Leadership and Managing Human Capital - Essay Example

Leadership and Managing Human Capital Leadership and Managing Human Capital Introduction With the collapse of Enron and other corporate giants over the last decade, companies became increasingly aware of the importance of business ethics and managerial accountability. Today companies give particular focus to the formation and implementation of potential corporate governance principles. As a result, management complexity has doubled over the last few years. In the current business environment, leaders/managers struggle to deal with different areas of management, specifically human resources management. Traditionally, managers adopt various management and leadership styles to better interact with their subordinates and hence to improve employee productivity and organizational performance thereby. It must be noted that there is no single best leadership style that suits all leaders or organizations. Therefore, managers need to identify the leadership style that would fit them best in terms of their strengths and weaknesses and the nature of the organization. In order to evaluate the various roles and responsibilities of leaders and to assess the influence of leaders on the overall organizational performance, this paper will critically analyze six different scholarly articles talking about leadership models and managing human capital. In this paper, my personal leadership style and its relevance in the network and IT field (my area of work) will be scrutinized. Article reviews and analysis Learning charisma is an article written by John Antonakis, Marika Fenley and Sue Liechti (2012). According to the authors, charisma is based on values and feelings. The concept of charisma represents an ability a leader must develop to persuade others, to promote personal and moral credibility, and to enhance followers’ emotions and passions. The authors particularly argue that charisma can be an invaluable asset in any worksite environment. Charismatic leaders can help their followers to understand, connect, compare, contrast, and remember a message. Undoubtedly, this mental process would greatly assist people to evaluate a message critically and to perform their tasks efficiently. In addition, charismatic leaders specifically foster engagement because they find it the best way to keep their followers active and excited. Integrity, authority, and passion are some of the major characteristics of charismatic leaders. Charismatic leaders not only give suggestions to their audience but also put all those ideals into practice in their daily life. What your leader expects of you and what you should expect in return is a research paper prepared by Larry Bossidy. In the paper, Bossidy (2007) clearly points out numerous qualities of a good leader. In the opinion of Bossidy, active involvement is the major quality that makes a leader successful in his operations. When a leader actively gets involved in the firm’s mission and goals, the employer does not need to take huge efforts to manage the business. Such a leader will proactively respond to various situations. Bossidy reflects that active involvement would assist leaders to get a feeling that they are an important part of the organization. In addition, an employer always wants his leaders/managers to generate ground-breaking ideas because idea generation has become a key factor influencing the competitiveness of the modern business. According to the author, some other qualities an employer would expect from his leaders include collaboration skill, willingness to lead initiatives, development of new leaders, and better anticipation. A leader has to express honesty and candor so as to make the organization’s activities transparent. Managing oneself is the work done by Peter F. Drucker (1999). The author particularly points that today companies do not pay much attention to managing their employees’ careers and therefore the individuals themselves are to develop their career. In the modern world, people have unprecedented opportunities and they can reach the top of their chosen profession regardless of their current background. For this, individuals must be willing to carry out their responsibilities timely and effectively. The author assumes that an individual may have an average work span of 50 years in his life. For this period, an individual has to set clear goals and determine the time to change the course and to get engaged. In order to plan his long term career well, an individual must obtain a deep understanding of himself. Drucker (1999) says that the individual should not only explore what his strengths and weaknesses are but also needs to learn how he can work with others, what his values are, and where he can excel. However, it is particularly important for individuals to operate from their strengths in order to achieve true excellence in the long term. Managing your boss is a scholarly article written by John J. Gabarro and John P. Kotter. According to the authors, the phrase ‘managing your boss’ implies “the process of consciously working with your superior to obtain the best possible results for you, your boss, and the company” (Gabarro && Kotter, 2005). They indicate that if an individual closely works with his superior on the basis of mutual respect and understanding, both the individual and his superior can be effective in their operations. It is vital for employees to understand and appreciate their boss’s goals and pressures. If employees are not aware of their boss’ goals and objectives, they will be operating in blindness and the possibility for the accomplishment of the firm’s long term goals will be minimal. The authors require employees to think that bosses/managers are also human beings and hence they are imperfect and also subject to mistakes. The writers point out that most of the managers do not actually