Discuss about the Reflection to People, Culture and Contemporary Leadership.
Leadership is one of the most important aspects of a business. A leader can make or break a team. It is the responsibility of the leader to guide and motivate the team and address the grievances of team members (Bryman, 2013). There are numerous leaders in this world who have changed the shape of various organizations and led to their growth and development. A leader of a team is eventually responsible and accountable for the team’s overall performance and morale. We encounter leaders in different walks of our life. There is a leader in every family, group, team, department and organization that we associate with.
This course on leadership helped in gaining a deeper insight about various different leadership styles. Every leader has their individual and unique style that works best for the growth of the team. No single leadership style can work for every situation or for every team (Bolden, 2011). Through this course, I have had a chance to understand the concept of leadership in more detail. For better understanding, I attempted to consistently reflect upon my leadership abilities with an aim to improve upon the same.
The first thing that we learnt in this course is the importance of leadership that exists today. Leaders have critical roles to play in the success of their team. It is eventually the responsibility of the team to ensure that their teams remain motivated, guided and performing in the long run. Leaders of a team also aim to instil effective communication and work culture within the team.
We conducted numerous activities, psychometric tests and questionnaires. These helped us understand the practicality of various leadership concepts and also assisted us in understanding our own leadership skills. These practices also helped me understand the different styles of leaders that exist in the world. Different styles of leadership prove to be effective in different situations and no single leadership style works in every situation (Day, 2014). Therefore, it is important for leaders to identify the most appropriate leadership style for the given situation and lead their teams accordingly.
Through the course and various questionnaires and activities, I was able to identify that my leadership style is democratic. I do not boss my team around and try to make sure that the flow of communication and information within the team is transparent and open. As a leader, I believe in instilling a sense of ownership among team members for team goals and performance. I do so by allowing members to make decisions and take onus and responsibility for their work.
As a democratic leader, I try to ensure that the work culture within the team and the overall environment is positive, vibrant and active. This helps in instilling a certain amount of creativity and innovation within the team (Carver, 2011).
One important thing that I learnt through this assignment is that a leader is more effective when he or she leads by example. This motivates people and inspires them to follow the footsteps of the leader and complete the given task (Griffin & Moorehead, 2011). Leading by example also builds trust and makes it easier for the team members to respect the leader. Therefore, whenever in the future, I get a chance to lead another team, I will make sure that I lead by example. This would help in setting the correct expectations from the beginning.
I also learnt about various leaders from across the globe who are currently leading giant organizations and have made it big on their own terms. I also tried to read different books and interviews of well-known leaders from different parts of the world in order to gain an insight about the leadership styles and policies that have been adopted by these leaders. I specifically read about Jack Welch, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and Sundar Pichai. These are renowned leaders who have established and led giant teams and built mammoth organizations out of sheer hard work, passion, dedication and an increased risk appetite.
Leadership in organization plays an important role because it ensures that all the members of the team are guided in the same direction and work towards achieving common goals (Schneider & George, 2011). A leader is bestowed upon with various responsibilities in an organization. These include guiding employees, inspiring employees, managing their performance, addressing their issues and creating a positive work culture within the organization.
One interesting style of leadership that I read about in this course is transformational leadership. A transformational leader is the one who becomes a part of the team, envisions a change and ensures that the change is conducted in the most effective manner. A transformational leader is the one who challenges the status quo and makes sure that the team grows and develops on a regular basis (Sarros et. al., 2011). Elon Musk is a perfect example of a transformational leader. The achievements and reach of Tesla is unparalleled and it has been possible under the sincere and dedicated guidance of Elon Musk. Elon musk is a visionary and he has made things possible which no one ever imagined before (Vance, 2015). But most importantly, achievements of Tesla are not single handed efforts, instead, it is the leadership of Elon Musk that has helped the organization reach the stature where it is today. There are many things that can be learnt by leadership style of Musk. His vision for the future, his confidence and his ability to think out of box solutions for everyday problems has led to the growth of Tesla that we witness today.
As a leader, I also believe that I could adopt a charismatic leadership approach. Leaders in different areas require different leadership abilities (Vlachos et. al., 2013). Many times, in order to lead a team of young and enthusiastic people, it is recommended that the leader has a significant charisma and charm in order attract and motivate the team. Charismatic leaders motivate their team and possess immense charisma and flamboyance (Wang et. al., 2011). We have been taught about charismatic leadership style in this course. Post which, I have worked hard at improving my overall personality traits including communication skills and body language in order to make sure that I leave a good first impression.
We were also taught the importance of communication in leadership. As a leader, it is important to build a strong connection and communicate freely with all the team members as well as ensure that the team members feel comfortable in communicating with the leader (Hackman & Johnson, 2013). This will create transparency in the team and encourage members to confidently address issues that they feel may exist in the team leading overall team productivity. A leader who cannot communicate effectively with the team cannot efficiently guide or motivate those (Men, 2014). Therefore, I realized that I must focus upon improving my communication skills in order to be a great leader. I possess excellent written communication skills but I somehow do not feel confident enough to communicate verbally. Therefore, this is the aspect of my skill that I am consistently working on.
