motivator
Efective leader would motivate and coach his members and direct them to improve performance, recognize their achivements give feedback and implement reward and punishment systems to maintain good performance.
Team player and a team builder
A leader should display loyalty, appropriate personal conduct and corporation with others as a team player and appreciating team members for their achievements, throwing parties or organize sporting events to increase their group moral as a team builder.
Entrepreneur
A leader should have a great awareness of what's happening in the outside world by reading trade publications, professional journals and visiting other organizations, meetings, educational programs, etc to understand changing needs and requirements and improve organizations performance.
3. Leadership Styles
According to Dubrin (2008, p.114), "leadership style is the consistance pattern of behaviour that characterize a leader". Effective leader always have a style of leading people which can be the following styles indicated, or a unique style taken from each style to facilitate their organizations. exploring the best leadership style is an extension of understanding leadership behaviors and attitudes.
3.1 Autocratic leadership
These leaders hold most of the authority and are considered task oriented since they give more prominence to get the task done where mostly group member's attitude toward decision will not take into account. According to an article in Big dog & Little dog's performance juxtaposition, (n.d.), autocratic style is not "bossing people around" which is unprofessional. A suitable circumstance to use this style is when a leader has all the information to solve the problem and required to take a decision quickly and also employees are well motivated. This aptly illustrates in the case The Man Who Turned IBM Around (2002), on Louis V Gerstner who used autocratic leadership style where he was described as a man of conviction, constantly pursued his own instincts and wanted results thus expected his employees to provide the results at any cost which sounds harsh but successful.
3.2 Participative leadership
Leaders who use this style share decision making with the group members. Leader is not expected to know everything and should make use of knowledgeable and skillful employees which provide benefit of enabling employees to become a part of team thus allowing the leader to make better decisions. Moreover the style can be used when a leader has part of information and the employees have other parts. According to Dubrin (2008, p.114), participative leadership can be further divide into three subcategories;
Consultative leaders
These leaders discuss with group members prior making a decision but the final authority of executing the decision is held by the leader.
Consensus leaders
In addition to discussing decisions, all members in the team have a chance to provide input and the final decision is only being made if at least all supports it.
Democratic leaders
Group will get the authority to take decisions where after all member opinions are considered the voting is done prior making the final decision.
Participative leaders often play key roles such as coaching, negotiating etc where it is more suitable in managing competent people who are eager to take responsibilities and want to involve in the decision making process. As Dubrin (2008) explain, Participative style works well with the new breed of graduates from business and professional programs.
A great leader should able to recognize employee behavior and believe their competency to follow this leadership style. A great example shown by Stallard, Hommes, & Pankau (n.d.) is about A.G. Lafley, the CEO of Procter & Gamble (P&G) who used participative leadership style to turnaround business. Although Durk Jager (Former CEO) had doubts in employee competency Lafley knew they were capable of restoring the firm to its former excellence. He was relentlessly inquisitive in a calm, respectful way which builds trust with employees thus soon employee morale and P&G's performance improved dramatically.
3.3 Situational leadership
Hersey, Blanchard and Johnson (2000) indicate their developed Situational Leadership Grid containing two dimensions of leadership. This included;
Task behavior- where the leader outline the duties and responsibilities of an individual or for the group
Relationship behavior- the extent of a leader partake in two way communication with behavioral choices such as giving support, communicating, assist interactions, active listening and providing feedback.
Leadership style should be matched to the experience of the employee which include psychological, self-confidence, ability and readiness to accept responsibility and the Job experience such as appropriate skills and technical expertise. Therefore it is wise that leaders should be more relationship motivated than task motivated as the employee maturity increases thus leadership will vary with the situation. Leader may then delegate, participate and sell ideas or tell employees what to do. More details on situational leadership regarding an actual situation, is shown in Appendix- 1.
4. Using Power and Influence ethically
Leadership ethics incorporate distinctive collection of ethical challenges related to a person's profession or role. Leaders face added challenges unlike in other professions since work of a leader is not well defined as career of a doctor or lawyer. In short, an effective ethical leader is a person who does the right thing, right way, for right reasons. Appendix- 2 shows more information on ethical behavior. A legendary example as Ciulla (1995) argued is 'Hitler', on whether he is a good leader. Hitler may be a leader but the 'good' part depends on whether it refers to ethics of his leadership or his competence as a leader. One element of these may not create a good leader where a good effective leader therefore should contain both competence and ethical practice.
Power can be the potential of one individual to influence the behavior of another where article edited by Marturano and Gosling (2008, p.130) argue, "If personal commitment is the result of the influencing process, then leadership appears to be the word which we use to describe this process". Thus leadership is an influencing method and power is the capacity to influence which some form of power is essentially applied when leadership takes place. Therefore a great leader using such power or capacity should do it ethically, for instance, if an executive use power in aid of a research project which benefit his organization if it is successful then he's action is ethical. Most of the times special privileges given to leaders may make them think that they are higher than others and not subject to the same rules. These privileges may include many, from a large salary, vehicles, higher position to special access to resources and information or exceptional privileges regarding rules and regulations which can be misused by the leader for his personal intentions thus cannot be justify as true leadership.
