Good Example Of Leadership Styles Essay

Introduction

In the society, every being would aspire to be a leader but not every leadership is positive. Determination of efficient and active leadership is based on the ability of the leader to demonstrate selflessness, accommodate other people’s emotions as well as maintain a sustainable culture of growth in the society or a company through leadership innovations and practices. Leadership is defined as the ability of a person to influence other people’s attitudes to conform to his opinions of positive and sustainable change for all. Various theorists have developed varied arguments on leadership and its best practices. While Great man theorists argued that leaders are born, behavioral theorists believed that leaders are molded based on the prevailing environment and circumstances and their leadership qualities continue to develop every other moment.

Have you experienced either visionary leadership or strategic leadership, as presented by Rowe?

Based on Rowe’s expressions and arguments about leadership, it would be logical to deduce that the concept of leadership is a complex social practice that demands extensive assessment to determine it major influencing factors. Not every leader is a leader, rather, the impact of leadership is manifested through attaining and sustaining the attained output for a long –term period. A manager may lead his employees and the company stakeholders to post positive financial results, however; the trend used in attaining results is unsustainable for application in the ensuing economic time. Such a situation invites the dilemma to the paradoxical question; of what benefit would it have to post positive financial performance in a company through innovative strategies but the same strategies fail to sustain the performance when inherited by another leader?
In simple terms, a leader should be conscious of the present and the future, and, therefore, his strategies should be flexible in application in order to enhance continuity in performance across various generations of leaders in the company. Such characters can only be portrayed in a strategic leader.
While working at Afiqx incorporation-a software development company, our production department manager was an aggressive being who believed in continuous improvement of existing product to sustain both the customer loyalty and build on sustainable competitive advantage in the competitive world of technology. Every morning, he would invite a brainstorming session to dissect the prospective viability of a new idea and at the end of the period; the idea would be mature and available for incubation. In case the idea overlapped an existing software application, the newest idea would overrule the previous on hence demanding a complete overhaul of the original system. His aggressiveness and charismatic leadership style to convince his thoughts with facts sealed any loophole for objecting to his idea.
Unfortunately, at some point some ideas would end up flopping for failing to reconsider other unforeseen influencing factors as well drawing past reference from similar or closely related tasks undertaken in the past. Inadequate chance for mutual interaction and exchange of ideas among the developers and the haste to transform a particular task to enhance the effectiveness and customer satisfaction are the cause of the failed leadership of the manager. Based on Rowe’s analysis, the manager’s characters rhyme with the leadership styles of a visionary leader.
Rowes notes that visionary leadership that is inconsistent with the existing code of conduct or working principles their culture of disorienting their styles from their subordinates is unlikely to sustain the short-term achievements realized (Rowe, 2001). For instance, some of the impressive software programs developed under the manager’s tenure could not maintain their viability in future under a new form of leadership because the subordinates had little exposition to the coordinated functionality of the program since its inception. Further, his character of visionary leadership was inhibitive of alternative ideas that would curtail or undermine the efficacy of the manager’s invention.
Present your analysis of working for a visionary, strategic, or managerial leader. Include the positive points as well as opportunities for improvement.
Servant leadership is usually the most successful form of leadership that every individual should possess. A servant leadership blends his intelligence and character with the emotional intelligence character of understanding opinion from different stakeholders in a bid to build a substantial deduction. The essence of servant leadership is to create a value-based share path that instills the sense of ownership and responsibility to all stakeholders. The stakeholders are empowered strategically to and voluntarily inject their reasoning in decision-making bearing in mind the focus on strengthening the present strategies and creating a long-term sustainable path (Năstase, 2010). However, Visionary leadership is oblivious of the current framework and mostly injects its focus and effort on the future. Notably, there is no future without the present, and if the latter is ignored, the future is unsustainable.
Working with visionary leaders is an enticing experience especially for leaders with an aspiration for improving efficiency and customer satisfaction. For instance, most multinational corporations believe in customer satisfaction as their driving force thus inject resources in market research to understand the market responsiveness of the prevailing products and the customers’ demands on the possible areas of improvement. In that perspective, performance in multinational corporations survives for long because the leaders employ conscious strategic criteria for considering the current framework as the basis for the development through integrated interaction with the immediate beneficiaries and participants.
On the contrary, a visionary leader is oblivious of prevailing work modalities as the basis for improvement rather; their concern is the future performance of new ideas that will change the market. One of the advantages of visionary leadership is its emphasis on innovation. Innovation is an integral factor in strengthening a company’s competitive advantage from market rivals. Visionary managers influence their employee’s attitude to think innovatively and concentrate on the perspective of new and market-oriented ideas. Additionally, visionary leadership style subdues bureaucracy that is usually practiced by managerial leaders. The leader assumes fully conscious of the mind free from protocol chains and exercises his performance at free will and thinking capacity.
Unfortunately, the fact that visionary leaders have low emphasis on the current operation culture could portray a character of greed disguised as enlightened self-interest i.e. a visionary leader may only be interested in personal fame and gains at the expense of a company’s operation culture and ability of the innovation to earn the company high returns in future. As a result, the visionary ideas are at risk attaining short-term gains and loss in the long-term. A major area of improvement is that visionary leadership should recognize the tenets of transformational leadership that cements its transformative structure on the prevailing culture and incorporates the sentiments of pertinent stakeholders to develop a stronger and viable innovation in the long-term. Innovation is the core driving factor of transformational leaders and applies democratic leadership style to impose decisions and strategies unlike visionary managers who allows participants to input their opinions but ends up applying their own criteria that had been formulated long before the brainstorming sessions (Bass & Riggio, 2006).
Another area of improvement is that visionary leaders ought to blend their leadership with partial managerial criteria that maintains conscious of the past as a cautionary measure to avoid repeating similar mistakes in the future. For instance, in the technological sector, programs and software are built on improving existing products and mainly focusing on factor that could have hindered in the product’s ineffectiveness. For that reason, a visionary leader should blend managerially with strategic leadership to safeguard the innovative culture and the urge to improve products continuously in response to consumer change in tastes and preferences.

What type of leader do you feel would be the most effective for your Capsim Company?

Upon realizing the three types of leaders and their varied characters, a strategic leader remains the most outstanding person to steer a company or organization to prosperity without distorting its organizational and working culture. A strategic leader accommodates the principles of servant leadership that emphasizes on the essence of inculcating a shared responsibility attitude among all individuals in the society or a company. A strategic leader employs both managerial and visionary leadership where the former acts as a driving force to achieve envisioned practices (Rowe, 2001). In addition, a strategic leader utilizes his emotional intelligence ability to assess the attitude of the society towards particular issues and considers their opinions while making a sustainable decision. A strategic leader should be conscious of the varied leadership capacities among the participants to enable him devise a formidable criterion to front success strategies for the company or the society. The ultimate objective of strategic leadership is to promote the social well-being of the society in consideration of existing culture and aspiration continuously to improve the current status for future prosperity.

Conclusion

Conclusively, leadership is an integral practice that requires the conscious understanding of the followers’ sentiments and opinions while influencing their attitudes to conform to particular strategies. An effective leader should be able to develop formidable strategies that are consistent with the current ethics and social culture and focus on improving the practices towards a sustainable future and flexible for inheritance by succeeding leaders.

References

Bass, B. M., & Riggio, R. E. (2006). Transformational leadership. Psychology Press.
Năstase, M. (2010). Developing a strategic leadership approach within the organizations. Review of International Comparative Management, 11(3), 454-460.
Rowe, W. G. (2001). Creating wealth in organizations: The role of strategic leadership. The Academy of Management Executive, 15(1), 81-94.