Relationship Between Traits, Motives And Effectiveness Of Leaders

Personal Leadership Style

Leadership is the process where an individual exert influence over others and motivates, inspires and directs their activities for accomplishment of goals. Effective leadership actually increases the ability of the business for meeting new challenges. A leader is the person that exerts the influence over other individuals (Nanjundeswaraswamy & Swamy, 2014).

Personal Leadership Style is the way where leaders select ways for influencing others. For instance, some leaders delegate as well as support subordinates others are very authoritarian. Therefore, managers at all the levels use one form of leadership style that is unique in its own way.

It is a known fact that a leadership style widely varies depending upon the cultural factors. For instance, European managers are more people-oriented as compared to American or Japanese managers. To explain in detail, Japanese culture is collective oriented but American culture only focuses upon profitability (Nahavandi, 2016).

Time horizon is also a major fact that affects cultures where US firms focus on short-term efforts while Japanese firms take a longer-term outlook.

There are several sources of power that enables managers to be leaders as well as influence their subordinated for accomplishment of goals. These powers are as follows:

• Reward power- Reward power is one of the sources of power where managers have the authority to give or withhold any rewards. This means hike in pay, bonus and any kind of verbal praise (Keskes, 2014). Effective managers use this power to motivate the employees who are working hard for the business enterprise.
• Coercive power- Coercive power is one of the sources of power where managers use this power to punish others. It ranges from verbal reprimand to pay cuts to firing from the job. Use of this source of power can have serious negative side effects.
• Referent power-Referent power is one of the sources of power where manager take decision based on special skills. For instance, first and middle managers have most expert power.
• Expert power- Expert power is one of the sources of power where managers looks at the personal characteristics of the leaders that can earn respect, loyalty as well as admiration. For instance, leaders who are most famous and likeable as they show their concern towards benefits of the workers.
• Legitimate power-Legitimate power is one of the sources of power where the managers have the authority that results by their management position in the business. This can be power to hire or fire workers and task allocation.

Most of the approaches are present that explain leadership effectiveness that mainly focus on either leader traits or leader behaviors. Here leader traits mean personality, gender and level of intelligence. On the contrary, leader behavior mean directive, charismatic, servant leadership and participative (Du et al., 2013).

For instance, people who are in leadership position in small business have the ability to promote a supportive as well as productive work environment by using their actions, leadership style and decisions. It is known that leadership styles and traits of manager and supervisors have impact on the bottom line of business in a fostering pleasant work environment.

There is difference between leadership styles and traits. Here, leadership styles refer to the methods that had been sued for managing a group of individuals. Furthermore, it is a method and theories that are used by the leaders for solving problems as well as undertaking decisions. On the contrary, leadership traits explain the features as well as personality traits that are among leaders and those who have authority in action (Cooper, 2015). Therefore, leadership traits actually encompass social, emotional, physical as well as intellectual features.

It is a known fact that managers mainly exercise over their employees just like the world leaders who exert control over a country. In addition, autocratic leadership are those leaders who have complete control over their subordinates and takes decisions all by themselves. In case of participative leadership, leaders encourage participation as well as take feedback from the employees. There are even other forms of leadership that include bureaucratic leadership style that need all team members for adhering to strict rules as well as procedures. Laissez-faire style of leadership is that form of leadership style that leaves team members to their own devices at the time of completing the work (Collins, Burrus & Meyer, 2014).

Leadership across Culture

It is a known fact that leadership traits show the individual features that goes into creating a specific leadership style. In addition, these traits signify attributes like ambition, self-confidence and high energy that represents a wide variety of leadership styles. There are even other leadership traits that help leaders for formulating a leadership style that will move their teams or departments towards accomplishing goals as well as initiatives at the same time.  

