Leadership Case

Introduction

Leadership is a method of persuading people to attain common goals which involves interpersonal skills to persuade others to perform with commitment to the task given instead of compliance (Hogan, 1994). In order to develop a person and enable them to response to changes, it involves mentoring and coaching. The process of leadership consists of interactions among three elements - The leader, the followers and the situation. Leaders who are appointed by the consensus from the followers are better and able to influence their followers towards goal achievement with the power conferred by the followers.

However, Bennis (1989) argued that manager is not a leader but the roles given required them to become a leader. There are differences between leadership and management. Management is associated to competence, planning, paperwork, procedures, policy, manage, and consistency but leadership is associated to risk taking, dynamic, creativity, change and vision. Leadership's effectiveness is highly dependent on personality traits and leadership style. Some personality traits in leaders are born with it while others can be learned and practiced. The Five Factor Model (FFM) or OCEAN model personality traits which contain openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism; had emerged as a robust model for understanding the relationship between personality and various academic behaviors (Barrick and Mount, 1991). Leadership style was defined as the manner or behavior approach of providing direction, implementing plans and monitoring people.

Based on GLOBE (2004) research, there are 6 Global Leadership Dimensions to distinguish effective and ineffective leaders. It was characterized as Charismatic/Value Based Leadership, Team-oriented Leadership, Participative Leadership, Human-oriented Leadership, Autonomous Leadership and Self-protective Leadership. On the other hand, Lewin (1939) identified three major styles of leadership which is autocratic leadership, democratic leadership and laissez-faire.

Leaders in my organization

An Autocratic leader

Miss X is a manager in one of a department in my organization. Her leadership style was similar to the Autocratic leadership. Autocratic leadership was characterized by an individual manage over all decisions and modest input from group members. Autocratic leaders normally make decisions based on their own judgments and hardly ever accept advice from the clique. Autocratic leadership involves unlimited, authoritarian control over a group (Knowles and Saxberg, 1971).

Miss X is bossy and controlling in the department. She is identified with using her position as a manager to lead her staffs. Her subordinates are seen to afraid of approaching her with new ideas or to make any decisions. Literally her staffs need to seek her approval and decision making even it's a small matter.

However, Autocratic leadership can be beneficial where decisions can be made quickly without consulting others. Some assignments that need to get things done quickly and efficiently, it requires a strong leadership. A strong leader who uses an autocratic style can control the group, assign responsibilities to different members and set solid deadlines for assignment to be finished. It enables members of the group to concentrate on performing specific responsibilities without worrying about making multifaceted decisions. Hence, it helps the group members to become highly skilled at performing certain responsibility, which can be advantageous to the organization. For example, in Miss X department, her staffs are not allowed to involve in other job responsibility other than their own job functions. This has enables other department to find the right person for the right job at the right time.

Nevertheless, the downside of an Autocratic Leader is that a leader can lead to hatred among group members. This is because autocratic leadership style are frequently analyse as bossy, controlling and dictatorial (Lewin et al, 1939). Due to autocratic leaders are solo decision maker, people in the group may felt de-motivated as they are unable to have a say ideas which may affect their career advancement. House (1971) research also found that autocratic leadership leads to a lack of creative solutions to problems that can affect the group performance. For instance, Ms X subordinate comments to her that the goods supplied by Company A were very poor in quality and this has resulted with many complaints from other departments. Instead of getting commend from Ms X, her subordinate received reprimand. This has lead to resentment among group members. As a result, Ms X department is fast in manpower turnover.

A Democratic leader

Miss Y is a manager in one of a department in my organization. Her leadership style was similar to the Democratic leadership. Democratic leadership also recognized as participative leadership. It encourages members of the group to be more participative in the decision-making process (Lewin et al, 1939). Berkowitz (1953) found that this style is efficient and lead to higher efficiency of a leader, better contributions from group members and increased group morale. For example, Miss Y encouraged her group members to share ideas and opinions even though Ms Y retains the final decisions. The members of the group felt respected and trusted from the leader. As a result, they will share openly and they co-operate with each others. This has lead to positive working environment and strong teamwork in Ms Y department.

The advantages of a democratic leader is they can generate better ideas and more creative solutions to a problem as the team members are encouraged to share their thoughts and opinions. This will motivate the team members as they felt involved and committed to the assignments. Based on Stewart and Manz (1995) research, democratic leadership leads to higher productivity among team members. For example, Ms Y department encountered sales down for a promotion. Buying momentum and the sales response were very weak during that promotion. Ms Y team member proposed to do "Happy Hour Specials" mechanics in the promotion in order to create excitement and draw crowds to the promotion area. The "Happy Hour Specials" mechanics were successfully attracted many customers to buy more and it leads to 10% increased in sale budget for that promotion.

However, the downside of democratic leadership is collaborative effort takes time. It is hard to get every members of the team to agree on a common understanding. Besides that, in situation where directions and positions are unclear, democratic leadership can lead to communication breakdown and resulted to uncompleted projects.