Effective Leadership Is Central to Leading and Managing an Organization at All Level - Coursework Example

REFLECTIVE JOURNAL AND REPORT EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP IS CENTRAL TO LEADING AND MANAGING AN ORGANIZATION AT ALL LEVEL Student’s name Course Professor’s name University City Date To understand the meaning of the term effective leadership, it is important to first describe the meanings of the two terms separately and then coin them to better understand their meaning. To define leadership, it is paramount that one understands clearly who a leader is because it is from this term ‘a leader’ that the term ‘leadership’ originates. Many a times one may get concerned more about the attributes that makes one a leader and entirely ignores the fact that this attributes that are of such great concern are all exhibited by the leader, the person himself. Several definitions indeed have been put forward in attempt to describe who or what the term ‘leader’ is. As a result of this great variation in definition of leadership, Winston & Patterson (2006, 2) developed an integrated definition of a leader. According to Winston & Patterson (2006, 6), a leader is an individual who can influence one or more of his followers whose skills and abilities are different. In such case, such leader influences the followers by equipping them, training and selecting such followers with an aim of focusing them towards the objectives of an organization or institutions. According to this definition, the leader should be one with the ability of channeling the vision and skills of the followers to that of the organization in such a way that the followers harmoniously, with spirit and enthusiasm channel their energy and efforts toward meeting those of the organization. Leadership therefore can be described as the ability of an individual to effectively focus his/her followers to willingly and with enthusiasm focus themselves towards meeting the objectives of an institution. Effectiveness is the ability to achieve or obtain an expected output from a situation or individual. Effective leadership can therefore be defined as the ability of leadership or of a leader to achieve the output or objectives of an organization by producing the potential output of the workers under him/her. Effective leadership as much as may be defined in general terms, it does not in any way represent a phenomenon that can be understood or viewed as a single aspect. Indeed there are several aspects that contribute to effective leadership. Many authors have written on various attributes that comprises effective leadership. It is worth noting that there is no specific set of scientific aspects or principles that makes an effective leadership. Depending on different settings, such attributes can vary so widely. This paper therefore seeks to explore some of the attributes that are widely published and held as fundamental components of effective leadership. However, before engaging into the attributes that comprises effective leadership, the paper will briefly explore the different theories of leadership as postulated by different authors. Leadership theories are developed on the aspects that are widely believed to be the definition of a leader. Leadership theory Common leadership theories that have been widely studied include the following; the trait theory, the theory of the great man, behavioral theories, contingencies theories, transformational and transactional theories (leadership-central.com, 2016, 1). The theory of the great man was popular in the mid 19th century (Bolden et.al, 2003, 6). According to this theory, great leaders were born to be great and only the right situations were needed for them to exhibit their greatness. The theory in other words attributes leadership to birth. One could only be born great and no condition or environment influenced the outcome of a leader. This theory was widely challenged in the late 1860s and lost it popularity (Bolden et.al, 2003, 6). The trait theory was developed in 1930s and 1940s, according to this theory; leaders were born with certain genetic traits that made them become suitable for leadership. The theory unlike that of the great men attributed leadership to traits such as intelligence, wisdom and responsibility. Just like any other theory it was also widely disputed. Behavioral theory was developed in the 1940s and 1950s, it came as a response to the trait theory, this theory asserts that that leader are not born as believed in the trait and great man theory but instead they are made. It is the conditions in which someone is subjected to that shapes up him or her as a leader (Bolden et.al, 2003, 6). The theory of contingency leadership however asserts that leaders are determined with how they respond to specific situation at hand. Those that respond effectively and efficiently are considered better leaders than those who don’t. The theory of transactional leadership relates leadership with the followers. This theory emphasizes on the relationship and influence that exists between a leader and his followers. The theory focuses on cognitive behavioral between the two groups involved in leadership, according to this theory, the leader is responsible for rewarding certain attributes such as loyalty from his followers(Bolden et.al, 2003, 6). Lastly is the transformational leadership theory. This theory emphasizes on the change that a leader or a person considered a leader is able to bring in an organization, institution or any other setting that involves leadership. The theories that have been mentioned in the paragraph above clearly have different orientation although some of them may have few things in common for example the trait and behavioral theories both