Evaluation Of Leadership For The Role Of Strategic Leadership

Discussion

Describe about the Leadership for The Role of Strategic Leadership.

This report introduces the evaluation of leadership of a leader belonging to the 21^st century. The example used for the evaluation is of a family member of the author who runs a small business on import and export of electronic apparatus with ten employees. The report gives a clear and concise description of the business owner as a leader along with his organisation. It also gives the description of the industry where the business owner’s organisation actually belongs and the situation or context on which the business is based. The report also makes the evaluation of the leadership on the basis of leadership theories and concepts. A further discussion has been made in the subsequent sections stating that if the author was in the position of the business owner, how differently he would have acted to make a stronger impact on his followers and the situation. Some recommendations have been added to make the overall situation better.

Description of the leader and his organisation along with the industry

In the given report, Mr. Thomas Lee, is the business owner of the Singapore based small import and export company, Lee & Co. He is a family member of the author. His company deals with import and export of various electronic apparatus such as musical instruments, editing set up and studio appliances (Aziz et al. 2013). Mr. Lee is running the business for last ten years. Currently he is having ten staffs including the accountant, the business development officer, the purchase officer, HR executive, system administrator, store manager, three shop sales person and one delivery boy.

Mr. Lee has started this sole proprietorship in the year 2006 with two staffs and after 10 years he has expanded the business with ten employees (Agyapong and Boamah 2013). Unless, an effective and efficient level of leadership was there by Mr. Lee, it was impossible for him to carry on a business in a progressive way for a decade. Initially, there was no such shop of Mr Lee in Singapore and he collected orders for studio appliances directly from his clients in the city (Hwang 2013). He used to visit in the countries of Japan, China and South Korea with his two staffs to purchase the products ordered and sold them to his clients in a good profit margin.

Later, he communicated to his clients and vendors through internet and phone and led his staffs to buy and sell the electronic equipments in behalf of him. More profit margins led to motivation of expanding the business through increasing the number of clients, vendors and staffs (Rothaermel 2015). Therefore, through an efficient leadership on the staffs and business, Mr. Lee was able to come to a position where he could establish a shop in Singapore where inventory of the imported electronic instruments can be maintained. He was there in the position to deliver the products to the clients within the required time frame as he had ample products in hand in his shop.

Evaluation of the leader on the basis of leadership theories and concepts

Being a leader, Mr. Lee guided his team to administrate the business integrally starting from the import and export operations to the order and delivery management in the shop (Landis, Hill and Harvey 2014). Such a good leadership created a good brand image of the company resulting to generation of new clients in other nations.

The organisation that Mr. Lee owns was established in the year 2006, in the name of Lee and Co. with two staffs. Those two staffs worked with Mr. Lee to collect the orders of the electronic equipments from the clients in Singapore and purchased those equipments from the wholesalers at South Korea, Japan and China (Lee 2013). As the business grew further through increase in profit margin and number of clients in the city as well as abroad, Mr. Lee felt the need to hire more staffs and establish a shop to maintain inventory of the items. He opened the shop in the year 2009 and hired more staffs to make good administration of the business. Since 2011, there were all over ten staffs working in the organisation, who have the aim to make an effective coordination with the clients and vendors to enhance the business performance.

The industry in which the organisation works are the studios and music workstations located in Singapore and other nations (Howell 2013). Those studios actually make programs for the entertainment for their audience. Due to such reason, demand of editing set ups, musical instruments always exist for those clients. As there are been diversified programs made keeping in mind of the taste and preferences of the audiences in various countries, a constant requirement of the innovative electronic equipments always prevailed in the industry (Das 2015). Such demand eventually helped to prosper a business like Lee and Co. which deals with import and export of such products.

The overall situation has actually become favourable for expansion of the business. At the current stage, there is a constant requirement from the clients, both in the city and other nations for the purpose of developmental work in their studios (Miner 2015). Due to such reasons, the company has to make a better management of its order collection, purchase, inventory and delivery. Mr. Lee has provided effective guidance to his team members so that the whole process can be streamlined resulting to optimum level of output. 

There are several theories and concepts which provides the explanation of leadership. It includes the naturalistic theories, functional leadership theories, situational leadership theories, autocratic and participative leadership theories, transactional and transformational leadership and the theories of moral leadership (McCleskey 2014). The naturalistic theory consists of the trait theories which states that leaders are born and not made. The trait theory explains that certain extraordinary personality traits make the identification of those people who have the potential to be great leaders. The functional theories are been prepared on the basis of various assumptions (Frost 2016). Those theories are based on the leaders’ actions, which is termed as action based leadership.

The functional theories does not support for dealing with changes. Adaptation and changes are best handled by the situational leadership. Such a good model to handle the varied situations is the Hersey Blanchard model of leadership (Chhokar, Brodbeck and House 2013). The model actually is concerned with the identification of the willingness and ability to deal with the varying situations and determination of the best leadership style.

The autocratic leadership has the tendency for making decisions and imposing it to others. Such leaders has the belief that they are been placed for making the decisions and their followers are there for accepting their leadership (Singh 2015). In participative leadership, leaders make consultation with their followers or involve them to make decisions. Such decisions are been made through demonstration of consideration and showing respect to other people. The participative leadership actually makes the development of the other people and prepares the support in all the directions.

The transactional theory of leadership is been developed on the exchanges between the leader and his follower (Sadeghi et al. 2013). It provides the assumption that the relationship regarding work is the one factor where the leader makes the issuance of the work, makes criticism, gives punishment and give rewards to his followers. In such model, the followers have a very low responsibility other than performing about what they are needed. The theory is applied for the case of jobs which require a very low skill (Youssef and Luthans 2012). The procedures in such segments have a clear definition and a nominal change is required.

