My vision of leadership

As I have already mentioned in my previous blogs, teams reflect their leaders as a mirror (Mullions 2010). The leadership style influences on the relations between the group and the organisation. A group leader gives guidance, help and support to the team, provides opportunities for team members, solves conflicts and pays attention to employee problems and decision making (Mullions 2010). It is very important, that a leader must establish a level of trust among the group and help them in understanding of the behaviours to build trust (McKenna and Maister 2002). McKenna and Maister (2002) argue that “The job of the group leader is to encourage people to earn the trust of others in their group and then show them how it can translate into greater commitment, greater creativity, greater professional satisfaction, and better performance”.

This blog shares my preferred style of leadership, type of leader I would like to be, leader who I am inspired by and my present feedback and strategies to improve for my future leadership.

In the previous blog 3 I considered “transformational leadership as one of the best leadership styles in business” (Zhambyl 2016). So, I would like to be a transformational leader and work with team members having capabilities to create and execute a guide vision of the needed change through inspiration and cooperation with team members. Under transformational leadership people have the opportunities for enhancing the motivation, morale, job performance. My dream is to become a role model for my team members and inspire them to become a team with great interest in the common projects.

Bass (1990) considered transformational leadership style in the framework of the leader’s influence on the team members due to his qualities. They trust, admire and respect for the leader, trying to work harder than usually. Transformational leaders give followers identity, providing with vision and inspiring mission, transform and motivate team through influence, intellectual stimulation and individual consideration (Bass 1990).

 In order to become a transformational leader, four specific components are necessary. They are: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, individualized consideration and intellectual stimulation (Riggio 2009).

• Idealized influence – when the leader “serves as an ideal role model for followers”;
• Inspirational motivation – means the transformational leader’s charisma, constituting the inspire ability and the ability to motivate team members and people;
• Individualized consideration – means a great concern for the needs and feelings of his team and people, “personal attention to each follower” serves one of the important elements for achieving best results;
• Intellectual Stimulation – when the leader requires the team members to be “innovative and creative”, and challenges to “higher levels of performance” (Riggio 2009).

I am inspired by Steve Jobs, CEO, Chairman, and co-founder of Apple Incorporation. He had important “personal characteristics of a transformational leader: creative, passionate, and visionary” (Steinwart & Ziegler 2014).  In his leadership, Steve Jobs had four above-mentioned elements of a transformational leader. Thus, he treated his team members equally, with a lot of flexibility; being a transformational leader, he concentrated on the “transforming others” in order to take care and help each other to imagine success and opportunities. He always knew the direction to lead the company and how to attract people with similar vision.  Steve Jobs headed as an inspirational leader to his team  and always knew what do people needed,  so he  experienced innovative technologies  and applied them to the personal computer whereas nobody could even guess about it.

In the blog 3 (Zhambyl 2016) I shared the idea, that “best leader needs to combine different leadership styles and skills”. Steve Jobs, used also a participative leadership style in encouraging his followers to suggest new ideas and mentioned only “We” instead of “I” in his speech. Some people also considered him as a charismatic leader, who influenced people with the help of his speaking. Therefore, Apple was revitalized by Steve Jobs and the Apple Inc. developed a great number of new devices, such as the iPod, the iPhone,as well as iTunes and iPad.

Along with making computers revolution and technology accessible all around the world, once he said: “Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them”.  This definitely explains the reason why a successful leader Steve Jobs is inspired by me and millions of people (Business News Daily 2016).

I do not consider myself as a leader yet. Vince Lombardi’s quote, which sucks me, is that “Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve anything worthwhile” (Walter 2013).This statement is very powerful to me and shows something I must work towards. I believe that in order to be a successful leader I need to work and learn more. My lectures and seminars on “Leading in a changing world” taught me a lot about leadership theories, its styles and nature. The knowledge, I got due to this course, as well as literature review, allowed me analyzing my own abilities to become a leader, on the basis of different leadership models.

