Effective Leadership

Mai Ko Chang

Kiel Jakubic

Jeremy Nelson

Kong Vang

Susan Senger

BUSN 2450-01

December 15, 2015

Effective Leadership

The distinction between being a manager and being an effective leader is often overlooked in the business world. Exploring the differences between managing and effective leadership will require a deeper look at the fundamental structures of leadership. Leadership is the process of influencing the activities of individuals or groups toward the achievement of a goal (Bierman, 318). Leadership is based off of concepts like power, influence, and behavior. Power refers to the organizational power, personal power, and legitimate power. Humans desire the concept of power because it gives the ability to satisfy the needs of others (Bierman, 319). The use of power can also be coercive, or used for negative purposes. For example, the use of punishment or force to influence people is often misconstrued with the concept of motivation. The use of power can also be used to give the people in power a sense of control.

The ability of a leader to influence others is based on their charisma, or their ability to inspire admiration, respect, loyalty, and most importantly the desire for others to emulate the leader’s personality traits. The more influence that the leader has, the easier it is for him/her to empower individuals or groups in the organization. The leader must also look into the behavioral patterns of the teams to effectively manage them. Behavioral patterns are used when setting up the structures of teams, scheduling work, coordinating employee activities, and defining the tasks of employees. The behavior of the manager, employees, and the organizational culture are all affected by the influence of the leaders.

Leaders can utilize different theories to help them communicate and process information effectively. In one example, situational leadership theory is a model that requires subordinates’ competence and commitment to their leaders style (Bierman, 328). The employees must respect and be committed to their leaders if positive results are expected in the organization.

Effective leadership is important in organizations for them to be successful. Without effective leadership, entire organizations operate without any legitimate direction. There are important aspects of effective leadership that involve; acting as a role model, clearly communicating, encouraging creativity and participation, listening as much as you are speaking, empowering employees to make decisions, identifying and guarding against ethical risks, building sincere relationships, evaluating employee success and failures, and moving individuals or groups toward continuous improvement. In the world of management, these effective leadership traits will impact how businesses operate within the organizations. Depending on whether the management of the organizations uses effective leaders that know how to demonstrate these skills or not, the success or failure of the organizations are at stake.

One good example of effective leadership is at Statistical Analysis Software (SAS). According to the founder, Charles Goodnight, “95 percent of [his] assets drive out of the gate every evening”. When the founders started the company, they knew that they wanted to create a desirable workplace. SAS gives its’ employees incentives that include healthcare, profit sharing, and child care. Today, some of the perks for working at SAS include having a recreation and fitness center, an aquatic center, racquetball courts, and more.

At SAS, managers are not only encouraged to manage, but to do the same tasks as those they manage. This type of management creates a unified organization with little bureaucracy. One of the employees called the organization a “creative anarchy”. Another example of effective leadership used by Goodnight and his managers is how he encourages his employees to communicate with one another to complete all tasks and projects effectively. The managers at SAS have created a fluid organizational structure that motivates employees to provide exceptional work by instructing the managers to participate in the duties of the teams.

SAS has seen its revenues grow for 35 consecutive years. SAS was number one on Fortune’s “100 Best Places to Work For” list for two consecutive years. The average rate of employee retention is about 10 years, although most have been around for at least 25 years.

One bad example of an effective leader involves the former CEO of the Dish Network Corporation. Charlie Ergren’s low touch management style reflected concern for operations at the expense of concern for people. Charlie Ergen was known for having a harsh leadership style. On one occasion, in order to address the problem of employee tardiness, Ergren implemented the use of fingertip scanners instead of using employee badge scanners to enter company buildings. If the employees were late, even for one minute, they were reprimanded and not allowed to offer an explanation for their tardiness. Ergren’s practice often left employees feeling dispirited. Apparently he cared more about employees being to work on time instead of their morale. A concern for the operations at the expense of concern for people will usually lead to a dissatisfied workplace with high turnover and low productivity.

     Nowadays, many businesses have changed over the years. Businesses change the way they used to work by relying on different things and having more people working together. They are also no longer relying on high layer people powers and one person as much as they used to do. A lot of companies try to find good or effective leadership for their companies. To become a great manager, someone need to be good with many things such as remain humble to everyone at workforce as much as possible, adaptive to change when need, know global economic, technology innovation or an innovation person.  In the article "Leading Development Solutions for Today's Leaders" by Ann Pace, Development Dimensions International (DDI) built a program to help its workers. It has struggle with productivity for some times. DDI understands that lack of communication and interpersonal skills cause it to have badly economic. Councelman finds out that every leader will have difficulty with trust relationships, to produce more goods, and manage workers. He believes these problems cause some company to have lower innovation productivity, hard time manage lower class workers, and to take longer times to finish a project. Studies show which focus on interpersonal relationships are very important. Concelman agrees that innovation, teamwork, engagement, and collaboration skills are very important for a leader. These solutions are very important because businesses use them a lot in the modern day. They can improve a leader skills and help him or her to become better. These solutions work really well with today leaderships or someone who plan to be a leadership in the future.