Understanding the Importance of Leadership
Discuss about the Effect Of Ethical Leadership Behavior.
Leadership is a vital function within a management that helps in achieving the group goals and maximizing the organizational efficiency. Leader is generally an individual that initiates an action by communicating the plans and policies to all the subordinates where the performance actually starts. I acknowledge leadership as an influence relationship among all the followers and leaders. They are the individuals that make real changes in the business environment by reflecting their shared purposes. As per Rakowski and Mongan (2014) leadership is a people activity and is responsible for managing all the organizational aspects.
In the current scenario, the concept of leadership has slightly changed due to various factors. This is due to the fact that world is changing because of increasing scandals and insecurity, terrorism and therefore strong leaders are required in such circumstances. Previously, an individual should be stable, competitive, uniform, self-centered and control the business more efficiently. While recently, leadership involves empowerment, effective collaboration, serves higher purpose by practicing a diverse workforce. I think it’s the perfect time for all the mangers to move towards empowerment, leadership valuing change and become an effective leader. Although management cannot be replaced by leadership as both the skills of leadership and managerial efficiency is required to effectively guide the organization.
As mentioned by Hirst et al. (2016) the leadership function related to the management is often authenticated or supported by various theories. I observed that cotemporary theories mostly lay emphasis on the situational factors, such as job structure, follower’s traits and stress level. On the other hand, the behavioral theories lay major focus on ascertaining the relationship between group performances and the leadership behaviors. The leader’s personality can be known in the form of several dimensions, like extroversion, agreeableness, emotional stability and conscientiousness and openness to experience. Through this approach, leadership efficiency can be known. In addition to this, it would also help the leaders to understand their dimensions. Leaders with high locus of control often think that they create a long-lasting impression on the behavior of their followers. As per Kesidou and Carter (2018) leaders having low locus of control showcases that the outcome is due to chance or result of luck and events or outside people
Values are generally such fundamental beliefs that affect the behavior or attitude of an individual or person. Values of the leaders are important for an effective result or outcome. I learned that these values actually guide the choice and actions of their leader’s. According to Bird and Mendenhall (2016) attitude of the leader is an effective evaluation of either positive or negative aspect relating to the events, things and people. As per McGregor, there are usually two set of human nature that is divided into two parts as Theory X and Theory Y. in Theory X, it is assumed that individuals are lazy and tends to avoid responsibility. Such kinds of people are not motivated to work, therefore repressive and authoritarian style of leadership style is to be practiced. While Theory Y is based on such assumptions that people are committed to work and take pride in their work. Understanding the people would help the leader to effectively interact with their followers.
Different Theoretical Frameworks for Effective Leadership
I think charismatic leaders help in motivating the people to more than would actually do in spite of all the existing personal sacrifices and obstacles. The people are influenced by the personal power of the individual rather than positional power. The influence is mostly based on their personal qualities. As per Banks et al. (2016) mental models are such theories that people hold relating to their behavior. They display how the behavior of the other people and other people affect the thinking pattern and effectiveness of other people. It is significant for the leader to foster feedback and reward teamwork. Emotional intelligence involves self-awareness of the people, self-management, social awareness and relationship management of the people. Through social awareness I think love based motivation is more important and helpful than fear based motivation. If an individual is valued more as an individual than it provide a sense of meaning and contribution to the community at a larger level.
I think in the recent era of globalization, diversity in workplace is highly significant. Workplace diversity is actually the workforce that includes people with diverse culture groups and different human qualities. The individuals are driven by major demographic changes, which add value to the firm. Diversity makes the organization more flexible by the development of organizational and employee’s potential. The leader in the present time should also focus on interactive style through which they favor both the collaborative and consensual process (Longenecker and Fink 2015). The leader should use diversity as a competitive weapon and apply high efforts to retain and recruit minorities. Top-level commitment of the individuals within an organization should be value diversity.
Leader should have a long-range vision that should recognize and support the diverse organizational community. I think it is highly important for the leaders to have knowledge related to dimensions of diversity besides awareness related to multicultural issues. As per Renko et al. (2015) the leaders should be opened to change themselves by empowering and mentoring all the diverse employees.
Effective managers are such who establish themselves as the focus of all the existing information networks. This would help them to facilitate the completion of all tasks. Leader should communicate the vision to their followers to achieve the desired goal with the same zeal. Communication champion are highly essential to build commitment and trust for achieving the vision. It would prove to be quite helpful to unite and inspire other people. In addition to this, I think it would also be proved useful to enable all those followers to live up to their vision. For initiating strategic conversation within the management, it is crucial, that the managers should have basic key elements. This includes open communication climate, discernment, dialogue and open communication climate.
