Overview Of Organizational Leadership Concepts

This paper will be discussing about some of the leadership concepts. The paper discusses on the five exemplary practices of leadership. A leader can understand and improve their leadership quality by understanding and improving their leadership skills. The paper further discusses on the foundation of leadership which is credibility. Some of the ways to create trust in the organization are also discussed. The paper discusses on different leadership styles.

Leadership Concepts

Generally people has a perception about leadership as a position. They think it as leading is the only the job of a person who is in a higher authority or position. But everybody should understand the fact that leadership is everyone’s business. Everybody should be leader so that everyone contribute more to the common goal. Being a leader is not a easy task. Leaders need to lead the team in order to achieve a goal with everyone motivated to perform the task that takes the people to goal. Doing this requires a lot of interpersonal and communication skills. As everyone is not capable of doing so, many leaders in the organization are not being able to motivate their team in order to achieve their goals. After studying leadership, I understood many literatures that has been in the field of leadership. These literatures covers various fields such as credibility, practices, leadership styles etc. These literatures can help some to become a better leader by improving their skills on handling different type of situations in the organization.

Some of the leadership concept that I have learned in this course are explained below:Credibility and building trust The foundation of leadership is credibility. What people look into a leader has been constant over the time. The leader has any of the leadership qualities without having the credibility. Major of the people believe that leader must be:

• Honest
• Forward looking
• Inspiring
• Competent.

All of these leadership traits boils down to the credibility. A leader can only have these traits only when the leader is trust worthy. The five exemplary practices of leadership is closely related to the mentioned traits of the leader. All of the exemplary practices requires trustworthiness of the leader. In an organization a leader can build the trust with the team members. Organization with high trust among the employees outperforms low trust organization by 286%.

According to Hackman (2010), the five dimensions of organizational trust are:

• Competency
• Open and honesty
• Concern for employees/ stakeholder
• Reliability
• Identification.

Trust building in an organization is very important. A team is with no trust is not an effective team. There is no satisfaction within the team members if there is not trust among the team members. In addition to the trust building, a leader should emphasize on team building activities so that trust building becomes easier. From my personal experience, my team had good trust among the team members. Everything was going fine until the team’s key manager (CEO) made a stupid mistake of agreeing a project that should have cost 10 times more than what it was signed for. The team members later knew about it and the leadership of the CEO was in questionable situation. The best performers of the office were upset due to suck stupid decision. The team slowly lost its credibility with the CEO and finally left the office. There had never been a team building activity in the office. While other friends were having fun the CEO never lead for team building activities and focused only on the works. I had taken stand for organizing a team building activity which was pulled down by CEO but still we managed to go for team building activity. There we realized that such activities helps to know the team members in depth and create the sensation of trust and importance of team building. Five exemplary practice of leadership has come up with five exemplary practice of leadership after a lot of research. Frequent use of effective leadership practices is positively associated with improvement progress and effectiveness climate.

The five exemplary practice are:

• Model the way
• Inspire a shared vision
• Challenge the process
• Enable others to act
• Encourage the heart.

These five exemplary practices of leadership are the one to keep in mind if someone wants to become a leader. Some people already have it while some people can learn these exemplary practices. When I was a project manager in my office, I had three other engineers under my lead. One of them was my senior in terms of age, on was an intern and other was my college mate. After deciding the tasks I had to model the way for intern and senior engineer as they both were just diving in to the field of computer science and software engineering. So I had to model the way for them in order to learn and complete the task while I could delegate to my other colleague. To inspire a shared vision, I had to tell them different things every time when they would get demotivated. For example, I would tell the intern that he was doing well and tell him my stories where I got demotivated and frustrated in programming process. For my college friend, I would have to tell that we are going to make the best software compared to the ones that we have done till now. I myself took some of the challenges in the process that I wasn’t aware about. I didn’t realized the five exemplary practices that I have used in my professional career back then.

Leadership styles

One can be a good leader with the knowledge of different styles of leadership. Then he/she can apply the style according to the need of the situation. Leadership style effect on the employees’ performance productivity. Swamy (2014) has mentioned about many literatures on leadership style in their paper. According to Goleman (2014), there are six different leadership styles. They are:

• Commanding
• Visionary
• Affirmative
• Democratic
• Pacesetting
• Coaching.

Each of them has their own place where the style works best and their impact on the climate. Leadership can be studied from two lenses, directive behavior and supportive behavior. Leadership style can be classified into four different category. They are directive, coaching, supportive and delegating. This can also be called as situational leadership.

Situational leadership

Another type of leadership is servant leadership. Some of the examples of people who are servant leaders are Nelson Mandella, Dalai Lama, Martin LutherKing Jr, Mathma Gandhi etc. I personally prefer situational leadership theory as it blends within the organizational context. When a new member there in the organization, he/she wont know the tasks properly. New members are to be directed at the beginning so that they will learn the task. After they learn the task, coaching is enough for them. Later only support is enough and finally delegation is done. I experienced situational leadership style in my office. I joined as a trainee. I was directed at the beginning as I didn’t knew a lot of things. After directions I understood some of the software engineering concept for a office so I was coached. Later I was able to do the things on my own so I was supported by my senoirs. After proper experience the tasks were delegated. Still support and delegations comes together for me in context of my office. As we hear that nobody is perfect, I think everyone in an organization are still supported and delegated in their works.

Enlisting others for idea

In an organization, the team members should be enlisted for idea generation. Idea can be generated only when people explore out to the world. The atrium in Pixar by Steve Jobs was a good example of enlisting others for ideas. Atrium is the one thing I want to implement in my office.

Conclusion

Leadership is everyone’s business. Leadership comes naturally but for a person in organizational context of leadership, the person should know about the five exemplary practice of leadership. The five exemplary practice is only possible if there is trust between the team. Proper knowledge of leadership style can help in exceling the performance of the team. In the current modern organizations, the team members should not be confined into their work desk. So creating a place like atrium by Steve Jobs in Pixar can bring a new idea. These are the important leadership concepts that I have learned and that I will apply in my new firm.