Scope of Leadership and its competencies
Discuss about the Leadership and theories of leadership.
In today’s world leadership quality is a very important ability that is not something commonly found among all. In my opinion, it is seen that an organization either reach the height of success by the leadership of an extremely capable leader or the reputation of an organization can be done and dusted by wrong strategies of a leader. It is a matter of fact that an effective leader can sort out all the issues that an organization can possibly face and it can be said that with the help of a leader the workers can become highly motivated and their level of commitment towards the organization can get increased by the inputs of a capable leader (Vaccaro et al. 2012). The purpose of this essay is to highlight the fact that, what kind of a leader I am and what are the possible areas in which I should improve for the betterment of my work performance to attain the goals. Thus it can be said that leadership quality is a much needed factor to successfully run an organization with a motivated and committed workforce towards the organization.
In my opinion, the scope of leadership can be referred to as a framework of competencies which allows the leaders to lead just like coaches. This highlights the leaders on developing their workforce and the capability of the general workforce. There is a set of 38 competencies categorized into five parts that can be found among the greatest leaders in the highly successful organizations (Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee 2013). These 38 competencies of the Scope of Leadership can move the managers from the regular business sectors to the path of working with an intention to deliver the best results possible. The competencies of the Scope of Leadership allow moving the managers from commanding, reporting, coaching, controlling and inspiring. These enable such a leadership ability and approach that allows the leaders to improve and leverage their asset, which is the workforce. This Scope of Leadership framework innovatively develops the mindsets of the leaders along with their ability for the development purpose of their people with an intention to foster teamwork and show results.
Leading people can be referred to as an art of motivating and influencing the general workforce in a way that would allow them to achieve a shared goal. In my opinion a leader must be intelligent along with having high integrity and character that does the right things in a right manner. I believe that, it is a fact that in most cases effective leaders has to work continuously and have a continuous communication with the workforce in order to motivate them to make them more efficient at work. In this section of this essay some leadership theories are given to support the before mentioned definition of leadership by me.
Trait theory and its limitations
Trait theory: In my opinion, trait theory highlights the qualities of the leaders that make them effective at the workplace. This theory does not establish the characteristics that is common between all the leaders as it can be said that great leaders does not have the same personality traits and they are significantly different from each other in many aspects. There are some traits like charisma, confidence; knowledge which is the most common among the greatest leaders of all time and relying on these traits might not serve the purpose of motivating the people in every occasion.
Behavioral theories: Behavioral theories identify the specified behaviors of the leaders that allow them to achieve success (Batool 2013). In my opinion there can be some occasions where the leaders can portray task oriented or people oriented behaviors or may take decisions using the democratic, laissez-faire or authoritarian styles. It is also a matter of fact that various behavior styles of the leaders can produce various results while applying them under different conditions. I think that the behavioral theories have missed the situational factors and the condition in which those behaviors should be demonstrated. I think that various limitations of trait theory and behavioral theory have led to the coin of Contingency theory and various developments of the contingency models.
Contingency theories: Contingency theory explores that the effectiveness of leadership is directly related to the interplay of the behaviors, traits of the leaders and other situational factors. There are four models of Contingency theories and those are mentioned below (Clarke 2013).
Fred Fiedler model: This model assumes that a team’s performance is highly dependent on the leadership style and the favorableness of the situation the team is working in. As an example, it can be said that, job-oriented leaders are seen performing better in a favorable condition and in some cases in most unfavorable conditions (Batool 2013).
This model suggests that the style of leadership must match with the maturity of the subordinate people. A leader might adopt styles like delegating, participating, selling and telling styles depending on the subordinate’s or the general workforce’s level of maturity. When a leader deals with the new entrants in the organization, he or she would be needing to adopt a telling style to guide them how to complete a task and at the same time the leaders may employ the delegating style, interfacing with the individuals at the higher level of ranks within the organization (Choudhary, Akhtar and Zaheer 2013).
Behavioral theories and their limitations
Path-Goal Model:
This model highlights that leaders can affect the motivation along with the performance of the team by offering them rewards for their achievement of attaining the goals previously set, or clarifying their way towards achieving the target along with removing the huddles they may face while achieving the goals set.
His model suggests that leadership styles, like autocratic or consultative or other styles must be chosen considering various situation variables in a form of questions that forms a decision tree (Hoch and Kozlowski 2014).
Charismatic Leadership theory:
In my opinion, charismatic leaders command authority not only by the virtue of a position that is formal but by the virtue of their charismatic personality Day, D.V. and (Antonakis 2012). There are three components of a charismatic leadership and those are empathy, empowerment and envisioning capabilities. This theory suggests that general workforce would attribute heroic or extra ordinary qualities to the leaders who are charismatic having an idealized goal and a commitment for the organization.
Transactional leadership theory:
It can be said that, Transformational leaders inspire the people with their personality and vision for changing the expectations, motivations and perceptions for working to attain the goals. Transformational leadership has four components and those are intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, consideration for the individuals and idealized influence (McCleskey 2014). It is a matter of fact, that transformational leaders are those leaders who tend to stimulate and inspire his people to achieve outcomes beyond expectations and in the process they develop their own leadership capability (Klenke 2016). They help their followers to grow and develop into leaders by responding to the individual worker’s needs by the process of empowering then and aligning the goals and objectives of the individual followers, leaders, the team or the organization. This kind of theory is apt for knowledge workers where both leaders and the followers can pull up each other to a higher level of motivation and moral (McDermott et al. 2013).
