Leadership in Workplace

Leadership appears to be required at all levels of the business to give motivation, administration services, goals, and operational monitoring. Good leadership fundamentally assists the organization in remaining focused on its objectives by directing subordinates toward the overarching corporate vision and mission. Most firms have developed leadership training programs to teach managers and workers how to set realistic goals, oversee execution, communicate with employees, and inspire them. Proper leadership is intrinsically important in instilling passion within the organization toward the preservation of the business culture and strategic objectives (Boerner et al. 20). It is beyond doubt that the success of any company significantly depend on managements’ ability to influence employees commitments in ensuring they execute assigned duties accordingly. Effective leadership promotes teamwork in the workers which ultimately confines them to accomplish a common purpose. To get clear insights on what entails effective management, this paper expounds on leadership theories, characteristics, and its effects on followers and organization at large.

Application of the leadership theory

Different leadership theories are used to define what distinguishes authentic leaders from others. Despite covering various theories from the course, this paper identifies behavioral theories which primarily focus on how good leaders act. Their behaviors are assessed based on the manager's capability to involve employees in the decision-making process to encourage support or just dictate what they feel is right. Behavioral theories were developed in 1930’s by Kurt Lewin who stated that there are three types of leaders; autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire leaders. Therefore, the behavioral theory is currently applied by managers in various times to ensure superb decisions and strategies are formulated to align with overall organization goals amidst the hostile business environment.

How behavioral theory works in my workplace

As earlier stated, behavioral theory constitute autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire leaders. Authoritarian leaders are famously known for making decisions without involving workers. Nonetheless, this approach seems appropriate when decisions are urgently required, and the success of the plans does not depend on teamwork. On the other hand, democratic leaders give opportunities to workers to provide their inputs before decisions are enacted. This leadership style is encouraged when roles in the business are performed in groups, and it is sometimes hard to apply when there are divergent perspectives among individuals in the teams (Boseman 38). Furthermore, laissez-faire leaders allow people in the team to make decisions without the interference of the management. However, this approach only works well where everyone in the group is self-motivated, highly capable, and works without close supervision.

Basing on my workplace, most leaders are both people and task oriented. People-oriented ensure their actions assists inner needs of the employees are satisfied to ensure a favorable working environment exists to allow them to exploit their full potential. Thus, the behaviors of managers portray attributes such encouraging, observing, listening, coaching, and mentoring. Additionally, some managers are task concerned and ensure their behaviors on business structure, and operating procedures remains in line with organization strategies. They initiate, clarifies, organize and gather adequate information from employees before making decisions.

Effects of power and influence leaders have on the followers in the organization

Effective leadership in a company are rated on the ability to influence workers through decisions formulated and strategies to stay focused on ensuring key objectives are realized. In my organization, leaders influence individuals’ behavior, opinions, and actions which ostensibly imply that they have positive powers on the followers (Boerner et al. 16). Every manager applies a different style depending to the situation to ensure a consistent decision or strategy is established which effects on employees in various ways. Equally, some managers apply democratic styles to ensure potential ideas from the workers are used in making decisions; whereby, such actions seem insignificant, but for sure they contribute to immeasurable commitments of employees on organizational activities. Followers are intrinsically motivated just from the special treatment accorded to them by leaders. Also, Laissez-faire style is allowed, but employees are cautioned that any action pursued using the strategy will attract heavy fines to those contravening organization aims (Laohavichien 8). Individuals are imperatively required to highly upheld professionals while deciding without receiving supervision from the supervisors. Because of the confidence the management has developed in teams, most of the personally made decisions eventually yield the expected results. Good leadership in my organization has positively impacted on followers by making them more accountable for any action they undertake because of the pride they have towards the business. I also realized that some managers develop decisions without involving followers where such plans ended up receiving substantial support from everyone. Therefore, the autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire have been successfully applied in the organization and yielded good results because it is a culture embedded which influences everyone to support managers decision especially if they are in line with overall business objectives.

