Analysis Of A Leader Management Essay

Isadore Sharp is the Founder of The Four Seasons Hotels Resort. Currently he is serving as the Chairman and CEO of The Four Seasons Hotels Resort. He was born in Ontario, Canada in October 8, 1931. Sharp is one of Canada’s most successful businessmen. He completed his graduation in architecture from Toronto’s Ryerson Polytechnical Institute. After working in real states for five years, he decided to take a new direction and pondered the idea to build a hotel on his own. He was just 29 years old when he opened his first 125 room motor hotel (motel) in Toronto which was profitable and popular (Martin R, 2009).

Mr. Sharp has build and managing a chain of 83 hotels that includes some of the world’s most impressive properties across 35 countries in 5 continents. Doing thing in own way Sharp has transformed the idea of service and quality of hotel industry. Mr. Sharp was not interested in following his competitors’ path; he developed his own management techniques and style which facilitated him to build the world’s largest chain of luxury hotels. Sharp was mainly focused on quality not the quantity. He believed in building medium sized hotel with excellent service and quality. In 2009, he authored a book name “Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy”, which gives an insight of the story of his successful five star Four Season Hotel chain (Morassutti W,2009).

Mr. Sharp has obtained and earned so many achievements and awards in his field till now which includes Order of Canada, the second highest honor for merit and many more Lifetime Achievement Award .He is Honorary Director of Scotia bank, Clairvest Group Inc., Canadian Unity Council, Canadian Council of Christians and Jews, and Mount Sinai Hospital. Mr. sharp has given Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from University of Guelph, 1992, University of Toronto, 1994 and York University, 2009 (Businessweek, 2012).

Leadership makes and allows a viewpoint for what must be done, why it is important, and how it can be achieved. It is someone who is aware of current government and company circumstances, possibilities, and issues. Leadership needs therefore having the right mind-set along with the right viewpoint. Leadership is an important function of control which allows to improve performance and to accomplish company objectives. Leadership is very important in taking effort, motivating, offering support, creating assurance, creating relaxation, creating fantastic office, and co-ordination. Leadership is important in every organization at every level to improve their growth & win the competitors. Organizations want leaders, who are value inspired individualities, who can control the circumstances by making the surprising happens ,develop organizations, win the employees’ commitment with the DNA i.e. purpose, viewpoint and ethical concepts, create better design with proper work way of life and lead the individuals towards the success of company objectives and objectives (Saxena S, 2010).

“Leadership is a process by which an executive can direct, guide and influence the behavior and work of others towards accomplishment of specific goals in a given situation. Leadership is the ability of a manager to induce the subordinates to work with confidence and zeal. Leadership is the potential to influence behavior of others. It is also defined as the capacity to influence a group towards the realization of a goal. Leaders are required to develop future visions and to motivate the organizational members to want to achieve the visions” (Anonymous, 2009).

According to Keith Davis, “Leadership is the ability to persuade others to seek defined objectives enthusiastically. It is the human factor which binds a group together and motivates it towards goals.”(asiahotelier, 2010)

Leadership and management are often considered to be the similar term. Leadership is very important in order to have effective management. Leadership focuses on building an environment in which each and every employee should be able to develop and excel. Leadership is basically influencing and driving the group efforts towards achieving the goals. A manager should have certain leadership qualities. Leaders formulate strategies that are competitive and which can give them a competitive advantage in the present as well as in the future. Therefore it is necessary for Organizations to have strong leadership and strong management for maintaining organizational efficiency (md, 2012).

All the good leaders are good mangers but not all the good managers are good leader, it’s not necessary that an effective manger can be a good leader. Many Administrators, supervisors and executives are performing their duties and responsibilities in effective way without being a good leader. Managers follow what has been told by their leader, they think about their department where as a leaders thinks about the whole organization. Managers deals with ongoing, day to day challenges and complexities of organizations. Managing requires costing and planning and leading requires creating a mission and vision for the organization. Good leaders lead their people towards ultimate vision and help as well as motivates them in obstacles whatever come in the way (Coleman P, 2007).

Good leaders are able to develop their work as a team. The first and most important function of a leader is to create and maintain that he and a pleasant working environment by needs a close look at his subordinates’ abilities, needs and potential capabilities. The second function of a leader is to serve as a labor representative. The head of a working group to work as a liaison and coordination between the group members and senior management. The desired condition, a leader is expected to communicate problems and complaints with their subordinates to senior management. The third function of leaders is to act as a consultant to help in the work for his people. Here are a leading company expects will accompany and advise his subordinates who face problems in terms of their performance in the workplace problem are not necessarily technical, but may also contain naturally emotional. The fourth important function leader manages time effectively (Anonymous, 2010). The function of leader is to check whether the employees are completing their work within the give time frame and also need to check if the work groups are providing quality and efficiency in their work. The fifth most important function of a leader is using his power in the right way. A leader should be a good observer. A leader should reward his subordinates so that they get motivated towards doing the job which in turn can create a positive and livelier working environment (Malhotra J, 2009).

