A leader needs to align with the culture and model desired behaviours. An organization’s culture is not always “right,” and a leader’s approach certainly is not infallible either. However, the leader’s behaviour sets the tone for the organization. Leaders’ values, actions, and the development of their teams need to visibly reinforce the culture of the organization. (Quartz, 2016) A great culture starts with a vision or mission statement. These simple turns of phrase guide a company’s values and provide it with purpose.
That purpose, in turn, orients every decision employees make. When they are deeply authentic and prominently displayed, good vision statements can even help orient customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders. (Coleman, 2013) No company can build a coherent culture without people who either share its core values or possess the willingness and ability to embrace those values.(Coleman, 2013) For example, employees feel an emotional connection with the brand and act as brand ambassadors, actively sharing positive information about the brand with their friends, families, and communities and recommending it to them.
(Lee Yohn, 2018)
By understanding the importance of these values, managers can develop a leadership style, and the outcomes they are designed to achieve, and can select the right leadership behaviour to maintain a sustainable and pleasant work environment for his team.
By experience, I realised that most leaders borrow from a variety of styles to achieve various goals at different times in their career. While I may have excelled in a role using one type of leadership, another position may require a different set of habits to ensure that my team is operating most effectively.
Has examples, I would describe some situations that have experienced few years ago has a manager and team leader, and a situation that I have been through few weeks ago and the leadership behaviours’ that I have chooses to express.
- Inspirational motivation
- Idealized influence
- Individualized Consideration
- Emotional
1. MAIN BODY (Adapt the heading)
1.1. (Interpersonal) Inspirational motivation
In order to meet the yearly sales target, I engaged my sales team to come up with a plan to achieve the goal given by management. The first meeting started in a rather unorganized way, wasting time with no tangible results. A week later, I had a second meeting and this time with a proper agenda. I started with a brainstorm session which served to populate the agenda items, and as a team we proceeded in an organized way to come up with a plan to implement. It led to much better result than initially expected as we managed to beat the sales target by focusing on promotions and seasonal events, such as Valentines, Christmas, etc. This was the result of carefully analyzing previous sales statistics in cooperation with the accounting department and it would not have been possible without the participation of all team members involved. That year we overreached the sales target by 30% despite having lagged the mid-year proportional target by about 20%. At the beginning of the following year, I decided to repeat the exercise again. I also realized, that this time around, all the team members were highly motivated, while taking more individual responsibility. As a result, we again overachieved the yearly sales target, but this time by more than 50%.
After this experience, I realized that information, preparedness, listening and relating to the team, while empowering them, is the best way for getting most value from the team members.
A great culture starts with a vision or mission statement, this simple turn of phrase guides a company’s values and provide it with purpose. (Coleman, 2013) When an organization wants to achieve its goals, it needs a vision. Leaders paint a picture of how that vision will affect the company, as well as everyone. A leader’s ability to articulate that vision into a mission statement corresponds to the active implementation of goals and the company’s bottom line success. (P. Kotter, n.d.)
A vision does not belong only to a leader. It must be a shared vision that attracts everyone to sustain high levels of motivation and withstand challenges. (Kouzes, Posner & Biech, 2010)
1.2. (Communication)
Generally, I don’t spend the whole time talking as it does not enhance communication within a team. I might have given speeches which was for the purpose of education otherwise I might have “over spoken” when I was trying to clarify a point by elaborating on the subject.
During one of my work experiences, I engaged management to come up with a sales promotion as inventory and old product/design kept increasing while sales volume was dropping. During the meeting, I used the direct approach and gave a rather direct speech on what was happening to inventory and on what needs to occur to improve the situation· One of the management members didn’t agreed with my initiative and added that they will be a revenue lost with my strategy, I insisted as the stock was old and was losing already value. This took me more than two meetings to make them understand the massive lost that we will get if we don’t get rid of that stock before it become obsolete on the market. After all this communication effort, stakeholder’s and the Managing director supported my proposal and even encouraged other management members to give me the necessary backing for the sales promotion.
After reflexion, instead of pounding the table with the facts, I could have used the relaxed-style communicator to induces calm and peaceful emotions, thus encouraging comfortable and positive emotional responses (Erickson et al., 1978; Kimble and Seidel, 1991; Scherer, 1982) or the charismatic strategy described by ”Anthonakiv” which is ” the Three-part lists” define by him as another old trick of effective persuasion because they distils any message into key takeaways, and finally, the strategy of questions and answers (“Q&A”), in other words let management get to their own conclusions by prompting them to come up with the same result. For example: “have you recently had a look at the sales trend?”, or “why is our inventory getting larger?”, and “why do we carry old merchandise on inventory?”, etc. My communication goals would have been the same, except management would have come to the same conclusion without me pounding the table and asking me what to do about the situation.
