Blog 5: The benefits of studying leadership

The various benefits involved in the understanding and studying of effective leadership is discussed in this blog. Leadership is essential for every organisation since it identifies the effective future of the industry (Hurley and Brown 2010). Advantages of studying effective leadership satisfies the various needs for understanding the organisational objectives, satisfies the needs for predicting the industrial goals and influences the various organisational events. Studying leadership helps the professionals to understand the organisational boundaries and improves the job satisfaction and performance of the employees (Glaid 2010). Main benefit of effective leadership is that, it helps to attain the future goals of the employees as well as the organisation. It benefits the team members to develop their skills and complete the task successfully. Passmore (2010) stated that, high level of self-awareness is created through effective leadership. The above authors have stated different views of the benefits of studying effective leadership. It is found that job satisfaction and self-awareness among the team members is created through effective leadership.

Conclusion

The major aspects that I learnt from effective leadership are, a leader should set him as an example for their followers, a business leader should be capable of inspiring the followers and improve their performance and a leader should also empower the other team members to make them satisfied with their job. Therefore studies on effective leadership styles could influence an individual to attain the future carrier goals in an efficient manner.

References

• Glaid, T. K. (2010) Leadership Ignite. USA: Xlibris Corporation
• Hurley, T. J. and Brown, J. (2010) ‘Conversational Leadership: Thinking Together for a Change’, Oxford Leadership Journal 1(2), 1-9
• Passmore, J. (2010) Leadership Coaching: Working with Leaders to Develop Elite Performance. London: Kogan Page Publishers

Blog 4: Ethical Relationships between Leaders and their Teams

This blog explains about the ethical relationship existing between the leaders and the followers of a team. According to Ponnu and Tennakoon (2009) Ethical leadership helps to attain the moral development and identity of the team members.  Positive relationship should exist between the leader and the team members in order to complete the task successfully within a particular time period. Ethical relationship between the leader and the followers of the team will influence the interactions among them and helps to attain high mutuality (Brown and Trevino 2006). Leaders are responsible to create a moral environment among the team members and motivate them to work around common values (Piccolo et al 2010). The above authors have mentioned the significance of ethical leadership by producing different ideas. They have emphasized that; moral development and mutuality are attained through the existence of ethical relationship between the leader and their team members. For example, the leaders or managers should communicate clear data about the ethical integrity and conduct as well as regarding the various behaviours that are expected from the team members (Schminke 2010). In a restaurant industry, leaders should instruct the ethical standards and explain the outcome measures for satisfying the consumers resulting to high profitability.

Increase in the level of ethical leadership will result in a reduced level of unethical behaviour among the team members (Ponnu and Tennakoon 2009). Internalisation and symbolisation are the two dimensions of moral identity obtained through effective ethical relationship between the team members and the team leader (Schminke 2010). The effectiveness of the leadership ethics depends on the moral or ethical attitude of the leader and the followers. Lentz (2010) mentioned that, effective performance of a team is the result when the values and ethics of the leaders and the team members are similar. The views of the above authors state the effectiveness of ethical leadership in a different ways. They have revealed that effective leadership leads to moral identify and efficient team performance.

 

Figure: Classic management process

Source: (Lang 2010)

Conclusion

Ethical leadership results in a positive relationship among the leader and team members. It is concluded that, effective ethical leadership leads to an increase of moral identity and mutuality between the team leader and followers.

 

 

References

• Brown, M. E. and Trevino, L. K. (2006) ‘Ethical leadership: A review and future directions’. The Leadership Quarterly 17, 595 – 616
• Lentz Leadership Institute and Lentz, C. A. (2010) The Refractive Thinker: Vol. IV: Ethics, Leadership, and Globalization, Volume 4. Las Vegas: Refractive Thinker Press.
• Lang, M. (2011) Transformational Leadership: Fundamentals – Models – Differences – Impact on Employees. Germany: GRIN Verlag
• Ponnu, C. H. and Tennakoon, G. (2009) ‘The Association between Ethical Leadership and Employee Outcomes – the Malaysian Case’, EJBO Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organisation Studies 14(1), 21-32
• Piccolo, R. F., Greenbaum, R., Den hartog, D. N., and Folger, R. (2010)’The relationship between ethical leadership and core job characteristics’, Journal of Organisational Behaviour 31, 259-274.
• Schminke, M. (2010) Managerial Ethics: Managing the Psychology of Morality. New York: Taylor & Francis Group.

