Personal Responsibility And Integrity Management Essay

Introduction

Leaders in today’s organizations are confront with the numerous challenges of creating and sustaining major organizational change. I have worked in a bank and I have chosen a person as a leader to conduct this study who is the senior assistant vice president and head of branch of that bank. The organisation is local and it is a private commercial bank. My selected leader is ……

There are three basic levels of leaders- Executive, Line, and Network. Executive leaders (CEOs) are responsible for articulating the vision and direction of the organisation. CEOs make speeches and reorganize but have very little impact on the day-to-day operation of any kind of business. This is the job of line-leaders. Among these three levels, my leader seats in the executive level as he gives direction to his employees to carry out the organisation’s operation.

Methodology

Questionnaire method, qualitative/quantitative,

Qualitative research explores attitudes, behaviour and experiences through such methods as interviews or focus groups. It attempts to get an in-depth opinion from participants. As it is attitudes, behaviour and experiences which are important, fewer people take part in the research, but the contact with these people tends to last a lot longer. Under the umbrella of qualitative research there are many different methodologies.

Quantitative research generates statistics through the use of large-scale surveyresearch, using methods such as questionnaires or structured interviews. If a market researcher has stopped you on the streets, or you have filled in a questionnaire which has arrived through the post, this falls under the umbrella of quantitative research. This type of research reaches many more people, but the contact with those people is much quicker than it is in qualitative research.

Leadership

“Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal.” (Northouse, 2010, p.3)

“Leadership is the process in which an individual influence other group members towards the attainment of group or organisational goal.”

Shackleton (1995 cited by Torrington D. et al, 2005)

John, C. Maxwell believes that, Leadership is influence – nothing more, nothing less. This moves beyond the position defining the leader, to looking at the ability of the leader to influence other.

Leader

Leader

Intention

Followers

Shared purpose

Personal responsibility & Integrity

Change

Influence

Figure: What Leadership involves (Daft, 2008, p. 5)

Management vs. Leadership

Bennis and Nanus (1985) maintained that there is a significant difference between the two term management and leadership. To manage means to accomplish activities and master routines, whereas to lead means to influence others and create visions for change. … ‘Managers are people who do things right and leaders are people who do the right thing.’ (p. 221).

Leadership Theories

Trait Approach

The Trait Approach dictates that some people are born with specific traits or characteristics that make them effective in interacting with others. Major Leadership Traits are – Intelligence – Self-confidence – Determination

– Integrity – Sociability.

The Big Five Personality Factors and Leadership: The ways to describe an individual’s personality. The Big Five Personality Test is based on the ‘Big Five’ theory of personality, pioneered in a popular 1963 study by psychologist Warren Norman. This theory classifies the main non-cognitive personality traits as:

Neuroticism- This dimension relates to emotional stability and degree of negative emotions. Includes traits like- moody, tense, anxiety, depression, and insecurity.

Extraversion- The broad dimension of Extraversion encompasses such more specific traits as talkative, energetic, assertive, and sociability.

Openness- People who like to learn new things, love adventures and enjoy new experiences. Openness includes traits like being insightful, broad-minded and imaginative and having a wide variety of interests.

Agreeableness- These types of people are friendly, cooperative, and compassionate. Traits include being kind, affectionate, sympathetic, forgiving, and soft-hearted.

Conscientiousness- People who have a high degree of conscientiousness are reliable and prompt. Including traits like: organised, disciplined, careful, and hard-working. (Pardey, 2007)

The results of the personality test of my leader after performing the questionnaire formed by John (2000).

Results

Closed-Minded

Open to New Experiences

Disorganized

Conscientious

Introverted

Extraverted

Disagreeable

Agreeable

Calm / Relaxed

Nervous / High-Strung

What aspects of personality does this tell about?

Openness to Experience

According to Daft (2008), high scorers tend to be original, creative, curious, imaginative, willing to consider new ideas; Low scorers tend to be conventional, down to earth, narrow interests, and uncreative.

So, my leader is relatively open to new experiences as he attained far above the ground score in the personality test questionnaire.