relates leadership to birth or genetic characters of an individual. However the orientation of specific theory may influence the type of a leader that one becomes. For example to believe that someone is born a leader may negatively influence the outcome of leadership. one can easily disregard other people who are his followers simply because he believes he was born a leader, otherwise the followers can as well believe that since one is born a leader, he is best suited to lead hence they may not question the leadership style even if it doesn’t suit them. Effective leadership may however thrive under the following theories; the theory of transactional, the theory of transformational and the theory of contingency. This is because in the modern world, so much focus on leadership revolves around how a leader can influence his followers to produce their maximum potential in work places without using unorthodox means like dictatorship but rather by rewarding good efforts and encouraging the workers. The focus today is mostly on how a leader can make his followers realize their full potential and self development at work places. In other words, a lot of focus today is on positive leadership. Positive leadership Positive leadership is an attribute that really originates from an individual leader, how he/she leads is much likely to influence the leadership outcome of the followers. ‘Self’ in this case becomes a very fundamental factor in determining positive leadership. In a study that was carried out by Luthan and Avolio (2007,2) to determine how being hopeful, optimistic and resilient both as an individual and as a group was related to work output and workers’ satisfaction, it was reported that these attributes were significantly related to workers performance and satisfaction as a group more than individually. The finding of the study confirms the importance of a leader’s ability to stimulate such attributes in workers. Leaders who stimulate self-esteem, confidence, hopes and resilience in workers are more considered better leaders. Lindorf (2008) further confirms the need of leadership approach that is more positive in the changing face of the society. The author asserts the need to have the ability to provide a multifaceted leadership approach as a leader today. Leadership is supposed to be more based on moral principle not only for an individual but the entire work force. Through being self conscience, leaders can be able to develop the same conscience to their followers, Perhaps the reason why emotional intelligence has today become part and parcel of leadership study. Emotional intelligence is the ability of an individual to recognize his emotions and that of others and carefully chose through the emotions to influence how one thinks and responds to others (Batool, 2013, 6). By being aware of self emotion, one can easily recognize others’ emotions and respond to them effectively. It is such a crucial concern for leadership today. Many studies have reported positive relationship between high emotional intelligence with high work performance; particularly leaders with high emotional intelligence have been reported to have positive influence on the output capacity of their followers. Positive leadership is typical of the transformational leadership. In transformational leadership, the leaders are concerned by changing not just the institutions and organizational that they lead, but also the workers. Such leaders are genuinely concerned with the welfare of the workers under them, they stimulate the workers intellectual, creativity, attitude and morale, such leaders reward good outputs of workers and in times of poor output or performance, they don’t rebuke or burnish the workers but rather engage them on how to improve on their performances (Luthan, 2002, 5).Effective leadership is dependent on several aspects which in so many ways are intertwined, for effective leadership to prosper in an organization factors such organizational culture must be considered as well. Organizational culture Organizational culture is a very fundamental aspect in shaping how individuals in an organization thinks and behave. It is basically the shared views, believes, routines and norms that are shared by members of an organization. It is more of an identity for members of an organization Baumgartner (2009). If members of an organization believe that in the industry which their organization belongs, they are the top players, such belief has a profound effect on how the members work, the morale with which they work with and their expectations as well. An effective leader must identify the typical organizational culture that exists and perhaps bring in new cultures that can as well help transform leadership and workers’ performance. Giberson et.al (2009) carried out an empirical research study to determine the relationship between personal traits of a chief executive officer and the cultural values or believes of the organization. The study samples a total of 47 top CEOS and another 432 middle level workers from different organization. The study reported that there was a very high relationship between the personal traits of a CEO and cultures of the organization. The CEOs are the top decision makers of an organization, most decisions that affect an organization as a whole comes from the CEOs, as a result when changes are supposed to be made in an organization, it is very important to consider the personal traits of the top management. There are times when middle level management has to make departmental changes where they are in charge. A case in point is when a departmental manager brings in religious initiatives in his department, for example, an initiative that every morning before the duties commence. All