Leadership is capability of the management to achieve and set challenging goals, make sound decisions and motivate others to perform well in an efficient and effective way. It provides direction for an organization or company. Every employee in a company needs direction to follow and reach the destination. Person with good leadership skills often rise to higher positions like chairman, Chief operating officer, Chief executive officer, Chief financial officer and president in a business world (Sarros & Cooper, 2008). It directs the personnel or employee of the company to achieve common objectives and goals. They show employees hoe to work productively and perform their roles and responsibilities effectively and managing and controlling their work regularly. It also sets a positive example for the employees to follow, by helping them when thy need help, by being motivated to work and learn new things, being punctual and excited about the work (Anon., 2016).
Effective leadership involves strong characteristics and clear communication skills. Leaders generally exhibit integrity, ethics, honesty and trustworthiness. A good leader always listens to and speak to his employees and respond to their concerns and questions and have an ability to share and understand others feelings. To move company forward and to achieve new goals they use effective communication skills which is a characteristic of strong leadership. Similarly, true leadership always plans and sees where the organization is headed. they visualize about the possibilities, taking risks to grow the company and follows trends in the industry. Productive leadership provides positive energy and always shows optimism for staff (Doyle, 2018).
The responsibility of leadership in current situation is very complex so they have to be highly flexible while following leadership style and should be open to adapt change according to the changing condition. Ethics, values, character, and beliefs are the basic support of leadership on which it stands. These pillars show the true its true essence. Leaders recognize the significance of the ethics in their business conduct, they understand what they value and develop value system of the leadership style they follow (Anatasia, 2017). They should always show high level of belief, character, ethics and values in their leadership style to lead the company effectively by motivating and influencing employees in the organization.
Leaders help to shape communities, nation and organization, so it is important to have leaders with good characters who will guide employees or workers and make crucial decision for the development. There are several characteristics of a good leader that include, communication skills, confidence, positive attitude, creativity, intuition, honesty, sense of humor etc. character is a very important factor in decision making process (Crossan, et al., 2012). A good leader should have good characters. Commitment, competencies count and character matters to the role of leader is very important to the success of leader. There is no exact definition to define character of leadership. Characters in the leaders can be described on the basis of values, virtues and personal traits.
Traits:
It can be described as a habitual pattern of emotion, thoughts and behavior which are known to be moderately stable in person over time and across circumstances. There are too many traits to describe personality. The five traits are: openness to experiences, conscientiousness, extroversion, neuroticism and agreeableness.
There are some other important traits like ambition, dominance, persistence, impulsivity, self-confidence, perfectionism and rigidity. some of the traits can be genetic or acquired from the environment people live in.
Values:
Values are beliefs or principle that person has about the things that are important to them. It influences behavior as people desire things that they value most. It is a guidepost for individual’s behaviors. Social environment where person live and grow, plays important role in a person’s values. For example: in western culture people mostly value liberty, pursuit of happiness and life. People who have been brought u in a strong religious value religion the most. Ethics or social dimensions like integrity, fairness, compassion, honesty etc. is subset of values. These moral values weakly or strongly influence the behavior of person (A.Wright, 2011).
Virtues:
There are 10 virtues of cross- enterprise leaders which are as follows:
There are basic factors that helps leader to develop strong character which are moral courage and self-discipline; core value; sense of true identity and integrity.
Moral courage and sense of integrity is an act of performing everything right despite of the significances. Moral courage is the capability of a leader to face challenges, danger, risks and fears. Core values helps leaders to resonate with. It can be compassion, harmony, respect, caring etc. Similarly sense of integrity is the real understanding of a person about themselves and to value their own belief. Integrity is a practice of arranging one’s thoughts, feelings and actions with values.
Ethics:
Leadership is a capacity to develop a relationship among people, that is the capability of people to influence other ethically (Miheli?, et al., 2010). It is one of the most important factors for effective leadership. Ethics has a major role in defining and shaping the character of a leader. It is not always about doing right thing all the time but it is a characteristic of an individual to take decision and perform in accordance to the situation.
1.Universalism
It is the external expression of a character of leadership which is displayed through the
actions fairness, compassion, humility, spiritual respect, respectfulness for others and cooperativeness. Respectfulness is a subgroup of universalism which describes the significance of leaders involving and respecting the needs of his workers and giving it a high priority by providing a favorable environment for them to work which directly enhances the productivity.
