What Should Be Done to Become a Better Leader of the People and Organizations - Coursework Example

Topic: What should be done to become a better Leader of the people and organizations Name: Registration Number: Institution: Tutor’s Name: Date of Submission: TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.Introduction 2 2.Purpose 3 3.Key issues that are embedded in the wording of the topic 3 4.Personality tests and Competing Values Framework 4 a)Personality Test Results 4 b)Competing Values Framework 6 Figure 1. Competing Values Framework 7 5.A clear plan for professional development as a leader with incorporation of test results and Competing Values Framework (CVF) 7 6.Why the action plan will work 9 7.How the Action Plan will result into a better leader 10 8.Conclusion 11 References 12 1. Introduction This paper provides a study of what needs to be done to become a better leader of people and organizations with the consideration of theories on leadership as well as other contentious theories. The reference organizations for this purpose are non-profit organizations, committees and social organizations. According to (Smart and Hamm, 1993), any leader of a position in an organization has to pursue excellence and exemplary leadership yet it has been considered a noble an unattainable task. On the other hand, there are principles that if carefully implemented, can result into a leadership style that enhances a person’s intellect, personality and socio-economic situation of a company. In addition, becoming a better leader requires the knowledge of oneself in terms of strengths and measurable attributes and limitations and confines that a person has (Richard, 2005). There are certain tools for growth such as self-realization and ability to conquer uncertainties are regarded as factors that can enable us overcome barriers that prevent our progress. The purpose of this paper is to discuss what can be done in order to become better leaders with the consideration of Competing Values Framework and personality test results. A new plan for leadership in organizations is developed that incorporates both the personality test results and the Competing Values Framework. The impact of the new leadership plan is then discussed and advantages of its application are explained. 2. Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a management system that accounts for the needs of people and the organization at large. It also provides the courses of actions that should be taken to ensure both the organization and people are managed by avoiding stubbornness, timidity and other psychological attitudes that inhibit the practice of heuristic leadership. The developed model helps in arriving at a new leadership theory that puts more emphasis on psychological training by defeating negativism and enhancement of self-mastery and discipline in order to obtain optimum mental clarity. This is followed by focusing on application of the theories with emphasis on customer commitment to ensure its effectiveness. The guide provided in this paper is significant source of information for an individual who wants to become a self-disciplined and committed leader. 3. Key issues that are embedded in the wording of the topic The main issues embedded in the words of the topic include the actions that should be taken in order to become a leader of both the organization and the people. The other issues embedded in the topic is the approach that should be taken to ensure people are managed by taking the right steps while ensuring management of an organization is also accounted for. The topic also addresses the approach that should be taken to manage an organization effectively while ensuring people are also managed and the right actions are taken by an organization. In order to arrive at these goals, an integrated management system is developed that incorporates personality tests results and the Competing Values Framework (CVF). 4. Personality tests and Competing Values Framework An approach for taking the right steps to ensure an organization as well as the people are managed by taking the right steps involves the use of the personality tests and Competing Values Framework (CVF). a) Personality Test Results According to this argument, an individual’s personality can be measured by use of five dimensions that have both positive and negative poles (Quinn et al. 2007). The based are based on the culture and language of a person. One dimension is the dimension of extraversion. In this dimension, the main poles are risk taking where a person may avoid taking unnecessary risks and prefer to be safe. The person may also be daring and avoid taking chances due to the need for adventure and excitement (Quinn, 1988). It also involves the pole of sociability. In this case, a person may either be able to associate with the circle of friends or conduct selective friendship. He may also enjoy having a lot of friends around them. It also involves the traits of social skills. This is where a person may be hesitant to associate with strangers or easily contact with strangers. On the trait of dominance, a person may either feel that his presence should be recognized while on the other hand he may like to have the last word. On the level of ambition, a person may be satisfied with the current social status or striving to ensure there is change. On the dimension of stability, a person can either be having strong emotions or