Management and Leadership Development - Essay Example

?Management and leadership development Since the past two decade, management development has become a priority for improving the functions of an organization. It is an attempt to enhance managerial effectiveness through a planned and deliberate learning process (Woodall and Winstanley, 1998, p.45). Leadership development in management is a significantly important component. Transformational, adaptive, and enabling leadership are emphasized as keys to effective leadership in the changing business environment (Woodall and Winstanley, 1998, p.46). This paper is aimed at providing a literature review on management and leadership development. In accordance with the traditional concepts of a leader, he/she is the one with a forceful attitude, who allocates clear agenda and expects his subordinates or followers to carry out and follow his/her commands without imposing any questions. However, in the fast changing commercial environment of the present day, with economic uncertainty ascertaining additional pressure, a single style of leadership does not efficiently match in every situation. Leaders of the present situation should be very much willing to adapt themselves to the various complex situations and simultaneously modify their various techniques and strategies. The truly charismatic leaders use their exquisite personality to charm over their followers and captivate the listeners. This particular form of ability to be able to inspire a strong feeling of attraction is liable to both positive and negative effects. Charismatic leaders are essentially good narrators and draw upon shared imagery to create a feeling of common purpose among its followers. The current American president, Barrack Obama, thoroughly demonstrated this particular phenomenon during his election campaign. Amongst all, one American citizen pointed out that the president’s most efficient talent was his natural ability to communicate difficult ideas comprehensively to his followers, rather than using the much popular yet complicated political words like other ministers practices vividly (The changing face of leadership, n.d., p. 22). Mabey and Lees (2007) in their research proposed that, management development is a potent and high profile human resource activity, involving some of the organizations key players and attracting high investment both in terms of corporate budgets and expectations. For this reason alone, management development requires sustained scrutiny. In the bureaucratized organization, the managers had responsibility for well defined roles such as planning, budgeting, controlling, staffing, and problem solving. In the present condition, very few organizations fit to this description of predictability. The decreasing numbers employed in workplaces, and the decline in the number covered by system of consultation and negotiation, have shifted the manager’s power base from positional to personal (Mabey, Lees, 2007, pp.3-4). According to Cornish, transitions and modification in leaderships are fundamental moments in the life span of an organization, and paying adequate attention to them benefits the business organization. However, inspite of having more than sufficient evidence in support to their creation, almost less than 30 percent of the freshly hired employees are devoid of any kind of integration plan. For the women executives who are freshly appointed, the upcoming challenge is much greater. For example in the USA, where 46 percent of the working people are of feminine gender, mere 3 to 5 percent have made it to the upper level of the management in an organization in their corporate life. Even in this modern world, women are still vulnerable to different organizational barriers towards advancement, which includes, very few role models to whom they can look up to, excluding women from important and essential networks, gender stereotypes and the unavoidable problem of dual role of a woman, i.e. in her corporate life and family life. But this dismal situation can be averted by assigning sponsors to fast track women, encouraging feminine employees to develop potential networks and mentors, release them of the burden of family life, and work life by creating a suitable environment and actualizing the additional pressure put on women who have families. This is for the fact that a woman is often found catering essential needs that are beneficiary for both female and male employees. As an individual, a woman can face tough scrutiny and a narrower band of permissible management styles, a tender tactical error, or mismanagement is sufficient enough to negatively affect the confidence of a woman from which it is considerably tough to recover. The possible measure should be adapted to enhance the chance of a woman to succeed in an organization, while minimizing risk in this critical period by providing them encouragement to properly allocate their most precious commodity, time (Cornish, 2007, pp.18-19). Gold, Thorpe and Mumford (2010) in their book addressed the fact that, over the years, ‘leadership’ has been a significant term and has marked its appearance in a significant number of books, all offering insights into how managers and very often those carrying the title of leader can develop themselves and their organization in the context of rapid change and globalization. There also has been a significant growth