STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP SKILLS INDUS TOWERS LIMITED

Strategic leadership basically means using strategy in the management of workers. The main strategy usually employed in a strategic style of leadership is to motivate workers to take the initiative to improve their productive input into the company. Strategy involves thinking and planning. Leadership inspires others to take the appropriate action. Strategic leadership is a management model that trains and encourages employees to best prepare the company for the future.Strategic leaders are always looking ahead and analyzing the present in terms of preparation for what may be ahead for the business. Awareness is a big part of a strategic leadership style, but it must be followed up with well thought out action. Strategic leaders are adaptable and growth-oriented. They take responsibility for getting things done by training employees to think and act more effectively to achieve the best result possible for the company.

1.2. The Impact of Management and Leadership Styles on Strategic Decisions

Company Background

Aircel group is a mobile phone service provider in india. It offers both prepaid and postpaid GSM Cellular phone coverage throughout India. Aircel is a joint venture between Maxis Communication of Malaysia and Apollo Hospital Enterprise Ltd of India. UTSB has a 74% stake in Aircel and the remaining 26% is with Apollo Hospitals. It is India’s Seventh largest GSM mobile service provider with a subscriber base of over 51.83 million, as of January 31, 2011. It has a market share of 6.72% among the GSM operators in the country. As on date, Aircel is present in all 23 telecom circles. Aircel placed an actual dinghy lifeboat to a downtown billboard. A rope with a sign reading, “In case of emergency, cut rope”, held up the branded raft. July 15, 2009 the monsoon arrived with flooded streets and so did Aircel customer service. The dinghy was cut down and pedestrians were safely transported. What Aircel calls “Corporate Social Responsibility – A Solution”. The company was able to generate positive publicity and show consumers that they care.

Aircel is famous for innovative Pocket Internet cards for Free GPRS service for 1day/3days/7days/30days. Aircel become first to introduce Online service to subscribe and manage Dialer tunes. It is first in country to introduce SMS bank/Phone Book/Reminder/Talking SMS.

In the past several decades, management experts have undergone a revolution in how they define leadership and what their attitudes are toward it. They have gone from a very classical autocratic approach to a very creative, participative approach. Somewhere along the line, it was determined that not everything old was bad and not everything new was good. Rather, different styles were needed for different situations and each leader needed to know when to exhibit a particular approach.

1.3.Leadership Styles Can Be Adopted For Different Situations

A leadership style survey is a innovative thinking of starting about leadership. using leadership style in organization is a different way from leadership competencies of explaining leadership.

Leadership style is the essential quality in the organization, implementing plans, innovative thinking, initiative, motivating the team members

Three of the most basic leadership styles are:

–Autocratic

–Laissez-faire

–Democratic

Autocratic:

This is something one peson decision, the leader tells the employees what to do and what not to do, the employees don’t have any option they have to follow their leader instructions. The employees don’t have the liberal freedom by thinking of innovative or they cant take any initiatives in the work or growth for the organization.

This style can be followed only if the employees have all the sources in the hand, because its something the leader orders to the employees and they follow them, so if every information is available to the employees they can finish the work with in the time frame of the limit. Actually this type of style should not be used as it is a emergency case. If we need initiatives and commitment from our employees we have to motivate our employees, so we have to follow the participative style. In this autocratic style we have a gap leaders and employees this leads to improper communication and understanding.

Laissez – Faire:

In this style the leader gives the full liberty to the employees to take there own decision. But its not something final what the employee does, the employee has every rights to take the decision, However leader is responsible for whatever the decision is been made, The decision can be made where the employee should know about the in and out of the process and analyse the situation how the decision can be made, we cant make the blind decision, we can set the target to complete the task.

This is not a style we can blame the employees if things went wrong, its something we are trusting employees and having confidence of the people who work below us. We should not afraid of using this style, we can use it wisely, by following this style employees will gain confidence and they can grow as an future leader.

Democratic:

This is the current style used in the organization, this style leader and employee merge together and comes to the final decision. Because certain things can be assessed only by the employees and not by the leader. The work done by the employees cannot be predicted how to handle this issue in the hectic situation. So the leader has no other go to contact the employees for final decision. Its not something the employees can take the final decision, it should be authorized by the leader, then it may get in to final decision. This style shows the good understanding between the employees and the leader.

The employee recruited are highly skilled. Using this style will benefit the organization as well as it creates the good relation with the leader and employees.

2.1.The Selected theories of management and leadership have on organizational strategy:

Under the autocratic leadership style in the organisation, The leader has the power of centralized decision making in the organisation. This is common to the directive style from organizational situational leadership Autocratic managers do not entertain any idea or initiatives from coworkers. The autocratic management is helpful to the managers because it gives a recognition to the team and organisation as well as it motivates the manager. It helps in quick decision making, as he is the only to decide for the whole team and the manager keeps decision to himself until he feels that is necessary to be shared to the coworkers. The autocrat tells others what not to do and what to do but not necessarily “why” it might be an appropriate model for the organisation where the team has low experience and skills or It has to be used in the effective way in the organisation with modern work forces.

