Leadership Essays Example

Introduction

Leadership and managerial skills are important for every organization. Leadership role plays a significant function to influence and motivate employees in order to reap greater benefits for the organization and efficient utilization of company resources. By creating achievable, realistic, specific, and measurable with time-bound goals and objectives, leadership is able to keep their workers focused on the production results through which long-term benefits can be gained such as organization’s success and profitability. It is important that employee’s personal development objectives and targets should also be clearly linked to the company’s goals and objectives so that both are able to achieve their targets (Grint, 2011).
Organizational goals, values and culture, and the role of leadership and management have a direct cause and effect relationship. It is mostly the leadership and management role that have a greater role to play in designing organizational objectives, overall goals, and culture. Different leadership styles practiced by the leader impacts how an organization culture is developed and how employees operate within a company (Milan, 2008). Hence, the leadership role determines the kind of values, culture, and employee motivation and behavior that will be effective for the success. Management role impacts the strategies and objectives that are designed and how these can be efficiently executed within an organization.(Morrison, 2000, p.117).

Leadership theory that best describes me a leader

I work in the energy sector for a company that installs wind turbines on a commercial basis for small industries as well as for domestic usage. I am employed by the company for past four years. I started my career after completing 16 years of education, and I have followed career path of my choice to follow career route to currently working on the position of technical assistant. My work requires organization of renewable projects from the point the basic design is made to end of the installation of the wind turbine at the installation site. This requires that I should maintain my interpersonal skills as well as effective communication management throughout each phase. I have to work in the team and am in charge of two trainees who have just joined the organization. Apart from being their manager, I have to keep them motivated because of the complexity of the work and keep them involved in the tasks so they can learn new concepts along with their basic work.
This paper will discuss my democratic leadership style that emphasizes situational approach to leadership. The situational leadership theory states that to be a successful leader it is important to have a rational understanding and clear idea of the prevailing situation and design an appropriate response to it rather than being a charismatic leader that has a large number of following (Grint, 2011).
The basic concept behind the situational leadership is that one strategy does not apply at all the situations as suggested by many leaders and the leadership qualities depend upon different situations varying upon the management and leadership style as necessary according to the situation. However, it is important, that the leaders must prioritize their tasks. Second, it is significant that the followers should be ready to follow their leader, and the leader should be in the position to analyze the team’s willingness and ability to perform.
Depending upon these levels of acceptability, the leaders apply the appropriate leadership style, and the leadership style that I have implemented is democratic leadership style. Since my team has the highest level of performance ability and high willingness to perform. It is important that leaders should delegate tasks to their employees when they are willing to perform and take responsibility for their actions (Milan, 2008). The task delegation to employees involve a lot of trust and communication with the employees and little support from the leader. The employees are given an opportunity to perform on their own, where the execution and implementation of tasks are in the hands of the followers. Since, the employees have most of the control, they are responsible for the communication and providing information to the leadership. At this level of performance, the employees require less support and praise, and they require more of recognition of the quality of their performance (Milan, 2008).

The most distinguishing leadership trait

One of the most distinguishing leadership trait that I have and that is of utmost importance in the situational model of leadership is diagnostic skills. This is the most critical managerial skill as it involves a critical evaluation of problems, decisions regarding their solutions and the implementation of the best possible solution available. This skill involves all of the managerial skills in order to apply the concept carefully. For example, if a manager identifies a problem, in order to understand the root cause of the issue, he will need to demonstrate his effective interpersonal skills and discuss with his teammates different aspects of the issue and try identifying the solution to the issue (Bennis, 2003).
Major difference between the application of diagnostic skills entails different functional levels. For example at top management level the diagnostic will be at wider perspective with most critical decisions and their solutions, for example, strategic issues, expansion, or outsourcing of certain tasks. At middle management, this skill may be restricted to departments or functions, for example, how to improve sales targets or the performance of the retail store, etc. At the supervisory level of the manager, the diagnostic skill application will be in the form of for example employee motivation and team conflict issues (Bennis, 2003).

