Essay on Key Topic on Organizational Behavior

Essay on Key Topic on Organizational Behavior

MBA 545 People and Systemructor
Essay on Key Topic on Organizational Behavior
November 11, 2010
The topic I am going to analyze in my Essay on Key Topic on
Organizational Behavior assignment is Leadership. Starting with its
definition, leadership is the organization of a group of people, so as to
achieve a number of specific goals that the group and mostly the leader
set. More specifically, a leader is considered to be somebody, who creates
and communicates a vision, provides his followers with guidance and
motivation, in order to achieve certain targets, influences others through his
use of power, establishes and maintains group culture, clarifies roles and
empowers the members of his group, and of course, has the ability to make
tough decisions with limited information.
Being a leader is totally different comparing to being a manager of a group
of people. Being a leader, as already mentioned, means giving motivation,
influencing and changing the behavior of people, when necessary, inspiring
and creating a vision for the group of people that he manages, putting his
people first, as well as acting decisively. On the other hand, being a
manager means executing plans; manage resources and materials,
understanding what responsibility and authority means, putting customers
first. A manager has a more practical meaning, comparing to a leader,
whose responsibility is much heavier in meaning.
In order a leader to be effective, he needs to have certain traits that will
make him effective. He must be intelligent, self-confident, determined to
succeed, honest, sociable, conscientious and have the ability to solve any
types of problems that may appear. On the contrary, if a person is
incompetent, rigid, corrupt, callus, selfish, insular or evil, then he will
certainly become an extremely poor leader.
There are several approaches, as far as leadership is concerned. The most
important of these are the Trait Approaches, the Behavioral Approaches,
the Contingency Approaches, the Transformational Approaches, and the
Emerging Approaches.
First of all, the Trait Theory of Leadership strongly supports the idea that
people are born with specific personality traits. Not all personality traits are
suitable for effective leadership, though through the identification of the
appropriate traits, we can discover these people, who already have these
traits and these ones, who can be potential leaders. These traits seem to
appear with each persons birth. So, according to this theory, leaders are
born. There is a lot of value in identifying the character traits associated
with leadership. A born to be a leader person is most likely to attract
followers. However, research shows that it is possible for people to change
their character traits for the worse. Someone who is known for being
honest can learn to be deceitful and evil too. The same goes for mean
people as well. A person, who seems to be dishonest, can learn to be
honest too. A person, who avoids risks, can learn to take risks and face
challenging circumstances. According to the theory, the top five traits for an
effective leader are:
Honest
Inspiring
Forward-Looking
Competent
Intelligent
All these traits can be learnt how to be implemented. It is absolutely not
easy, but only with practice and good training;you can become more
inspiring, more honest, and morecompetent.
Secondly, the Behavioral Approaches support that leaders are born not
made and that leaders can be made through identifying effective behaviors
and providing training too. This type of approach actually defined
leadership in the terms of actual behaviors. What is more, according to this
approach, there is not the best type of leadership to be followed, since this
depends on the circumstances each time.
Furthermore, the Contingency Approaches support the idea that the best
type of leadership seems to be the combination of leader personal traits,
as well as the characteristics of each situation. This approach was
developed, since the previous two seem to be inconsistent. At this point, I
have to present the Fiedlers Contingency Theory. According to this theory,
effective leadership depends on each leaders personality and personal
traits, behaviors, as well as situational factors. Of course, leaders need to
be trained well enough by their companies, so as to cultivate their ability to
adapt more easily to the situational changes.
Besides that, we have the Transformational Approaches too. According to
this theory, the employees change their goals, values, needs, beliefs, and
aspirations. This is done by appealing to followers' values and personality.
According to the research made, the implementation of this theory leads to
the employees job satisfaction, satisfaction with the leader, and motivation,
as well as personal commitment to the leader and the vision he has,
organizational commitment, and high performance of the group.
In addition to these, we have the Emerging Approaches. The most crucial
of them is the Path Goal Theory. According to this theory, an effective
leader learns to use more than one type of leadership, as well as new
behaviors, which are based on the situational changes. What is more,
leaders need to find the suitable paths, so as to achieve their goals and
avoid any obstacles appear on their way. Of course, not only employees
traits (locus of control, task ability, need for achievement, experience and
need for clarity), but also environmental characteristics (work group
dynamics) influence the type of leadership that a leader will follow, so as to
be effective and which will lead to employee satisfaction, motivation,
performance, leader acceptance and work - unit performance.
We also have the Shared Leadership Theory, which supports the idea that
there is a dynamic interactive influence among the members of the group,
which will lead to the achievement of the group, organizational goal or even
better, to both of them. According to this type of leadership, tasks are highly
interdependent and complex, as well as need a high level of creativity.
Leaders are in charge of managing the team and its boundaries, forming
the vision and the team processes, as well as selecting the members of the
group.
The approach of Servant Leadership focuses clearly on the idea that there
must be increased service to the others rather than to one. The main
characteristics of this theory are the following:
It highly focuses on the meaning of listening, in order to identify the needs
and goals of the group.
It gives emphasis on the empathy as far as the feelings of all the
members of the group are concerned.
It supports the idea that all members of the group need to be well aware
of their strong and weak points.
It focuses on the persuasion of the rest members of the group, when they
have to make decisions.