Blog 3: Analysis of leaders in global business

The main aim of this blog is to perform analysis on leaders in global business by providing examples about two leaders in global business. Leaders are playing a great role in developing the organisational business. Many leaders of reputed organisations will be the former of those business organisations. Founder of reputed firm will be the best leader in the global business environment. The following paragraph illustrates about the two famous leaders and their leadership styles briefly.

Technology is the top business performed by different business people in past 25 years. Bill Gates who is the founder and chairman of Microsoft performs the world-class technology business for past 25 years. Gates is not only world’s first richest person but also first leader to perform the business with innovative ideas. “A tough but fair compromise” is the leadership style determined by Bill Gates. This leadership style has made the Microsoft to place in highly competitive cutting edge region in global business environment (CNN 2012).

Innovative leaders follow three effective innovative leadership activities such as form a supportive environment, develop effective technique for innovation and assign the resources for the innovation. This makes many innovative leaders to achieve their targeted goals in global business environment (Agbor 2008). Innovativeness is given more importance by the effective intellectual leaders (White and Bruton 2010). Bill Gates also focuses on innovativeness which impacts positively on the development of Microsoft organisation. CNN (2012) report and White and Bruton (2010) stated that innovative and competitive leadership style is followed in the Microsoft: by a great business leader called Bill Gates. The above authors’ views CNN (2012) and White and Bruton (2010) are not same and it is observed that innovative leadership style is followed in technology industry.

Both, Sergey Brin and Larry Page is founder of famous search engine of Internet called Google. They followed variety of leadership style and models in order to direct their employees towards reaching the success on innovation (Deitel and Deitel 2009). These two are considered as young leaders who made revolution in leading the subordinates or employees in the organisation. ‘Don’t be evil’ is the main motto of the Sergey Brin and Page leadership style. Page and Brin are not like other managers; they directly assign projects to the individuals in the organisation. They allow their employees to feel free to approach personally during critical situations. They have introduced chid day-care in order to help their employees, which is indication of Brin and Page care on their employees.  Page and Brin soft leadership style has made many individuals to work with more interest and dedicated manner. Soft leadership style of Sergey has changed the individuals to perform their duties ethically and which in turn increased the position of Google in technical business. This made innovative employees to perform their business successfully.

In servant leadership, higher officials will directly work with employees according to the company norms in order to increase the power of vision towards reaching the goals among the employees. This leadership style helps in turning the employees into best. In Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page have implemented servant leadership in order to guide the talented individuals to reach the goal successfully (Lussier and Achua 2009). This leadership style resulted to launch many innovative products such as Google Tool Bar, Google Video, Adwords, earth, Gmail and so forth. This has increased the per share rate of about 500 dollar and resulted the Google to reach highest growth. Servant leadership of Brin and Page has increased the innovative capability of Google and also made many competitive firms to think whether the Servant leadership of Brin will be suitable for their organisations.

 

Figure: Servant Leadership

Source: (Finzel 2012)

Conclusion

Different leadership styles are followed by Bill Gates, Larry Page and Sergey Brin for directing their followers or employees into right path. Bill Gates follows innovative leadership style and Page and Brin follows servant leadership style. The leadership styles of these leaders have increased the innovative capability of their firms.  

References

• Agbor, E. (2008)’Creativity and Innovation: The Leadership Dynamics’. Journal of Strategic Leadership 1(1), 39-45
• CNN (2012) Top 25: Influential business leaders Internet [online] available from <http://articles.cnn.com/2005-02-28/us/cnn25.top.business_1_business-leaders-top-business-people-melinda-gates-foundation?_s=PM:US>  [25^th June 2012]
• Deitel, P. J. and Deitel, H. M. (2009) Internet and World Wide Web, 4th Edn. New Delhi: Pearson Education India
• Finzel, H. (2012) The Top Ten Leadership Commandments. England: David C Cook Publication
• Lussier, R. N. and Achua, C. F. (2009) Leadership. USA: Cengage Learning
• White, M. A. and Bruton, G. A. (2010) The Management of Technology and Innovation: A Strategic Approach. USA: Cengage Learning

Blog 2: Change and Resistance to change

Changes in the characteristics of human beings, why some people resist changing their character is the concept discussed in this blog. Characteristics and mentality of human are quite differing from each other. A leader changes the characteristics of human beings but mentality of some human being cannot be changed in the working environment. The character of Human being can be changed when he/she inspired to any Leader. Inspiration comes from the deep heart of an individual about the appearance or mannerism of other individual for their unique quality (Lance and Secretan 2004). Inspiration towards a leader can change the character of human beings by themselves.

