Concept of Leadership free essay sample

Despite this, the precise nature of leadership and its relationship to key criterion variables such as subordinate satisfaction, communication, motivation, commitment, organizational citizenship and performance is still uncertain, to the point where Fred Luthans (2008), in his book said that â€Å"it (leadership) does remain petty much of a ‘black box’ or unexplainable concept. † All over the history strong leaders such as Load Buddha, Napoleon, Mao, Gandhi, Churchill, Roosevelt, Thatcher, and Reagan have all been highly discussed because of their leadership characteristics. When Margaret Thatcher was prime minister of Great Britain, She was regularly explained as a confident, iron willed, determined and decisive woman and finally called as ‘Iron Lady’. Indian philosopher Kautiliya wrote a book named ‘Arthashatra’ years ago. It carries a number of principles and implications for leaders. Main theme of the ‘Arthashatra’ was the economic wellbeing of people. He stressed the kind of role the leaders should follow in this endeavour. He pointed out three factors for the wellbeing of the people whose responsibility lies on the hand of the rulers of the country. The three factors are wealth of the people – ‘Artha’, Prosperity in moral and religious regard – ‘Dharma’, Satisfaction for the people – ‘Kama’. It is up to the leaders of the country to provide the people with these factors as claimed by the Kautiliya. (Sastry, 1924) A Chinese philosopher named Tzu Tzu had illustrated the tactics and virtues of effective leaders in his we known book The Art of War. He pointed out the correct way of behaviour for military leaders in China in 400 BC, in winning the battle with enemies. The qualities and strategies were for any warfare associated with good leadership. They are resourcefulness, momentum, cunning, flexibility, integrity, secret, speed, positioning, surprise, deception, manipulation, responsibility and respectability. Master and Slave concept can be seen in Egyptian civilization. It hits leadership effectiveness of its rulers. The highest monuments on the earth; pyramids show evidence of such great leaders. Egyptian philosophy on ruling or leading is totally different from the Asian philosophy. The leader should not work at all. Slaves are for working- It is up to the leaders to get the work done by their slaves using their power. Leaders are for ruling and slaves are for working. Louise, 1996) Initiative leadership is most appreciated by the Japanese culture. IMAI principle of leadership reveals the Japanese leadership philosophy. Japanese concept of leadership is also worth considering here. It is supervisors that set the goals and then relies upon subordinates to work out the details for themselves in achieving the set goals. Subo rdinates are allowed to set out their own formula for the work assigned by the leader. Japanese leaders heavily trust in their subordinates in getting work done (Whitehill, 1991). Many authors have identified the importance of leadership. Most of them mainly focussed about leaders’ behaviour in achieving organizational goals. They highlighted the behaviour a leader should exhibit in concentrating the achievement. Successful leadership is always associated with performance. Physical performance of subordinates is not good enough to achieve success. Leadership should bring both the physical and ethical performance. Ethical behaviour is a major concern of today management. The search for ways to identify or develop good leaders need to continue (Miller, 1996) Leadership probably involves with achieving goals through people. Kotter (1990) identified leadership and management as two aspects of managers, which are complementary to each in achieving organizations goals. He claims that while management is vital for stability of performance leadership is a must for coping with changers. Accordingly leadership involves with †¢Setting a direction or vision †¢Aligning people †¢Monitoring and inspiring The finding of Peter and Waterman are a great contribution to the leadership literature. They showed what to do in providing leadership implementation of which results in organizational success. They are bias for action, close to he customers, autonomy and entrepreneurship, productivity through people, hand-on-value driven, strict to the knitting, simple from lean staff and simultaneous loose-tight prophecy. Peter and Waterman finding brings out a sort of action a leader should implement for effective leadership (Peter and Waterman, 1982). The key principles are workforce democracy, profit sharing, a nd free access of information. It is a sort of democracy which let subordinates to set their own working conditions, profit-sharing rewards them for doing well and the information telling them how to do. Anti hierarchical and perhaps unorthodox management philosophy should be the philosophy of leaders in organizations (Ricardo, 1989). Leaders responsibility lies in taking an organization to the destination set by the mission through positive results. It requires a great courage, responsibility and humility from the leaders of the organization. Wildblood makes the leaders responsible not only for present success but also for the future success of the firm. Setting a vision, changing or creating a culture and search for results