The Role of Diversity, Communication, and Values in Leadership
Transformational leadership is more effective than any other form of leadership. The individuals have potential or abilities to bring the necessary changes in the environment. They have the ability to lead change as well as promote innovation by focusing on intangible qualities and providing common ground. The major highlights of such kind of individuals are that they develop or transform the followers into leaders. They recognize the courage in other people and also unlock their own potentiality to act and live courageously. According to Demirtas and Akdogan (2015) business is not only related to economic performances of the clients but is all about the values of the individuals. Moral leaders encourage their followers to generate moral values among themselves and furthermore apply this tactics to their workplace.
There are generally there levels of personal moral development. In the pre-conventional methods people follows certain rules so that they can easily avoid punishments and acts according to their own interest. The next level is the conventional level in which the people lives up to the expectation of others and upholds laws. The next and final level is post-conventional level, where the people act in a very ethical and independent manner irrespective of others expectation. Moral leadership actually encourages other people to act like a leader by enhancing their personality.
As per Klaus and Fernando (2016) the leaders should possess some communication charm to achieve maximum growth. The leader should practice persuasion to establish credibility and build effective goals on common ground. He or she should connect emotionally and make their position compelling to others. It is the duty of the leaders to handle multiple cues simultaneously and should also have the ability to provide two-way feedback to the organization. The leader should select an effective and rich communicating channel and lead strategic conversations. As suggested by Rakowski and Mongan (2014) effective leaders are the ones that transform the group of individuals into a collaborative team so that they can easily achieve high performances through collective responsibility and shared mission.
It is crucial for the leaders to develop and use their personal qualities for being an effective team to generate virtual, traditional and global teams. The leaders should effectively handle all the conflicts that inevitably arise among all the team members. An effective team is one that is developed through four stages. This includes forming, storming, norming and performing. In a team, all the people generally shares same goal and also has a sense of collective responsibility and shared mission. The team actually achieves high level of performances through a shared purpose, responsibility and leadership. I learnt that there are also self-directed teams that are empowered with major powers, such as decision-making power, solving problems, monitoring results and also empowers them to make proper plan for future. As per Pruzan (2015) team effectiveness leads to achieve the performance outcomes such as innovation, efficiency, and quality and employee satisfaction. Team leader is only proved to be effective, if they are able to recognize the value of shared purpose and all values.
The Significance of Moral Development for Leaders
Recently virtual teams are also found within an organization and they share a common purpose that are linked primarily through telecommunication technologies and advanced information. It is important to build trust by building effective connections. It is managed by culture and language and the global competition leads to increase the competition level of the employees.
Leadership and motivation go side by side, motivation leads to creating such behaviors that leads to create high performances within an organization. The employees when in an organization are highly motivated; it leads to reduce the staff turnover rate by 70%. Customers are 70% more loyal. This help in increasing both the productivity and profitability within an organization. Both extrinsic and intrinsic rewards are highly important to provide maximum satisfaction to their employees. The hierarchy of needs and two-factor theory are few of the important for fulfilling the needs for achievement, affiliation and power. By providing the employees the power required for adequate authority and information enables them to acknowledge high intrinsic satisfaction related to their work.
The employees should be empowered to successfully performing their jobs by having complete knowledge about the organizational performances. Power is required to make substantiaitive decisions by the people. I observed that when the employs are rewarded on the basis of organization increasing performance, it raises their productivity level. The leader within an organization is also influenced by the attitude and actions of their followers. Followership and leadership plays a fundamental role. Effective followership enables the individual to willingly express their ideas and thoughts to their leaders. On the other hand, I think they also have to face certain risks such as losing their job, feeling inadequate or being demeaned. Developing personal potential is useful in building a strong community of followers.
As suggested by Swanson and Frederick (2016) strategic leadership has the ability to anticipate and maintain flexibility by thinking strategically and working with other. This is an effective means to initiate changes that would be helpful in generating competitive advantage for their organization in future. It is important for the leader to set actions and decisions within the management to implement and formulate all form of actions. Shaping culture is one of the main functions of leadership. As it is the culture that controls day-to day operations, working relationships and helps in determining how people usually communicate within an organization. The right cultural values also help in responding to the customer’s needs or the actions of the competitors. Culture helps in encouraging employee’s commitment to achieve the major purpose of the organization, their specific goals and also would help in accomplishing the goals.
Successful leaders are the person who easily recognizes economic and social pressure for changes. They implement proper actions through effective planning that differentiate between the roles and tasks that affect organizational performances besides fulfilling the satisfaction level of the employees. Ethical values within organizations strengthened and developed primarily through value-based leadership. The ethical values shape the culture of the organization that leads to long-term profitability of the organization. Moreover, I also recognized that through strategic planning, leaders can achieve changes in the tasks, systems, culture and strategy. With proper vision, they can easily manage uncertainty within an organization. Continuous change and adaptive learning will be useful in creating major changes within an organization.
References and Bibliography:
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