I have learnt, that organisations needs to “make use of the various strengths of employees” in order to survive and thrive (ACAS 2007). Belbin’s nine team roles model defines me as a “teamworker”,“co-operative, mild, perceptive and diplomatic”, having weakness to be easily influenced. (Mullins 2010).This is true, my strength is in close cooperation with other team members in a teamwork, with the use of perceptive and diplomatic way of suggesting new ideas, conviction and decision making. Buy I have to be more strong in some crunch situations and combine my present democratic style of leadership with transformational one (Mullins 2010) in order to become an effective leader in my business activity. I have also known a lot about ethical leadership, which includes such leader’s qualities as charismatic sociality, honesty, trust and fairness (Brown, Trevino,& Harrison 2005). I absolutely agree with the Nahavandi’s position (2009) that ethical leadership depends greatly on the cultural background of the leader. Moreover, working in a team, doing joint projects or presentations with groupmates, who came from different countries and represent various cultures, I began more familiar after learning about managing diverse teams, in understanding that only “full use of people’s individuality can bring mutual benefit of the group as a whole” (Mullins 2010).

Before my class on “Leading in a changing world” I had some difficulties in defining feedbacks for myself and colleagues. I have known the Situation-Behaviour-Impact model, which is very helpful for giving effective feedback. This model focuses on giving feedback on specific behavior situations and determines the impact of this person’s behavior on others (Wietzel 2000). Now I became more confident to give feedback to my colleagues and used to get constructive feedback, which made me more conscious about my strengths and weaknesses.

My colleagues recognised me as a very sociable and communicative person, able to work in a team, demonstrating reliability and confidence, but it is necessary to be more initiative in decision making. This feedback made me to be more brave and insistent in suggesting my own ideas to my colleagues, and decision making. For this purpose, I try to develop persistence, check my ideas, build self-confidence and potential improvements. And I do hope that MBA will provide me necessary skills to become more initiative in generating a vision in order to be an effective leader, to be able to inspire people for meeting challenges and to motivate people for better changes in organizations.

The course “Leading in a changing world” taught me to distinguish management and leadership. Now I understand, that management means “coordinating the activities of people and guiding their efforts towards the goals and objectives of the organization” (Mullins 2009), while leadership is “relationship through which one person influences the behaviour or actions of other people” (Zhambyl 2016).

I imagine to be a leader, who determines the goals and direction of the organisation, motivates and leads employees to achieve them (Zhambyl 2016). I am sure, that the knowledge I got from the leadership course, will allow me to “do right things” as a leader (Bennis 1989).

References

Bennis, W. (1989) On Becoming a Leader. New York: Addison Wesley

Bernard, M. (1990) Bass transactional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision, Organizational  Dynamics, Vol. 18, , no. 3, Pp. 19-31.

Brown, M. (2005) Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing’. Organizational behavior & human decision processes 97(2), 117-134

Business News Daily (2016) [online] available from http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/4195-business-profile-steve-jobs.html   [8 March 2016]

Guirdham (2007) ACAS Teamwork: Success :Through People advisory booklet, M. Interactive Behaviour, p. 4 and p. 6.4

McKenna, P. & Maister, D. (2002) Building Team Trust’, Consulting to Management, vol. 13, no. pp. 51–3.

Mullins, J. (2010) Management and Organisational Behaviour. Pearson Publication.

Marlane C. (2014) Transformational Leader”: Implications for Pedagogy. Journal of Leadership Education, p. 52

Nahavandi, A. (2009) The Art and Science of Leadership. N.J.: Prentice Hall.

Riggio, R. (2009) Cutting-edge leadership, are you a transformational leader? [online] available from  <https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/200903/are-you-transformational>  [7 March 2016]

Walter, E. (2013) 5 Myths of Leadership [online] available from <http://www.forbes.com/sites/ekaterinawalter/2013/10/08/5-myths-of-leadership/#420038e6584b> [9 March 2016]

Wietzel (2000) Feedback that works: How to build and deliver your message. Centre for Creative Leadership

Zhambyl, A. (2016) Blog 3 Most effective leadership and management style [online] available from <https://wordpress.com/post/culczhambyla.wordpress.com/30> [7 March 2016]

Leadership & Change

 

“Change is nothing new and a simple fact of life. Some people actively thrive on new challenges and constant change, while others prefer the comfort of the status quo and strongly resist any change. It is all down to the personality of the individual and there is little management can do about resistance to change” (Mullins 2010: 753).

Business world has become extremely competitive. In order to survive in the rapidly changing conditions and to meet customers’ needs the organisation must have all possibilities to make changes quickly.  Today, organisations need to make strategic changes relating to customer demand, competitiveness and innovative technologies. Organisation’s structure and processes must be familiarized flexibly, in regard “to change management”. This concept is known in most business organisations, and the results of business change depend on many factors, including nature of organizations, involved employees and people, understanding of the change process by people.

