Leadership Challenges and Practices - Essay Example

Client’s 19 March Leadership is a very important skill which is not possessed by all; hardly very few people are blessed with thisskill. Being a leader is not easy; it poses many challenges and the person who overcomes these challenges make a successful leader. A leader instills confidence and provides motivation to the employees, motivation is an extremely important factor and motivation can easily transform an employee within no time, ones the transformation of the employee takes place, the goals of the company would become much easier to achieve. This is why motivation is considered to be one of the most important factors and all most all the companies look for new methods to motivate the employees and to bring out the best out of them. This paper will focus upon the different leadership behaviors and the best leadership behavior which should be adopted to meet the company’s goals. Good leaders are very hard to find, good leaders know how to get the best out of others and good leaders are those who keep others motivated and focused at all times. These qualities are very hard to get in an individual but the most successful leaders are all well equipped with these great qualities. “Jon Howell in an interview with Sun-News (January 29, 2001: 7) states "A leaders behavior must match the situation, and the news of his or her followers." And his summary is very appropriate here: Leader effectiveness is determined by what people do, not by some inherent personal characteristic... Im not saying personal characteristics dont help; they certainly do. But leaders have to adapt their behavioral styles to fit the situations in which they find themselves" (p. 7).  Howell says the good news is most people can learn leader behaviors and learn to recognize situations in which certain behaviors are most important.  Howell and Costley (2001) argue for the match of leader behavior, leader traits and characteristics, follower characteristics, and the situation at hand.  And there are seven leader types, fit for various behavioral processes and situations in my read of their leader theory: 1. Supportive Leaders (those considerate, people oriented leaders). 2. Directive Leaders (fit for repetitive or work spread between sites and for cultures such as Mexico that prefer status well defined. 3. Participative Leaders such as Dwight Eisenhower who could tame the Primadonna generals and politicians of WWII, and by careful listening to many voices craft an alliance.  4. Reward and punishment leaders (transactional). 5. Charismatic (heroic) leaders 6. Boundary spanning (network) leaders 7. Leaders who build and forge social exchange (also networkers).  And now we have left the obsession with one best style of leadership. There is no universal style. There is as I have suggested, a dimension of behaviors running between Transactional and Transformational. The behavior school to this point is fixated on the transactional. To find transformational we must sail to the Isle of Situation.” ( Howell and Costley). The same principles of Howell and Costley are elucidates in the paper. Core leadership behaviors There are mainly five major behavior patterns namely, supportive behavior, directive behavior, participative behavior, reward and punishment behavior and charismatic behavior. Every behavior pattern has its own pros and cons. But the behavior pattern which works out the best is undoubtedly reward and punishment behavior. In this the terms and conditions are made very clear to the employees, any breach of these terms and conditions result in punishment, on the other hand if the employee performs well, he/she is rewarded suitably for his/her work. This is probably the best behavior pattern, simply because everything is made crystal clear to the employees. The harder the employee works more will be his/her chances of getting rewarded. This pattern also has some risks involved like if an employee is punished for some mistake, the employee may leave the organization or will keep underperforming for the organization but the biggest positive of this behavior pattern is that if an employee is rewarded that will surely boost the confidence of that employee and with more confidence the employee will be motivated to surpass the expectations of the leader ones more and this whole process will go on. Reward works like a stimulus and makes the employee work harder, the appreciation shown by the leader to the employee becomes a huge positive for the employee and gives the employee motivation of the highest order. The main goal of any leadership behavior is to make sure that the company achieves its goals and reward and punishment behavior acts very effectively in making sure the same, this is exactly why this type of behavior is the most appropriate and suitable in all situations. Unsuitable behavior pattern Directive leadership behavior is not preferred in today’s world. This type of behavior has very less pros and has many cons this is the only reason why it is unsuitable in today’ world. Directive leadership behavior involves many things, as the name suggests, it’s all about giving directions to the employees. The main role of the leader following this type of leadership behavior is to pass directions to the employees. This involves telling the employees what to do and even how to do, not only the leader tells the employees what to do and how to do, but also where to do and when to do. The most unsuitable thing about this behavior is that involves keeping a close look on the employees which can sometimes yield undesirable results. Supervising the performance of the employees is also one of the main roles of directive leadership. Directive leadership restricts getting the best out of the employees; it also restricts their growth by not allowing them to use their creativity. If an employee is not allowed to use his/her creativity, he/she can never develop and directive leadership hampers the growth of the employees. Impatience is one of the biggest