Leadership Challenge Moving To Leadership Business Essay

Everyone in their professional career usually starts their career from bottom and work to reach at top of the career ladder. During the course of professional career, individuals become proficient in work, gain respect from the whole management and eventually becomes a valued member of the organization. On getting promoted as a leader of that same team within which we have been working with so far certainly is an advantageous offering however coupled with several problems and challenges.

However, being promoted within the same team is advantageous up to a certain extent as that individual would be aware about the policies and procedures and working environment as well as expected problems often encountered by the team, individual would also face several challenges while leading a team. The problems and challenges arise in a sense that when other employees who have been working for a longer duration than that of the individual being promoted and possess more experience might feel that they actually deserve the promotional hike. Also, problems arise owing to the assertiveness often expressed in meetings and words by the individual.

Consequently, individuals being offered promotional hikes and promotional offerings entail to gain respect from the team and getting the things done without thinking that the power or authority has been moved to individual’s head. Additionally, several things are ought to consider to smoothen the transition process of promotion. Primarily individual has to stop beating head and applaud on promotion as dynamics of the team are changed to a large extent and individual have to embrace the changed circumstances. Another key initiative is to show explicit value and support and listening to other team members’ ideas to even the process of promotional transition (Case Studies).

Case II: Leadership Challenge: Juggling Cultures

Several cases of bi-diversity are common in the Middle East with subject of leadership of women at workplace. Government is certainly putting in tremendous efforts towards recognition of women in the society and inclusiveness in different sectors of the economy. It is the key requirement of organizations to incorporate flexibility in corporate cultures in order to respect and consider individual needs. While comparing with the scenario in western countries, it is required in Arab countries to broach such issues within the cultural sensitivities and tradition and culture.

In large organizations, it has been determined that they are in a better profitable state and quarter attributing to success while having female employees in senior leadership. Moreover having female executives in senior leadership leads to bringing of new perspectives as well as new innovative ideas.

In the context of the case organization, the officials contemplate in selection of male executive over female executive for arranging deals with Saudi Arabian clients. The environment in Saudi Arabian organizations is inflexible characterized by male biased talent management systems and culture. Throwing light on the case situation, it would be effectual to select a male executive over female executive owing to the conservative biased system prevailing across Arabian countries. The selection and choice of male executive is justified to comply with the conservative and male dominated organizations and clients (Case Studies).

Case III: What Leadership Characteristics Does Reuben Mark Possess?

Reuben Mark professional accomplishments are legendary who is considered as a niche player for almost all the time of his career in one of the most valuable companies operating across the globe, especially in terms of market capitalization. Colgate-Palmolive is a leading consumer goods company serving in two hundred countries across the globe. Several business organizations would strive to achieve level of success and aspire to achieve a competitive edge likewise of Colgate-Palmolive.

The case is primarily digging out the management style of Reuben Mark and his management and leadership style. Mark the leader possesses dynamic personality whose genius and innovation contributed successfully towards the growth of the company. Being one of the prominent leaders in the market and entire corporate world, Mark’s leadership style can be visualized as with tremendous clarity. Reuben Mark is certainly a willful and driven leader and the products and services directed under his supervision have raised the development and commercialization of brand in the market.

At the same time, the leadership style of Ruben Mark has been intensely focused with strong commitment and confidence in taking risky leaps. Mark is also considered as a charismatic that has successfully solicited employee legions as well as customers in the relentless pursuit of his ambitions and aspirations. The exclusive style of leadership has also helped the company to shape the unique and powerful culture within the environment owing to his seemingly constructive behaviors (Case Studies).

Case IV: Leadership Challenge: The In-Group Applicant

Individuals hired through employee referrals tend to have a longer duration of association with the company in comparison than those of individuals hired through other methods of recruitment. Today, employers of business organizations try to determine the effectiveness of employee referrals and compare with other hiring methods. At the time of hiring, several factors are taken into consideration pertains to determine effectiveness such as overall hiring costs, performance of employees, employee retention rate. They tend to ponder these key aspects to narrow the field of best pool of candidates. Also, the current and existing staff gets benefitted by an incoming of lucrative salaries packages and recognition they get at the time of every hiring on their recommendation.

In the context of the business case, the manager faces a contemplating situation of hiring an assistant manager on the basis of strong reference by his office manager. The office manager recommends the name of one of his family members for the job and the one is effectively suitable for the offered job profile. With an aim to get his family member into the job, the office manager tries to convince his manager to not to take risk with other outsider/stranger becoming his assistant. He sees this opportunity to build strong relationship with the company and is therefore motivated to refer to his family member. Recruiting talent in today’s competitive market is certainly a difficult and tedious job and therefore employee referral program has been seen as an effective strategy to hire new employees (Case Studies).