On the other hand, these changes may cause stress and uncertainty among employees (Callan 1993; Terry & Jimmieson, 2003).  According to statistics about 60 percent of organizational changes fail (CIPD 2011). This happens because employees are not involved in the planning and implementation processes and suffer from stress, consequences of which are very cost for organization (McHugh 1997). Thus, people resist the process of change giving preferences to status quo (Mullins 2013).

According to Klepper (1997), organizations normally have four main changes to go throughout their growth: Formative Period, Rapid Growth Period, Mature Period and Declining Period.

• Formative Period – when an organization starts its activity, and changes as   creativity and discovery are necessary.
• Rapid Growth Period –means changes, focusing on the goals and business strategy of the organization.
• Mature Period –changes are necessary for maintaining established markets and achieved gains.
• Declining Period – in order to survive, changes are directed to tough objectives, to get something new.

Some organizations follow these four stages of growth very quickly, others needs decades. In contrary, the organization stops its activity, if it fails to follow with the needed changes of the four growth periods.

 K. Lewin’s Change Management Model

Kurt Lewin (1950) developed one of the important models of organizational change. This model includes the three-stage change process: Unfreeze – Change – Refreeze.

Figure 1: K. Lewin’s Change Management Model

1. Unfreeze- is used in order not to resist change. It must be initiated by means of motivation.
2. Change– After first change, the organisation has a transition stage for some time. To have success in this process, an adequate leadership is necessary.
3. Refreeze – is the stage, when the organization has become stable after change implementations and employees refreeze, operating under new guidelines.

This change management model needs time for implementation and it is widespread, due to its easy use to many changes.

While this remains widely used today, it is takes time to implement. Of course, since it is easy to use, most companies tend to prefer this model to enact major changes.

McKinsey 7-S Model

The McKinsey 7-S model suggests an integrated approach to organization. This model was created by Robert Waterman, Tom Peters, Richard Pascale, and Anthony Athos and introduces 7 factors for collective change. They are as follows: shared values, strategy, structure, systems, style, staff and skills. According to Joseph and Mohapatra (2009), “the essence of McKinsey’s 7S model is that a firm is the comprehensive sum of its parts, and that the internal dynamics of an organisation clearly determine that organisation’s ability to compete, the premise being that both the strategy and the structure of the organisation determine management’s effectiveness”. The model can be usefully used for reviewing different types of business organisation in implementation of strategic direction and marketing operations.

Figure 2: McKinsey 7-S Model

Benefits of the McKinsey 7-S Model’s use

1. It allows understanding and diagnosing an organisation with highly effective method;
2. It supports an organisational change;
3. It integrates emotional and rational parts;
4. All components are compound in a unified manner

There are some disadvantages of the McKinsey 7-S Model. This model is complex and changes in one part lead to the changes of all parts, because they are closely connected and interrelated with each other. Some differences can be ignored and organisations can meet failure.

Starbucks Corporation

Hard elements

Starbucks Corporation is the example of rationalized changes relating to the McKinsey 7S framework. McKinsey 7-S Model has hard and soft elements.  Hard elements are strategy, structure and systems, while soft elements include shared values, skills, style and staff. Corporation management influences directly and controls the hard factors of the framework, while soft factors are more difficult to control, because of the influence by corporate culture.

Strategy

Starbucks management main strategy is improving quality of products and high level of customer services. Corporation aims to increase revenues by means of effective placing Starbucks stores.

Structure

Management structure suggests the elimination of the assistant managers within the stores, and only three positions of management, including store manager, shift manager and customer assistants. This will save the amount of costs and increase the organisational efficiency.

Systems

 The rotation system of duties must be introduced for reducing workface conflicts and development of the work process.

 Soft Elements

Starbucks promoted set of values to be shared by the workforce.

Skills

Starbucks organizes raining programs to master necessary skills by workforce for achieving a customer satisfaction.

 Style

Corporation changed management style of stores from Laissez Faire style to inspirational management.

 Staff

Starbucks employs only capable employees, providing growth potential.

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I believe that change is very necessary for organizations activity. Only those organisations which regularly have changes to gain the market share are successful and well developed. To do change management well, the organizations require effective communication, involvement of employees, planning and analysis, full support, and the need for the implementation of changes.

 

References

Callan, V. (1993). Individual and organizational strategies for coping with organizational change. Work & Stress, 7, 63-75.