responding calmly to situations (Quinn, Faerman, Thompson, McGrath and St Clair, 2011). He may also be operating calmly at a low energy level or have a high energy level and avoid being quick to tire. The person may also be more sensitive and perceive life as a burden or believe in his own abilities. He may also be one who needs a lot of time to recover from stress or one that performs the same or even better when under pressure. The person’s self adequacy may be that he occasionally reacts excessively during sensitivity or confident and spontaneous in social situations. On the dimension of Conscientiousness, he may either be one who is satisfied with the current state of affairs or one who always wants to perform well (Quinn and Rohrbaugh, 1983). On tenacity, he may be one who is relatively quick to give up or one who ensures the job is finished off properly. On goal orientation, he may be one who operates in a light-hearted manner and does not focus on achieving any goals or he may be one who sets goals and tries to achieve them. According to (Quinn and Rohrbaugh, 1981), the person may also be one who enjoys improvisation during performance of his tasks or one who works in a planned way by making preparations. Discipline wise, he may be one who follows the spirit rather than the requirement of the law and willing to deviate from the requirements according to his beliefs or he may be one who sticks to the rules and has self-discipline and demonstrates the ability to concentrate. On the dimension of agreeableness, he may be one who is wary of opinions from others or one who trusts other people. According to (Quinn and Kimberly, 1984), he may also be one who is more focused on his individual results than that of the team or one who works in collaboration with other team members. He may also be one who enjoys working as an individual or one who enjoys working in a group. On the dimension of Openness, he may be one who prefers to stick to the tried and tested ways of working or one who thinks in new ways of working and retention of imagination. He may also be one who is basically focused on the present situation or one who has ideas of his own on possible desirable developments (O’Neill and Quinn, 1993). He may also be one who has only selective interests that ere selective rather than broad or one who has interests in a number of subjects. Furthermore, he may be one who is unaware of the factors that surround him that are important or one who has high awareness of the factors that surround him for his individual performance. b) Competing Values Framework This is a framework that was developed for the purpose of understanding conflicting values and assists in their integration to enable collaboration in organizations (Quinn and Rohrbaugh, 1981). Its purpose is to develop a team that works towards opposite goals and integrating them at the right time to enable successful development of each value. This results into companies that are creative and are open and collaborate as well as having a high competitive edge. This framework provides four organizational Culture Types that have strong differences in dimensions (Kouzes and Posner, 2006). They include the internal focus and integration against external focus and differentiation. In the CVF model, Flexibility is a concern in areas such as human resource development and the methods that can be used to accomplish this is by enhancing human resource development through planning and setting goals. Internal and external characteristics involve ensuring stability is achieved (Hooijberg, 1996). This can be achieved through information management and communication. They also include stability and control against flexibility and discretion. According to the left of the graph, the organization is focused on internal characteristics and the most important things to it. On the right side of the graph, focus is put on external factors that need to be implemented to achieve success such as the outside world, clients and the market. Figure 1. Competing Values Framework 5. A clear plan for professional development as a leader with incorporation of test results and Competing Values Framework (CVF) Competing Values Framework and personality tests above can be used to come up with an integrated approach for managing both organization and people and attain the highest outcome from activities of organization (Goleman, 2000). The personality test resultscan be applied in solving leadership challenges and ensure a leader is better. One of the leadership problems that will need to be solved is the condition where the leader is not willing to associate with others and always want his presence to be recognized (Chan and Mauborgne, 2005). The leader may also be one who feels comfortable with the ways things are at the organization. An action plan that will be used to solve these difficulties will involve training the leader to be sociable by associating with close friends and also associate with strangers. This action plan will also involve allowing other make their opinions before making a suggestion. This process will be complemented by Competing Values Framework strategy of coordination. This is the process where the leader will only control the events but allow suggestions and decisions to come from workers from the organization (Cameron and Quinn, 1999). He will only ensure things happen smoothly in the process of finding solutions to problems. The