THE KEY ROLES OF LEADERSHIP
Leadership quality is one of the greatest virtues of management. Managers create the vision for their organizations and are responsible for implementing strategies to ensure that targets and objectives are met. A successful organization values the affirmative roles of its leaders and provides a work environment, where leaders can perfect their leadership skills. Leadership demands a lot of hard work, effort, training, education, willpower, integrity, persistence, responsibility, decisiveness, and above all, effective communication skills. When you lead a corporation, you accept all the implications of that trust (Hindery, 2005); therefore, the organizations should focus on leadership development through such techniques as on the job training, mentoring, teaching, and so forth.
Education, offered by colleges and universities, provide students with the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in their careers. Such formal education, in its current form, is not enough to provide the skills, attitudes, and behaviors considered to be essential for the leaders of the twenty-first century. The organization needs to devise a unique and focused training program for employees, keeping in view its current and future requirements (Mathews & Edwards, 2005). Such endeavors facilitate in developing visionary leaders.
Leaders have distinct visions, values, and standards, which allow them to manage their organization with a great level of comfort and confidence. It is not only obligatory for an organization to have a realistic vision, but it must be communicated effectively to all employees for purposes of achieving growth and profitability. A clear and well-defined vision gives employees confidence, by improving their perceptions of the organization. Cornelius (2004) described that vision as one that could help employees to feel better and stay well informed by keeping their eyes on bigger picture. Vividness and clarity of vision help leaders to modify the behaviors of their staff. One purpose of leadership is to influence the attitudes of employees by setting good examples demonstrated by their own actions. Most leaders are high achievers and they invariably set their targets high, and optimistically expect the best from themselves and their subordinates. In addition, leaders empower others to achieve their desired expectation levels by inculcating trust while simultaneously exuding firmness when enforcing rules and regulations.
Leaders are required to ensure that proper protocols are followed and they must evaluate the performance of employees against clearly defined expectations. In addition, leaders must provide their employees with immediate assistance when requested. Therefore, communication must be permitted to flow freely, absent of interruption. The success or failure of transforming the attitudes of employees is determined to be a byproduct of the leadership's style to gain support of the change from their employees (Appelbaum, Berke, Taylor, & Vazquez, 2008). Leadership style is the way to coach or work with the employees. Leaders employ various leadership styles such as directing, coaching, supporting, and delegating. The directing style of leadership provides specific direction with a close monitoring of the task accomplishment. Whereas, coaching continues to direct, closely monitor task accomplishments, and also explain decisions. Similarly, the supporting leadership style facilitates and supports people's efforts toward task accomplishment and shares responsibility for decision-making. Finally, the delegating style delegates responsibility for decision-making and problem solving to the employees. The leadership styles appropriate for various development levels (an adaptation of the Blanchard, Zigarmi, and Zigarmi model, 1985) are shown in Table 1 below:
Table 1: Leadership Styles Appropriate For Various Development Levels
DEVELOPMENT LEVEL APPROPRIATE LEADERSHIP STYLE
DIRECTOR DIRECTING
Some too Low Competence and High Directive and Low
High Commitment Supportive Behavior
Structure, organize, teach, and
supervise
COACH COACHING
Some too Low Competence and High Directive and High
Low Commitment Supportive Behavior
Direct and support
SUPPORTOR SUPPORTING
Moderate to High Competence and High Supportive and Low
Variable Commitment Directive Behavior
Praise, listen, and ask
DELEGATOR DELEGATING
High Competence and Low Supportive and Low Directive
Behavior,
High Commitment Turn over responsibility for
day-to-day operation
These four styles consist of different combinations of two basic leadership behaviors that a manager could use while influencing others, that is, directive and supportive behavior. Blanchard, Zigarmi, and Zigarmi (1985) mentioned words like structure, organize, teach, and supervise to define directive behavior and praise, listen, ask, explain, and facilitate for supportive behavior, as mentioned in Table 1.