the workers in the department must assemble and pray together. Assume the CEO is a non-believer, or of different religion such as Muslim, the culture may not become popular in the organization, therefore for effective leadership such aspects must be considered. Prati et.al (2009) also confirms the importance of cultural identity in an organization; the study was taken to determine how the emotional intelligence of a manager can influence the cultural identity within an organization. Prati et.al (2009) argues that an emotionally intelligent manager is likely to determine and influence the cultural identity in an organization. An effective leader for example can emotionally inspire his/her followers to develop a sense of identity among themselves within the organization. The leader can inspire a feeling of self-worth and respect and makes these feeling among his followers become a culture in the organization such that every worker at all level feels important and responsible for the success of the organization. Several objectives within an organization can be attained through emotional intelligence. A leader can create a culture of winning among his followers, a sense of hard work. However, all this are attributes that an individual does not just develop overnight. They need emotional involvement in order to be part of the followers personal believes, this is where the emotional intelligence of a leader comes into play. The leadership perspective however is varied across the globe; the leadership perspective in Australia may not necessarily be similar to international perspective. So as much as effective leadership is pegged on several aspects, regional leadership also can play a role in effective leadership. Several studies have confirmed the variation that exists between universal perspective and cultural perspective as far as leadership is concerned. Leadership approach in Australia Studies on leadership approach in Australia do not seem to put Australia in a global scale in terms of leadership. They indicate that a top class culture of leadership has rather taken so long to develop in Australia; however the studies were done several years ago. At the time in which they were done, the leadership in Australia was described as characteristic of hard work, flexibility and technically knowledgeable but poor in personal development (GLOBE, 2002, 5). The study also characterized the leadership of Australia to be less educated compared to major trading nations at the time. Sometimes culture may hinder or expedite change. Leadership itself has transformed from the once ‘great man approach’ to today’s popular transformational approach. The international/universal approach to leadership is associated to inevitable events that occur across the globe such as change in technology, industrialization and institutional globalization (GLOBE, 2002, 5). Transformational form of leadership however is more of a basic thing and simply goes beyond borders. To be a transformative leader does not require settings of a particular environment or some kind of predetermined exposures. It just happens in leaders though many leaders try to improve on it through various courses and seminars. The study by GLOBE (2002, 5) also reported that specific region’s culture can determine the local perspective of leadership. In Australia, the perspective of leadership is characterized by inability to visualize growth in organizations, lack of long term strategies, and inflexibility towards leaning, irrationality, poor teamwork and poor people management skills as well as intolerance to differences. Such attributes points towards conservativeness of Australian and conservativeness is a cultural practice. Culture has not enabled Australia to integrate faster with the developing world even in important aspects like leadership. several studies were taken with respect to how Australia should integrate with other cultures to improve its leadership. The studies suggested that Australia needed to adopt the global approach to leadership by integrating other cultures particularly the Asian cultures since it is geographically placed advantageously to Asia. China for example is currently the second largest economy after the U.S. multinational companies operates in china and Japan. Leadership in Australia can gain a lot from these Asian economic giants. The approach to leadership in china is more of a transformational; the CEOs are well educated and practice widely an international approach to leadership. Furthermore china has rich working culture from which Australia can indeed learn a lot of things. Kennedy (2002, 2) illustrates how Malaysia has been able to integrate global leadership while at the same time maintaining its culture. Malaysia had transformed itself between the periods 1980 to 200 into a middle income nation trading with international economies. By 2001, Malaysia was trading about 20% of its exports to the United States. Currently, U.S. is the major export destination of Malaysian export and it generated. Total trade in Malaysia is in total of 200 percent of its gross domestic production. This clearly indicates how globally the economy of Australia has become oriented. The drive for industrialization, the British colonial heritage and the drive for industrialization has indeed changed Australian leadership style to become more westernized. However as (Kennedy, 2002, 7) reports, the cultural leadership values of Malaysian leaders have more or less remained intact. Malaysia is a multiethnic nation including Chinese, Indians and Malays with the Malays being the majority with an approximate percentage of 61 percent followed by Chinese and the Indians (Kennedy, 2002, 7). Many studies from Asia indicates that the cultures