problem of satisfaction with the current state of affairs at the organization will be solved by always striving to make change. This will be complemented with the Competing Values Framework strategy of innovation. In this process, the leader will create alternative ways of solving problems within the organization by allowing flexibility of strategies for solving the problems. The problem of having strong emotions and sensitivity and perception of life as a burden and the belief in ones abilities can be solves by being calm and operating at high energy and avoiding the tendency to give up (Bolman and Deal, 2008). The response to challenges will involve responding calmly and avoiding confrontation with employees. This action plan can be enhanced by the use of Competing Values framework strategy of being a facilitator or a mentor. Mentoring employees will ensure they are provided with the right course of action whenever they make mistakes in their areas of specialties. Facilitations of leadership will be achieved by providing inspiration to employees in their areas of specialization and making them believe in themselves. A leader may be one who does not trust the opinions from other employees and may be one who is basically focused on achieving his individual results rather than that of the team and does not like working in collaboration with other members of the team. This problem can be solved by allowing other members of the workforce to work at the same place with the leader and allow them contribute their ideas (Smart and Hamm, 1993). The problem of working as an individual will be solved by collaborating with other employees when performing certain tasks. This plan will be complemented by the Competing Value Framework strategy of collaboration and monitoring. In this strategy, the leader will monitor the activities of employees and provide his ideas on methods of improving the current state of things but allowing most of the ideas to come from the workers (Quinn, 1988). During collaboration process, the leader will ensure the actions he performs are those which reflect the goals of the entire team and not his individual goals. 6. Why the action plan will work The above action plan has the potential to bring great changes and will ensure the leader has the leadership skills that make him competent to make the right decisions and manage employees and the organization well. For instance, the leader will be equipped with the skills of being capable to associate with other workers and associate with strangers and allowing workers to make their own suggestions. These competences will result into a better relationship between the leader ad employees and management process in the organization will be successful (Quinn and Rohrbaugh, 1981). Application of the strategy of innovation will equip the leader with the skills of finding alternative ways of solving problems and making his employees apply the same principles in managing their tasks. This will result into the ability of the leader and employees to solve many problems encountered by the organization (Quinn and Kimberly, 1984).The dimension of calmness from the test results will provide the leader with the ability to take unpleasant situations in the organization positively and avoid confrontation with employees. He will be able to avoid emotional reactions when displeased with his employees’ acts (Quinn and Kimberly, 1984). When these two are combined, employees will be able to trust their managers and they will listen to clients from the organizations (O’Neill and Quinn, 1993). The action plan that incorporates openness and creativity when combined with innovativeness from CVF will result into a leader who has the ability to share information with employees and develops ideas for improving the existing condition in a company. The process of combining innovativeness and other forms of leadership such as openness assists in coming up with a leadership style that enhances the willingness to innovate and bring change to the organization, and limitations of one strategy will be counteracted by application of another strategy (McGregor, 2005). 7. How the Action Plan will result into a better leader The action plan will be applied in situations that are relevant to their application during management process. The first part of the action plan will involve association with employees to avoid the tendency to avoid association with them during the management process. The leader will also allow his subordinates to contribute their opinions before making a decision in situations where there is the need to come up with ideas that result into a solution to a problem (Kouzes and Posner, 2006). Competing value Framework strategy of coordination will be accomplished by modifying activities so that every stakeholder in the organization is able to provide the right services to its constituents. In the process of organizing the order of events in the organization, the leader will be able to apply coordination to ensure there is no clash of activities in the organization (Hooijberg, 1996). He will also be able to achieve coordination through centralization as a method of promoting a healthy balance and ensuring responsibilities are delegated while including the needs of employees. The leader will apply the action plan of mentoring in the case where an employee is involved in a mistake that can be avoided. In order to ensure the employee’s