in the leadership centres that help in improving the leadership skills of particular groups of professionals. Management literature has prominently distinguished management from leadership, acknowledging a difference between aspects of an organization that might be said to be in steady state or routine, and aspects of an organization that might be said to be in steady state or routine. When leadership is defined in relation to management, it is leadership that is casted as the creative function, with management seen as relating more to day to day work. Management in the past was primarily associated with those who manage the factors of production on behalf of owners and shareholders. While leadership is significantly in contrast with management, has a longer pedigree, and is the term traditionally used in the management of professionals. With the increase in knowledge in the new economy, and a significant rise in professional employment, the term ‘leadership’ has become dominant when discussing the way powerful, self directing and knowledgeable workers might be ‘managed’ (Gold, Thorpe and Mumford , 2010, pp.3-4). Nienaber in his editorial proposed that, in the past years, management was emphasized only from the perspective of the general manager of an organization, and it specifically addressed the task he/she had to perform to ensure the success of the business entity. In the later years, the responsibilities of command and co-ordination was fused together which gave birth to the phenomenon of ‘leadership’. Leadership is a separate and unique function in the firm. Management is being symbolized as uninspiring and tactical by nature that cannot assure the success of the organization management is portrayed as mundane, uninspiring, and tactical by nature, and cannot guarantee the success of the business. It is prominently proposed that leadership be should be given preference at the cost of management (Nienaber, n.d., p.1). In the past two decades we have evidenced prolific change in the field of leadership, developments in the methods of leadership and the significance of a leader’s emotional resonance with others. It is being recognized that development in leadership involves much more than just developing individual leaders. Leadership is defined not as what the leader does but rather it is the process that engenders and is the result of relationships—relationships that focus on the interactions of both leaders and collaborators instead of focusing on only the competencies of the leaders. Development in leadership in the present era signifies performance support and application of skills in the real world, through methods like training programs, coaching and mentoring action, and developmental assignments. Development emphasizes on providing people with significant opportunities to learn from their work, instead of taking them away from their work for learning. Established organizations, consider leadership as an essential component of jobs at all levels and are dedicated to creating leaders throughout their organization. In certain organizations, there are CEO’s who model leadership development through a strong commitment to teach leaders internally. Considering an example of Carly Fiorina at Hewlett Packard, she teaches at 12 leading business result classes (Hernez-Broome and Hughes, n.d., p.27). According to Mcgurk (2011), public service organizations have made substantial investments in management and leadership development at all level of management in recent years as an effort to the part of modernizing the organization. Management and leadership development has a significant contribution to strategic organizational change, but better equipment and methods are required to be practiced in order to realise the precise nature of its effect and its limitations. Management and leadership development’s efficiency is found to be reliant upon the type of organization and its directional change, as public service organizations exhibit considerable organisational diversity. Organisations on the way of enhancing their flexibility, tend to delegate more sets of responsibilities to the middle and front-line managers, development and learning priorities develop due to such delegations that leads organizations to invest in activities of management and leadership development. Due to the diversity of managerial work within organisations, the Middle managers represent an essential set of workers in an organisation that performs necessary duties between strategic and front-line management (McGruk, 2011, p.2). Kutz (2004), in his research, emphasized the fact that, leadership development is a widely practiced topic among the business professionals and the educators. Leadership is a phenomenon very much essential to everybody and it remains confusing and vague. Enhancing the allied health care profession and the members of the allied health care community is proving to be significantly difficult to achieve, due to the lack of proper leadership skills. opinions on leadership is in abundance, the literature is enriched with opinions and findings about defining leadership, and also the process in which it is instructed, identified, and evaluated. It is essential to make the leadership development in allied healthcare to be made intentional. Intentional leadership assumes the fact that there is ability in every individual to lead, atleast