1.3. (EMOTIONAL)
When I took over the position as the boutique manager for a well-known luxury brand, one of my major tasks was to improve the sales performance of the individual sales assistants. In order to make everybody in the team more involve, I decided to abandon the daily group performance report with a new report tracking every salesperson individually. This report would include a) the number of clients met during the day, b) actual sales booked, and c) the sales target for the next day. These individual reports would then be discussed during the next morning’s group briefing, with the objective to better focus the group’s sales effort.
I did expect an adjustment period until every staff member would provide the new report in a satisfactory manner, but what I did not expect, was that one of the team members would not deliver the report at all. This went on for three days and I grew increasingly upset about the blatant noncompliance. My impatience and anger grew as the individual claimed, not having the necessary knowledge to fill out the report. Not only was the report a simple spread sheet but also every sales assistant was individually trained to complete the report. Somewhat flabbergasted by the salesperson’s attitude, I made an additional effort to walk her through filling the report, in the hope, to achieve compliance the next day. Instead the salesperson did not deliver the next day again. While I had to deliver my own group report to the Management that same day I was obviously stressed out about the incident and the incomplete data I had to present to my superiors. After delivering my report to management I wanted again to talk to the same salesperson, only to find out, that she has left work early for her lunch break and could not be contacted. At that point I was visibly very angry.
Later that afternoon the salesperson came back and I managed to talk to her. I realized, that once again she had not completed the report. I was rather harsh in my approach, raised my voice and threatened her, that if she would not complete the report in the next 30 minutes, I would suspend her for a week and at the same time inform Management and Human Resources. This was intended as a last-ditch effort to move her in line with everybody else, and to set a sign, that disobedience will not be tolerated. In hindsight it was the right move as the person fell in line with everybody else and started to deliver the report on time. While this was helpful to complete my own report to Management in time, it also strengthened the sales team as a group, and eventually everybody would be working together to achieve the common goal of higher sales.
“Ethical situations at work can be cause for alarm, and are also a normal part of doing business,” says Detert.”When it comes to ethics, we think it’s a test of our moral identity, which makes us more emotional, less effective, and vulnerable to self-deluding,” says Mary Gentile. Detert and Gentile agree that when you suspect someone is acting unethically, in most cases, you should talk to him first. It’s often better to give the person the benefit of the doubt and assume that, when he sees how his behaviour is perceived, he’ll change. Give him the opportunity to correct his ways. (Extracted from Amy Gallo harvard journal)
1.4. (Initiative)(IDEALIZED INFLUENCE)
A group in which I was member, was given a task to be submitted for a grade. The team had to come up with different ideas in order to choose one that will better feet the course subject.
On day three, we all presented our propositions. During the meeting that same day, we decided that it would be in our advantages if we consult with the instructor who assign to use the tack to make sure that we are on the right track and also, he might help us choosing between our ideas which one suite best with the task assigned.
We meet with the instructor who considered 2 of the 5 ideas descript and showed to him that day, but he left the final decision to the group to agree on which one we would like to develop.
The group decided for the project to be pursuit. unfortunately, the next morning, one of the team members came back to us saying that she doesn’t agreed with the fact that we choose the other project instead of hers’. This was followed by many arguments between her and the other group member that we decide to carry out the project.
Two days have past, both still arguing, furthermore, some members of the group not sure anymore which project they would like to follow. Despite the fact that I find this situation childish and disrespectful, I took the lead and offer to the other member that objected the decision to execute her project and show it to the group, we will compare both project and tack the final decision. Since the group was getting split, I thought that it was the only way to move forward, even though, my fear was that another disagreement arise. Fortunately, think went smoothly and we finally got into an agreement.
In this case, I have used the initiative behavior to manage the conflict. The initiating structures refer to superior actions made to achieve the team goal, such as giving new approaches to a problem or defining specific standards of performance. (Dr Darioly Carroz) Conflict is ubiquitous, especially when highly skilled workers are coming together to achieve shared goals. It’s not necessarily trivial or rooted in personality; people may believe passionately in their own ideas and their way of doing things, and they may privilege their own experience and expertise over someone else’s. (newman, n.d.)
Discuss your forth behavior in detail. Go beyond the description.
You should finish with a lead-in paragraph to the next chapter.
CONCLUSION
Beside the choices of leadership behaviors that I have decided to apply for all these different scenarios, and which I believe was successful, I strongly believe that the application of some of the different theories that constitute the leadership studies, needs to be taken into consideration by me for a further development of my leadership skill. For example, the transformational leadership which is characterized by four main points.
- Idealized influence
- Inspirational motivation
- Intellectual stimulation
- Individual consideration
These four points are designed to run a team efficiently by “getting people to want to change and to lead change.” (Dr Darioly Carroz) Giving critical feedback is essential but we must give more praise than criticism and listen more than we talk. (Seppala 2017)
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