For example:
The former MD (managing director) Juliana Chugg of General Mills demonstrated respect for her employees by changing time of her employees required to spend at office by shutting the door at 1 pm on Fridays. Though this decision was against the board’s advice, it was implemented at office which made workers of factory happy and enjoy their weekends longer.
This decision of her resulted in no salary reduction or any job loss, increased productivity etc.
Fairness means providing equal treatment to everyone without discriminating irrespective of benefits or challenges available in the company or externally.
For example: Max De Pree the former CEO and co-founder of company called Herman Miller showed the significance of implementing fairness in organization. Implementing fairness to his workers and prioritizing their interest was one of the reason for the success of his company. Similarly, other factors like humility, compassion, spiritual respect are the important factors in universalism.
Transformation
It is the way leaders gain benevolent and universal outcomes. leaders have characters like passion, competency, wisdom, courage, self-discipline in their leadership qualities.
Example in context to passion: The CEO John McFarlane of the ANZ bank, believes that choosing to make changes or difference must reflect passion in the particular area (Cavazotte & Moreno, 2013). Passion of leader can make a huge difference and inspires and provides motivation for the company.
Another example is can be taken in the context of competence: Founder and CEO of FedEx, Fred Smith believes in the compassion. According to him education and continuous learning and
finally having discipline to implement to the operation is a quality of leader. He suggests to make an effort and time to learn about the history.
Benevolene
It is an internal factor of leadership character. It is associated with selflessness,
loyalty, honesty, and integrity of the organization. Leaders are supposed to be selfless and should see the interests and desires of their workers above their wish it can be explained by taking an example of Founder of Raindrop Geomagic Ping Fu. Fu is the leader who display the character of selflessness (Anon., 2013). Fu became the CEO of the company when it’s viability was threatened. Company had shortage of money and venture capital was also in vulnerable condition. But her constant effort and strategy of various cost cutting initiatives by laying most of her workers. She even did not accept pay check from the company until the crisis situation. with the act of selfless and constant effort she took company out of such crisis. Integrity is practice here person aligns his or thoughts or emotions with their values or principle. Roger Corbett a managing director and CEO of the company called Woolworths is a leader with integrity.
Honesty is also important factor of leadership. People respect and value leader who are honest and who they can trust. Best example for this is the CEO of Netball Lindsay Cane. Her integrity and views on honesty plays important role in developing leadership character.
There are several theories on leadership styles that exists in the organization or company. the leadership styles are selected according to the goals and culture of the organization. Some organization have more than one leadership styles that they implement according to the specific project or task (Amanchukwu, et al., 2015).
It is the first theory to describe why some leaders have good qualities and why others are considered as bad leaders (Anon., 2016). It is constructed on the basis of both successful and unsuccessful leaders which is used to determine effectiveness of leader. So, the resulting characters are compared to the possible leaders to determine whether they will be a successful leader or unsuccessful one. There are several common traits of leaders are: initiative energy, flexibility, charisma, confidence, emotional intelligence, initiative etc.
Theories of leaderships styles characterized on the basis of behavior are discussed below:
It is also known as authoritarian style. It is a boss centered leadership style where only boss or manager is allowed to make decision without involving others. In this leadership styles boss or manager holds all the responsibility and authority (Bhatti & Maitlo, 2012). They make decisions themselves without consulting to any employees. They make decisions and subordinates has to follow them. This leadership styles have no flexibility or is very less flexible.
Leaders who supports such leadership style are Donald Trump in Trump Organization and Albert J Dunlap of Sunbeam Corporation.
It is also called as democratic leadership style. Employees or subordinates in this leadership styles are involved in the decision-making process as it is a subordinate centered leadership style. It gives importance to the input of peers and team members though the final decision is in the hand of the participative leader. It motivates employees and team members as they are the part of the decision-making process. It is one of the most favored leadership as it entails creativity, competence, fairness, courage, honesty and intelligence. As they involve subordinates in decision making process, employees accept the change easily (Bell, et al., 2014).
This leadership styles gives authority to workers or employees. They allow employees to work according to their will with no or interference. This is the least effective and least satisfying management style. These leaders do not directly control workers and fails to deliver updates to those who are under his control. Trained employees and highly experienced employees with low requirement of supervision only fall in this leadership style. But this is not appropriate for every employees because most of them require supervision. This does not implement any supervision or leadership efforts from managers, which leads to poor production increasing costs and lacks control (Yang, 2015).