It is undeniable that high acceptance and support of managers ideas by followers explicitly depicted they were open-minded. Followers were receptive to leader’s strategies and decisions because they properly understood benefits that are derived from organization success. I also noted that high support from the employees was contributed by its mission and vision that purposed to capitalize on innovation to meet the changing consumers wants (Boerner et al. 17). Therefore, workers were always willing to adopt brilliant ideas that were rapidly developed by the leaders to ensure the business stayed on the track.

Nevertheless, operational and administrative strategies require frequent improvements to enable them to remain effective over an extended period. I felt the need for my organization to change leadership practices from behavioral theory to contingency theory. Both autocratic and laissez-faire are more risky to the business especially when some managers pursue selfish interests. Some of the inefficiencies in the strategies surfaced when marketing team decided to increase their yearly budget which failed to yield more profits; instead, the business experienced a decline in the market share whereby its close competitors realized improved performance. Another instance occurred where the production manager decided to increase the production of a particular brand without seeking information from the marketing department. Unfortunately, it was revealed that the brand whose production volume had been increased declined in market demand, an aspect that had already been deliberated by the marketing department and it was evident that such as issue could not arise. To avert such challenges, it is important for my organization to adopt contingency theories to suit the changing organization and customer’s needs (Laohavichien 10). Above all, this is the most appropriate strategy that will enable the organization to handle internal challenges and the ever-evolving external business environment.

Roles and effectiveness of transactional and transformational leadership in the organization

In overall, transactional leadership focuses on maintaining the normal or planned flow of activities in the organization. Transactional leaders apply array of incentives to motivate employees and disciplinary measures to influence their commitments and further perform their best. Ideally, transactional leaders use extrinsic motivation such as rewards for better performance from the subordinates (Gumusluoglu & Ilsev 461). However, transactional leadership is mostly concerned with ensuring organization activities flow smoothly without considering the long-term business strategies and market attainment of significant market share. Moreover, transformational leaders ensure organizational execute daily operations smoothly and go beyond this and develop strategies for catapulting the company to the next level of success and performance. Transformational leadership is more concerned with motivation, team-building, and collaboration with workers across the organization to accomplish success. They provide employees with opportunities for employee personal and professional growth and offers incentives as a way of encouraging them to achieve set goals.

In any organization, the role and effective application of transactional and transformational leadership fundamentally contribute towards success (Gumusluoglu & Ilsev 464). Notably, transactional leadership allows the business to address small operational issues quickly, handle issues that come together to build a strong reputation and keep employees productive. Similarly, transformational leadership is paramount to strategic development of the company to shoot for ambitious goals that can assist in achieving rapid success through team-building skills (Boseman 36). However, the two styles of leadership are not effectively practiced in my organization. For instance, most managers are more concerned about individuals’ behavior and how to influence workers to support various decisions crafted instead of monitoring the way daily activities are executed. The success the organization accomplishes stems from the acceptance and receptive culture that have been established. Most metrics of transactional and transformational such as providing incentives to hard-working employees, monitoring and evaluating how daily activities are performed and rapidly developing effective strategies and offering personal and professional growth opportunities.

Traits and characteristics of effective team leader within the company

Usually, effective team leader naturally possess traits and characteristics that influence group members to support their goals. An effective team leader should be capable of instilling confidence in the team members and contribute to the organizational growth through bolstering group productivity (Gumusluoglu & Ilsev 461). Some of the valuable traits and attributes which qualify individuals to be termed effective team leaders including but not limited to outstanding communication and organizational skills, confident, respectful, fair, influential, facilitator, negotiator, and others. Apparently, my team leader evinced good leadership traits whereby most of his decision emanated from the democratic style. He showed respect to everyone by listening to all views however small it was. Allowing members participation in forming decisions motivated them further to enhance success to validate their ideas and improve the confidence of the management in their capability.