Culture is defined as system where group of individuals accepted to follow that system for given time period (Willcoxson and Millett 2000). The informal rules that presents how individuals are behaving for most of the time is termed as strong culture. Sharing some patterns in the working environment that are applicable for all individuals, is termed as organisational culture. Organisational culture is defined as set of values, beliefs, perceptions and feeling that impact greatly on the decisions or actions of individuals in the organisation (Kaur 2009).

National culture and organisational culture are integrated aspect where many global business firms are facing challenges to implement it. Employees who belong to other countries feel difficult to adopt with the other country organisational culture. This is because organisational culture is framed based on the country’s culture (Daft et al 2012). In this situation, leaders need to make their followers to adopt effectively with their organisational culture. The following paragraphs explain how the people of different culture or other individuals resist to the changes made in organisational culture. Change is also related concept to the organisational culture.

Every individual in an organisation has a goal to reach. The main intention for most of the people is to attain a leadership quality, because Leaders Rule the world of Business.  Healthy Leader can take their business to the global level. Individual in the firm can change their character by inspiring their leaders to reach the leadership quality but the mentality that shapes the character, is very hard to change through the inspiration of leader. The mentality is a key used to mould the character of a human being. Individuals have unique mentality with them. Character is as a temporal factor of Human being but Mentality is stable nature of humans, which cannot be change forever. According to Nagendra and Manjunath (2010) Leaders motivates their followers and it inspires the employees to reach the organisational goal in the firm. Business environment are subjected to often changes and organisation which not responding to these changes are quite difficult to survive in the business field. Employees in an organisation have resistance to change since they are familiar to particular methods and not interested to learn new technologies.  Great leadership is required to convince the employees to accept the change occurred in the business field and to reduce the ration of resistance to change. Thus the Leaders in an organisation act as a change agents in an organisation.

Three major sources of resistance to change are as follows

Facts: They are defined as the statements, which have an evident for the confirmation of this statement. Every employee use facts to prove their opinion towards their senior peoples.

Beliefs: Belief is nothing but the mentality and opinions of an individual. The Belief of a human being cannot be proved. Beliefs lead employee into a confusion state; whether the change is good to accept or not (Lussier 2011).

Values: People believe and trust towards a work has some value. Every employees give importance to their values.

Three major focuses of employee for resistance to change:

Self: Usually every individual has a nature of asking queries like “What I will gain or lose by accepting the changes”. If facts proves that the changes has a negative impact on employees. Then it is hard to accept the change by an employee.

Others: Considering others about the change and its impact on them is common mentality of peoples. Most of the people mentality is selfish in nature. They ask their friends and colleagues about the effects of change to safeguard them from the issues. If negative impact found by them, they started resisting the changes occurred in business environment (Lussier 2011).

Business Environment: Physical setting, business climate and external factors includes in working environment. A pleasant environment which is controlled by employee is required if change occurs to that they resist to accept the change.

Inspiration is not just a model or formula to apply as such, it should be provided according to the situation.  Lance and Secretan (2004) mentioned an incident about the unsuccessful attempts of inspiration by a leader. A case study covered by Tom Brokaw about the inspiration provided former President Richard Nixon to his follower who met an accident. A news anchor of NBC has covered this accident lively and he describes it in a logical way of Leadership quality and inspiration. Tom Brokaw is the anchor of NBC discussed about an accident was happened during a presidential motorcade. The motorcycle driver has lost his legs during the accident. The former President Richard Nixon saw the accident and the fellow who lost legs is 10 yards away from him. One of the guy in the crowd said this employee has worked for three years with Nixon. Suddenly Nixon walked to seen the injured man and said, ‘Do you enjoy your Job?’ The motivation has not been given to the injured employee at right time by: Nixon. After accident, Nixon has to encourage the injured guy personally first, since he will be discourage with his lost legs. Later, the motivation needs to be provided by Nixon to injured guy towards the job.

 

Fig. 2: Action research model

Source: (Wagner and Hollenbeck 2010)

An inspirational leader could revise the agendas of organisation in clear manner in order to meet the end goal of the organisation successfully. These changes may not satisfy the followers’ expectations and makes them to perform in resistant manner. Case study about a leader called Harold Geneen; ITT CEO is taken into consideration for describing about the importance of setting the organisational agendas according to the expectations of the followers. He has played a great role as leader and established competitive goals according to the expectations of his followers (Bass 2007). He worked hard for long duration for the benefits of his subordinates. Harold use to share the views of team member’s expectations in order to drive positive effects from the changes. Harold leader inspired, motivated and stimulated his followers to work effectively in the firm by setting the changes according to the expectations of his followers. Therefore, it is observed that leaders could acquire the views of followers before setting the changes in the organisational goals.

