Leadership In Organizational Knowledge Creation

Challenges faced by leaders

Discuss about the Leadership in Organizational Knowledge Creation.

According to Von Krogh (2012) leaders are individuals selected to equip, control and influence one or more individuals who have diverse abilities and skills. Leaders are required to ensure followers focus on the team’s mission and objective causing the followers to enthusiastically, emotionally and physically concentrate on achieving the pertained mission and objective. Leaders tend to convey prophetic visions of the future which resonates the follower’s values and beliefs in a manners followers can understand and interpret the future action (DuBrin, 2015). Additionally, a leader’s achievement needs to be attained using ethical means as he or she seeks greater good to his followers.

The above discussion shows that leaders should work ethically so as to achieve the pertained mission and objective. Hence, this means that there are certain challenges that as a leader one tends to experience when trying to influence a group. Firstly, staying motivated tends to be a challenge. According to Walumbwa et al (2012) the greatest mistake any leader could make is hoping that someone else will motivate him or her. For any leader motivation must always be an inside job. In any group there can be formation of a positive environment and aid in motivation, but remaining motivates is something that as a leader could do for himself.

Secondly, maintaining focus for a group leader tends to be a challenge. This is because there exists a lot of demands on a leader’s attention and the existence of many leaders tends to allow other to determine theirs. Effective focus which arises and the step of choosing this tends to be the most crucial but maintaining focus tends to distract most people (Hogg et al, 2012).

Thirdly, leaders face the difficult of balancing the needs of the group and the team members wants. The challenging issue here it trying to satisfy the two parties which is a key factor in the attainment of group objectives.

Being respected and liked by group members tends to be vital for the success of a group, thus for most leaders getting to balance the two tends to be a milestone. For many leaders they tend to use the term “being respected” as an excuse of them not being liked. For most leaders in any group choosing one out of these two aspects tends to be difficult (Ubben et al, 2015). This is because being competent tends to gain you respect and being nice gets people to like you. Hence, the extra effort of choosing the best aspect is the challenge most leaders face.

Challenges faced by groups

Above, we have looked at some of the challenges leaders face in controlling groups. On the other hand, team members also tend to experience some difficulties during their stay in the group. First, there is the issue of coordination. Coordination is a representation of time and energy needed in group work so as to complete the assigned task (Herrmann & Herrmann-Nehdi, 2015). This issue tends to be difficult to tackle because arranging of schedules, meetings, making decisions collectively and integration of group members to contribute consumes more time and at times there could be no co-operation by team members.

Similar to leaders pertained to leading groups remaining motivated is also difficult for group members. Some of the factors that demotivate group members include free riding by some of the team members. Social loafing where members describe the tendency of a not applying more effort in their groups (Reeves & Ventura, 2012). The development of conflict in any group may also reduce the levels of morale in any group.

Intellectual cost also tends to be a challenge for most group members. For instance, the escalation in commitment in plans and strategies could lower the inefficiency of group members. Transparency illusion may also become a challenge because of the thought that attitudes and reasons tend to be the obvious reasons for their inefficiency (Komives & Wagner, 2016). Common information effect to a group tends to be a problem because members tend to share and ignore the unique information which could be helpful in the completion of a particular task.

The issue of conflict over opinions, strategies or positions greatly affects group members. This is because of the personal preference of a certain individual which affects the group in attainment of its set objectives and goals.

Leader’s recognition of diversity of the followers and achieving unity tends to be a common value. For this to happen any leader should have effective leadership traits. In this case, we will be looking at how important it is to have a leader with leadership traits. Firstly, consider the case of an honest leader (Northouse, 2012). Most people will choose to follow any honest leader this is because of his unique ability in handling of mistakes. Honesty in any leader is vital because it tends to refine new ideas that failed compared to ideas that dishonest leaders who will fail to refine such ideas because of fear of failure.

The significance of leadership traits

The trait of forward looking tends to be a vital trait for leaders. This is because as a leader you should be able to figure out where you are going from your actual standing point. Failing to have such a trait makes team member perceive that their leader is not forward looking and the leader is unwilling to share his vision with others. Leaders having such a trait tends to be vital because it shows that he or she is thinking and planning for the future plan used in task completion (Chiriac & Granström, 2012).

Competency trait in a leader is vital. For team member, they are always on the verge of following a competent leader. This doesn’t insinuate that leaders need to be experts from each areas, but the ability to portray some form of competency is vital. Additionally, as a leader you need to understand that demonstration of competency isn’t enough. Some people assume one is competent because of his leadership position, but demonstrating tends to be vital for other to accept that you are competent.

Inspiring others as a leaders is also a critical trait. For most group member getting inspired by their leaders tends to keep their morale high (Leroy et al, 2015). In fact, there is a class that people follow an individual because he tends to inspire them even if the leader possesses no quality.

Our previous discussion on leadership perceives it as a process that enables followers to be innovative towards the achievement of a certain goal. But, also we have viewed that leaders tend to face serious challenges during their influence. Hence, we will be providing brief explanation on how such issues could be tackled.

First, there was the issue of remaining motivated as a leaders. There exist many ways one could use so as to remain motivated. Knowing your purpose tends to be the first initiative this tends to develop a high sense of purpose leading to high motivation (Nahavandi, 2016).

Maintaining of focus is also a critical issue which most leaders face. To effectively tackle this problem there is need of knowing what’s significant and choosing it first. Distractions shouldn’t be ignored but tabling then in a better way could effectively tackle the situation since not all task are equal.

Balancing needs of the team members and organization is also hard for leaders. Therefore, leaders need to understand that balancing the two is vital (Ubben et al, 2015). Hence, there are instances where sacrifices will be needed and most people need to understand that. Thus, leaders need to understand that achieving results at the expense of your team may lead to resentment and high turnover. Therefore, balancing the two is the only best way.

The issue of being respected and liked is critical for leaders. Hence, the best way that they could deal with this is by being competent which makes people respect them (DuBrin, 2015). Being nice also get people to like them taking an extra effort on this two might be critical.

This paper has provided an in-depth discussion on the issue of leadership. This includes the challenges faced by leaders in a group, challenges faced by group members and the best ways leaders could tackle this situation.

References

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Chiriac, E. H., & Granström, K. (2012). Teachers’ leadership and students’ experience of group    work. Teachers and Teaching, 18(3), 345-363.

Von Krogh, G., Nonaka, I., & Rechsteiner, L. (2012). Leadership in organizational knowledge  creation: a review and framework. Journal of Management Studies, 49(1), 240-277.

Hogg, M. A., Van Knippenberg, D., & Rast, D. E. (2012). Intergroup leadership in organizations: Leading across group and organizational boundaries. Academy of      Management Review, 37(2), 232-255.

Reeves, D. B., & Ventura, S. (2012). i Leadership. AGENDA.

DuBrin, A. J. (2015). Leadership: Research findings, practice, and skills. Nelson Education.

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Herrmann, N., & Herrmann-Nehdi, A. (2015). The Whole Brain Business Book: Unlocking the Power of Whole Brain Thinking in Organizations, Teams, and Individuals. McGraw Hill      Professional.

Ubben, G. C., Hughes, L. W., & Norris, C. J. (2015). The principal: Creative leadership for excellence in schools. Pearson.

Nahavandi, A. (2016). The Art and Science of Leadership -Global Edition. Pearson.

Komives, S. R., & Wagner, W. (Eds.). (2016). Leadership for a better world: Understanding the   social change model of leadership development. John Wiley & Sons.