Leadership Style, Skill And Change Management: A Brief Discussion

Leadership

Give a brief discussion on leadership style, skill, and change management.

Good leadership requires good human quality beyond the concept of being authoritative. In the age of globalizations, good leaders are the enabling force motivating the people and organizations to perform and develop in a team to achieve the purpose of the organization aligning individuals with organizations needs and aims. Good leadership includes the right attitude and behaviour that is related to humanity. Leadership is an opportunity to serve the people of the society. Leadership focuses on the people of the organization to make effective decisions and actions and its responsibility for people. Leadership includes emotional strengths and behavioural characteristics, which comes from the leaders and the experience they have gathered over the years.  Leadership is a very profound concept, which is characterized by increasingly complex and rapid-changing world. Good leaders are obeyed as people trust and respect them because of the excellent leadership they have shown. Leadership depends on the attributes that are not measurable like faith, inspiration, attitude, decision making and it comes from the personal and professional experience of the leaders. Today ethical leadership has become an important part since the world is connected and media and public criticize the action and philosophies of the organization. The new leaders need to understand the people and the consequences before making any such decisions that affect the company image in the market. Effective leaders are flexible enough to change the leadership style as per evolving situation. There are classic styles, transformational styles, participative styles and influential leaders (Madsen et al., 2014).

Classic styles explain how much control a leader gives to its subordinates. In a laissez-faire, style of leadership manager gives very less authority to the subordinates. This style of leadership suits well in a situation where the employees are very trained and motivated. Whereas autocratic style of leadership explains a situation where leaders control most of the work and give very less scope to the subordinates to make any suggestions. The participative leadership style focuses on teamwork to work collaboratively to solve the problem and increase the performance of the leaders (Salih & Doll, 2013).

Transformational style explains how leaders can bring changes to a workplace and in the employees. The leaders of this category have a vision of the company and have the skillets to implement the vision. The leaders are inspired by their exquisite quality and skill of leadership to set the vision of the organization and motivate others to achieve it. This type of leadership suits well in entrepreneurial businesses (Mast et al., 2012).

Role-play

Participative styles highlight employee participation in work. One of this kind of leadership is the democratic style of leadership. In this form the leader, take the individual’s suggestion while making decisions for the organization. The style is best suited for those organization which has several alternatives to direct the team. The affiliative style focuses on the teamwork to increase the performance of the team and improve the overall standard of communication the system. This applies to the company where there is a huge gap created by an improper connection.

Active Leaders belong to that category which is affected by the personality of the leaders. This type of leadership focuses on the influential leaders who set the high standard of goal and are very obsessive to realize the target. Michael Dell, one of the prominent leaders of Dell computers located in Texas belong to the category because of his constant endeavour to grow and improve the business. In a commanding style of leadership, the leaders dictate the employees like a military and are applicable in crisis. In coaching style, the leader identifies the development areas of an employee to teach the learner how to overcome the problem by formulating the action plan and by continuously providing feedback to improve the outcome (Jones et al., 2012).

Role-play is an important learning tool for a long time. By role-playing a person is projecting himself in an imaginary situation where a person can’t control the outcome of a case but anticipates some of the conditions to direct the performance to effect the results. Role plays often use theory and gather all the concepts to transform it into a practical experience.

Role-play can be ineffective when people are not clear about what they are supposed to do. The objective of role-playing is to make it clear to the employees what is expected of them. The leader needs to understand whether the manager wants to assess the skill of the employees or developing them. If it is evaluating the people, then they must know the competency level of people to are aware of their potential and their capability to face a challenge. It allows other participants to monitor the role-play to make the comment on this since it is hugely learning experience for the observers. The spectators should follow the leader’s instruction while observing the matter understand the aim role-play. One of the objectives of the role-play is to develop the person to face future challenges for the organization. The concept of role play centres around few things it must be simple, and the objective of role play must be clear to the participants, and the participants must understand the instructions and feedback of the leader who is given instantly (Bennett & Dodge, 2014).

Change management

For example Storyboarding has been used for engineering and computer science projects to ensure cooperation form experts from different streams. Collaborative design workshops use role play where a computer science or engineering students assume to play project roles like project manager, designer to play it up and it helps them to gather skill and knowledge and overcome the challenges while facing such situation in reality.

Change management includes shifting the organization and its employee to bring desired changes in the business. It can be strategic, operational or technological changes that can come from the organization or outside the organization. Technical, macroeconomics, globalization and new legal legislation are considered the external forces for change whereas new management, restructuring are considered the internal forces for change. The management is a change agent who will bring all the positive shifts in the organization to for the betterment of the company.

The external forces stimulate the organization to change the existing scenario with the help of leadership to bring the desired organizational changes. Technological changes can bring dramatic changes to the structure by expanding the supply and demand for the product in a market. It requires competent change management to get the opportunity by avoiding all the negative implications associated with it. The recession of 2008 exemplifies the importance of adaptability and change (Cameron & Green, 2015).