Conclusion

The Leader with good qualities and mentality only can inspire the employees of an organisation. This quality helps to change the characteristics of employees and reduces the resistance to change. Although qualities of leaders are good, the mentality of an employee is difficult to change.

References

• Bass, B. (2007) ‘The Inspirational Processes of Leadership’. Journal of Management Development 7(5), 22-31
• Daft, R. L., Murphy, J. and Willmott, H. (2010) Organisation Theory and Design. Singapore: Cengage Learning EMEA
• Kaur, R. B. (2009) Organisational Culture An Exploration in Indian Banking Industry. New Delhi: Deep and Deep Publications
• Lance, H. K. and Secretan  (2004) Inspire! What Great Leaders Do? USA: John Wiley & Sons
• Lussier, R. N. (2011) Management Fundamentals: Concepts, Applications, Skill Development. 5^th Edn. USA: Cengage Learning
• Nagendra, S. and Manjunath, V. S. (2010) Entrepreneurship & Management. New Delhi: Pearson Education India
• Willcoxson, L. and Millett, B. (2000) ‘The Management of Organisational Culture’, Australian Journal of Management & Organisational Behaviour 3(2), 91-99
• Wagner, J. A. and Hollenbeck, J. R. (2010) Organisational Behaviour: Securing Competitive Advantage. New York: Taylor and Francis

Blog:1 Theories and Models of Leadership and Management

This blog emphasizes about the models and theories of leadership and management. The process of directing the followers in order to achieve the end goal is termed as leadership (Velsor et al 2010). It is the combined task of generating direction, making arrangements and changing the attitudes of followers to be committed towards specific goal. Effective leadership is developing an individual capacity towards performing a specific task (Boyd et al 2011). Leaders are playing a major in an organisation on the basis of different theories and models of leadership and management. Leadership is highly important since it involves in developing attitudes within every individual.

Leadership and management are two different factors, which plays significant role in the organisational development. Leadership is a multidirectional aspect, which impacts on the relationship between individuals (Fairholm 2009).  In case of management, it is unidirectional relationship authority involves in coordinating actions for making individuals to perform a job or task. Leadership involves in the process of increasing the efficiency of individuals for various purposes (Northouse 2009). Management directs the integrated actions of individuals in order to complete a task. Followers and leaders will take steps in order to create a real change in the organisation but subordinates and managers perform a task together in order to complete it effectively.

Leaders have to modify their process of dealing various actions periodically, since they need to create successful changes in the organisation. Therefore, change is considered as significant aspect for leaders in order to make effective leadership plans and implement successful steps to achieve the targets (Cameron and Green 2004).

This theory basically deals with the creation of personal opinions regarding the reasons for specific observations or events. Attribute theory of leadership engages with the behaviour of others and oneself. This theory could be applicable in an organisation. Two fields of leadership are focussed in this theory. First, it focuses on qualities of leadership and later the superiors’ attributions on observing the individual or group members behaviour (Winkler 2009). This theory concentrates on grouping the individuals from various disciplines, backgrounds and situations, which can be performed only by the leaders. This theory states that various qualities of leaders are responsible for grouping the individuals of different disciplines. The important quality like understanding the situations and attitudes of individuals are important for the leaders to understand the emotions and attitudes of an individual.

Attribution theory emphasizes that individuals try to make an effective aspect from the cause and effect relationships (Robbins 2009). Leaders produce effective organisational outcomes with the help of attribution frameworks. It helps to determine the vulnerabilities among people in the organisation and also aids in maintaining effective relationship with individuals in the firm (Masood et al 2012). Robbins (2009) and Winkler (2009) state that in attribution theory, leaders with the help of leadership qualities involves in producing positive emotional effects on other individuals in different environment.

Visionary leadership model emphasizes that an effective leader is a person with positive attitude about vision (Kantabutra 2006). This vision-oriented leader could encourage others to share the positive impact about vision and implements the steps to achieve the vision (Cook 2011).  This model acts like an important device for creating successful changes in the organisation.

Visionary leadership model suggests that a leader need to have clear idea about the process that going to be carried out both personally and professional and also a leader should increase the positive attitude towards facing both failure and success towards the current process which is going to be performed (Cameron and Green 2004). The views of authors Cook (2011) and Cameron and Green (2014) are different and it is observed that visionary leadership model states that leaders have to perform vision-oriented action successfully with positive attitude.

Realistic approach that plays important role in leadership development is situational theory (Griffin and Moorhead 2011).