of leadership are more conservative and many authors have asserted the importance for the leadership in Asia to consider and integrate more reformed, liberal and progressive forms of leadership. Ismail (2010, 16) insists on Asian countries to consider more global forms of leadership in order to economically transform faster and trade better with other progressive economies around the world. It is worth noting that the leadership orientation that has since been discussed in this paper was as per research publication of over a decade ago. Although at that time several developing countries were already practicing a transformational leadership and hence Australia being one of the developed countries had no reason not to have been practicing such kind of leadership. Recent studies have however indicated that many institutions in Australia today are practicing best leadership approaches as opposed to those of over a decade ago. A study conducted by Davis (2014, 7) indicates that many Australian leaders have adopted leadership practices that are better and more transformational, leadership practices that aims at developing the workforce potential. The study surveyed a total of 379 top leaders in Australia, out of those surveyed; only 219 returned dully filled questionnaires. The study reported that a very high percentage of those who returned the questionnaires were adopting and practicing best styles of leadership. Hempsall (2014, 5) however, reports that leadership preparation in higher education in Australia is still not equipped to transform leadership style in Australia. Hempsall (2014, 5) indicates that compared to the united states and the united kingdom, Australian higher education system have failed yet to develop leaders who are transformational and able to manage a complex situation which is characteristic of the modern world, the study recommends that more needs to be borrowed and learned from the U.S and the U.K education system if Australian higher education system is to produce transformational leadership. Another aspect of concern to Australian leadership is gender. Gender in leadership Gender is such a critical issue in leadership in almost every part of the world. In the developed world, gender is always an issue of concern. Women of course are the subject of every gender debate. The world evolved in such a way that man was the ultimate leader in several spheres of life. The situation was not made any better by religious believes that have commonly perceived woman as a weaker gender. In many societies, the woman’s role is more confined at home; women are perceived as keepers of the homes, taking care of the children and other household chores (Wilson, 2014, 9). It based on such perception of the roles that women play in the society that has always made many societies treat women differently when it comes to leadership positions at work and any other social platform; political, religion etc. In respect to gender and leadership, Australia has remained largely conservative in allowing women to lead. Studies have shown that majority of executives and top CEOs in Australia are male, women indeed represent such a small percentage less than 10 percent. In Australia the culture of leadership is still oriented towards the great man theory. The role of women in leadership especially in the context of Australia where leadership style is still authoritarian needs to be considered with great attention. Several studies have shown that naturally women have the transformational sense in their style of leadership. A study conducted by Collins and Sarah 2001, 8 indicated that leadership style exhibited by female accountants differed significantly from that exhibited by male accountants. The study reported that females were more likely to use management styles that were more interactive. Interactive style of leadership is more the same like transformational leadership. Actually some authors use the term ‘interactive’ to refer to transformational leadership. The study further reported that leadership style of females was more effective in training and developing an individual and also in communication. Several studies have emphasized the importance of women in leadership even though it is an issue that still remains less accepted and incorporated by many societies (Lyness& Schrader 2006). Evidence are there however to show that women are equally as effective as the men counterparts. Catalyst (2007, 14) reported the effect of women in corporate performance. In the study 500 companies were surveyed in terms of women representation in the company’s board and the corporate performance of the companies. The study found that those companies that had more than three women as representatives in their boards had the best performances. It also reported that those companies that generally had women represented in the boards recorded the best returns to equity, higher profits and returns to investment capital. Effective leadership therefore must consider the issue of gender in an organization at all levels. It does not necessarily mean that women must be the CEOs of companies, but it is important to consider a woman CEO in cases where one happens to be a favorable candidate. But in cases where the CEO is a male, it is important to consider the issue of gender in other management positions within the organization in order to achieve maximum potential. Australia must consider women as equally able to lead. Perhaps the gender is one cultural leadership characteristics in Australia that needs to be considered even further in order to develop an internationally oriented perspective of leadership (Still, 2006). Communication is also a very fundamental aspect of effective leadership. Communication in