Result of the questionnaire completed by me
After completing the questionnaire I saw that I scored in a way that projects that I can become a good leader who employs coaching style to get the results in the workplace. The questionnaire is provided in the appendix section of this essay and the results show that I am able to represent the position of the management in a convincing way and try to motivate the general workforce to take decisions. Apart from that I can motivate the staffs to enhance their ability to perform better and I can motivate them by praising and rewarding them (Northouse 2015). Finally the result suggests that I could provide necessary feedbacks to the employees regarding their performances.
Contingency theories and its models
Class activities
In the class there were several activities which were related to leadership practices and we learned our first lessons of leadership from those fun filled activities. We participated in various games including solving puzzles, games that require leadership qualities and some role playing game where we were asked to create scenarios and we had to act accordingly (Noruzy et al. 2013). In those fun filled activities I realized that I belong to the category of leaders who tends to coach the followers and guide them to the path of glory and I believe that I have the potential to become one eventually. It is a matter of fact that while performing those tasks, I realized that it is necessary to involve all the employees to make an important decision and their inputs are valuable. I also learned that I should coach them well before allocating any tasks to them and I should not let them solve the problems all alone as they will be needing my intervention and that would eventually boost their confidence, if they see that I will back them up no matter what situation arises and I will be always there for them (Paustian-Underdahl, Walker and Woehr 2014). It is also a matter of fact that in today’s world this coaching style leadership is widely accepted among the workers as it would cut the loads from them and they would be freely able to complete their assigned tass without hesitation whether they are doing it in a wrong way or not (Sadeghi and Pihie 2012).
Area of development
It is a matter of fact that I belong to the category of coaching leader and thus there are some qualities of me that I should brush up before entering an organization for managing the general workforce. Commitment is the key that allows us to trust the employees we are coaching and likewise would be needing to make sure that all the subordinates trust me. I should improve my self-learning ability to make sure that I am giving correct inputs to my followers for the completion of any task they are allocated (Vaccaro et al. 2012). I should promote self directing in my team to allow the workers to complete their tasks with full freedom without my intervention and only when needed, they can freely ask for my inputs. I should make sure that all the workers feel free to seek my advice. I should become more transparent towards my fellow workers to maintain a good ambience in the workplace. It is a matter of fact that being transparent would eliminate the rate of mistakes done by the workers as they all would be having a clear idea of what the organization is expecting from them and what are the needful to do to solve the tasks (Yukl 2012). Not only these, to become a good leader I should show the workers the path that would lead them to achieve all the goals set before and the path to achive glory for them as well as the organization.
Charismatic Leadership theory and its components
Thus to conclude, I can say that leadership quality is a very important aspect of the managers of any organization and a good leader can lead a organization to the path of glory and likewise a leader who is incompetent can ruin the reputation of an organization to the dust and can ruin the confidence, level of motivation and the worker’s commitment towards the organization or authority. Thus, in short for a business organization to taste desired success good leaders are necessity and it would be highly recommended that the organizations should employ good leaders to maintain their reputation, productivity and profitability.
References
Batool, B.F., 2013. Emotional intelligence and effective leadership. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 4(3), p.84.
Bhatti, N., Maitlo, G.M., Shaikh, N., Hashmi, M.A. and Shaikh, F.M., 2012. The impact of autocratic and democratic leadership style on job satisfaction. International Business Research, 5(2), p.192.
Choudhary, A.I., Akhtar, S.A. and Zaheer, A., 2013. Impact of transformational and servant leadership on organizational performance: A comparative analysis. Journal of Business Ethics, 116(2), pp.433-440.
Clarke, S., 2013. Safety leadership: A meta?analytic review of transformational and transactional leadership styles as antecedents of safety behaviours. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 86(1), pp.22-49.
Day, D.V. and Antonakis, J. eds., 2012. The nature of leadership. Sage.
Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R.E. and McKee, A., 2013. Primal leadership: Unleashing the power of emotional intelligence. Harvard Business Press.
Hoch, J.E. and Kozlowski, S.W., 2014. Leading virtual teams: Hierarchical leadership, structural supports, and shared team leadership. Journal of applied psychology, 99(3), p.390.
Klenke, K. ed., 2016. Qualitative research in the study of leadership. Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
McCleskey, J.A., 2014. Situational, transformational, and transactional leadership and leadership development. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 5(4), p.117.
McDermott, A.M., Conway, E., Rousseau, D.M. and Flood, P.C., 2013. Promoting effective psychological contracts through leadership: The missing link between HR strategy and performance. Human Resource Management, 52(2), pp.289-310.
Northouse, P.G., 2015. Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.
Noruzy, A., Dalfard, V.M., Azhdari, B., Nazari-Shirkouhi, S. and Rezazadeh, A., 2013. Relations between transformational leadership, organizational learning, knowledge management, organizational innovation, and organizational performance: an empirical investigation of manufacturing firms. The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, pp.1-13.
Paustian-Underdahl, S.C., Walker, L.S. and Woehr, D.J., 2014. Gender and perceptions of leadership effectiveness: A meta-analysis of contextual moderators. Journal of applied psychology, 99(6), p.1129.
Sadeghi, A. and Pihie, Z.A.L., 2012. Transformational leadership and its predictive effects on leadership effectiveness. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 3(7).
Vaccaro, I.G., Jansen, J.J., Van Den Bosch, F.A. and Volberda, H.W., 2012. Management innovation and leadership: The moderating role of organizational size. Journal of Management Studies, 49(1), pp.28-51.
Yukl, G., 2012. Effective leadership behavior: What we know and what questions need more attention. The Academy of Management Perspectives, 26(4), pp.66-85
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