(percentile: 65)

Conscientiousness

Daft (2008), believes that, high scorers tend to be reliable, responsible, well-organized, self-disciplined, careful, and achievement oriented; Low scorers tend to be disorganized, undependable, and negligent.

Hence, the leader is very well-organized, and can be relied upon as he achieved higher score in the questionnaire.

(percentile: 97)

Extraversion

High scorers tend to be sociable, friendly, fun loving, outgoing, talkative and comfortable meeting and talking to new people; Low scorers tend to be introverted, reserved, inhibited, and quiet as stated by Daft (2008).

He has conquered 83 percentile thus, it can be said that he is extremely outgoing, social, and energetic for getting relatively high score.

(percentile: 83)

Agreeableness

Daft (2008), declares that, high scorers tend to be good natured, co-operative, trusting, understanding, sympathetic, forgiving; Low scorers tend to be critical, rude, harsh, and callous.

Therefore, he tends to consider the feelings of others which can be said by seeing the reasonably higher percentile score.

 (percentile: 79)

Neuroticism

High scorers tend to be nervous, high-strung, insecure, worrying; Low scorers tend to be calm, relaxed, secure, and well-adjusted said Daft (2008).

Consequently, he probably remains calm, even in tense situations as he gained a small percentile score in questionnaire.

(percentile: 1)

Strengths and weaknesses:

Strengths

It is intuitively appealing

It has a century of research to back it up

By focusing exclusively on leader it has been able to provide some deeper understanding on how Leader’s personality is related to leadership process

It has given some benchmarks for what we need to look for, if we want to be leaders.

Weakness

The failure to delimit a definitive list of leadership traits

It has failed to take situations into account

The approach has resulted in highly subjective determinations of the “most important” leadership traits

It can also be criticized for failing to look at traits in relationship to leadership outcomes

It is not a useful approach for training and development of leadership. (The reasoning here is that traits are relatively fixed psychological structures that limits the value of training. On the contrary, we could challenge this assumption concerning at least some traits changeable.)

http://www.abolrous.com/hazem/leadership.htm

Skills or Functional Approach

Katz (1955) three skills approach- The Skills Approach focuses on an individual’s skills and abilities that set them apart from others, indicating that these Human and Technical Skills can in fact be taught and developed as individual competencies. Following are the Katz’s three approaches:

Technical skills: (competencies in specialized area)

Human skills: (knowledge about and ability to work with people, involves the ability to interact effectively with people)

Conceptual skills: (ability to work with ideas and concept)

There are three levels of leaders: Lower level, Middle level and upper level leaders. Leaders need all three skills – but, skill ability/ importance changes based on level of management Technical and human skills are most significant factor for lower level leaders, for middle-level leaders the three skills are necessary and for upper level leaders conceptual and human skills are essential. My leader is upper level leader and by conducting the questionnaire of Northouse (2010, p.64) with my leader it can be said that, he has both conceptual and human skills which are required for the upper level leaders. But he lacks of the technical skills, as he is not skilled in operating day to day activities practically. The Skills Inventory helps to understand how leadership skills are measured, and what skills might be in the leader.

Strengths and weaknesses:

Style or Behaviour Approach

The style approach gives emphasis to the behaviour of the leader. This differentiates it from the trait approach, which emphasizes the personality characteristics of the leader, and the skills approach, which emphasizes the leader’s capabilities. The style approach focuses absolutely on what leaders do and how they act.

Blake & Mouton’s Leadership Grid (1964/1978) is designed to explain how leaders help organizations to reach their purposes. This leadership grid explains how leaders help organizations to reach their purposes through two factors/behavioural dimensions: Concern for production; how a leader is concerned with achieving organizational tasks, and Concern for people; how a leader attends to the members of the organization who are trying to achieve its goals. Using the axis to plot leadership ‘concern for production’ versus ‘concern for people’, Robert Blake and Jane Mouton defined the following five leadership styles: Country Club Management (1,9), Task Management (9,1), Impoverished Management (1,1), Middle-of-the-Road Management (5,5), and Team Management (9,9).