Additionally, my team leader maintained effective communication. He exhibited quality verbal and written communication which allowed team members to understand. Effective communication skills allowed the team leader to listen and implement inputs of others. The breakdown in the flow of information in the business deters effective implementation of plans which ultimately leads to failure (Krishnan 560). Therefore, teamwork success is built on effective communication on what to do, ways to perform them, and responsible parties. My leaders ensured all these elements are complied with which culminated into continued collaboration among members. Also, my team leader was a facilitator. He comprehended that strategies could only be effectively implemented by employees if they are provided with the required resources and helping workers understand their goals. He organized action plans that purposed to ensure team members realized their objectives more efficiently. Planning without putting in place appropriate measures and resources to support the implementation might prevent the company from meeting the goals. Thus, the team leader availed needed resources and support to ensure departmental activities are executed according to plans.

Moreover, my team leader possessed many traits and characters for effective leadership and this was the primary reason as to why most objectives were timely accomplished. He was very confident in any decisions formulated and abilities. Also, he had firm confidence in team members’ capabilities. Consequently, he guided others in making secure decisions and reassured the group about its capacity driving the department towards its success (Laohavichien 16). Similarly, his confidence in workers enhanced delegation of duties. Delegating certain tasks to trustworthy employees in the team gave him the opportunity to concentrate on other issues. Therefore, my team leader had the best characters and traits which substantially assisted workers to effectively perform their roles and overall organizational success.

How the leadership supports vision, mission, and strategy in the organization

The level of leadership in any organization determines commitments of employees towards meeting strategic objectives, vision, and mission statement (Krishnan 557). In my organization, the leadership supports mission and vision by timely and effectively communicating them to the employees. The management ensures every new employee is proactively informed about what the business aims to achieve and the appropriate strategy to take it there. Most decisions crafted by the management align with company mission and vision. For instance, the organization vision for the company is to provide best quality services possible to the customers and this was embedded in the culture whereby everyone must act for the best interest of the customers. The effectiveness of employees actions were evaluated based on the ultimate effects on clients and managers always valued activities that complied with vision preposition. Again, the leaders used memo to communicate to the workers what the company had achieved in a particular month, its focus on the following period and how to accomplish the goals. Leaders supported the mission by setting realistic goals and providing propitious environment for everyone to discharge roles without limitations. Furthermore, they supported the mission through aiding workers in understanding the importance of their contributions in the organizational performance, and the reasons for establishing a friendly relationship with clients (Krishnan 554). Undeniably, customers are the pillar of any profit-making organization; therefore, loss of customers to the competitors will adversely affect the performance of the company. Equally, I observed that the leadership supported business strategy through explaining or drawing an outline to employees on how they were supposed to conduct themselves to meet organization vision, mission, and objectives. Strategies are paramount for the organization to reach where it aims; thus, the management explicitly communicated them to employees, availed the required resources for implementation and guided them on how to perform challenging duties.

What I would change if I were a leader in the organization

If I were a leader in the business, I would change the presently used human resource practices and organizational structure. Because the business culture is grounded on behavioral leadership traits where some decisions are regularly formulated without following any prescribed procedure. For example, the effectiveness of Laissez-faire and autocratic leadership styles work perfectly well when the managers or team members have adequate knowledge and skills about the subject. Therefore, frequent employee training and development programs should be offered by the business. Besides, the robust changes in external business environment require workers to be more conversant with the changing consumer needs and market demands. Apparently, being offered the management role, I would ensure the business establishes a formal administrative structure that defines individual’s responsibilities by clarifying the reporting levels within the organization. Creating a formalized organizational structure will help to overcome instances where some team members may deliberately make decisions that are not in line with organization mission, and vision (Krishnan 550). Also, a formalized administrative structure will enhance development of powerful department that competes amongst themselves to accomplish business objectives. Thus, changing the organizational structure will improve development of unique culture that substantially focuses on performance. I suppose the transition will allow development of a strong human resource department that will commit itself to ensuring workers interests are adequately taken care of by offering required training and resources to help individuals perform their duties without any limitation. Consequently, innovation will become invaluable as it is the key to creating efficiency, providing quality products and services that satisfy customer’s needs. However, no leadership is perfect in the contemporary society, but training and appropriate organizational structure provide a ground for making operational adjustments that suit both business and market needs.

Works Cited

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