Free «Leadership Development Theories» Essay Sample

Leadership

Effective organizational leadership is important for the success of any organization. Research has proved that most financially successful companies have a leader with a clear vision, good socialization skills and good communication skills. The late Steve Job had a clear vision of developing computers that could be held easily portable and this led to the invention of iPad and iPod by Apple. Furthermore, Bill gates has good socialization skills and this has helped him to study the market easily thus Microsoft is able to know market trends and remain as the market leader in software development. Managers may apply several leadership styles such as autocratic, democratic and coaching style depending on the organizational situation facing him. This essay focuses on my personal reflection on leadership by integrating concepts of emotional intelligence and self-monitoring.

Leadership Development Theories

Transactional Leadership Theory

There are several theories in leadership development that have influenced our organization. Transactional leadership theory has helped our organization to achieve the goal of reducing the spread of Aids in the whole world. According to this theory, workers become motivated when rewards and punishments are offered to them. In our organization, every employee is expected to convince a certain number of people to take HIV tests in order to know their status. The employee who convinces the most number of people to take tests is rewarded by receiving cash bonuses. In addition to this, according to this theory, employees perform best when the chain of command is definite and clear. In our organization, all junior employees have to report to senior employees on any proposal that they wish the management to implement. In addition to this, all grievances about a particular issue have to follow a vertical channel of communication so that the senior managers can consider their grievances. In this theory, every worker is supposed to follow strict rules and policies defined by the leader and the organization. In most cases, these rules are in written form. The followers are not given an opportunity to be creative and innovative in order to come up with new solutions to solve organization’s problems since they have to follow strict rules and regulations. In our organization, every employee has to follow code of ethics that are defined in our organization’s policies. In addition to this, we are not supposed to reveal any confidential information about our patients. We are also supposed to arrive at our offices at 8 o’clock in the morning and if any employee is late, he is expected to report to the supervisor on the reasons that made him to be late.

Transactional Leadership Theory

Transformational leadership development theory has also influenced our organization in several ways. James Macgregor Burns developed this leadership development theory. This theory contains four components that include intellectual simulation, individualized consideration, inspirational motivation and idealized influence. In intellectual simulation, a transformational leader encourages his followers to use creativity to find new ways of doing things. In our organization, our leaders encourage us to always come up with new proposals that will help in controlling the spread of Aids in the whole world. In addition to this, we are always encouraged to propose new ideas on how we will encourage more people to take HIV tests in order for them to know their status. In individualized consideration, the transformational leader offers support and encouragement to individual followers. In our organization, the senior employees are encouraged to know the strength and weaknesses of each employee in order to know the strengths and weaknesses of these employees.

In inspirational motivation, the transformational leader is expected to have a clear and defined vision that his followers can easily understand and follow. In addition to this, they are expected to motivate the followers to improve their performance. In our organization, our managers always explain to us their targets and they always inform us when they formulate these targets in an attempt of involving us in the definition of their goals. In idealized influence, the transformational leader is expected to play the role of a good role model towards his followers. The leader is supposed to have high moral standards and hardworking and thus the followers of these leaders are always proud to be associated with their leader. I am proud of my senior manager since he is always hard working. Despite the financial success that this manager has, he is always the first person to arrive in our offices. Furthermore, he always interacts with the employees despite the level that these employees are in our organizational hierarchy.

Theories on Leadership Styles

Different theories in leadership styles correspond to produce alignment in perception commitment, innovation and motivation. According to Daniel Goleman, coercive leaders often require their followers to do as the leader commands them. This form of leadership style is most effective when an organization is faced with crisis such as drop in sales or decrease in market share that threatens to put a company in financial crisis. Most managers prefer this method if they want to control everything happening in their organization. I used this leadership style in a particular instance in our organization. We had been assigned a task of collecting survey on the rate of HIV spread in our county. This survey was to last three days but in the second day of our survey, we had only covered a quarter of our survey area. I had to command members of our team to increase their pace of survey since I was the leader of our team. This leadership style does not encourage perception, innovation or motivation among team followers since everybody has to adhere with what the leader says. However, it ensures that employees commit to the organizational goals since they have to adhere with what the manager says. This makes managers better leaders especially when an organization is faced with challenges and crisis.