• Trait Model- Trait Model is one of the leadership models that help in identifying personal characteristics responsible for effective leadership. According to a research, it is understood that traits actually appear to be connected for an effective leadership. For instance, most of the traits are results of skills as well as knowledge. Therefore, not all effective leaders can have all these traits (Clarke, 2013).
• Behavioral Model- Behavioral model is one of the leadership model that help in identifying types of behavior. As far as consideration is concerned, leaders show care towards workers such as employee-centered. Initiating structure where managers take steps for getting the work done such as job-oriented, task allocation, and goal setting.

This model is used widely where the effective leaders motivate workers for achieving the outcomes. By using the model, the leaders are seen rewarding the workers for high performance as well as attainment of future goals and objectives (Buble, Juras & Mati?, 2014). Path goal is one of the contingency models that propose steps that should be used by the managers for attaining the future goals. It is required to determine the outcomes where the subordinates try to obtain and ranges from pay to job security or interesting work. Once the outcomes are known, managers have to be sure that they have reward source of power to provide these. The other two steps are rewarding subordinates and clarifying the paths to goal accomplishment for the workers as well as removing obstacles to performance and expressing confidence in worker’s ability. This model identifies four behaviors leaders that can use important trait pattern. Behavior leaders can use directive behaviors where they set goals as well as assign tasks and show how to complete it. Behavior leader can use supportive behavior where they look for the best interests of the workers. Behavior leader can use participative behavior where they give subordinates an opportunity where they can share their opinions and views. Behavior leaders can use achievement-oriented behavior where they set challenging goal and believe in the ability for the workers (Aydin, Sarier & Uysal, 2013).

As in case of small business, it is difficult to suggest or predict a single form of leadership style that is most feasible and appropriate for this type of business that should be used by managers and supervisors as it varies due to several factors. For example, managers in an environment where safety is main concern like construction job sites. The managers and supervisors need to adopt bureaucratic leadership styles for solving the issues of the workers who are working for the sites. The reason behind selecting the leadership style is that all about following the procedures to the letter that itself is a important part of ensuring safety in that type of environment. Therefore, an organization can have benefit from different types of leaders that better matches the needs of each department as well as team.

2 Corporate objectives and approaches to marketing 

The corporate objective of Woolworths Limited is to keep customers as first priority in and across all types of brands (Woolworths.com, 2017). In order to achieve this, Woolworths Limited aims at building a customer as well as store-led culture and team. The company generates sustainable sales momentum in the food items. The company believes in empowering their portfolio business for pursuing strategies and delivering value to the shareholders as far as possible. The company desire to improve in the stock turnover as well as optimizing network efficiency where customers will be served in more than 800 stores. The company invests large amount of money in the supply chain management systems that eventually affects the entire economy. The company understands the needs of customers and moved seamlessly and effortlessly between physical as well as virtual stores (Weaven et al., 2014). Woolworths Limited serves more than 18 million customers every week as well as they value each customer by providing them with endless choices.

Source of Power

Production concept- The main idea behind production concept was consumers who favored products that were readily available as well as affordable at the same time. This concept is oldest one that is not applicable mostly in recent times. This concept is all about production and distribution efficiency. This concept is not totally abolished by companies because this concept is still considered to be useful one in some situation (Ramaswamy & Namakumari, 2013).

Selling concept- The main idea behind selling concept is consumers will not purchase enough of products unless it undertakes a large-scale selling as well as promotion effort. In this particular concept, management need to focus on creating sales transactions rather than only making an effort to build long-term as well as profitable customer relationships (Peters et al., 2013).

Marketing concept- The main idea behind marketing concept is achieving organizational goals that depend upon knowing the needs as well as wants of target markets and delivering desired satisfaction than its competitors.

Woolworths Limited is an Australian-based retail company that uses marketing concept in their business operations (Woolworths.com, 2017). This is because the company believes in customer first approach. The company produces product that has the ability to meet the needs, wants, values and expectations of their targeted customers.

