Analysis of Leadership

This blog will discuss about analysis of leadership. The content of this blog will consist of the importance of leadership, why we need to study and understand it, theories about leadership and some organizational example of leadership. This blog will also share the authors point of view and invite all readers to share and discuss about their thought about leadership. Last but not least, there will be a conclusion and recommendations for the future leaders.

Leadership development is vital because organizations take on the personality of their leaders. Leadership training and development can maximize productivity, shape a positive culture and promote harmony. To achieve this, key people must lead individuals and teams using an appropriate leadership style.

The leader’s job is not to solve every problem alone, but to inspire those he or she leads to solve the problems. Good leaders recognize that they do not have all the answers and are constantly reeducating themselves on their businesses and sharpening their leadership skills. Beyond personal qualities such as vision and positive thought, a leader must also take careful steps to communicate with his or her staff in the best way possible. Formerly rare processes such as goal-setting, constant feedback, and a system of rewards are now the norm in most workplaces. Some of the most important lessons of this book concentrate on your interactions with your group as a team, but also as individuals.

Based on Individual Differences Framework (IDF) there are some factors that can influence individual leadership styles. 2 most important factors are heredity (genes, race/ethnicity, gender) and environment (culture/education, parental influence, physical influence). Those factors will form individual characteristic such as personality, abilities and skills, values that can reflected by their leadership styles and behaviors (Nahavandi 2006). While Adair’s model said that leadership style influenced by 3 factors such as:

1. Task needs

achieving the objectives of the group, defining group tasks, planning the work, allocation of resources, organisation of duties and responsibilities, controlling quality and checking performance, reviewing progress.

2. Individual needs

meeting the needs of the individual members of the group, attending to personal problems, giving praise and status, reconciling conflicts between group needs and needs of the individual, training the individual

3. Team maintenance needs

maintaining morale and building team spirit, cohesiveness of the group as a working unit, setting standards and maintaining discipline, systems of communication within the group, training the group, appoint sub-leaders (Mullins 2010).

There are 3 main leadership styles that we will discussed. First is the great man or discretionary effort leadership style. This type of leaders can influence employees or followers to give their best in every task given. “enough is not good enough” (author 2017), so the employees or followers are willing to go “extra miles” to get the best result. This type of leadership needs to have charisma and some skills in communication, build relationships based on trust, enable and support staff to carry out their role, allow staff flexibility in over how they perform their role. Example for this leader was Steve Jobs in how he leads Apple Inc. Steve had been a living role model for Apple employees. His charisma, passion, spirit and communication skills “infected” to Apple’s employees, that makes all employees were willing to give their best for Apple. It reflected from the Apple products from Iphone 1 untill Iphone 6 there was a significant innovation in every product. It also influenced to the sales of Apple’s products and makes Iphone become a market leader.

The second leadership style is transactional/situational style. Situational leadership is based on the ‘readiness’ of the followers that the leader needs to influence (Mullins 2010). This model focuses our attention on the requirement for leaders to invest time and energy into: developing the ability, confidence and commitment of individuals, developing their readiness and willingness to accomplish tasks and achieve objectives, using their leadership behaviour to deliver this development of their teams (Mullins 2010). This is the common leadership style that we can see at most companies nowadays.

The third is transformational leadership style. This style needs 4 important components to be imolemented: idealised influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualised consideration (Yukl 2010). Example for transformational leadership style is William Edwards Deming, management consultant, transformed the way workers behave in the automobile manufacturing industry by introducing quality-management techniques. Through the use of statistical methods, Deming’s approach helped the industry improve design, quality, testing and sales. This type of transformational leadership has also impacted other industries as well, leading to the development of process -improvement methodologies such as Six Sigma. Quality management professionals implement Six Sigma to transform their business by reducing product errors, minimizing waste and improving customer satisfaction.

As conclusion, everybody can learn to be a good leader by taking good examples from their environment (family, education, workplace), mentors, training and combined with the way their act, think and feel to influence their employees or followers doing their tasks in the way the leader want them to do it.

 

References

Richard Hays (2012), Leadership, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Available from: Locate,  http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=c0937ba3-bef3-4702-936c-c3d87bbfea75%40sessionmgr4008&vid=1&hid=4104, [6 March 2017]

Bahman Nasir Zenouzi & Ali Dehghan (2012), Complexity Theory and General Model of Leadership, Global Journals Inc. (USA), available from:  https://globaljournals.org/GJMBR_Volume12/6-Complexity-Theory-and-General-Model.pdf [7 March 2017]

Terence R. Mitchell (1970), Leader Complexity and Leadership Style, Available from: locate,  http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=bf634f64-8a40-44b2-b20e-2aafbdc8085e%40sessionmgr4006&vid=1&hid=4206 [6 March 2017]

Laurie J. Mullins (2016), Management & Organisational Behaviour Eleventh Edition, Pearson [6 March 2017]