Shell was lacking of oil reserves crisis in 2004 and that has affected its share price. This has happened due to the departure of the Oil group’s chairman, Sir Philip Watts. The new chairman Jeroen van der has identified the need of change and transformations of entire structure to retain the market share of the product. They have standardized the entire system effecting 80 Shell units. The change in process has shown the major market players the need of change and focused on adoption from everybody involved in the system.

It distributes responsibility among the team members hence empowering the member and helping them in group’s decision-making. The participative leadership centers around four things. First is the information sharing that is keeping the employees informed about the changes and the economic status of the company. It provides training to enhance the skill level of the employees and provide development opportunities to apply new skills in respect of decision making in the organization. It offers many benefits for the company by creating ownership in the company and motivates employees to enhance productivity to achieve the goal.

Participative management

Steve Jobs, the owner of Apple and Pixar, is one of the iconic participative leaders who has invented Macintosh PC. Job’s invention is marked by simplicity; every aspect of the device is analyzed carefully. Therefore, Job has created something which is an example of excellent innovation and able to instil confidence in the users. In his leadership he has shown patience, empathy, enthusiasm and confidence (Sebastian,2014).

Steve Jobs helped Apple to survive because of his adaptability to new changes, from a participative leader Steve Jobs has become charismatic or laissez-faire leader and Apple has got success then he became an autocratic leader and resigned the company as per the instructions of Apple’s board of directors. Jobs has returned to Apple after 10 years and applied several leadership styles with participative style at the same time. Thus Jobs with the help of other experienced leaders has achieved the success and Apple survived.

Group discussions help to resolve problems, improves decision-making and to assess the personality of the employees in a better way. It has become essential tools for problem solving by providing diverse viewpoints. So the success of group discussions depends on effective communication, a participation of all candidates and a real leadership skill (Ahmad et al., 2014).

Many reputed B-schools like IIMs conduct group discussions in the final round of selection process. In this process the candidates are asked few questions based on a case study and the case study group discussions are mostly dealing with situations in corporate world. The candidate will be given a situation, a problem and are expected to provide solution of the case.

Many issues compelled the organization to bring variations in the body. There are developmental changes which are aimed to improve the present business structure. For example changing the current billing and reporting procedures or developing the training methods. It can be a renovation of marketing strategy and the branding strategy.

Transitional changes are those to replace the existing process with the new one. Examples are restructuring the company mergers or requisitions, launching new products and new technology.

Transformational changes are those to replace the company structure, business strategy and the process entirely to cope up with the market changes (Sousa et al., 2013).

Successful change management leadership includes the input and the participation of subordinates to initiate changes and design a new business model. It includes analysis of statistical data, which is related to sales, market share, and compare to competitors, focusing on customers surveys. The most important aspect of changes is successfully transforming the employees into the new role. Successful leaders can address the potential issues, and give clear guideline and provide training to achieve the goal in reality (Asgari & Hasanpous, 2013)

Reference List

Ahmad, N. L., Tobi, S. N. M., Rahim, R. A., Shobri, N. D. M., & Wahab, S. (2014). The Relationship between Participative Management and Job Satisfaction. In Proceeding of The Austrialian Academy of Business and Social Science Conference’, ISBN 978-0-9925622-0 (Vol. 5).

Asgari, M. H., & Hasanpous, H. (2013). Comparison of impact of managers’ participative and collaborative management styles on creativity, job satisfaction and organizational commitment of secondary school teachers, Rasht city, Iran. International Research Journal of Applied and Basic Sciences, 4(5), 1081-1085.

Bennett, D., & Dodge, K. (2014). It was like a mirror: a reflection on filmed role play simulation.

Cameron, E., & Green, M. (2015). Making sense of change management: a complete guide to the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. Kogan Page Publishers.

Jones, N., Seddon, R., Fear, N. T., McAllister, P., Wessely, S., & Greenberg, N. (2012). Leadership, cohesion, morale, and the mental health of UK Armed Forces in Afghanistan. Psychiatry, 75(1), 49-59.

Madsen, I. E., Hanson, L. L. M., Rugulies, R., Theorell, T., Burr, H., Diderichsen, F., & Westerlund, H. (2014). Does good leadership buffer effects of high emotional demands at work on risk of antidepressant treatment? A prospective study from two Nordic countries. Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology, 49(8), 1209-1218.

Mast, M. S., Jonas, K., Cronauer, C. K., & Darioly, A. (2012). On the importance of the superior’s interpersonal sensitivity for good leadership.Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 42(5), 1043-1068.

Salih, A., & Doll, Y. (2013). A middle management perspective on strategy implementation. International Journal of Business and Management, 8(22), 32.

Sebastian, D. J. (2014). Effectiveness of participative management in the industrial sector of Kerala.

Sousa, M. E. M., Martins, B. M. L., & Fernandes, M. E. B. (2013). Meeting the giants: The need for local ecological knowledge (LEK) as a tool for the participative management of manatees on Marajó Island, Brazilian Amazonian coast. Ocean & coastal management, 86, 53-60.