As a follower which leadership approach will you prefer

As a follower, I would prefer more of the skill based leadership approach because this approach will focus on the knowledge and skills of the leader and will help the followers to learn and gain knowledge from their leader. This leadership approach with emphasis upon:

Conceptual Skills

This skill set is significant to the leader because it involves the ability to determine and evaluate the overall picture and scenario of the organization and the external business environment that can majorly impact the company. This skill is not restricted to just top managers, but also crucial for middle and supervisory levels so that they can envision, for example, how teams can be organized for better performance. (Schoemaker, 2013).

Interpersonal Skills

Effective communication not only makes things easier but also reduce the communication barriers within the company. A manager who is competent in his job not only needs to demonstrate excellent conceptual and technical skills, but also interpersonal skills to succeed in their job and to have an outstanding career ahead. This skill is important at all levels within a company (Schoemaker, 2013).

Technical Skills

These skills determine the technical capability and are of utmost significance. The level of expertise requires in technical skills is different from other skills set as these require direct involvement in product design and development and require complete information on production and other technical details to look after the matters on a daily basis (Schoemaker, 2013). These managers need to be mastered in technical skills so they can design budgets and schedule workers' responsibilities. The middle-level managers will require skills and technical information for organizing and planning of tasks whereas the senior managers will need technical skills and abilities to analyze the company budgetary issues and financial statements. (Schoemaker, 2013).

Political Skills

The political skills are important because managers need to retain a certain amount of power and prevent other employees from misuse of power. Power management is critical in order to achieve the objectives set by the management and also in conflict resolution between employees and team. The manager needs to emphasize the importance of the other skills discussed above in order to demonstrate his political skills because he can only maintain his position if he has strong political skills but employees will only respect if he is able to exhibit other skills. It is important to note, that a certain amount of political skills is required at every stage of functional units, for example, managers will require the exhibition of political skills when others try to intervene in the work or control their work positions. The kind of political skills required by top managers requires meeting needs at higher levels to operate in a competitive business environment. (Schoemaker, 2013).

Leadership theory that bests describe influence to others

The leadership theory that best describes my influence on others is the transformational style of leadership which is very much in line with the above leadership style that I have implemented. The importance of transformational leadership is that it helps the leader to communicate the vision of the company to the subordinates in a well-established way. This leadership style also helps the employees to improve their skill set and knowledge level in order to reach the higher levels of the company. The leader who implements transformational style of leadership demonstrates certain charisma and authority that provides a clear pathway to the employees to follow (Khan, 2010).

Personal Development Plan

In order to self-assess and bring further improvement, it is important that a personal development plan of action must be developed by the leader. I would like to continue with the democratic style of leadership that fits best in the situational model according to the role and willingness of my employees.

Conclusion

Leadership role plays a significant function to influence and motivate employees in order to reap greater benefits for the organization and efficient utilization of company resources. This essay described my leadership in terms of democratic leadership style that emphasis on situational approach to leadership.

References

Grint, K. (2011). A history of leadership. In A. Bryman, D. Collinson, K. Grint, B. Jackson & M. Uhl-Bien (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of leadership, pp.3-14, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Khan, K. U., Farooq, S. U., & Ullah, M. I., (2010). The Relationship between Rewards and Employee Motivation in Commercial Banks of Pakistan. Research Journal of International Studies, p.14.
Milan Pagon, Emanuel Banutai (2008) Leadership competencies for successful change management, Slovenian Presidency of the EU, p.21
Morrison, A.J. (2000), Developing a global leadership model, Human Resource Management, Vol. 39 Nos. 2/3, pp. 117.
Schoemaker, Paul J. H (Jan-Feb2013) Strategic Leadership: The Essential Skills, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 91 Issue 1/2, p131-134.
Warren Bennis and Joan Goldsmith (2003) Learning to Lead: A Workbook on Becoming a Leader, 3rd ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Books Group, p.5.