limitations of directive leadership, this is quite natural because directive leadership is full throttle and aims at achieving the goals of the organization. For instance, a leader passes instructions and the employee fails to understand the same, this type of situation becomes worse because the leader gets impatient and may start shouting at the employee or may even react very violently because of impatience. Another major drawback of directive leadership is that it can sometimes turn out to be insensitive to others, for instance even if an employee is sick and cannot work for long hours, the leader would still want him/her to work for long hours and this is when the leader becomes insensitive to the need of the employees. So this is also a very big drawback which can affect the employees thinking and can discourage him/her to work for the betterment of the organization. Another major drawback and one of the biggest drawbacks is that the communication which takes place in directive leadership is just one way and the employees cannot even clear their doubts, this can create many problems and impatience is also created because of this. The same concept can be understood with the help of an example, if a leader tells the passes the instructions which are partially clear and the employees come back to the leader realizing that the instructions were half clear at a later stage, this situation can create a lot of trouble because the communication is just one way, had the communication been two way, this problem would have never cropped up and because of the same impatience of the leader also takes its toll on the employees. One way communication is never good, employees also should be given a chance to speak, so that the leader can get to know the thinking and the mindset of the employees and in directive leadership this fails to take place making it the most unsuitable leadership behavior. Another big problem with this behavior is that the leader can get irritated when he/she feels that the things are not going according to plan, for instance, if an employee is slow when it comes to working but is a highly skillful person, the leader may get irritated by the activities of the employee and the employee may even quit the organization, this is a very big problem which comes up when a leader follows directive behavior. Had this type of leadership taught the leaders to be patient with the employees then this type of leadership behavior would definitely have been better than what it is now. All these drawbacks make directive leadership behavior the most unsuitable. Leader style “Howell said, Dwight Eisenhower was a superb example of "participative leadership," especially in his role as supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II. Eisenhower treated the other Allied leaders with patience, gave each a chance to state his point of view fully and was able to convince his counterparts he approached problems objectively. As a result, he succeeded in uniting the other commanders -- several of whom were flamboyant, egotistical men unused to sharing decisions -- to reach a common goal.” (NMSU) Eisenhower is a classic example of a leader, he handled everything with ease and made sure he reached his goals, this is how a leader should be. Patience is the key in leadership, had Eisenhower not shown patience, he would not have been as successful as he was. Patience is the key for any leader and without patience it is highly improbable for a leader to be successful. The behavior pattern followed by Eisenhower was participative behavior, in this the leader gets actively involved in the thick of things, the leader sets example in front of the other people and provides motivation of the highest order. Some leaders do not opt this type of leadership thinking that if they involve in themselves in the activities which will also have the employees, it would give an impression that they are weak, so to project themselves strong some leaders never choose participative leadership behavior, but Eisenhower never thought about the negatives of participative leadership and set an example in front of all the leaders of today. Ethical Problems “Many executives and business thinkers believe that ethical leadership is simply a matter of leaders having good character. By having “the right values” or being a person of “strong character,” the ethical leader can set the example for others and withstand any temptations that may occur along the way. Without denying the importance of good character and the right values, the reality of ethical leadership is far more complex and the stakes are much higher.” (Darden) There are ethical problems which the leaders face; these problems arise when the employees forget the ethics which should never be forgotten, ethics in other words are values which an employee is expected to stick too in any circumstance. In financial institutions ethical problems arise because the employees may involve themselves in various scams and other undesirable activities, solely done for the purpose of money. Such problems can be treated by having a code of ethics, one ethical standard should be followed by everyone and there should not be double standards, meaning that the code of ethics should not treat employees of different position unequally, all the people working under the leader should be treated equally and the code of ethics should be followed. All these things can be done by a leader if he/she consciously involves in reflection, in the sense that looking back at ethical issues and keenly finding a way out to deal with the same. It is highly important that the people stick to their morals in order to avoid any ethical problems, a leader can make sure that this happens by reflecting upon the ethical issues and also by talking to the employees. References Developing Ethical leadership, In Darden. Virginia. Org. Retrieved from: Howell, JP, Costley, DL 2000. Understanding behaviors for effective leadership NMSU Professors. In nmsu.edu. Retrieved from: Read More