Participative or democratic style

The democratic leadership style advantage decision making by the group as shown, such as first leader will set up the meeting with the group and he asks for the suggestions then he will give instructions to the group members. This style is more helpful for the managers so that the group member will be cooperative to the managers, and they may be motivated effectively and positively by the managers. The decision of the democratic leader is not unilateral as with the autocrat, because generally they used to discuss with group members and they will get a final idea with the group, and finally the manager will go for suggestion and ideas so that all the group members will participate by them. Democratic is not something is put to the vote it is the manager involves in to the participation of the group of members and make decision consulting with the group member and he has every right to take the own decision and cascade the final decision to the team members. If some one could not follow or discuss with the team members then it may be a weak leadership.

Free rein style or Laissez-faire

A free-rein leader does not lead, leaves the group freely entirely on its own as shown; such as leader allows maximum liberal freedom to the group members, i.e they have given a liberal freedom and suggestions in choosing their own policies and procedure methods.

2.2.Leadership Stretegy Supports organizational direction:

Its to remember the alternative situations for alternative leadership styles in the organisation. In the emergency time we have only little time only and where as in designated authority has more experience in the organisation or the rest of the whole team if they follow the autocratic leadership that would be more effective. In the case of highly motivated and designated team with a knowledge level of expertise, a more democratic or laissez – faire style may be much more effective.

When I complete the strategic leadership style survey I should remember that the leadership style has adopted and that would be the most effective and achieves the objective of the whole while balancing the interest of members of individuals.

Also this leadership style survey is provided the answer but its not something we got the right answers, but I have the opportunities to ask the right knowledge questions in a right time about the leadership style at present and in the future cases.

3.1. Appropriate Method to review current leadership requirements:

Jun Liu Business School, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China Xiaoyu Liu School of Labor Relations & Human Resources, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China Abstract Leadership research has gone through several phases of development in the past 80 years or so. The paper identifies the major theories in each phase, and investigates the strengths and weaknesses of the research. Among those theories, transformational/charismatic leadership and leader-member exchange (LMX) are heavily discussed. The paper also discusses the future trend of research in leadership areas. Keywords: Review, Transformational Leadership, LMX Leadership can be defined as a process that an individual influences a group of individuals to implement strategies and achieve the collective goals (Yukl, 2002). Research in the area seeks to find out what types of leaders

are likely to be successful and what factors determine leadership effectiveness. Generally, leadership research has gone though four paradigms: trait approach, behavioral approach, situational approach, and the contemporary theories of leadership. The paradigms of leadership theories shift with the progress from static to dynamic view of leadership with the trait and behavioral theories reflecting a personal, the situational theories an interpersonal, and the contemporary theories a relational approach to conceptualizing leadership. That is to say leadership has been examined as intrapersonal competencies, interpersonal processes, and relational dynamics. More specifically, I review those approaches, their strengths and weaknesses as followed: The trait approach The trait theories assumed that leaders were born, not made. In the literature, Stogdill (1948, 1974) completed two comprehensive reviews by synthesizing more than 200 studies of the trait approach. His two surveys identified a group…

3.2.plan for the development of future situations requiring leadership

-poor management performance

-low  employee morale

-unstable  organization structure

-unsustainable business practices

-high  employee turnover

-unable to  manage diversity

-Poor  Measured organizational performance improvement

-Decreased quality of management

-Poor  Healthy organizational climate-

-Lower  morale

-Increased  labor  turnover

-Lack Organizational and personal growth

-Poor teamwork

-Lack  of  Retention strategies-talent leaving  the organization.

-chronic industrial relations problems 

-no means of resolving employee grievances 

-increasing  employee turnover 

-inter-group conflicts 

-dissatisfaction with pay and conditions 

-unclear job roles 

-no clear performance measures 

-poor recruitment standards / practices 

-no management development programs 

-no induction training for new employees 

-critical skill shortages 

-inter-departmental conflict 

-lack  of  sufficient skills / power bases in the organization.

-lack  of  appropriate leadership skills within the organization? 

-lack  organization structure flexibilty  in the face of changing demands.

– staff have no clear roles and responsibilities? 

-lack  of  procedures and management practices to facilitate the accomplishment of tasks.

-lack  of   staff  potential spotting   and development   for the future.

-lack  of  staff encouragement  to perform well through the giving of recognition, feedback, etc.

-staff  do no  know what their expected performance standards are. 

-organization’s systems  do not encourage effective performance among your staff.

-systems are  not  consistent across the organization.

-there are  no clear rewards for effective performance within the  work group. 

4.1. Developing leadership skills for a specific requirements

Leadership has been described as the “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task.” 

Alan Keith of Genentech states that, “Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen.”

According to Ken “SKC” Ogbonnia, “effective leadership is the ability to successfully integrate and maximize available resources within the internal and external environment for the attainment of organizational or societal goals.”

The above characteristics of being leaders; they are controlling and directing day to day business, they support the staff, they work as chefs and waiters and they try to achieve the best profit they can.

4.2. Useful methods to plan the developing of leadership skills

Basic Skills in:

Solving the problem and Making the decision

Strategic Planning

Delegation of work

Internal Communications with the team

Meeting Management with the mentor

Managing Yourself with in the organisation