Choice of leadership styles

In the process of certain incidents with in the group of people whether it formed temporarily or permanent which requires someone to lead or conduct the group of people in a way that drives towards right direction. For any organization it is difficult to run a business without a leader. It is alike driving a car without knowing the road. The person who is appointed or selected as a leader needs to have certain influential skills which cause the organization to follow. To be a leader the individual must be able to induce followers to act for certain goals that represent the values and motivations the wants and needs, the aspirations and expectations of both leaders and followers (Burns, 1978).

There are some differences and similarities between the companies followed leadership style. It depends on structure of a company, area of a business and other factors which would influence the leadership style of the organization. Managers need to have certain skills to run their business in any situation and need to reflect feedback gathered from other people, on their business process and sometimes they need to delegate someone to complete the specific task within a particular time frame and the outcome would show how successful and inspirational managers they are.

1. Identify factors in organisations that would influence choice of leadership styles and explain why leadership styles are likely to positively affect team building.

Mainly there are four basic factors which influence leadership style in certain organization (US. Army, 1983), which are leader itself, follower, situation and communication.

Leader: The knowledge, personality, beliefs, skills, ethics and values of the leader’s (his/her) will affect the leadership style. The leader will reflect his or her personal characters on the process of strategy or way of doing.

Followers: Any organization consists of numbers of followers with different backgrounds and personalities. Leaders should use the most appropriate strategy in a way that followers to respond their best and they need to know their people well.

Situation: Leaders stay had to choose the strategy in many different situations. Every strategy does not work for every situation. The one strategy you used in one situation may not work for in other.

Communication: The way of communication shows the relationship between the leader and an employee. The relationship between leader and an employee affect the leading style.

Adam’s Equity Theory:

According to this theory, when fair balance between employees inputs and outputs settled productivity of work is to improve with motivated employees.

Employee Inputs include:

Effort

Loyalty

Hard Work

Commitment

Skill

Ability

Adaptability

Flexibility

Tolerance

Determination

Enthusiasm

Trust in superiors

Support of colleagues

Personal sacrifice, etc.

Employee Outputs include:

Financial rewards (salary, benefits, perks, etc.)

Intangibles that typically include:

Recognition

Reputation

Responsibility

Sense of Achievement

Praise

Stimulus

Sense of Advancement/Growth

Job Security

When employees think their inputs are more than their outputs, some employees are to work hard to bring the balance whereas some may feel de-motivated and could look for another alternative employment. Therefore manager needs to keep the balance of input and output’s as fair as possible. In the practical life these inputs and outputs of employees are balanced differently, based on organizational structures and its management style. There are five kinds of leadership styles can found in organization which are: Autocratic, Collaborative (Participatory), Democratic and Laissez-Faire.

Autocratic leadership style: Manager has as much power of authority as possible and does not seek input from team. Employees are expected to do their work as whatever manager said. Also this type of leadership is likely to reduce motivation of employees.

Collaborative (Participatory) Leadership style: This leadership style is the most effective one for team building. Every one from each department, appointed for certain task within the organization and encourages creativity, productivity and responsibility.

Democratic Leadership Style: Managers inform their employees for everything and encourages employees to participate in a decision making process through gathering information, suggestions and ideas from members and employees.

Laissez-Faire: Managers leave their employees free for decision making, determining goals and objective and all authority is given to employees.

Among these leadership styles most appropriate one for to create effective team building is the collaborative leadership style. For instance, at STARBUCKS, the managers wanted to develop a deep relationship with their employees in order to achieve their trust from trust other employee carer UNIONS. Starbucks has increased the employees’ outputs to motivate their employees such as providing them opportunities to practice their skill, allow them to contribute to organization, improved the working condition, created a part of the organization environment and recognised employees achievement awards like; ‘Warm Regards’, MUG Award and ‘Spirit of Starbucks Award’. When employees achieved their task or exceeding the targets, they are to get motivated and rewarded when.

2. With reference to a relevant leadership model, explain how an organisation’s working practices could be improved, by collecting feedback from others. :

Any organization is in battle to continuous improvement of its product and service. One of Japanese most famous management model is KAIZEN. Kaizen means on going improvement involving everyone, top managements, managers and workers. Kaizen refers to removal of 3MUs (Muda- waste, Muri-strain, Mura- discrepancy) and application of 5Ss (Seri- straighten up, Seiton- Put things in order, Seiso- clean up, Seiketsu- personal cleanliness, Shitsuke-discipline) at any level of the organization in order to improve the process of the organization continually.

When any problem is seen in the organization, it demands some changes for improvement and as a matter of fact only the honest and realistic feedback would affect to bring sustainable growth and change in the organization. Gathering feedback from others is one of the most important techniques for both individual itself and for the company to improve its ongoing performance. The feedbacks can be gathered through different ways such as surveys, suggestion box, face to face conversation, telephone, online comments etc. The output of the company could be more effective, when managers reflect the gathered feedback information on their decision making process.

