Leadership For Spiral Dynamics

The case of Gerald GichuruWanderi

Describe about the Leadership for Spiral Dynamics.

Leadership is the act or action of leading a group or groups of people in an organization towards a particular goal. A leader is someone who assumes the position to lead the people to the required objectives. Leadership is most effective when there are people to drive, in this case, a team of people who will be geared into the same direction, staff (people who are willing to work with the organization towards achieving its objectives and are responsible to the people assigned to them(Beck and Cowan, 2014).

Staff should be ready to work without being followed up thus showing commitment to their responsibilities and should be proactive. However being a leader is not the same as being an effective leader. An effective leader is one who leads by example, and other people tend to follow because they believe that they are doing the right thing. All leaders should strive towards being effective leaders and not just leaders(Best, 2014).

Mr. Gerald GichuruWanderi is a business entrepreneur with a chain of stores in the grocery and agriculture industries in Kenya. He is an entrepreneur who has conquered the agriculture industry providing solutions to agricultural products such as cabbages, tomatoes, carrots, watermelons, onions, paw paws, French beans, eggplant, and broccoli among other horticultural products(By, Hughes and Ford, 2016).  With his products, he has been able to use agencies to export them to other countries thus providing solutions to many. Through his Wanderi farm produce company he has been conquering the vast industry.  His unique characteristics which are his open-mindedness, his risk taking and tolerance attitudes, his persuasiveness, his versatility to provide support to his staff, his decisiveness among other features have enabled him to thrive in the business(Chhokar et al. 2013).

Mr. Wanderi is a model of success to many as he started out as a hawker hawking sweets, biscuits, juice(s) such as afia, soda, water among other products in Karatina, Nyeri County Kenya.  With his small savings, he, later on, moved out to Nairobi to seek for greener pastures. He started a small grocery shop. With help from his wife and two children, they managed to run the business for a whole year after which he expanded the business to contain butchery, grocery store, and a small hotel. Due to its business being a proprietor type of business he was able to employ the services of his family(Curlee and Gordon, 2013). He was later on forced to hire three people to help out with the work. Mr. Wanderi was very enthusiastic and was highly motivated. He moved on to join SACCOS and other tertiary financial institutions where he secured loans to continue his developments. With his loans, he went on to purchase a piece of land in his rural area Karatina where he began farming projects as his family continued with their Nairobi business. He began producing products such as watermelons and onions which he used to sell to the market(Day, 2014). He later on went on to lease out pieces of land to continue with his farming. With many pieces of land, he had to increase his manpower thus his staff increased. He motivated his employees to work hard explaining to them his rise to the success level he was in and that it is possible to go to extreme success levels(Dinh et al. 2014). With his farming skills, he employed techniques such as grafting, constructed greenhouses, used drip irrigation and created his water sources such as boreholes for farming instead of relying on rainwater and other sources of water that are unreliable and not readily available(Fairhurst and Connaughton,  2014). He went on to seek the expertise of agricultural officers and after his produce sale, he employed his agricultural officers who were readily available to inspect the progress of the crops. With time, he increased his agricultural product range to not only watermelons and onions but also cabbages, tomatoes, carrots, paw paws, French beans, eggplant, and broccoli. The favorable conditions for farming in the area enabled Mr. Wanderi to increase his range of products.

In due time, he managed to know people who export their green produce and formed alliances with them. He developed a packing franchise in his main offices to pack his produce and later ship it. He managed to increase his staff number from initially three to five hundred including the farmers, drivers and their touts, agricultural officers among other relevant staff. He closed down his wife’s proprietor and opened up a supermarket for her increasing the team number whowere all well remunerated accordingly. The couple used to encourage everyone from their humble beginnings to their current state.

With entrepreneurship being the only ship that the family could sail in, they managed to grab all opportunities that were coming their way. They seized them and all challenges that they were coming across they used them as stepping stones and faced them in full regalia.

His success enabled him to create a company dealing in horticultural products and horticultural problems educating the innocent young farmers who would want to join the industry on how to start and grow in the business. Hawkers who heard and learned of his success story were well motivated not to look down on their jobs and respected the Kenyan phrase “kazinikazi”.

An evaluation of the leader by referring to concepts & theories

Great Man Theory. This theory was existent in the 19^th Century and argued that only a man could lead. It further on goes to state that great leaders are born and are not made. It, later on, explains that given tough and tight situations, great leaders will rise due to the harsh conditions.

Trait Theory. This theory, unlike the great man theory, goes on to argue out that people are born with the features that enable them to lead others either born or are made with certain qualities that will make them excel in their leadership roles. The qualities may be intelligence, a good sense of direction and responsibility, creativity and other virtues that a good leader should possess. The trait theory focused on analyzing mental, physical and social characteristics to gain more knowledge of what is the attributes or the combination of features that are common among leaders. This theory, however, has many shortfalls.

Behavioral Theory. This theory is of the opinion that there are two types or categories of leaders who are those concerned with the people and those involved with the tasks. It further on goes to state that leaders are made and not born.

Contingency Theory. This theory argues that there is no central way of leadership and that leadership is as a result of certain situations and further on goes to state that certain people perform at their maximum level in some locations but minimal performance level when taken out of the situation(Goethals et al. 2014).

Transactional Leadership Theories/exchange theories of leadership. This theory is characterized by a transaction made or carried out between the leader and followers. The relationship between the two is positive and mutual. For the leadership to be successful, the leader must find a way to remunerate his follower

Transformational Leadership Theories. States that through individual interaction with other people, he or she can create a relationship that later on results in trust.

It is argued that the leadership theories are categorized by the aspect to which defines the leader the most.