The marketing strategy used by Woolworths Limited is to win the trust of its customers as well as increases the share of customer’s food spent by lowering the prices and improving over all aspects of their shopping experience (Keller & Kotler, 2015). The strategy of Woolworths Limited is based on three main key principles that are as follows:

• Offer-Woolworths Limited believes in offering the best products to the customers that meet their needs and expectations.
• Growth-Woolworths Limited believes in innovating for meeting the needs of the customers (Woolworths.com, 2017).
• Efficiency- Woolworths Limited believes in creating customer value that organizes for attainment of success as well as implementing “Lean Retail Model” (Woolworths.com, 2017).

There are several positive aspects that are present in the current marketing strategy of Woolworths Limited (Woolworths.com, 2017). The company has a strong brand name as well as efficient operations in the retail sector. Their prime focus is on meeting the needs of customers that made the company retain its topmost position from decades. The companies seek growth by use of strategic acquisitions as well as franchise models in the emerging countries or economies (Dickinson, 2014).

There are several weaknesses as well noted in the current marketing strategy that need further improvement by the management. Woolworths Limited faces negligible global presence as compared to its competitors such as Wesfarmers Limited, Wal-mart, Tesco and Aldi. The brand had failed to sustain its competitive advantage. Woolworths Limited had even entered in the online markets that result in competition having low prices as well as more experience. Woolworths Limited faces threat from international players (Woolworths.com, 2017).

Reference:

Aritz, J., & Walker, R. C. (2014). Leadership styles in multicultural groups: Americans and East Asians working together. International Journal of Business Communication, 51(1), 72-92.

Aydin, A., Sarier, Y., & Uysal, S. (2013). The Effect of School Principals’ Leadership Styles on Teachers’ Organizational Commitment and Job Satisfaction. Educational sciences: Theory and practice, 13(2), 806-811.

Buble, M., Juras, A., & Mati?, I. (2014). The relationship between managers’ leadership styles and motivation. Management: journal of contemporary management issues, 19(1), 161-193.

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), 22-49.

Collins, B. J., Burrus, C. J., & Meyer, R. D. (2014). Gender differences in the impact of leadership styles on subordinate embeddedness and job satisfaction. The leadership quarterly, 25(4), 660-671.

Cooper, D. (2015). Effective safety leadership: Understanding types & styles that improve safety performance. Professional Safety, 60(2), 49.

Dickinson, J. R. (2014). The marketing management experience. Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning, 27.

Du, S., Swaen, V., Lindgreen, A., & Sen, S. (2013). The roles of leadership styles in corporate social responsibility. Journal of business ethics, 114(1), 155-169.

Keller, K. L., & Kotler, P. T. (2015). Framework for Marketing Management. Pearson.

Keskes, I. (2014). Relationship between leadership styles and dimensions of employee organizational commitment: A critical review and discussion of future directions. Intangible Capital, 10(1).

Nahavandi, A. (2016). The Art and Science of Leadership -Global Edition. Pearson.

Nanjundeswaraswamy, T. S., & Swamy, D. R. (2014). Leadership styles. Advances in management, 7(2), 57.

Peters, L. D., Pressey, A. D., Vanharanta, M., & Johnston, W. J. (2013). Theoretical developments in industrial marketing management: Multidisciplinary perspectives. Industrial Marketing Management, 42(3), 275-282.

Ramaswamy, V. S., & Namakumari, S. (2013). Marketing management: Global perspective, Indian context. MacMillan.

Weaven, S., Grace, D., Dant, R., & R. Brown, J. (2014). Value creation through knowledge management in franchising: a multi-level conceptual framework. Journal of Services Marketing, 28(2), 97-104.

Woolworths.com. (2017). Very | Womens, Mens and Kids Fashion, Furniture, Electricals & More!. [online] Retrieved from: https://www.woolworths.com [Accessed 11 Aug. 2017].

Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:

Turnitin Report

Formatting

Title Page

Citation

Outline

Place an Order