It encourages the development of the ability to predict future results, in
association to the situations happening each time.
It supports the idea of commitment of people beyond their work role.
It encourages the creation of a sense of community inside, as well as
outside the work organization.
It is very easy to understand the meaning of good and effective leadership
in theory, rather than practising it. Effective leadership requires deep
cultivation of human qualities, beyond conventional borders of authority.
According to nowadays meaning, good leaders are in charge of helping
people and organizations to perform and develop, so that the aims of the
organization are achieved. Effective leadership does not necessarily
require a great level of technical or intellectual capacity. They will surely
help the leader, but their meaning is additional. Leadership is absolutely
connected with people and humanity values, as well as great sense of
responsibility that the leader has, due to the fact that he has to manage
people, not just resources. So, every effective leader does not only need to
acquire certain skills and knowledge, and then, apply them in a reliable
way, but also demands emotional strengths and behavioural
characteristics, which can deeply reflect on a leader's mental and spiritual
reserves. The role of the leader is an inevitable reflection of people's needs
and challenges that daily life creates. Good leaders have loyal and
supportive followers, because people trust and respect them as
personalities, rather than the skills or abilities they have developed.
Leadership is firstly related to behaviour, and then to skills.
Everyone makes mistakes, no matter how good they are. It is definitely not
necessary to make the same mistakes that other people have already
made, if we can avoid them. We can learn from these mistakes that they
have made so as not to repeat them and become even more successful.
Below, I am going to present the most common mistakes that leaders
make:
First of all, leaders call their followers with nicknames. It is fine to call
others with nicknames, as far as they want to hear them. General
nicknames do not have a personal meaning, and therefore, they do not
have a positive impact.
Employees are always observing their leaders behaviour, and sometimes
try to follow their example. They observe everything, not only the strong
points of their leaders character, but the weak traits and mistakes they
make. Some of them may think that it is fine to make mistakes, but the
employees do not have the same right. They may become resentful and
look for certain ways to sabotage what their followers are trying to create.
So, it is better for an employee to show them, rather than just tell them that
they make a mistake.
We all wish to be likeable to the others and most leaders make the
common mistake to start being friends with their employees. So, they miss
the actual meaning of leader. The need for a leader to be liked by the
others must come secondary to meeting the needs of your organization
and your team. A leader is in charge of leading by principles and not be
impacted by the emotional meaning that friendship brings with them. We
expect totally different things or behaviour from leaders and friends. When
the roles are combined, the expectations become confusing and this leads
to problematic situations.
Some leaders have the tendency to assume that things are going well and
thus, they do not check at all. When somebody makes assumptions, it
means that he puts his success in other people's hands. So, the more
important the outcome is, the less amount of assumption there should be
on your part. It is reasonable that leaders do not have enough time to
check upon everything all the time. Although, this does not mean that
leaders have every excuse to make assumptions that the tasks are going
well, without having any justifications for that. They have to check them
constantly, even if they have their most trusted employees. Through this
way, they have to opportunity to correct any error, or this could even be a
chance for the employees to show their great work.
There are a great number of people that leave certain tasks for a later
time to be done. Of course, we all have to prioritize our tasks, so as to
manage our time in an effective way. However, we also need to recognize
which tasks can be done in a later time and which not. Unfortunately, many
people fall into this trap with "not yet" tasks. Too many "not yets" to the
same person and you start to look unreliable. It is absolutely necessary, of
course, to accomplish the big projects, but if that person keeps hearing "not
yet" they will think either that he is not capable enough, or that he does not
have much respect for them. We could make it much easier by just say
"no" to the small things.
Quite many people have the impression that all their problems will go
away, if they are left alone. But this seems to be far from the truth. An
employee seems to quit more easily before you talk to them about
performance. Or even, a new manager decides to step down from her
position, because they realize the position was not what she actually
wanted and does not fit to her field of interest. Pretending the pink elephant
is not in the room makes great analogies, but it does not help motivate
teams and this is a problem.
It is not suitable for the leaders to complain constantly to their employees.
The organization does not seem to have any benefit from hearing just
complaints. In case someone seems to be upset about a situation he has to
face, he has to choose either to live with it or deal with it. Crying to the
employees about it is no solution to the problem at all, because two bad
things can happen. The one is that they leverage this extra emotional
power for their benefit and the second is that they become jaded toward the
organization, leadership, or other employees.
In conclusion, the topic of leadership is extremely important to all types of
organizations. It is very easy for everyone to become a manager, though it
seems to be from the most difficult tasks for someone to become an
effective leader with supportive followers. This is something that exists
inside a persons soul and can be cultivated, but definitely not created. One
thing is for sure, leaders are born for that.
References
Politopoulou Sophia. (October, 2010). The Protocol for Meetings (Protocol).
Retrieved from
Media Markt Athina V database.
(2009) Leadership and Dealing with Conflict. Retrieved November 10,
2010, from NSBA Organization. Web site:
www.nsba.org/sbot/toolkit/Conflict.html.
Kantas, A. (1995, October). Organizational Psychology. Athens, Greece:
Ellinika Grammata
[part 3]
Retrieved November 10, 2010. Web site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership.
(Gen Wright). Nurture your future leaders. Retrieved November 10, 2010.
Web site:
|http://www.leadershiparticles.net/Article/Nurture-Your-Future-
Leaders/86368. |
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