CIPD. (2011) Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development [online] available from <http://www.cipd.co.uk/hr-resources/factsheets/change-management.aspx> [02 March 2016]

Joseph, S.  & Mohapatra, S. (2009, Management Information Systems In Knowledge Economy, PHI

Lewin, K. (1951). Field theory in social science. New York: Harper & Row.

McHugh, M. (1997). The stress factor: another item for the change management agenda? Journal of Organizational Change Management, 10(4), 345-362.

Mullins J. (2013) Management and Organisational Behaviour. Pearson Publications.

Terry, D. & Jimmieson, N. (2003). A Stress and Coping Approach to Organisational Change: Evidence From Three Field Studies. Australian Psychologist, 38, 92-101

 

Most effective Leadership & Management styles & approaches

“Which personal style should managers adopt to ensure success? What is the most effective approach to managing the work of subordinates? These questions have been extensively researched and debated over the last century, and while the general consensus has moved away from ‘command and control’ to management and leadership towards more consultative and participative approaches, there is no single ideal, as the best approach may vary according to circumstances and individual characteristics” (CMI 2013).

“Leadership and Management equal in status, but at opposite ends of a continuum”

Ray Moorcroft

 

Leadership and management are necessarily connected and interchangeable things, and must go hand in hand. Both leadership and management deal with people. They are different from each other in their styles to motivate teams and people to reach objectives. “Management is more usually viewed as getting things done through other people in order to achieve stated organisational objectives” (Mullins 2010). In this blog, we will consider effective leadership and management styles, and give some recommendations how to use knowledge of leadership skills to produce better results.

The process of management means, “Coordinating the activities of people and guiding their efforts towards the goals and objectives of the organization”, while leadership is “relationship through which one person influences the behaviour or actions of other people” (Mullins 2010). Leaders determine the goals and direction of the organisation, motivate and lead employees to achieve them. On the other hand managers maintain organisation standards, directing teams to reach set tasks.

A manager must encourage subordinates in their aspirations to work willingly, to be high morale and involved into cooperation in order to reach the best results in organisation. For these purposes, a manager must behave according to leadership style, i.e. the “way in which the functions of leadership are carried out, the way in which the manager typically behaves towards members of the group” (Mullins 2010). Zaleznik determined differences between leadership and management regarding to “goals, conceptions of work, relations with others, self-perception and development” (Mullins 2010).

Managers	Leaders
Adopt impersonal or passive attitudes towards goals.	Adopt a more personal and active attitude towards goals.
Need the necessity to coordinate and balance.	Creates excitement in work and develops choices.
Maintain a low level of emotional involvement.	Have empathy with other people and give attention to what events and actions mean.
Conservators and regulators of the existing order of affairs.	Work in, but do not belong to, the organisation.

 Figure 1 : Differences between leadership and management according to Zaleznik (1977) Source: Mullins (2010)

Leadership styles

 K. Lewin (1939) determined three major styles of leadership towards subordinate staff, such as autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire.

Figure 2: K. Lewin Leadership styles

Autocratic leaders do not consult any of their team members while making decisions. This style cannot be appropriate in the organisation, because it can demoralize the team and lead to staff turnover (Lewin 1939).

Democratic leaders usually include members of the team in the process of decision making. On one hand this style encourages creativity, high engaging in projects and reaching objectives. It increases productivity and job satisfaction. On the other hand, it is not appropriate in quick decision-making (Lewin 1939).

Laissez-faire leaders can give a lot of freedom to the team members in their activity, supporting with resources. In case, if the team members do not have enough knowledge and professional skills, this leadership style can prevent the productivity and development of organisation (Lewin 1939).

 A typical representative of the autocratic leadership style was Andrew Rosenthal, who presided the New York Times in 1970s. His autocratic leadership style increased the efficiency of the company in newspaper industry. To reach these results the company managed due to regular autocratic control in publishing newspaper.

Howell Raines, the executive editor of the New York Times at the period from 2001 to 2003, is another representative of the autocratic leadership style. Initially, his autocratic authority allowed the company winning a Pulitzers Prize in a year. However, his desire to reach goals at any cost made him sarcastic to journalists and arrogant. His autocratic leadership style led a decline in quality and information quantity, creating discord among the staff (Kellerman 2004).

Path-Goal Theory

This theory includes four different types of leadership (EPSI 2012), such as supportive leadership, directive leadership, participative leadership and achievement-oriented leadership.