effective leadership Communication in leadership is just as important as any other factor that comprises effective leadership. In fact it is very crucial since it is a means by which followers can easily get to know the personality of a leader. Communication in an organization or an institutional setting is either official or casual. For business communication, official language is the only form of communicating and there are some forms of rules and formats that are used to convey such information. Memos are often used to communicate within organizations and the structures of memos are more or less the same. However the body and tone of the memo may portray the emotions of the informant. However, as far as communication in effective leadership is concerned, casual communication is of major concern. As luthra and Dahiya 2015, 6 puts it, communication skills is the most important consideration while hiring a business manager. The study asserts that often business mangers spent most of their time concerned with the management aspects of the business such as profits, sales targets and so forth and largely ignore the aspect of communication. It further reiterates that as much as a manger uses other management skills such as effective and strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation among other management skills, communication skills remain the most fundamental. This is because oblivious to the managers of course, they always spend over 70 percent of their time communicating with their teams, partners, associates and other people in the organization, the study reports that it is the communication skill of a leader that will that will motivates and inspires his team to work in order to achieve targets for both the team and the organization. Transformational leadership indeed is fundamental for effective leadership. The key concerns in this form of leadership are the ability of a leader to motivate his/her follower, stimulate full potential in them and help the followers to develop personally and professionally. All this aspects revolve around communication. It is through communication that a leader can find the right words to use to inspire his followers. It is through communication that a leader is able to use his or her emotional intelligence to effectively lead. And communication is effective not only from top to the bottom but even vice versa and it is the responsibility of a leader to establish an efficient and effective form of communication (luthra, Dahiya, 2015, 7). Effective leadership is crucial to successful leadership and management of an organization at all levels. How one lead varies from place to place and depend on an individual and other non-individual aspects such culture, traditions and norms. However there is an almost unanimous view that leadership needs to be transformational. The traditional perspective of leadership seems to have loose effect and meaning and it is now commonly believed that transformational perspective of leadership offers more success. Reference Avolio, B.J. and Gardner, W.L. (2005). Authentic leadership development: Getting to the root of positive forms of leadership. Leadership Quarterly (16): 315-338 Baumgartner, R.J. (2009) Organizational culture and leadership: Preconditions for the development of a sustainable corporation. Sustainable Development. 17 (2):102-113. Batool, B. Fakhra (2013). Emotional Intelligence and Effective Leadership Journal of Business Studies Quarterly 4 (3): 6 Bolden, T., James M., Lee, Y (2006). Leadership theory and the chronological transition Journal of Leadership Studies 1 (2) 70-84 Bruce E., Patterson, K (2006). An Integrative Definition of Leadership International Journal of Leadership Studies 1 (2) 6-66 Burke, S., and Collins, K.M. (2001). Gender differences in leadership styles and management skills. Women in Management Review, 16(5), 244-256. Catalyst (2007). The Bottom Line: Corporate Performance and Women's Representation on Boards. Davis H. (2014). Transformational leadership practice in Australia Journal of Leadership Studies 3 (2) 43-861 Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE, 2002). Transformational leadership report Hempsall T. J (2014). Higher education training of leadership; a perspective of the U.S and the U.K. Australian journal of leadership 3 (1): 65-81 Kennedy W (2002). Malaysian global leadership perspective and its cultural diversity. Journal of international business 5 (3) 75-93 Lindorff, M. (2008) Wellbeing and transformational leadership. In J. Sarros (Ed) Contemporary Perspectives on Leadership: Focus and Meaning for Ambiguous Times (pp 91-106). Melbourne: Tilde University Press. Luthans, F., Avolio, B.J., Avey, J.B. and Norman, N. (2007) Positive Psychological Capital: Measure and Relationship with Performance and Satisfaction. Personnel Psychology. 60 (3):541-573. Lyness, K.S and Schrader, C.A (2006). Moving Ahead or Just Moving?: An Examination of Gender Differences in Senior Corporate management Appointments. Group and Organization Management. 31 (6): 641-676 Prati, L.M., McMillan-Capehart, A. and Karriker, Joy. H. (2009) Affecting Organizational Identity: A Manager's Influence. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies. (15) Pgs 404-415. Still, L.V. (2006).  Where are the women in leadership in Australia? Women in Management Review, 20(3), 180-194. Tomas R. Giberson, Christian J. Resick, Marcus W. Dickson, Jacqueline K. Mitchelson, Kenneth R. Randall Malissa A. Clark J Bus (2009) Leadership and Organizational Culture: Linking CEO Characteristics to Cultural. Psychol 24 pgs123–137 Wilson P (2014). Perception of the roles played by women in the society; in the past and into the future Women in Management Review, 20(3): 1843-158 Read More