spell out what their expectations are. Under such circumstances, it is the duty of subordinates to find out what their bosses actually expect from them. Workforce diversity management: Biggest challenge for 21st century managers is the research work submitted by Parul Deshwal and Supriya Choudhary (2012). As the title indicates, this article particularly discusses workforce diversity and measures to manage this challenge. The authors claim that workforce diversity is the biggest challenge as well as the opportunity for the 21st century managers. In order to keep the workforce productive, managers must pay specific attention to diversity in the workplace. Deshwal and Choudhary (2012) opine that diversity management is a better tool to deal with workforce diversity in organizations. A well structured diversity management policy can positively influence communication among employees and the organization’s overall productivity. In their article, the authors clearly illustrate the connection between workforce diversity and organizational performance. They found that diversity is either positively linked to performance or there is no notable connection between diversity and performance. However, managers have an inevitable role to play in managing a worksite containing diverse workforce. Finally, Toward a theory of managing organizational conflict, the article written by M. Afzalur Rahim (2002), says that management of organizational conflict involves two key components such as diagnosis and intervention. Diagnosis is required to assess whether there is a need for intervention and the type of intervention needed. Leaders use an array of intervention strategies to resolve organizational conflicts and to improve relations between employees and departments. The authors indicate that timely identification and intervention of organizational conflicts are necessary to improve the overall performance of the organization. The leader must be unbiased while dealing with organizational conflicts. In addition, the leader should be thoughtful in choosing the type of intervention strategy to be executed. In short, only skilled and efficient leaders can resolve organizational conflicts successfully. Analysis All the articles reviewed above talk about leadership and managing human capital. It is identified that charismatic leadership is a relatively new management approach to human capital and it appears very similar to transformational leadership style, in which the leader instills high levels of enthusiasm and motivation in his audience. Evidently, charismatic leadership is very energetic and effective leadership style to drive others forward. However, it seems that charismatic leaders tend to believe more in their skills and capabilities than in the team strength. From the perspective of followers, success is greatly connected to the presence of the charismatic leader. This issue may lead to the collapse of the project or even an entire organization if the leaders’ assumptions go wrong or leaders leave the firm. Therefore, in order to meet the long-term goals of the organization, the charismatic leader needs to demonstrate greater responsibility and long term commitment to the concern. Evidently, every employer expects active involvement and terrific idea generation from their managers. In the modern business environment, product/service innovation is particularly important to survive stiff market competition and hence to enhance long term sustainability. For instance, Apple’s terrific product and technological innovations have significantly benefited the corporation to dominate the industries in which it has an interest. Therefore, leaders must sincerely involve in the overall operations of the firm and try to perceive and seize opportunities from surroundings that others do not see. Likewise, leaders have to effectively collaborate with their teammates to achieve the shared vision of the organization. From an employer perspective, the organization has to continue its operations for long years successfully. Therefore, employers need their managers to develop new potential leaderships for the future from the current workforce. For this, the managers should attain a better understanding of the abilities and weaknesses of their subordinates individually. Furthermore, they have to maintain a personal relationship with their followers because such a positive worksite relation would assist leaders to guide their audience effectively. When the manager is in close touch with his followers, he can timely identify and resolve issues like worksite conflicts, which could be a potential growth impediment to business houses. In addition, effective involvement and collaboration is specifically vital for leaders to address the sensitive issue of workforce diversity. It is clear that today workforce is becoming increasing diverse due to globalization pressures and liberalized immigration policies. A diverse workforce is very prone to problems including language difficulties, cultural and emotional conflicts, and poor collaboration. In this context, the leader can promote worksite relations and improve organizational performance only if he has significant influence on his followers. Although ‘managing oneself’ is a better approach to promote long term career development, today’s employees largely expect career development opportunities from their company. Therefore, today employees are more interested to work for companies that foster employee creativity and employee participation. The concept of ‘managing your boss’ presented by Gabarro and Kotter (2005) is important for today’s business managers because the level of uncertainty in the current business environment is extremely high. Although there are a wide variety of leadership styles, I would personally suggest democratic or participative leadership style for managers working in the IT