It is based on the philosophy that leadership style is flexible and leaders should have capability to adapt according to the changing conditions in order to ensure success of their organization. This style suggests that which leadership style is the most appropriate one for the particular circumstances and according to this, leader implement the most relevant and appropriate style for the situation. these leaders are highly flexible and adaptive (Anon., 2017)
It follows the concept of punishment and reward. These leaders trust that that the performance of employees depends on these factors. When employees are motivated, they put their full effort and they are rewarded with bonus i.e. mostly in monetary terms. But when they fail to accomplish the goal or target they are punished by giving negative appraisal. These leaders pay attention to security and physical requirements of the workers. This leadership is not much efficient to build relationship with the subordinates or employees. It is generally characterized by factors like passionate towards work, being practical and having strong value for work (Ingram, 2018).
Perception of the employees are affected by this leadership styles. These leaders encourage others to perform more than they usually intend to do. they gain higher benefits from their employees by developing interpersonal communication among workers, providing knowledge management processes and developing healthy culture in the organization (Anon., n.d.). It creates participative culture or environment to flourish innovation of organization. It supports a culture where their workers have freedom to share knowledge and talk about their experiences. These leaders are more very innovative and have more satisfied and committed follower because it empowers followers.
Jack Welch
Jack Welch was a CEO who exhibited as a leader from 1981 to 2001 of General Electric Corporation followed transformational and participative style of leadership. He played an important role in 600 acquisitions in developing markets and he increased the market value of General Electric from 12 billion dollars to 505 billion dollars. As the market keeps changing constantly, he suggested everyone in the company to adapt or embrace change. In order to develop company productivity and operations, employees and managers had to reinvent their work and themselves continuously. Welch hired managers who were high in energy, encouraged and motivated his employees and shared same vision of GE. He sorted managers who developed, refined and created ideas for the future and implement them in the reality. He also suggested his managers to work side by side with the workers or subordinators in order to understand the way employees work and why they do what they do (Anon., 2015). His leadership was very effective where his employees and manages were highly motivated, gained more productivity with higher quality, profits increased and highly satisfied customers.
Bill Gates:
He retired in 2008 from Microsoft. He was considered as a demanding but sometime acted as abrasive boss. Still he motivated and encouraged innovation, creativity from workers. He used to interrupt his employees frequently in developmental meetings. he relied on authoritarian leadership style (Chris, 2017). He used to take control and let everyone know about it. Like many other successful leaders, he also used to blend few other leadership styles as he knew that authoritarian style does not favor innovation. But it is very effective style in rapidly changing circumstances where decisions should be taken immediately. So, most of the success of Microsoft can be credited to his quick decision-making process.
Critical management is the initial stage of the leadership which states that current day leadership styles is susceptible to excess problems and changes, that affects the capability to make decision in critical conditions. It is evolved by the classical Greek, modern and Medieval social scientific thoughts that are the main features of the leadership before and currently also. Though in the present day, it has been altered to modernism leadership in which the leaders use current values and character traits, to develop success in the company (Anon., n.d.).
Modernism in the leadership style as developed in 19th and 20th century. It is a philosophical movement which along with changes, cultural trends, arose from far reaching and wide scale transformation during that time. These leaders are categorized by modern characters, values, sympathies, traits and follow what is significant. Sometimes they tend to manage ethical considerations in this leadership so that it is better for the society. For example, of this: Steve jobs ex- CEO of Apple Inc was one of the great examples of modern leader. He acquired the potentials of the contemporary leader and made his company one of the most successful company in the world. For modern leader it is important to concentrate on sustained innovation as well, as nowadays innovations are rising day by day (Shannon, 2016). Thus, the role of these leaders is very demanding and challenging in the context of current situation.
Conclusion:
It is apparent that, the leadership style over the period of time has changed and has adopted the traits of modern day society. In this competitive world, the leaders have to be flexible, fast decision maker and adaptive according to the changing needs of the world. The true character of a leader appears at the time of crisis and how he bails out his people and organisation out of that situation. The leaders can come out of those situations only by the virtue of its standard ethical, moral, code of conduct and by demonstrating strong character. The beliefs and values in a leader varies with the type of leadership style. The transformational leaders tend to have a character which is considered to the reflection of his own vision, trust and respect towards the workers and stands tall on the pillar of sustained innovation. The leaders of Plethora have shown such character which has tremendously helped his organisation towards sustained growth. Thus, it is evident that strong social and moral values, beliefs, character, confidence are the traits of a successful leader and is prerequisite of effectiveness and efficiency of leadership ability.
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