THE KEY ROLES OF LEADERSHIP
Leadership quality is one of the greatest virtues of management. Managers create the vision for their organizations and are responsible for implementing strategies to ensure that targets and objectives are met. A successful organization values the affirmative roles of its leaders and provides a work environment, where leaders can perfect their leadership skills. Leadership demands a lot of hard work, effort, training, education, willpower, integrity, persistence, responsibility, decisiveness, and above all, effective communication skills. When you lead a corporation, you accept all the implications of that trust (Hindery, 2005); therefore, the organizations should focus on leadership development through such techniques as on the job training, mentoring, teaching, and so forth.
Education, offered by colleges and universities, provide students with the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in their careers. Such formal education, in its current form, is not enough to provide the skills, attitudes, and behaviors considered to be essential for the leaders of the twenty-first century. The organization needs to devise a unique and focused training program for employees, keeping in view its current and future requirements (Mathews & Edwards, 2005). Such endeavors facilitate in developing visionary leaders.
Leaders have distinct visions, values, and standards, which allow them to manage their organization with a great level of comfort and confidence. It is not only obligatory for an organization to have a realistic vision, but it must be communicated effectively to all employees for purposes of achieving growth and profitability. A clear and well-defined vision gives employees confidence, by improving their perceptions of the organization. Cornelius (2004) described that vision as one that could help employees to feel better and stay well informed by keeping their eyes on bigger picture. Vividness and clarity of vision help leaders to modify the behaviors of their staff. One purpose of leadership is to influence the attitudes of employees by setting good examples demonstrated by their own actions. Most leaders are high achievers and they invariably set their targets high, and optimistically expect the best from themselves and their subordinates. In addition, leaders empower others to achieve their desired expectation levels by inculcating trust while simultaneously exuding firmness when enforcing rules and regulations.
Leaders are required to ensure that proper protocols are followed and they must evaluate the performance of employees against clearly defined expectations. In addition, leaders must provide their employees with immediate assistance when requested. Therefore, communication must be permitted to flow freely, absent of interruption. The success or failure of transforming the attitudes of employees is determined to be a byproduct of the leadership's style to gain support of the change from their employees (Appelbaum, Berke, Taylor, & Vazquez, 2008). Leadership style is the way to coach or work with the employees. Leaders employ various leadership styles such as directing, coaching, supporting, and delegating. The directing style of leadership provides specific direction with a close monitoring of the task accomplishment. Whereas, coaching continues to direct, closely monitor task accomplishments, and also explain decisions. Similarly, the supporting leadership style facilitates and supports people's efforts toward task accomplishment and shares responsibility for decision-making. Finally, the delegating style delegates responsibility for decision-making and problem solving to the employees. The leadership styles appropriate for various development levels (an adaptation of the Blanchard, Zigarmi, and Zigarmi model, 1985) are shown in Table 1 below:
Table 1: Leadership Styles Appropriate For Various Development Levels
DEVELOPMENT LEVEL APPROPRIATE LEADERSHIP STYLE
DIRECTOR DIRECTING
Some too Low Competence and High Directive and Low
High Commitment Supportive Behavior
Structure, organize, teach, and
supervise
COACH COACHING
Some too Low Competence and High Directive and High
Low Commitment Supportive Behavior
Direct and support
SUPPORTOR SUPPORTING
Moderate to High Competence and High Supportive and Low
Variable Commitment Directive Behavior
Praise, listen, and ask
DELEGATOR DELEGATING
High Competence and Low Supportive and Low Directive
Behavior,
High Commitment Turn over responsibility for
day-to-day operation
These four styles consist of different combinations of two basic leadership behaviors that a manager could use while influencing others, that is, directive and supportive behavior. Blanchard, Zigarmi, and Zigarmi (1985) mentioned words like structure, organize, teach, and supervise to define directive behavior and praise, listen, ask, explain, and facilitate for supportive behavior, as mentioned in Table 1.
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