Situational theory is otherwise termed as contingency theory, which suggests the leader to assess the environmental conditions or situations and manage the individuals according to those situations (Cook 2011). The two authors like Cook (2011) and Griffin and Moorhead (2011) states different views about situational theory. It is determined from their views that a leader should consider external condition while managing the individuals.

Situational Theory

 

Figure: Situational theory diagram

Source: (Desai 2008)

Contingency theory states that no leader has the ability to direct the followers since different behaviours are required at several different conditions in order to handle the individuals. This theory also suggests that leaders could actively lead their followers at different situations depending upon the effectiveness of leadership styles (Lewis et al 2011). This theory emphasizes that leaders should have two abilities such as degree of controlling the activities of individuals according to the situations and ability of motivating others (Manning et al 2006). These qualities of leaders could make the individuals to achieve organisational goals effectively. It also stresses that leaders should also be self-motivated initially before directing their followers towards achieving the goal (Moshal 2009). Firms by following the contingency or situational leadership model could attain their targeted goals effectively. For example, PepsiCo CEO uses this contingency leadership model in order to build up the efficiency of employees who works in that organisation. PepsiCo has reached great success in-terms of economy by implementing this model in right manner at appropriate situation in the organisation.  The above two authors Lewis et al (2011) and Moshal (2009) have emphasized about contingency theory in different manner. It has been observed that Leadership style; motivating attitude and degree of control are significant abilities of leaders required for grouping the people from various backgrounds, cultures and disciplines.

Conclusion

This blog discusses about contingency or situational, attribution and visionary leadership and management models effectively. Attribution leadership model helps in determining the negative aspect of people by closely observing their behaviour.  This could help the leader to change the negative aspect of people and direct them towards organisational goal. Contingency leadership model increases the efficiency of an individual towards achieving the targeted goal of the firm. Visionary leadership states that guiding the vision and sharing about it to others and implementing the activities to achieve that vision is significant for a leader. It is observed that contingency or situational, visionary leadership model and attribution leadership model are advantageous for leaders towards directing their followers from different backgrounds, cultures and generations.

References

• Boyd, B McClure M. and Goertzen, B. J. (2011). ‘The Intersection Between Soft Skill Development and Leadership Education’. Journal of Leadership Education 10(1), 1-23
• Cameron, E. and Green, M. (2004) Making Sense of Change Management [online] London: Kogan Page Publishers. available from <http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6ntE9TLr7YYC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false> [25^th June 2012]
• Cook, S. (2011) Customer Care Excellence [online] 6th edn. London: Kogan Page Publishers. available from <http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZTHAEzB_a1cC&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22Sarah+Cook%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=tMfnT4i5G9GV0QXH9N0q&ved=0CDwQ6wEwAA#v=onepage&q=inauthor%3A%22Sarah%20Cook%22&f=false> [25^th June 2012]
• Desai, A. (2008) Increasing Integration of Technology in Classrooms Through Enhanced Teacher Knowledge and Efficacy. USA: ProQuest publication
• Fairholm, M. R. (2009) ‘Leadership and Organisational Strategy’, The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal 14(1), 1-16
• Griffin, R. W. and Moorhead, G. (2011) Organisational Behavior. USA: Cengage Learning
• Kantabutra, S. (2006) ‘Follower Effects In The Visionary Leadership Process’, Journal of Business & Economics Research 4(5), 57-65
• Lewis, J. A., Packard, T. R. and Lewis, M. D. (2011) Management of Human Service Programs, 5th Edn. USA: Cengage Learning
• Masood, S. A., Shahbaz, M. and Shaheen, M. (2012) ‘Transformational Leadership and Attribution Theory: The Situational Strength Perspective’, Life Science Journal 9(1), 317-329
• Manning, T. T., Wilson, L. and Harlow-Rosentraub, K. (2006)  ‘Legacy Leadership Institutes: Strengthening Leadership for Community Involvement in 50+ Adults’, Journal of Leadership Education 5(2), 58-92.
• Moshal, B. S. (2009) Principles Of Management. New Delhi: Ane Books Pvt Ltd
• Northouse, P. G. (2009) Leadership: Theory and Practice. USA: SAGE Publications
• Robbins (2009) Organisational Behaviour, 13th Edn New Delhi: Pearson Education India
• Velsor, E. V., McCauley, C. D. and Ruderman, M. N. (2010) The Center for Creative Leadership Handbook of Leadership Development, 3rd Edn USA: John Wiley and Sons
• Winkler, I. (2009) Contemporary Leadership Theories: Enhancing the Understanding of the Complexity, Subjectivity and Dynamic of Leadership. USA: Springer