Case V: Leadership in Action: The Caring Dictator:

Understanding and embracing a team is the main talent of a leader who is essentially thinking out in a creative manner and whose style of leading is based on his or her strengths. The best leaders of the industry allow leaders to emerge as reach to the top premier position in their professional career ladder.

In today’s fast paced world and competitive era, it has been determined that best leaders are ones those who bring out and build best leaders and not the best followers. The traditional military kind of leadership style is no longer proven to be effective. Nowadays, the leadership is more to be executed in a dynamic way depending on changing circumstances and changing needs of the team. At times, it takes the way of coaching; sometimes it is executed as visionary and is therefore termed as situational.

In the context of the business case, Jack Hartnett is more of an affilitative leader who appears to rely on creation and building of emotional and companion bonds with other team members as well as subordinates. According to Jack Hartnett, if we sum up his vision in terms of leadership style, then it would be “people come first”. The affilitative style of Jack Hartnett has been proved to be highly successful during the times of relieving from stress and mental trauma, and even at the time building of trust. Jack Hartnett essentially put a greater reliance on praise and appreciation to foster performance (Case Studies).

Case VI: Janine Bay of Ford Focuses on Interpersonal Skills:

In today’s competitive and changing times, leaders are mainly focusing on leveraging and utilizing their strengths and try to support and compensate their weaknesses to achieve organizational directives. Leaders are continually recognizing the significance of fact to concentrate and focus up on one’s preeminent attributes and initiate efforts to compensate certain shortcomings and weaknesses coming their way to achieve greater success as well as positive self regard.

The case study pertaining to Janine Bay, one of the top executives of a large corporation, Ford Motor Company articulates her journey so far in the professional career and how she managed to achieve zenith with her unique style of leadership. According to her insightful thoughts, an individual could not find recognizing his/her strengths a much difficult task in which they excel. The harder point is realizing out one’s weakness. Another key fact of managing effectual leadership within a team is a teamwork that works like a fuel allowing people to achieve set and established directives.

As per the views of Janine Bay, it is imperative to build an effective communication to members of the team group while allowing them to respond with innovative ideas and become a vital part of the visioning process. Appropriate communication as well as effective listening has been emerged as key components of undertaking successful leadership (Case Studies).

PART II

Based on your knowledge of the field of management and your personal definition of leadership, how are management and leadership similar or different? Write your answer after discussing it with a business leader.

“Leadership and Management” are often seen as different terms by several people and terms have been even used interchangeably at workplaces. On the basis of personal experience gained from several field researches and scrutinizing industrial and organizational scenarios in today’s competitive environment, a vast relationship can be established between management and leadership. Particularly, it has been observed that management requires good leadership styles which mean effective management is carried out with the support of effective leadership. For instance, at times when managers in large organizations are required to persuade his team members to his point and his view to facts, it is then handled out and managed effectively with the use of mixed leadership skills. Both goes hand in hand as the main focus of the manager here would be to be a good leader in the team who is able to manipulate and influence others’ views and decisions, ultimately involved effective dealing with people.

An encounter with the business leader, who is the successful entrepreneur operating well in the area of fast food restaurants in the Emirate of Dubai has resulted in the emerge of several surprising and astonishing facts in the area of leadership and management. On having a formal meeting and discussion with him, it was essentially determined that an individual could be a great leader and an individual could also be a great manager, only the difference being that both the area requires a slightly differential set of skills and competencies. Where management is resulting in producing order and consistency in the process of operations and flow of work, leadership is resulting in change and movement up to a certain level within the process.

The management in any organization includes a vast array of activities such as planning and budgeting, setting of agendas, preparation of timetables, allocation of resources, setting of rules and procedures, hiring, organizing, problem solving as well as taking corrective actions spontaneously. Leadership on the hand requires an individual to set direction, clarify the big picture and prepare strategies, communication of goals and responsibilities, alignment of tasks, seeking commitment, building teams, motivating peers and subordinates, and satisfy unmet needs and wants.

As it has already been mentioned above that both leadership and management goes hand in hand, both the fields certainly requires human skills, conceptual skills and technical skills. Also, with the closing of discussion with the fast food business owner promoting healthy and happy lifestyles, he stressed on the fact that leadership is certainly required to set a new direction in the business like for example in their business targeting a new customer segment would require an individual leader to take an initiative to lead the team of members to conduct market research. At the same time, this requires effective management skills by the individual to plan and organize about the financial resources, time constraints, staff required etc. Indeed, there is no end to overlap of leadership and management.