Mullins (2010) believes that, among the 5 styles of leadership the appropriate style is a combination of task and relationship behaviour. From my style questionnaire completed by my leader it can be seen that, he is more relationship oriented rather than task as he attained higher score in relationship. According to Gill (2006), when the leaders have heavy emphasis on task and job requirements and less emphasis on people he describes them as task management (9,1). When the leaders are low concern for task accomplishment coupled with high concern for interpersonal relationships then they known as Country Club Management (1,9), when the leaders are unconcerned with both task and interpersonal relationships they called Impoverished Management (1,1), when they are compromisers it is Middle of the Road Management (5,5), and when they have strong emphasis on both tasks and interpersonal relationships then it is Team Management (9,9).

As a result, among the 5 leadership styles of Blake and Mouton’s managerial grid my leader situate in the country club management style as he is more concern for people that means he is highly relationship oriented and little concern for task achievement. Mullins (2010), believes that, Task oriented leader offers directions for the actions of followers, sets goals for them, and describes their functions and how to carry out them. As, relationship oriented leader engages in two-way communication with followers, listens to them, and gives support and encouragement.

Strengths

Easily applied

Pros

Expanded research to include what leaders did and how they acted

Research has been validated by several studies and researchers

Task and relationship behaviors work together to form the core of the leadership process

Leaders can learn a lot about themselves by looking at their behaviors in the light of task and relationship dimensions

Weaknesses

Cons

Research has not shown the connection from leader’s styles to performance outcomes

Theory fails to find a universal style of leadership that could be effective in almost every situation

Theory implies that 9,9 is most effective leadership style however that may not be the case in all situations (Northouse,

Importance of Style approaches:

Situational Leadership

Hersey & Blanchard (2001)

Telling:

Selling:

Participating:

Delegating:

Leadership Approaches

Transactional Leadership: It refers to models which focus on exchanges that occur between leaders and followers. Transactional leadership requests to the self-interest of followers. It is based on a relationship of mutual dependence and an exchange process of: ‘I will give you this, if you do that’. (Mullins, 2010)

Transformational Leadership: It is the process a person engages with another to create a connection that raises the level of motivation and morality in both leader and follower. Transformational leader is attentive to the needs and motives of followers and tries to help followers reach their full potential. (Mullins, 2010)

Transformational leaders influence their followers by intellectually stimulating them to become aware of problems in their groups and organisation and view their problems from a new perspective – one consistent with the leader’s vision. A transformational leader causes followers to view problems differently and feel some degree of responsibility for helping to solve them.

Transformational leaders are able to identify the need for major organisational change, and then get people involved in making the change happen. These leaders know how to take action; get things done; initiate and complete projects effectively; and deliver results. Transformational leaders make things happen.

Distributed Leadership

The leaders who share knowledge within the organisation.

Impact of leadership/ Effectiveness of leadership

Conclusion

In general, research confirms the popular belief that leadership is indeed an important ingredient of individual, group and organisational effectiveness. Good leaders drive on individuals, groups and whole organisations to perform at a high level and achieve their goals. Conversely, a lack of effective leadership is often a contributing factor to uninspiring performance.

http://docsdrive.com/pdfs/medwelljournals/pjssci/2005/1065-1074.pdf

http://www.practical-management.com/Leadership-Development/Transformational-Leadership.html

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_73.htm

((He cannot transform employees to pursue organizational goals over self-interest.

I consider him as a leader because he has clear vision, integrity, inspires others, strong interpersonal skills, self-confidence, intelligence, influence others.

Leadership strengths of my leader: Risk taker, Friendly, Fast moving, Opportunist, and Adventurer. He has adoptive, supportive and participative behaviour, and adapts quickly to change, enjoys good relationship among subordinates, passionate about his work.

Weakest areas of him: He gives freedom to perform to his employees but they abuse it and for this reason he sometimes cannot lead people to right decision. He gives responsibility to his subordinates according to their willingness that negatively impacts on decision making process of the organisation.))