field. I have been working in the network and IT field for the last 4 years. For the last two years, I have been delegated the responsibility to lead a team of 10 people. To manage my followers effectively and to meet goals time-oriented, I preferred the democratic leadership style. According to some scholars, “the democratic leadership style is the pattern of leader behavior that emphasizes allowing others to have a voice in determining actions the leader takes” (Certo, Kaufmann, & Husted, 1990, p.208). Although the final decision is made by the leader under the democratic leadership approach, he allows his followers to contribute to the decision making process. Through this practice, employees obtain a feeling that they constitute a key part to the top management and this feeling in turn would promote employee satisfaction. Evidently, employee satisfaction would indirectly enhance employee motivation, which is a key factor influencing organizational performance. It is identified that employee participation allows a leader to help his teammates develop various skills. For instance, when a leader allows his subordinates to involve in the decision making process, his teammates’ ability to assess situations and to suggest best possible recommendations is developed. Ultimately, participative leadership style is better to find out and develop new leaders for the future. In the words of Mayer (2007), under the democratic leadership strategy, team members increase their self-confidence and feel that they are in control of their own destiny. For instance, if they want a job promotion, they will work hard until they achieve that aspiration. The author also indicates that this approach can motivate followers better than what a financial reward can do (p.8). In addition, the team members obtain an extensive exposure to long term career development opportunities under this management style. Therefore, the participative leadership approach assists employees to develop their own career. From my two years’ experience as a leader, I think that democratic leadership style is very effective to minimize employee resistance to change. Since employees are given the opportunity to take part in the management decision making process, they would consider the planned change as a necessity. The democratic leadership style can perform better when team working is indispensable and “quality is more important than speed to productivity” (Mayer, 2007, p.8). Team work is inevitable in the network and IT field. Each team works on specific projects and equal contribution from all team members is essential to complete the project in time. Today, there are numerous IT firms offering high quality services to clients. Therefore, the organization will certainly go out of the market unless it meets industry standards in quality. The democratic leadership style has greatly assisted me to keep my followers productive and to finish projects with high quality and within specified time. As this leadership approach promotes employee participation, our team could generate some creative project ideas under my leadership. My team members have been very energetic and keen to explore innovative ways of completing their tasks. Another advantage I realized from this leadership model is that it is extremely better to reduce employee turnover rate. Over the last two years of my leadership, none of my team members left the firm. I maintain a good personal relationship with each of my 10 team members and I swear that it aided me to keep the work environment free from employee conflicts. Finally, my whole team members have a good understanding of the long term goals and objectives of our company. They strive to improve their productivity and thereby enhance organizational performance on a continuous basis. Conclusion In total, the leadership style a leader adopts to manage his followers can have a significant influence on the overall organizational performance. The views described in all the six articles are of particular importance in the modern worksite environment. Although the charismatic leadership seems to be a potential leadership model, it would not suit all organizational environments. The two key concepts discussed, such as “managing oneself” and “managing your boss” are of considerable importance in today’s competitive business environment. Workforce diversity and organizational conflict are the two potential challenges for leaders today because these issues may negatively impact employee productivity. By effectively collaborating with the team, leaders can resolve such workplace issues. Personally, I support democratic/participative leadership model because it has greatly assisted me to lead my team members successfully over the last two years. In addition, this leadership approach was helpful for me to promote employee satisfaction and product/service quality, which are specifically important in the network and IT field. References Antonakis, J., Fenley, M., & Liechti, S. (2012). Learning Charisma. Harvard Business Review, 90(6), 127-130. Bossidy, L. (2007). What Your LEADER Expects of You. Harvard Business Review, 85(4), 58-65. Certo, S., Kaufmann, F., Husted, S. W., Pettijohn, J. B & Douglas, M. E. (1990). Business. Allyn and Bacon. Drucker, P. F. (1999). Managing Oneself. Harvard Business Review, 77(2), 64-74, 185. Deshwal, P & Choudhary, S. (2012). Workforce diversity management: Biggest challenge for 21st Century managers. International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, 2 (4): 74-87. Gabarro, J. & Kotter, J. (2005). Managing Your Boss. Harvard Business Review, 83(1), 92-99. Mayer, T. (2007). What Makes a Good Leader and How Might the Performance of Leaders Be Measured. GRIN Verlag. Rahim, M. A. (2002). Toward a theory of managing organizational conflict. The International Journal of Conflict Management, 13 (3): 206-235. Read More