In transformational leadership, change is the ultimate bottom line. The leaders in such model provide inspiration to their subordinates for following a vision. They generally make the opportunities for the people for showing the flair and taking responsibilities for latest ideas (Clarke 2013). In such cases, the leaders become very much charismatic and extrovert. The transformational leaders always have the vision of the bigger picture. The transformational leadership is in generally much more applicable in case of situations which are frequently changing.

In moral leadership, people tend to make approaches to create the world a better place to stay through a proper care for the environment and being true in their vision. In the case of Lee and Co., Mr. Lee has always made a practice of participative leadership. From the initial stage to the present, he always made verbal consultations with his staffs regarding decision making (Du et al. 2013). He took opinions from his staffs regarding choosing the wholesaler shops in the East Asian countries from where they purchased the order items. The staffs provided suggestions to him for purchasing the electronic equipments from those shops where maximum amount of discounts were provided. Mr. Lee also made decisions regarding payment mode from the clients on the basis of consultation with his staffs (Aydin, Sarier and Uysal 2013). Moreover, further hiring of staffs, establishment of shop, segmentation of departments, generation of more clients in the other nations, implementation of online portal for making transactions, every incidents took place on the basis of good amount of involvement by the staffs.

The main theme that lies behind all such incidents are that the main thought process always take place in the mind of Mr. Lee (Wang et al. 2013). But at certain cases, he did not become very much sure about the outcomes of a decision. Due to such reasons, he always given authority to his employees to participate in active manner for verbal consultations and provide suggestions for solving an issue.

Therefore, the style of leadership of Mr. Lee was very mild to his followers. His behaviour was always very friendly to them so that they can have the zeal and motivation to suggest the best solution for him (Hamidifar 2015). The personality trait of Mr. Lee permitted to provide space for his employees regarding elaborating their opinions. The attitude of participative leadership style always gave the authority to the followers, therefore the employees to make the actions done on the basis of their justifications. In such leadership style, power has been given to the followers to some extent for supporting their leader through active participation and involvement for making decisions starting from the initial stage to the present.

If the opportunity was given to the author to lead the situation as a leader, he would have acted as the transformational leader (Wang et al. 2013). As the business of Lee & Co. is of electronic equipments, therefore the demand of the equipments are constantly changing. Therefore to stay competitive in the market, the company has to be innovative in their business strategies. Such strategies may not be possible to implement by the leader through his own thought process. Therefore, the leader will give responsibilities to his employees to make strategic moves based on their own thought process (Aydin, Sarier and Uysal 2013). Therefore, development of strategies can be built for the improvement of the performance of each department of the company by their respective personnel who have the ample expertise in their domain.

Such leadership will definitely motivate the followers as they will have a sense of feeling that they have the sole authority to utilise their thought process to improve their work resulting to enhanced performance (Du et al. 2013). The accounts professional will innovate new procedure to prepare balance sheets and profit and loss statement, the business development officer will make new online marketing strategies to attract new clients, the store manager will make newer strategies through promoting new offers for effectively satisfying the customers coming to the shop, the counter sales people will make strategies to greet their customers in a better speech so that it can create a good impact in their mind resulting to repeated footfalls.

The delivery people will make strategies for shortest path calculation so that a timely delivery of the ordered items and collection of cash can be done in a far better way (Clarke 2013). Therefore, starting from the ground level execution to the upper level management, each and every professional will be given the authority to create the strategy in their own. It will definitely have a stronger impact on the followers as it will create the flexibility in them to create plans and execute them to make the situation better. Such a huge authority will make the followers to stay committed to their organisation in a long run.

The transformational leadership will make the overall situation to be very much improved as each and every person associated with the organisation make the strategies to enhance the overall quality level of the business performance (Youssef and Luthans 2012). Integration of all those strategies actually formulates the ultimate set up which leads to prosperity. Therefore, it actually builds an enormous potential for the company to flourish to the fullest extent in the competitive market. An effective integration will take place between the departments resulting to a huge satisfaction among the employees.

Conclusion

In the above discussion, it has been stated that, Thomas Lee, being the owner of Lee & Co. has adopted participative style of leadership from the starting of his business of importing and exporting electronic apparatus. He had started the business ten years back with two employees and currently running it through a shop with an online portal for purchase. He has achieved a good progress in his business in terms of revenue earned. The company has expanded its business to other countries where it is exporting its products. Mr. Lee has given space to his employees for providing suggestions to make decisions regarding business progress. But in certain scenario, the employees can have lack of knowledge in the domain they work. Therefore, there may be gaps in making the plans for refinement of the business process which can create obstructions in the progress. From the above discussions, it can be concluded that if the leader follows the recommended steps given below then the company can reach the optimum point of success with an enhanced brand image in the near future.

The recommended options for the business owner Mr. Lee is as follows,

Hiring external experts for verbal consultations – The business owner should hire external professional who have ample experience and expertise in the domain of the business of electronic apparatus. Such professionals can help Mr. Lee to fix the loopholes in the business strategies so that the overall performance can be improved to the optimum level.

Reduction of cultural barriers among the employees – The business owner should make frequent parties with their employees to encourage respect among them so that the cultural barriers become reduced among them resulting to development of a friendly relationship resulting to better work.

Increasing business network through social networking site – The business owner should concentrate to develop a profile of their organisation in the social networking site such as Facebook to increase the business network with their vendors and clients. He should participate in making online promotions to create awareness among the target audience so that they become more eager to buy the products available.

Effective utilisation of the revenue generated – The business owner should perform a detailed market research to know the recent trends through effective investment of the revenue earned so that they can deal with the products which are in demand and can reject those products which have become obsolete.

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