I plan to start my own business in the future wherein I would have to lead a team of a large group of people. Henceforth, I need to ensure that I possess the competency, charisma as well as the transformational leadership skills that are required to motivate my team so that they can take the business forward. As a leader of a new business, it is also essential for me to make sure that my team is retained in the business. In order to achieve the same, I need to consider the needs of team members and make sure that their goals are aligned to those of the business.
As a business leader of a new business, there might be times where I would need to adopt a participative leadership styles and there would be times where I would need to adopt an authoritative leadership style. Participative or democratic leadership encourages team members to participate in the decision making process (Tourish, 2014). This is done in order to create a sense of ownership among team members. For this leadership style to be successful, it is important that the team members are competent, experiences and highly skilled. On the other hand, autocratic leadership is characterized by a single individual or leader taking control of the entire situation, making the decisions and ensuring they are achieved (Goleman, 2017). Autocratic leadership style gives less or no authority to the team members especially in terms of decision making (Giltinane, 2013). This form of leadership is required while leading a team of fresh and new team members who do not have any experience and are at the beginning of their learning curve. Therefore, to make sure that the team performs well in a new business set up, I need to identify the leadership style that would be best for different situations.
Throughout the course, we conducted various activities and questionnaires that helped us in understanding different facets of effective leadership. Activities also helped us understand how different leadership styles are more effective in different situations.
Overall the course has been highly effective in ensuring that we learn about different leadership theories. The course has specifically been highly fruitful for me as I plan to start my own business and hence it is very important that I have the required leadership skills in order to see the business through. The growth of my business will be highly dependent on how I conduct myself as a leader. Therefore, I believe it was truly helpful that I learnt so much about different leadership styles. Now it would be easier for me to guide my team in the most effective manner and using the most efficient strategy and style.
However, there are still a few things that I lack as a leader. Firstly, I rarely have an experience of leading a team. Therefore, it is difficult for me to identify various issues that may arise as a leader just yet. Secondly, I need to work upon my communication skills in order to make sure that I am able to instil a transparent and clear flow of communication in my team as well. In order to further improve my leadership skills, I have shortlisted 10 leaders from across the world and I would consistently put efforts in reading about them, following them on social networking websites and effectively try to gain a deeper insight about their leadership styles.
I would work towards ensuring that my team remains motivated and associated with the overall organizational goals. Moreover, I would also ensure that I am always reachable for my team members and hence they can reach out to me in case of any issues. The course was very helpful for me to understand the importance of leadership in an organization and also helped me understand different leadership styles that are required to be adapted during different situations. Now I would work harder towards improving my leadership traits. I would also ensure that I lead by example so that my team members can trust me and stay motivated through my behavior. The course has helped me understand various facets of effective leadership and hence has given me further impetus to work on my new business idea as an effective leader.
References
Bolden, R., 2011. Distributed leadership in organizations: A review of theory and research. International Journal of Management Reviews, 13(3), pp.251-269.
Bryman, A. ed., 2013. Leadership and organizations. Routledge. United Kingdom.
Carver, J., 2011. Boards that make a difference: A new design for leadership in nonprofit and public organizations (Vol. 6). John Wiley & Sons.
Day, D.V. ed., 2014. The Oxford handbook of leadership and organizations. Oxford Library of Psychology.
Giltinane, C.L., 2013. Leadership styles and theories. Nursing Standard (through 2013), 27(41), p.35.
Goleman, D., 2017. Leadership That Gets Results (Harvard Business Review Classics). Harvard Business Press.
Griffin, R.W. and Moorhead, G., 2011. Organizational behavior. Cengage Learning.
Hackman, M.Z. and Johnson, C.E., 2013. Leadership: A communication perspective. Waveland Press.
Men, L.R., 2014. Why leadership matters to internal communication: Linking transformational leadership, symmetrical communication, and employee outcomes. Journal of Public Relations Research, 26(3), pp.256-279.
Sarros, J.C., Cooper, B.K. and Santora, J.C., 2011. Leadership vision, organizational culture, and support for innovation in not-for-profit and for-profit organizations. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 32(3), pp.291-309.
Schneider, S.K. and George, W.M., 2011. Servant leadership versus transformational leadership in voluntary service organizations. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 32(1), pp.60-77.
Spisak, B.R., Nicholson, N. and van Vugt, M., 2011. Leadership in organizations: An evolutionary perspective. In Evolutionary psychology in the business sciences (pp. 165-190). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Tourish, D., 2014. Leadership, more or less? A processual, communication perspective on the role of agency in leadership theory. Leadership, 10(1), pp.79-98.
Vance, A., 2015. Elon Musk: How the billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is shaping our future. Random House.
Vlachos, P.A., Panagopoulos, N.G. and Rapp, A.A., 2013. Feeling good by doing good: Employee CSR-induced attributions, job satisfaction, and the role of charismatic leadership. Journal of business ethics, 118(3), pp.577-588.
Wang, G., Oh, I.S., Courtright, S.H. and Colbert, A.E., 2011. Transformational leadership and performance across criteria and levels: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of research. Group & Organization Management, 36(2), pp.223-270.
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