Authoritative Leadership Style

A manager tries to mobilize his employees towards a common vision when he adopts an authoritative leadership style. This is especially when an organization needs a new vision and when the path of the old vision is not clear. According to research conducted by several scholars on executives, authoritative leadership style is most suitable when managers want to promote a positive work climate. This is because employees become motivated when they see that a manager helps them to achieve the vision of their organization. It also promotes innovation since the manager allows the followers to come up and implement new ideas on how to achieve the vision of the organization. John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King used this leadership style. In our organization, our managers always encourage us to achieve the vision of ensuring that the spread of HIV around the world is zero. In order to achieve this vision, they always ensure that they have given us all the resources required to educate the world on the benefits of practicing safe sex. This improves our perception and commitment to our organizational goals.

Affliative Leadership Style

In affiliative leadership style, the leader focuses on the emotions of his followers. The leader always tries to seek people’s emotions and feelings in order to build loyalty in the organization. This leadership style is effective when a manager tries to build broken trust, improve organization’s communication and increase the morale of his followers. There is a time in our organization when I was assigned the task of preparing the payroll of all the employees. However, due to errors in our database management system, some of the employee’s financial records were destroyed. This delayed their payments and they became frustrated. Since I was responsible for preparing their payroll, I talked with the employees separately and made them understand the issue that faced our organization. This improved their perception and commitment to our organization since they understood the situation that faced our organization. They also became motivated since they knew that I cared for their well-being.

Democratic Leadership Style

Democratic leadership style involves participation among all members of the team in order to come up with solutions to solve organization challenges. In this leadership style, the manager asks the opinion of other employees before implementing any organizational change. This leadership style is mostly used when an organization wants to introduce a new change in its operations especially if this change will affect the employees. In our organization, I used this leadership style when we were given a project of raising money in order to donate to poor orphans living Africa. I encouraged all the members of our team to come up with suggestions on how we would convince people to raise money for our team. This increased innovation in our team and one of our team members suggested we host a dinner party and invite top C. E. Os to attend. We raised many funds and this improved the motivation and perception of our team members.

Pacesetting Leadership Style

Pacesetting leadership style involves a manager setting high standards for performance where the manager requires all the employees to achieve the results that the manager achieves. The manager is always obsessed with doing things better and faster. There is a time in our organization where we were required to counsel more than 20 people per day on HIV. This did not motivate us because we were always tired after the counseling sessions. This leadership style does not improve employees innovation and perception. In coaching leadership style, the manager helps the employees in developing their future leaders. The managers try to advice employees on how to achieve their long-term goals by telling them what to do in order to succeed in their lives. I always advice my junior employees on the things they should do in order to rise up in the corporate ladder. This always motivates them and improves their commitment to our organization. This creates a positive work place environment.

Domains of Emotional Intelligence

The domains of emotional intelligence include self-awareness, self-motivation, social awareness and relationship management. These domains can be used in relation to several proposed innovation changes in our organization. According to self-awareness domain, a worker should be able to understand his emotions, evaluate his strengths and weaknesses, and be self-confident. Using this domain, workers will know their strengths and weaknesses and thus they will implement innovative ideas that they can do best. The domain of social awareness argues that an employee should have the ability of understanding other employees emotions, ability to read current organization life and the ability to meet the customer’s needs. Using this domain, employees in our organization will only implement new ideas that will improve consumer’s satisfaction and not affect the emotions of other employees negatively. The domain of relationship management requires a person to have the ability of influencing other people in addition to being a catalyst of change. In addition to this, it requires a person to bond easily with other people. Using this domain, employees in our organization will always communicate their ideas to other employees so that we choose the most innovative idea to implement in our organization. Furthermore, this employee will help me to inspire other employees to support change since it will promote our organizational growth. According to the self-motivation domain, employees should always have a drive of succeeding in their endeavors. Furthermore, they should have the drive of adapting to changing situations. Using this domain, I will have the desire of coming up with suggestions on how I will help our organization to reduce the spread the global spread of Aids.