As Harvard Business Essentials (2005, p.120) argue; influence, power and persuasion have one common thing with explosives, which is if handled carelessly, irresponsibly or evil intent it can do a huge damage as well as capable of good if it's used carefully with good intensions. Power can corrupt leaders who possess it, such as the earlier example 'Hitler', where influence can also be evil. For example exaggerating demands in a negotiation, concealing true intentions to influence a better outcome and intentionally giving false information to gain advantages can indicate as evil things done through influence. Influence is a main ingredient of negotiation, which is a role that leaders play, where a good leader should think long term and understand unethical tactics can demolish reputation of trust and credibility as well as the influence ability in a second which developed over the years. So apart from written policies on ethics, a great leader needs to use his power and influence tactics ethically and lead as an example.
5. Creativity and Innovation
According to a study of Williams (2005), creativity is defined as "The thinking process that helps us to generate ideas". This can be either novel method of looking at existing problems, or of noticing new opportunities maybe by exploiting evolving technologies or changes in markets. So creativity involves looking unusually at what people usually take for granted. Furthermore he states that innovation is where applying such ideas to make or do things better, efficiently and effectively. Therefore if these two are used cleverly and facilitated by competent leadership it will enable improvement, transformation, success and growth in the organization.
Study of Williams (2005) goes further on the difference between creativity and innovation through a screening process where an effective leader should participate in these stages to get the best out of it. As a foundation for recognizing the clever close-quartet leadership can add value to people creative thoughts and attempts, the model synthesizing the complementary and parallel ideas appear as in figure- 1.
Figure- 1 (Williams, 2005)
In the input stage leader should nurture the environment and produce opportunities for creative thoughts and productive synergy to thrive. At close quarters, the leader can encourage, facilitate, energize, shape up and endorse creativity and creative thinking mostly through brainstorming sessions, workshops, etc. Then creative environment will begin to create a more open culture and enable increase in quality of insight, awareness, participation and engagement. Better understanding and a more freely exchange of learning and knowledge are some outcomes of well guided creativity, in an organization.
Screening stage is a conversion process involving logic, objective analysis and rational evaluation which give scope for leaders to investigate problems of potential improvements in firm's value chain, products, services and daily work with his teams. The more creative the group, then screening process should be more detailed.
The innovation stage is basically about tangible results of creative thinking where leader's main contribution will probably that of providing the sense of direction, political influence and required horsepower, to make sure that appropriate innovation is pushed through to successful implementation.
The hierarchy of task activity, with its varying implications for leading and managing creativity and innovation, is shown in Appendix- 4
6. Culture and Leadership
Leaders always have to deal with people from different cultural backgrounds within and outside the organization. An effective leader therefore should understand how to deal with these cross cultures in an organization. Recent study edited by Marturano and Gosling (2008, p.32) shows, cross-cultural leadership is "leadership in which a leader endeavor to influence the activities and goals of a culturally diverse group by appealing to their systems of shared knowledge and meaning".
Interest in cross-cultural leadership was primarily encouraged by the increasing globalized world since many workers nowadays work outside their home countries. When it comes to managers this is where they start experiencing 'culture shock' as they try to adjust their management and leadership styles to an unfamiliar set of dominant norms and expectations of the host culture.
It is important to identify the persistent behavioral patterns shown by leaders from different national cultures where these differences are systematically described by techniques that categorize and compare cultural values. Hofstede's five dimension model is one highly influenced way of identifying these. For example in Sri Lanka even though private companies practice new ways to improve, public companies are still operate more traditionally. Figure- 2 is a different application of Hofstede's five dimensions to Sri Lankan public companies.
Sri Lankan public companies
Characteristics
Advice
High Power Distance
Companies are more centralized
Taller hierarchies.
Gaps are large in authority, respect and compensation
Admit a leader's power.
To find answers may need to go to the top.
Low Individualism
Emphasis on developing skills thus becoming masters of something.
Harmony considered significant than honesty.
Suppress emotions and feelings to work in harmony.
Show respect for age and wisdom.
Respect traditions and changes are introduced more slowly.
High Masculinity
Men are masculine and women are feminine.
There is a well defined difference between men's work and women's work.
People may expect different roles from males and females.
Men mostly avoid discussing emotions or making emotion base judgments or arguments.
High Uncertainty avoidance index
Business conduct is formal with many rules and policies.
Sense of anxiety spurns high levels of expression and emotion.
Be brief and clear about your expectations and parameters.
Plan and arrange, communicate frequently and early, give detailed plans and concentrate on the tactical
High Long term orientation
The basis of society is family
Parents and men have additional authority than the young people and women.
Show respect for traditions.
Should not act frivolously or show extravagance.
Avoid behavior which could cause another to "lose face".