Employees are one of the main factors for operating business and managers are able to know how employees think, feel and behave, through a relevant survey. The employee attitudes, opinions and suggestions in the survey would provide opportunity for managers to see the organization from different angle. The survey should aim to understand what makes their employees motivated or discouraged and what factors that can provide a job satisfaction or dissatisfaction, what do employees think about current situation of the company, what changes they want, then managers would be aware of the problem and they would be able to know what steps needs to be taken and which helps the company to operate in more productive and profitable ways.

The most recent and effective appraisal, for individual and organization is the “360 degree feedback” and which has widely implemented in numbers of organizations. 360 Degree or multi-rater feedback is a process which is a tool of individual or organizational self assessment through multi raters’ feedback and anybody who is related to individual or to the organization can be involved in the process such as managers, direct reports, clients, customers, suppliers etc.

In this process you are not assessed by one person like only by your manager, you are also assessed and rated on your performance by other people who know about you and your work well. Your own completed assessment will be compared with others opinion and feedbacks and the result will be much more realistic and objective as assessment involved large number of raters than as involved only one rater. When this process implemented well and effectively, which will help the organization move towards bright and successful future.

3. Explain why it is so important to make effective and efficient use of your team’s knowledge and skills while planning to achieve work objectives

More or less someone’s help encourages an achievement of success for any reason. No one could be successful without receiving any help from others. Specially, a manager in any organization works with other people as a team for a certain goal and whose success can not be measured on its own, without his/her employees. There are numbers of tasks need to be completed by team members to reach the set objectives. However it does not mean that everyone can do whatever they want. As a manager it is important to use knowledge and skills of his/her employees, in effective and efficient way. Manager needs to consider and identify which employee is good at what and what skills of employee need to do what task, during the planning and task allocating process. When manager identifies the strength and weakness of the employees it will be easier for the manager to delegate the task. If managers delegate the tasks without having any idea of their employee skills and knowledge, a team can face quality and cost related problems and it could cause not to achieve the set objective on time.

The outcomes are as written bellow when managers use skills and knowledge of their employee in a right way:

Save time to accomplish a task on time

A good quality of work

Save cost and money

Ready for next similar task, since manager knows who good at what

4. Identify and describe one barrier to delegation in the workplace and one mechanism to support delegation in the workplace

Delegation is a part of a manager’s job and which gives responsibility, authority and accountability to employees and also gives opportunity to show their skills and talent to their managers. Some managers avoid delegating works because of mistrust and try to complete the whole work on his/her own. It brings workloads and stress to the manager and even can cause to failure of work. Therefore delegation of work is useful for manager him/herself, employees and for the company as a whole. However there are some advantages and disadvantages of delegation.

Advantages of delegation:

Efficient use of time and skills

Provides professional growth opportunities

Promotes teamwork

Increase productivity

Develop trust with your employees

Save money

Gives employees pride in their work and improve job satisfaction

Disadvantages of delegation:

Delegated work may not be done correctly

Employees may focus more on their own work than delegated work

Employees may not be sure who to consult because of unclear structure of authority

The numbers of obstacle can appear in front of delegation though the barrier that seen most frequent is the own attitudes and traits of delegators or managers themselves. Delegation means allowing someone to do something through giving an authority to make their own decision to complete the certain task. The main barrier appears when the manager to decide whether to delegate or not and the reasons which influence managers to not to delegate are, having a mistrust with their employees and having a fear of loosing their authority to others. If manager do not trust his/her employee’s skills or having a fear of loosing his/her authority to someone, manager would prefer to do it on his/her own, rather than delegating to someone.

Even though there are some factors which push managers to delegate the task to someone, which are; size of organization, more demanding tasks to complete, task complexity, qualities of subordinates and importance of the duties and decision. These supporting factors are more situational and the most influential one, which supports the delegation, is having workloads in a workplace. When managers have to complete massive works in a short time, they will prefer to delegate someone to complete the task behalf of them. Otherwise managers can not be complete their task on time and which could influence their work performance negatively.

5. Explain one technique that could be used to monitor the outcomes of delegation in the workplace

A manager as a delegator needs to make sure that delegated tasks are being done correctly and effectively before its’ accomplishment. Every tasks need to be completed in a certain period of time and employees supposed to be aware of what work needs to be done, how it should be done, whom they are going to consult when problem appears and what outcomes do managers expect. If manager re-inform about deadlines and establish checkpoints and ask members if there is any problem or if they need any help to support them for finishing the relevant tasks which would help managers to get successful outcomes from their staffs. However the one thing that managers always need to remember is not to interfere too much to their employees’ work where you delegated. Because, it could influence employees decision, to accomplish the task on their own way and which can not be effective when something has done under someone’s pressure.

Conclusion:

The numbers of organizations are being established day by day and they would choose their own management style adapting to their business situation. There is no such leadership style, which is always successful and its effectiveness would depends on what organizational culture they have and what type of business they run.

Managers need to have certain influential leadership skills which are to accomplish the certain task successfully through making their employees motivated. On the other hand, managers’ decision will not be right all the time, sometimes they need to listen to other people’s opinion, suggestion and ideas and should reflect those things on their decision making process to reach a successful outcomes.