Concept of Self-Monitoring

According to the concept of self-monitoring, different people differ in the extent at which they monitor and control presentations of themselves in social situations. This concept involves two components that include sensitivity to other people’s behavior and having the ability to modify ones behavior so that it is in line with the behavior of other people. For a leader to practice self-monitoring, he needs to avoid being controlled with his own consistent attitudes and model his behavior according to a particular situation. According to this concept, leaders possessing high self-monitoring skills are able to interact with their followers since they are able to regulate their interpersonal relationships while interacting with their followers. Furthermore, they are able to adjust their behaviors so that they are in line with the needs of all their followers. If a leader has high self-monitoring skills, he is able to present himself in a socially desirable manner. Furthermore, these leaders are always confident and they encourage their followers to participate actively in all the things that they do.

As a potential leader, I will be applying this concept in several ways. I will be ensuring that I know all my strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, I will be evaluating the emotions, strengths and weaknesses of the other employees. This will help me to socialize with the employees during my leadership term without affecting them emotionally. Due to this, I will build a strong team since all the employees will be motivated by the fact that I care about their well being. Moreover, I will be making decisions considering the environmental variables surrounding the decision. This will improve my decision-making power and thus I will be making decisions that affect my organization positively.

Future Strategies

I will adopt several strategies in order to become an effective leader in my working environment. I will always practice ethics and encourage all my employees to promote ethics as they conduct all the transactions in our organization. I will achieve this by creating a code of conduct that every employee has to follow while dealing with organizational clients. Through practicing ethics, our organizational brand will improve and we will be responsible for all our actions. In addition to this, I will ensure that I create a clear defined vision that will help to guide our organization in achieving its goals. According to research, a clearly defined vision has the power of inspiring, focusing and clarifying the work of an entire organization. I will also ensure that I help in promoting effective communication in our organization. I will achieve this by encouraging brainstorming of ideas from different employees and this will ensure that I make collective decisions. In addition to this, I will create effective feedback mechanism where I will encourage all the employees to respond to any issues that may be facing our organization.

I will also change our organizational culture so that it emphasizes on teamwork instead of individual work. Through teamwork, employees will be able to learn the strengths and weaknesses of their fellow employees and thus this will promote our organizational growth. This will enable our employees to complete tasks efficiently and fast and thus improving the overall productivity of our company. Furthermore, I will be encouraging creativity and innovation in our organization. I will achieve this by awarding the employees who come up with the most innovative ideas that will help in solving our organizational problems. This will also help in promoting our organizational image. Moreover, I will introduce mentorship programs in our organization. Through these programs, the junior employees will improve their skills since they will have a chance of interacting with the senior employees and learn of the challenges that they may encounter during their career progress.

Conclusion

To conclude, our organization has applied several concepts of leadership. Our organization applies transactional leadership development theory since every junior employee has to report to senior employees on the proposal that they wish our organization to implement. Our managers also apply transformational leadership development theory since they always define clear goals and advice us on how to achieve this goals. I used affiliative leadership style in our organization in order to guide the emotions of my fellow employees in an instance where they were frustrated due since the payment of their salaries had delayed. It is important for a leader to understand the domains of emotional intelligence in order to be effective in his leadership skills. This is because it helps the leader understand the strengths and weaknesses that he posses and thus he is able to adjust his strengths and weaknesses by considering the environment. The concept of self-monitoring is important for effective leadership since it enables the manager to be sensitive to the behavior of other employees and thus he is able to modify his behavior according to the behaviors of other employees. In order to become an effective leader in future, I propose to encourage ethics in our organization. In addition to this, I propose to promote the culture of teamwork and this will promote our organizational growth.