Figure- 2
As Jayaweera (2010, p.8) points out it is clear that past three to four decades most appointments leaders to these government firms in Sri Lanka have been made mostly not on the basis of their true leadership qualities but on their political associations with the governing party. These cultural dimensions and politics may reduce productivity in the firm where however effective leader must take an active part in understanding the culture in the firm and executing policies to change the mindsets of the workforce to identify the concept of economic and efficient running government sector organizations and corporations.
Furthermore study edited by Mobley (1999) shows international leaders need to attempt in becoming trans-cultural creative leaders. Therefore effective leaders should have the ability in learning how to exceed their childhood cultural patterns, respect different cultures, build cross-cultural collaborations based on mutual trust, respect and actively engage in cross-cultural issue solving conflicts and aid in constructing new cultures based around the projects, networks and transitory companies.
7. Conclusion
There is no distinct leadership style to use in an organization. A true effective leader should identify which style to use, in what circumstances and the type of followers he has. For an instance the new breed of graduates from business and professional programs nowadays can be a sign on future followers where they will be very competent and show willingness which participative leadership style can be more effective.
Power and influence can be considered as important tools for a person to get support from people and achieve desired organizational goals. However these two ingredients can be used for good as well as evil intensions like 'Hitler', where only a true leader will use them for good. Therefore a 'person' will be a 'leader' when he do the right thing, right way, for right reasons.
Creativity and innovation is a key for organization's survival and success. This can only be effectively encouraged through good effective leadership by using close-quartet leadership management which adds value to people's creative thoughts and attempts.
Culture is a key concept to understand when working with people in this high globalized world where a good leader should understand different cultural back grounds, norms and their expectations while respecting them and go beyond his childhood cultural patterns to create cross-cultural collaborations based on mutual trust which mainly depend organization's success.
8. Recommendation
When considering an effective leadership style a leader should always balance the requirements of the firm against the requirements of his team thus should consider;
The experience and the skill levels of the team
Whether the work is involved is novel and creative or routine
Whether the organizational environment is radically changing or stable, risky or more conservative
The style that leader is more preferred with
A leader should use power and influence for good intentions where he should work with high ethical standards and lead by example. Only after a leader sets an example he can encourage others to follow company's code of ethics which enable leaders to work in an ethical environment.
A good leader should always encourage creativity and innovation in the organization which can be effectively achieved through close-quartet leadership management.
A good leader should understand different cultural back grounds, norms and their expectations and respect them. He should learn on how to exceed his childhood cultural patterns, build cross-cultural collaborations based on mutual trust, respect and actively engage in cross-cultural issue solving conflicts and aid in constructing new cultures based around the projects, networks and transitory companies.
My strengths
My weaknesses
Always try to think positively in any situation
English writing skills
Working under deadlines
Not very fluent when it comes to speaking English
Too much thinking when a work is given
Lack of confidence
Feedbacks received from others
Positive:
They feel really comfortable around me
They say that I'm very nice
Negative:
Not assertive enough
Priorities to focus
To be highly fluent in speaking English
Developing more confidence
My Personal Development plan
My desired state
What I'm hoping to improve/achieve in priorities
To communicate very fluently specially when dealing with professionals without getting stuck. To present my ideas quickly and very clearly.
Confidence has very much improved comparing school days but need to go to the next level like voice out my opinions and ideas in any situation for any level person.
Why do I want to achieve those and what does it provide me?
With fluent English speaking skill I will be able communicate more clearly and effectively with people as a professional graduate. To deal with international relations effectively
With more confidence I will be more motivated and my life will be more interesting. Also I will be able to gain more opportunities for success thus I can live my true self.
My short term goals
Finish reading all four course text books again, this time loudly enabling those familiar words to speak fluently.
Browsing net and read articles and books on building confidence and follow those concepts.
My long term goals
Have a habit of speaking English at all times and going to a spoken English class to master fluency.
Being confident at all times normal situations as well as in real organizational situations and never backing down.
How to get there? What is required?
What must I improve/ experience/ learn to achieve that desired state
Everyday practice reading twenty pages each from business related as well as other books aloud. Listening to audio books and films.
Using NLP techniques to develop confidence.
What are the possible resources to experience/ learn/improve?
Business related and other kinds of books, spoken English class, audio books.
Listening to 'Develop Your Self Confidence' audio book by Glenn Harrold and reading 'How to develop confidence' by Joe Smith.
Timeline
Priority - 1
Priority - 2
Start date:
Short term goal:
Long term goal:
02/08/2010
02/11/2010
02/02/2011
Start date:
Short term goal:
Long term goal:
02/08/2010
02/11/2010
02/02/2011
Day:
Time:
Activity:
Friday, Saturday
7pm to 8pm
Spoken English class
Day:
Time:
Activity:
Monday, Wednesday, Friday
8pm to 9pm
Practice NLP techniques on developing confidence
Day:
Time:
Activity:
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
7pm to 8om
Reading loudly
Day:
Time:
Activity:
Tuesday, Thursday
8pm to 9pm
Read 'How to develop confidence'
Day:
Time:
Activity:
Sunday
8pm to 9pm
Listen to 'Develop Your Self Confidence'