Different leaders have different leadership styles which differ in the manner and approach in which they provide direction to the people, and how they implement the plans and how they motivate the people. The three old approaches of leadership are Authoritarian or Autocratic, Participative or Democratic, Delegative or Free Reign.

Leader who informs his employees about what needs to be done and how it needs to be done is an Authoritarian and Autocratic type of leader. Such a leader never takes advice and suggestions from others. This style of leadership is useful in situations when the leader has all the information and resources to solve the problem efficiently and only needs the work to be done by his employees. This style of leadership helps in saving time. This style is successful only when the employees are thoroughly motivated to do the work. A good leader knows when he needs to use this style and when not to (Cherry K, 2000).

Leader who involves his employee in the process of decision making by taking their opinions and suggestions in how to do the work, uses the Participative style of leadership. Although he takes the opinions, the final decision remains with the leader and he can chose not use the suggestions if he thinks that it doesn’t help the cause (Cherry K, 2000). Mr. Sharp believed that in order to achieve significant productivity gains, he needs to empower his employees to a certain extent. One of the first tasks that he did was to create a united purpose amongst his workers. Sharp knew that neither he nor anyone else could command the dedication of his employees. Leader who uses this style should not be considered a weak leader but on the contrary it’s a sign of strength. Using this style, a leader gains the respect of his employees. This style is used when the leader doesn’t have complete information and other employees have some information which will be useful for achieving the goal. A leader should always employ employees who are knowledgeable and skillful as the leader is not expected to know each and everything. This style helps the leader to become a part of the team and it helps in getting towards a better decision (Lewin K., 1939).

A leader who allows the decisions to be made by his employees uses the Delegative style of leadership. Although the decisions are made by the employee(s), the responsibility of the decisions rests with the leader since he is the person in-charge. This style should be used by a leader only when he can completely trust the decision making capabilities of his employees and has confidence in their knowledge and skills (U.S. Army Handbbok, 1973). Mr. Sharp believes that in order to gain the success one needs support. Mr. Sharp, the leading luxury hotelier in the world, didn’t become so all by himself. In the 50 years of service in the hotel industry, he has developed a leadership style for himself which is unique and has encouraged his employees the world over to completely devote themselves for the betterment of the company in all regards. He has created a working environment which has been built on trust, credibility and integrity. This has inspired his team to work with more dedication to cater to the needs of the guests in all of his hotels across the world. Mr. Sharpe realized very quickly that this is the secret which will help him to get the best results for his company .

New approaches of leadership are Transformational Leadership, Charismatic Leadership, Transactional Leadership, People Oriented Leadership. Leaders can posses all of this styles in some manner.

Transformational leadership style is very inspiring. This type of leaders expects best from all employees as well as themselves which will lead to a good productivity and involvement of everyone as a team. Transformational leadership is very useful in the organization to take initiatives and add new values. Transformational leader needs support from their people or employess. This type of leaders uses other leadership styles as well depending on the situation and the people (Johnson R, 2010).

Charismatic leadership style is one of the modest approaches of leaders to his employees. Charismatic leader shows enthusiasm towards his employees and motivates them to move forward. The only difference between charismatic leaders and transformational leaders is their intention. Transformational leaders wants to transform their teams and organizations where as Charismatic leaders are regularly focused on employees and do not want to change anything. The tsunami crisis in Southeast Asia in 2004 was a good example of Sharp’s commitment towards his team. Waves pounded the Four Seasons hotel in the Maldives and within 24 hours, all employees and guests were safely evacuated from the island. But, the damage didn’t stop there. Resort went to shutdown and hundreds of employees were out of work all of a sudden. Sharp subsequently sent all his employees to other Four Seasons hotels around the world in order to keep them employed (Sharp I, 2008).

Transactional leader work through such a structure in which it is clear what is to be done by his employees and what reward they will get after completion of the given task. This leadership style starts with the idea that team members agree to obey their leader when they accept a job. This leadership style clears employees’ roles and responsibilities (Tegborg M, 2010). In this leadership style employees are given rewards after achieving the goal and same way employees fail to achieve the given task, then they are fully responsible for the failure not the leader. This type of style focuses on short term tasks. The downside of this leadership style is that team members can do little to improve their job satisfaction. It can feel stifling, and it can lead to high staff turnover (mindtools, 2010).

People-oriented leader completely focuses on organizing, supporting, and developing the people on their teams. People oriented leader treat every employee equally in a friendly and approachable manner which tends to encourage good teamwork and creative collaboration. Team members of a people oriented leader are often more productive because they know that the leader will provide support if they need it (mindtools, 2010). Same way Sharp has showed his people oriented leadership at the time recession. At that time other organization were downsizing the labor cost to recover the loss and unpressurized the situation, Sharp maximized employees value to show him commitment toward his people (Isadore Sharp, 2009).