are the tasks of leadership (Wildblood, 1995). Leaders should be able to get the cooperation from subordinates for effective implementation of his decisions. Therefore cooperation from subordinates is a prerequisite for effective leadership. Carnage has pointed out the strategies for getting the support from others, †¢Make other people feel important through a sincere appreciation of their effort. †¢Strive to make a good impression †¢Win people to your way of thinking. †¢Change people by parsing their good traits. (Dale, 1936) Effective leadership depends on the group effectiveness which the leader is responsible for. Leadership is to create a typical environment in the group, which enhances the group performance. The leader should meet the following conditions for effective group performance and leadership as well. †¢Individual skill base †¢Culture of empowerment †¢Individual character development and emotional maturity. †¢Empowerment opportunities (Covey, 1991) Eugene E. Jennings mainly focussed on the innovation perspective of the leadership. Innovativeness should be the prime quality of a leader where there is a growing loss of faith in leadership in organizations. Innovative leadership brings the organizations back to the prosperity. It gives him a power over his subordinates namely power of innovation. It requires a great deal of courage and assumes risks by the leader (Jennings, 1972). Leadership has a major role in developing people in firms. Career development programs conduct in organizations should focus on developing people in order to a required level result. Those results would be the accruement of benefits to the organization. Developing people in the organization is a duty of the leadership. Leadership should, †¢Ensure that right people will be available for meeting the challenging tasks. †¢Increase workforce diversity Provide employees with goal-oriented tasks †¢Guide and coaching (James , 1976) Robert states that leadership may vary with the same person with respect to different subjects (Anderson, 1982). Effective leadership requires providing leadership to each person. This approach is referred as ‘individual consideration’. Each different individual or group may require a different behaviour from the leader. Employee Performance, Employee Satisfaction and Employee Commitment are the main outcome variables of leadership. Each outcome variable is highly correlated with leadership and with each other (Schwab, 1970). Are all outcomes possible at one time? It is claimed that each follows another. Performance is the result of satisfaction, which is followed by the commitment of employee. The culture and values of nation are instrumental in driving its leaders and their style (Robbins et al, 2009). So leadership is differently identified and differently behaved in different cultures. Therefore it is known as a Culture Bounded concept. Any study on leadership is, therefore, imperfect without understanding the cultural setting of the inhabitants in which the leaders function. There are two types of cultures that matter; national culture and organizational culture. National culture influences leadership in two ways. It shapes the preferences of leaders, and it defines what is acceptable to subordinates. Therefore, leaders cannot choose their style at will. They are constrained by the cultural conditions in which they have been socialized and that their subordinates expect. An organization’s culture shapes leader behaviour by influencing the selection of leaders and the values that effective leaders must exhibit. Cultures create sort of environments where leaders of the organization require behaving in the specific way. It is because culture creates work related values, which rules the performance of people in organization. Leadership behaviour consistent with the culture brings better performance from the people. The culture is determined by the values on, †¢Power distance †¢Uncertainty avoidance †¢Individualism vs. collectivism †¢Masculine vs. feminism (Hofstede. , 1980) Degree of orientation of leaders on people and task may fluctuate in different organizations depending on the various value orientations of the managers. Orientation of managers is determined by mainly the Organizational Culture. They are †¢Basic nature of the human being †¢Relationship among people †¢Activity orientation †¢Relation to the nature †¢The time orientation This value orientation of organization determines the leadership orientation and resulting in deferent behaviour pattern of leaders in different organizations (Kluckhohn, 1961). Another important determinant of leadership effectiveness is the Self-image of leaders. Creating a positive image among subordinates is required for an effective functioning of leadership. This necessitates the leader to be honest, loyal to the group, faith in subordinates, integrity and strong personal character (Ziglar, 1996). Ziglar declares that the leader should help enough subordinates to what they want and leader can get everything from his subordinates in turn. Leadership is also affected by the globalization concept. It is observed that the demographics of organizational leaders are changing over past years. There is also evidence that not only who leaders are is changing, but also what they do and how they behave is changing (Luthans, 2008)