Leadership can be stated as the core capability of a group of people or individuals for the purpose of influencing as well as guiding the followers or any other member of the organization (Bolman & Deal, 2017). This leadership includes making of sound and difficult decisions, creation and articulation of a clear vision, establishment of achievable objectives and then providing those followers with significant tools and knowledge that are required for achieving the objectives (Goleman, Boyatzis & McKee, 2013). The following report outlines a brief description on the leadership skills and characteristics of a popular business leader, namely, Catherine Livingstone, the chairwoman of Commonwealth Bank of Australia with proper details.
A. Evaluation of Leadership Characteristics, Skills and Knowledge of Catherine Livingstone that allowed her to lead Commonwealth Bank of Australia in today’s Economic Environment
Catherine Brighid Livingstone is an Australian business leader, having held some of the most influential positions within few of the country’s popular organization. Currently, she is serving Commonwealth Bank of Australia as the chairwoman of the company (Daft, 2014). Due to her significant and unique leadership skills and characteristics, Livingstone had been able to deal with the turbulent and disruptive economic environment. The most important and noteworthy skills, knowledge and characteristics of Catherine Livingstone are as follows:
iii) Inspiring Others: The next important and significant leadership skill of Livingstone is that she provides inspiration to others (Daft, 2014). It is extremely important to motivate her followers so that they are able to do their work efficiently.
vii) Delegation and Empowerment: Livingstone even allows delegation and empowerment and hence allows her subordinates to take their own decisions eventually (Ciulla, 2014). This helps in maintenance of a healthy and positive work environment.
viii) Innovation and Creativity: Livingstone even has the leadership skill of innovation and creativity that enables her to be more innovative and creative regarding business strategies and operations.
B. Past Failures Influencing Livingstone’s Current Leadership Skills and Characteristics
Livingstone has worked with several popular organizations like CSIRO, Telstra and Macquarie Bank. She had acquired her current leadership skills and characteristics after facing few failures in the work (Tschannen-Moran, 2014). During the early days with her involvement in one of her previous organizations, she had once faced issues with her leadership skills. She had an autocratic leadership style and hence she used to take little inputs from her group members for undertaking any decision. The judgments and ideas were made on her personal choices and she rarely accepted advice from the followers. This created a major issue for the followers as they were not ready to accept this type of leadership (Robertson, 2016). Although, Livingstone had the intentions of leading the organization to a better position, she did not apply the correct leadership skills in the correct area.
Due to this above mentioned issue, she decided to change her leadership skills and characteristics. She became a democratic leader, who considers inputs and ideas from her team members and followers. Her current leadership skills and characteristics are strongly influenced by the previous issue or failure that she had faced in her work (Rosenbach, 2018). She switched to democratic or participative leadership style and hence currently, she is termed as one of the most influential and significant business leaders in the entire world.
C. Process of Livingstone Developing the Characteristics and Skills
As stated above, she used to be an autocratic leader, who did not take any participation and inputs from the team members or followers while working in one of her previous organizations (Northouse, 2017). She was opposed for this type of leadership style and she found it extremely difficult to manage her employees. After facing this type of situation, he decided to become a democratic leader. For becoming a democratic leader, she made a distinct plan. At first she started encouraging and rewarding creativity and innovativeness whenever any of her followers gave an idea. Although, she had the final say, she ensured that each and every follower is having a fair chance to speak about and sharing their unique ideas and views for the betterment of decision (Tannenbaum & Schmidt, 2017). Moreover, she arranged for group meetings and motivated all the employees to share ideas and plans. With this type of effectiveness, she was finally able to gain the confidence of her team members as well as employees and they were happy with her leadership. The democratic procedure has the tendency to emphasize on group equality and free flow of ideas and the group leader offers proper control and guidance (Goleman, Boyatzis & McKee, 2013). Livingstone developed the leadership skills such as creativity, competence, better collaboration and communication, integrity, team management skills and fairness to every follower.
D. Leadership Method, Approach and Concept that are employed by Livingstone as a Business Leader
Catherine Livingstone has employed the leadership approach, method and concept of democratic. She emphasized on collaboration and free flow of ideas (Antonakis & Day, 2017). The principle of a democratic leader is that responsibility is being shared amongst each and every member of the staff with leader present to offer proper guidance and keeping discussions much controlled and balanced. Moreover, a democratic leader allows shared participation for decision making process and they even decide who is a part of the committee or group tasked to make decisions (Hackman & Johnson, 2013). This type of leadership also instils mutual respect amongst those involved, who are responsible for creating open and candid conversations.
A major and important aspect of the democratic leadership style is to understand the situations, where it is helpful for making the organization work excellently (Bolman & Deal, 2017). Since, Livingstone had an autocratic leadership style, she faced a major issue while managing the staffs within one of her previous organizations. After changing to democratic leadership, she have a stronger connection to the most challenging and stressful event and this is established for including several ideas for making effective decisions. The main advantage of democratic leadership that Livingstone obtained was the major impact on employee engagement (Tschannen-Moran, 2014). Moreover, staff productivity was increased to a high level and the employee morale and performance is improvised within Commonwealth Bank of Australia. The democratic leaders could even receive valuable inputs from the frontline employees or even those, who have a better grasp on any decision than the senior leaders.
Apart from democratic leadership, Catherine Livingstone even followed situational leadership method that allowed her to take decisions as per certain decisions. Flexibility was enhanced and a comfortable environment was created for the employees. Moreover, with the situational leadership approach, she is able to undertake several development phases into account and increasing the awareness to a high level (Tannenbaum & Schmidt, 2017). Livingstone helped her team with the ability to work in a better manner. Due to the immediate effect on the situation, this situational leadership style was required for her and even for the betterment of team.
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that an effective leader possesses few of the most significant characteristics, which include stronger communication, management skills, self confidence, innovative as well as creative thinking, willingness in taking risks, perseverance in face of failure, reactiveness and levelheadedness in respect to the crisis and openness to the changes. The individuals, who eventually exhibit such leadership qualities could easily ascend to senior positions. The above report has outlined about Catherine Livingstone, who is the chairwoman of Commonwealth Bank of Australia and she had been serving this organization for last 2 years and had provided several ideas for making the organization extremely successful.
References
Antonakis, J., & Day, D. V. (Eds.). (2017). The nature of leadership. Sage publications.
Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership. John Wiley & Sons.
Chemers, M. (2014). An integrative theory of leadership. Psychology Press.
Ciulla, J. B. (Ed.). (2014). Ethics, the heart of leadership. ABC-CLIO.
Daft, R. L. (2014). The leadership experience. Cengage Learning.
Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R. E., & McKee, A. (2013). Primal leadership: Unleashing the power of emotional intelligence. Harvard Business Press.
Hackman, M. Z., & Johnson, C. E. (2013). Leadership: A communication perspective. Waveland Press.
Northouse, P. G. (2017). Introduction to leadership: Concepts and practice. Sage Publications.
Robertson, J. (2016). Coaching leadership: Building educational leadership capacity through partnership. New Zealand Council for Educational Research. PO Box 3237, Wellington 6140 New Zealand.
Rosenbach, W. E. (2018). Contemporary issues in leadership. Routledge.
Tannenbaum, R., & Schmidt, W. H. (2017). How to choose a leadership pattern. In Leadership Perspectives (pp. 75-84). Routledge.
Tschannen-Moran, M. (2014). Trust matters: Leadership for successful schools. John Wiley & Sons.
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