circumstantially, and hence can be significantly laid down its simplest form as a set of attitudes, behaviours, characteristics, and desires that successful leaders often inhibits. Proper leadership creates vision for the organization (Kutz, 2004, pp.1-2). Leadership is presumed to be everything and nothing. It is termed ‘everything’ for the fact that it is evident in almost everywhere in the organization, and not just at the premier level. It is everything as it is implicated in all of our works; it is not sacred. Every individual behavior has the implications of leadership. Leadership emerges as a function of participation and interaction as it is thoroughly based on action. It is termed as ‘nothing’ for the fact that it seems impossible to define the phenomenon of leadership. Organizations believe in the importance of leadership. In order to enhance the quality of the next generation of leaders, a substantial program must be customized to meet the organizations essential needs. The programs may be designed and delivered within the company or by an external means such as a university or consulting firm. These programs are more favorably received if they are delivered by someone within the company with a vivid reputation for success. This particular path is practiced by PepsiCo CEO Roger Enrico, who uses above 100 days a year in carrying out workshops for senior executives (Day and Halpin, 2001, p.7). Popper (2005) proposed in his research article that, leadership is an assimilation of acquired and genetic factors and has several implications for large organizations that are paving the path to create systematic processes of leadership development. An essential point in leadership development is the need to identify people who have the potential to be future leaders. The process should also relate to the prime question of motivation to lead. For example the people who sincerely have the potential to be pilots but have no desire to be so, similarly there are people who have the potential to be leaders but they do not desire of the same. Acording to the learning theory identified by Skinner (1989) is based on the “law of effect”, past results affect the behaviour of an individual. If a person is rewarded for a particular behavior in the past, then he/she will repeat the same in the future. In this process efficient and fruitful behaviour only appear frequently while the other less effective behaviour disappears with time (Popper, 2005, pp.66-67). Leadership is not just limited to the leaders anymore. Premier companies are beginning to realize that sustaining good performances requires the complete performance by the whole firm. It cannot be achieved just by developing a few numbers of leaders. Organizations have to essentially procure way to cascade leadership responsibilities from senior management to all significant levels in an organization. Some organization follows the traditional classroom based training method for their development. in these cases the participant are due to attend an offsite program and receive prominent instruction on what are the prime characteristics for being a leader in their organization, why these characteristics are so essential, and finally how an individual will adapt to such himself/herself to such desired model (Goldsmith and Morgan, n.d., pp-71-72). Conclusion: The literature review discussed above has already focused on the difference between management and leadership and the importance of the later in topical times. The literature has not clearly defined whether management or leadership is more effective in managing organizational change and this gap can be filled by the subsequent research while focusing upon UK’s retail sector. References: 1. Cornish, L. (2007), "Women leaders: how to help them “hit the ground running”", Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol.21, No.1, pp.18-20 2. Day, D. V. and Halpin, S. M. (2001), Leadership Development: A Review of Industry Best Practices, U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, available at: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/army/tr1111.pdf (accessed on March 16, 2012) 3. Gold, j. et al. (2010), Handbook of leadership and management development, UK: Gower Publishing Ltd. 4. Goldsmith, M. and Morgan, H, (n.d.), Leadership Is a Contact Sport The “Follow-up Factor” in Management Development, available at: http://www.marshallgoldsmithlibrary.com/docs/articles/LeaderContactSport.pdf (accessed on March 16, 2012) 5. Hernez-Broome, G and Hughes, R. L. (n.d.), Leadership Development: Past, Present, and Future, HUMAN RESOURCE PLANNING, available at: http://www.ccl.org/leadership/pdf/research/cclLeadershipDevelopment.pdf (accessed on March 16, 2012) 6. Kutz, M. R. (2004), Necessity of Leadership Development in Allied Health Education Programs, The Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practice, Vol.2, No.2, available at: http://ijahsp.nova.edu/articles/Vol2num2/pdf/Kutz.pdf (accessed on March 16, 2012) 7. Mabey, C. and Lees, T. F. (2007), Management and Leadership Development, UK: SAGE Publications Ltd 8. McGruk, P. (2011), The contingent role of management and leadership development in public service organisations, Paper for EGPA 2011, Bucharest, available at: http://soc.kuleuven.be/io/egpa/HRM/bucharest/McGurk2011.pdf (accessed on March 16, 2012) 9. Nienaber, H. 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