Figure 3: Model of Path-Goal Theory of Leadership

Supportive leadership focuses on relationships and pays much attention to the best interests of the team members. Directive leadership deals with setting tasks relating to goals and expectations. Participative leadership focuses on mutual participation and consulting with your team members before making decisions. Achievement-oriented leadership means setting of the challenging purposes for the team members, maintaining high standards for each team member.

Indra Nooyi, the CEO and chairman of PepsiCo, is a good example of the participative leadership style. She is able to attract and endear herself to employees, because she is always interested in employees’ personal lives. Indra Nooyi has also the capacity of company’s vision in future.

Best leadership style

CMI 2013 says that “there is no single ideal, as the best approach may vary according to circumstances and individual characteristics”. I fully agree with this statement. Modern leadership can be associated “not with command and control but with the concept of teamwork, getting along with other people, inspiration and creating a vision with which others can identify” (Mullins 2016). There is a diversity of leadership styles with different skills and traits. However, there is not any leadership style to be appropriate in all situations. Internal and external factors may also influence on the leadership style, as well as personalities, environment, interaction with people, and culture. To my mind, leaders and managers in their work with subordinates should adopt different leadership styles.

 I consider transformational leadership as one of the best leadership styles in business. According to Burns (1978), it is a process of high motivation and adherence among followers. This leadership style creates trust, loyalty, justice, as well as gives the opportunities for leader to appeal to followers’ values and ideals.

How would you like to be led?

As a member of a team, I would like to be led by transformational leaders, as I have already mentioned, to my mind this style is one of the best leadership styles. A transformation leader is a leader:

• Who sets clear aims and objectives.
• Encourages other members of a team.
• Has high expectations.
• Provides support of team members and other people.
• Inspires people to reach for the unbelievable.
• Gets people to go ahead, despite their self-interest.

One of the good examples of transformational leader was Steve Jobs, Apple founder, who successfully transformed business processes to   high-speed microprocessors. Nelson Mandela is another example of transformational leadership, who canceled apartheid and enforced change in South Africa.

Recommendations how to use knowledge of leadership skills to produce better results

 

 “One of the keys to Apple is Apple’s an incredibly collaborative company.” Steve Jobs

Leaders can be taught and learned. A successful leader should have the capability to inspire, and to increase leadership skills. It is a person of integrity and needs to trust and to be trustworthy and willing to follow. It is necessary for leader to believe in yourself and organization, and to have an open leadership culture and charisma. I believe that the best leader needs to combine different leadership styles and skills, as Steve Jobs did.

Apple between 1970s and 1980s was a prosperous company, before failing in 1990s. After that, Apple became a successful company again and survived. This happened, because Steve Jobs became a participative leader. Initially Jobs began as a charismatic and laissez-faire leader, and Apple raised at that time. When he began an autocratic leader the company requested his resignation. He returned after 10 years later, and his activity combined different leadership styles, including participative, charismatic, laissez-faire, transformational, supportive and achievement-oriented (Brennan 2013).

Dearlove (2001) argues that “It is one thing for a leader to propound a grand vision, but this is redundant unless the vision is managed so it becomes real achievement”. Management and leadership are complementary connected with each other, and it is impossible to extricate one from the other. In business, a manager plans and coordinates, while a leader motivates and inspires. Therefore “Leadership, is doing the right things; management is doing things right” (Drucker 2011).

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References

Brenna, C. (2013) The Bite in the Apple: A Memoir of My Life with Steve Jobs P. 23

Dearlove, D. (2001) Reinventing Leadership’, in Crainer, S. and Dearlove, D. (eds) Financial Times Handbook of Management, second edition, Financial Times Prentice Hall p. 538.

 EPSI, (2012) Leadership in Organizations: Concepts and Theories [online] available from < http://www.epsi-inc.com/leadership-organizations-concepts-theories-2/> [26 February 2016]

Peter, F. (2011) 22 Quotes on Management Published in: Affaires, Education Mullins, L. (2010) Management and organizational behavior 9^TH ad Pearson p.148

Kellerman, B.  (2004) Bad leadership: what it is how it happens, why it matters. Harvard Business Press.

Moorcroft, R. (2005) To Lead or to Manage? That Is the Question’, Manager, The British Journal of Administrative Management, November, p. 4.

Lewin, R. & White, R. (1939). Patterns of aggressive behavior in experimentally created social climates_. Journal of Social Psychology, 10, 271-301.

Zaleznik, A. (1977) Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?’ Harvard Business, pp. 67–78.