acts are corrected and he does not feel threatened, the leader will provide a mentoring session to the employee and facilitate his change of attitude by communicating the need to provide useful service to the organization. The leader will achieve the action plan of trusting other employees in the organization by considering the opinions of other employees and allowing them to decide on how they would like to be managed (Goleman, 2000). The problem of working as an individual will be achieved by working in collaboration with other employees. The leader will be able to collaborate by helping other employees enhance their capacity to do their jobs. For instance, he will ask employees in the organization to attend a training session with employees from other companies so that they can learn about each other. He will also be able to achieve collaboration by sharing the risks that workers in the organization have caused and also sharing responsibilities. In the case where there are any credits to the organization, the leader will ensure he shares these recognitions with his workers. The action plan of innovation will be achieved by developing a culture of using a variety of techniques to solve problems when they arise. The firsts step towards achieving an innovative organization is by exploring new products and services based on insights (Chan and Mauborgne, 2005). Market trends will also be studied and changes made to the organization based on changes in the market trends. The leader will also study technology drivers that are used to communicate to consumers about what the company produces. Finally, the leader will determine the unique products in deals with and come up with a method of creating awareness regarding the product without incurring high costs. 8. Conclusion This paper shows that the main steps towards effective leadership is through enhancing their abilities to lead others. It involves reflecting on their individual needs and determining the steps that can be taken to become better leaders of people and organizations by applying heuristic and holistic leadership styles. For a leader to be followed by his people, he has to be confident, resilient, optimistic and hopeful. This paper provides a discussion of principles that should be applied in order to achieve a better leadership of people and organizations. These are based on individual reflections and also based on the existing problems encountered in a working environment. There are many challenges faced by organizations in attempt to accomplish their goals. These are mainly in terms of dealing with employee demands as well as managing the needs of the organization at large. In order to use a more general leadership system, Competing Values Framework has been used to solve managerial problems in situations where there are many needs that are contradicting within an organization. By applying the integrated plan explained in this paper, organizations can ensure the right actions are made during management of an organization while accounting for the needs of employees. References  Bolman, L. and Deal, T. 2008, Reframing Organizations, 4th edition, Jossey-Bass, Cameron, K. S., and Quinn, R. E. 1999. Diagnosing and changing organizational culture: Based on the competing values framework. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Chan and Kim W,Mauborgne, R. 2005. Blue Ocean Strategy. Harvard Business School publishing.   Goleman, D. 2000. Leadership that Gets Results. USA: Harvard Business Review.78-80  Hooijberg, R. 1996. A multidirectional approach toward leadership: An extension of the concept of behavioral complexity. Human Relations, 49(7), 917-947. Kouzes, B. and Posner, J. 2006, The Leadership Challenge, 3rd edition, Jossey-Bas McGregor, J. 2005 . One Billion Customers.: Lessons from the front lines of doing business in China. Nicholas Brealey Publishing O’Neill, R.M and Quinn, R.E. 1993. Editor’s Note: Applications of the Competing Values Framework. Human Resource Management, 32, (1), 1-7. Quinn, R. E., and Kimberly, J. R. 1984. Paradox, planning and perseverance: Guidelines for managerial practice. In J. R. Kimberly and R. E. Quinn (Eds.), Managing organizational transitions (pp. 295–313). Homewood, IL: Dow Jones-Irwin. Quinn, R. E., and Rohrbaugh, J. 1981. A competing values approach to organizational effectiveness. Public Productivity Review, 5, 122–140. Quinn, R. E., and Rohrbaugh, J. 1983. A spatial model of effectiveness criteria: Towards a competing values approach to organizational analysis. Management Science, 29, 363–377 Quinn, R. Faerman, S. Thompson, M. McGrath, M. St Clair, L. 2011, Becoming a Master Manager, Fifth Edition. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken NJ (ISBN 978-0-470-28466-7) Quinn, R.E. 1988. Beyond Rational Management: Mastering the Paradoxes and Competing Demands of High Performance. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Quinn, Robert E et al. 2007. Becoming a Master Manager-A competing values approach. Richard Templar 2005. The Rules of Management . Great Britain: Bell & Bain p111. Smart, J. C., and Hamm, R. E. 1993. Organizational effectiveness and mission orientations of two-year colleges. Research in Higher Education, 34(4), 489-502. Zaccaro, Stephen J.; Foti, Roseanne J.; Kenny, David A. 1991.Self-monitoring and trait-based variance in leadership: An investigation of leader flexibility across multiple group situations Read More