A leader can be evaluated by:

Is or her delegation of authority along with the responsibility to hisher people. In our instance, Mr. Wanderi was delegating responsibility by expertise. If one has special skills or talent on handling a certain task such as management, Mr. Wanderi was allocating managerial tasks to them such as administration of the farm, etc(Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee, 2013).

If the leader were to walk away from the organization, how would the team’s effectiveness and resultsbe impacted? A practical example is Steve Jobs who was an American information technology entrepreneur who was the co-founder, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and majority shareholder of Pixar Animation Studios and was forced out of Apple in 1985 following a long power struggle. The story illustrated shows how his absence affected the overall organization’s results. If the leaders were true to his leadership and entrepreneurial responsibilities walking away from a better course would change him. For Steve, he walking out of a company that he had started and seen it rise from ashes to a multi-million dollar project was devastating for him. It made him feel like he had let his generation of entrepreneurs down having dropped the baton on them as it was passed to him but this walking away later turned out to be a game changer in his career. He came up with NeXT and PIXAR Animation Studios(Hirst et al. 2015).

His or her ability to foster the effectiveness of others. In the example of Steve, according to William Simon, co-author of iCon; illustrates that Steve Jobs was so great since he demanded so much out of an individual that made them achieve the targets put before them. He believed that being polite and gentle never produced the results that he required.

His or her approach to coaching or mentoring others. For Mr. Wanderi he has a positive mindset on mentoring and mentorship and that anyone can make it provided, they put the correct mindset and have the drive to chase their dreams(Hoyt, Price and Poatsy, 2013).

If in the start of a project, the leader gives a clear picture of the desired outcome or he or she is likely to change the picture along the way. Effective leadership requires that the leader has clarity on what he or she wants for his or her organizations regarding starting new or continuing old projects.

His or her general expectations of others. For Mr. Wanderi he expects the best and is very demanding on other people. He expects people to be proactive and does not encourage supervision of individuals, but he is of the opinion “if you are doing something give it your all which is a hundred percent.”

Leaders track records of success and achieving great results measured by the organization and group performance. Using the example of Steve, with Steve Wozniak, they sold Apple II which was a successful mass-produced personal computer thus success to them. Steve’s success in computer revolution enabled him to become an icon at a very tender age(Landis, Hill and Harvey, 2014).

The general view of the leader. i.e. on a scale of one to ten how would you rate the manager regarding his or her products etc. are his products customer oriented does products solve vast problems that are existent in the world. For a leader to have a ten out of ten, this would mean that his products can address the current challenges that are existent in the world(Lozano et al. 2013).

Values and qualities that the leader holds high with the people he or she hires in his or her organization. Some of the values can be innovativeness, thinking different, etc. these two values are two among the values that Steve Jobs held high. In our case, Mr. Wanderi encourages innovativeness of his staff. H trains his staff on his requirements among other things.

Finally, a leader can be evaluated by the values that are close or relevant to his or her professional life.

In a similar situation, this is a discussion of how you would do it differently.

Being in the shoes and position of Mr. Wanderi, having staff under my control and people that I have given the authority to inspect the farms for me and ensure everything is running smoothly, this includes when I am there or not. I would lead my organization in a different way by first enhancing corporate social responsibility such as donating books, writing materials, cleaning the environment being the chieftain showing the people how to do it e.g. slashing the grass, visiting the old and sick in the hospital. In a case of job vacancies, I would encourage the people that I have put in charge of employment to sought out after the local communities around the area, etc.

Again being the leader, I would encourage innovativeness of the staff i.e. for every staff that comes up with an innovative idea towards the company that is practicable there is a reward or each and every one of them. I would also build the infrastructure around that area i.e. roads, light along the highways and streets, construct stage shades that have seats where people are waiting for “matatus” will seat instead of having to stand. I would also employ the services of other competing businesses’ staff that have moved out from previous heir companies to seek out after greener pastures. With their skills and past experiences with our competitors, it will be possible to learn from our competitor’s techniques. Thus we will be able to devise a method of competing with them having known a little about them from an inside source(Shapira, 2014).

Conclusion

Despite all this, I would still go ahead to create seminars by networking with other large-scale exports and companies offshore to educate people on smart farming. By doing this, it will enable them to learn ideas that will help them in their farming. I would again go on to talk about banks and other tertiary financial institutions to create platforms for educating the young farmers on how to get funding. For Kenya, with the new bill that was signed recently by the president of banking i.e. the new law regarding bank loan interest rates I would encourage the locals to take loans to boost their produce. Again, I would merge with others and create marketing platforms for the farmers who lack platforms to market and sell their agricultural products.  With help from the government i.e. The Ministry of Agriculture Livestock and Fisheries, I would form alliances with other countries to conduct free soil sampling for the farmers to enable them to get knowledge on the different soil types that they have and the various horticultural products that can do well with their soil samples(Ulrich, Zenger and Smallwood, 2013). These problems can be collectively solved by the partnering countries university students who study for agriculture and agriculture-related courses thus giving the students exposure thus also promoting the education system in the respective countries. With this in mind, quality education will be provided to the students and quality crops will be cultivated(Waddock, 2015).

Given being the leader, I would create public awareness on these horticultural products by producing brochures which will be circulated by the Ministry of Agriculture Livestock and Fisheries and other institutions that deal with agricultural produce.To those who know about the products and don’t know about their health benefits through the mass media such as television stations and radio stations(Wu, 2013). I would encourage shows to be conducted concerning their health benefits and a healthy living thus a healthy nation which will enable a country’s citizens to be strong for them to carry out their respective tasks(Zaccaro, 2014).

Finally, as the Chief Executive Officer of my organization, I would conduct sponsorship programs for needy and bright students who lack the resources for their education yet are bright. Having done this, I will have made a child’s future bright as a candle loses nothing by lighting another candle(Ziek, 2014).

Reference list

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