Leading and Managing People

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Introduction

Change is a part of an organisation world, which leaders must have the capacity to adjust. ‘Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal’. (Northouse, 2016, p.3). The leadership methodology of an organisation is the strategy used to accomplish the objectives of an organisation. Department managers play an essential role in leading change and helps the organisation to reach their desired goals. These managers likewise help their organisations accomplish their set objectives by motivating their employees intrinsically and extrinsically. Change is considered to be one of the most important and critical process for any organisation. This essay will attempt to demonstrate the what change leader is and will talk about the required skills and competencies to be an effective change leader. Furthermore, it will discuss the argument about whether it is possible for any individual to become a change leader or not. The argument will be supported by a reflection and then by drawing a conclusion in support of the thesis statement.

Change leader

A change leader can be characterized as someone with an insight of the organisation and has the ability to put the organisation on the correct path for the success in order to move towards the predictable future (Plowman et al, 2007). The leader could have distinctive styles of driving; for example, being strong, instrumental, action-oriented or just participative taking into account the set objectives and his expectation of the ways by which he drives for achieving the objective. A change leader is often seen as challenging the processes that is typically taken after and making another innovative system of carrying out the same task but in a more efficient way. The leader shares his vision that inspires him and in same manner models the way for others to follow and help the organisation achieve its set objective. Simultaneously, he empowers others to take an interest and act towards the shared objective by always motivating his group to push ahead in the right path.

Skills and Competencies required:

Leaders should possess interpersonal skills. A good leader should take into account the opinions of his subordinates while making decisions but leaders might not always have the time to ask number of people every time while making decisions, this type of leaders are classified as employee-oriented leaders (Robbins, S.P, Judge, T.A, Campbell, T.T, 2010, p.320).

To be an efficient leader in a changing organization may not be as direct as it might appear. The leader needs to pay attention on various issues. He should have a clear vision and understanding of organisation goals and he should provide his followers with the required information and support to achieve their goals and this kind of leadership is classified as path-goal theory (Robbins, S.P, Judge, T.A, Campbell, T.T, 2010, p.325). He then must develop a strategy in agreement with the team and set a direction for the team to work toward the goals (Kreitner, R., Kinicki, A., Buelens, M, 2002, p.455). A leader should develop an effective reward system as it always encourages and motivates employees to work towards the change (Beer and Nohria, 2001).

An individual can appear as an effective change leader only when he is real as someone who can influence the behaviours and actions of his personnel at all levels, and who has a commitment towards quality, service and a long-lasting learning (Robinson and Harvey, 2008).

Argument:

Whether a person can emerge as a change leader or not has remained a debatable issue. Being a change leader is not something one is born with but can be learnt through one's experience. Trait theory of leadership distinguishes leaders with nonleaders by focussing on personal qualities and characteristics. This theory further put emphasis on the fact that leaders are born not made. For instance, Gandhi, Buddha, Napolean, Churchill, Roosevelt were considered to be the born leaders. (Robbins, S.P, Judge, T.A, Campbell, T.T, 2010, p.317). Though, it is possible that some individual’s have better leadership skills than another, but this does not mean’s that leaders are born and not made.

Kotter, J.P. (2001) claims that a successful manager may or may not necessarily be a good leader. Organisations in today’s scenario do not recruit leaders and rather seek employees within the organisation with more or less leadership potential to act as change leaders. This has worked for the organisations when right choices were made at the time of selection and the employee’s skills were developed to pursue the leadership roles in the business organisation. But he also argued that while improving their ability to lead and making the organisations weak by less management, can sometimes worse the situation. Therefore, it can be drawn that organisations are well constructed with the combination of strong leaders and strong management.

Another aspect of a change leader can be a transactional and transformational leadership approach. Transactional leaders guide and motivate their followers in the direction of established goals by properly assigning the tasks and their roles, however transformational leader motivates its groups to go beyond their own self-interest for the benefit of the organisation (Robbins, S.P, Judge, T.A, Campbell, T.T, 2010, p.345). Therefore, a combination of both the approaches is necessary to carry out the objectives of an organisation.

According to Hodges, J. (2016) there are several challenges that are associated with leading change. For instance, Adaptability and alignment, changing the rules of the game, taking bold decision, changing one’s mind and role-modelling desired behaviour are the major challenges in leading organisation. Moreover, Aguirre, .D. & Alpern, .M. (2014) claims that in addition to these challenges, Change fatigue, Change initiatives and Transformation efforts of the change suite are also considered the major challenges. Therefore, in order to transform these changes in a systematic way, change leader need to follow certain principles. For example, Lead with the culture, Start at the top, involve every layer of an organisation, make the rational and emotional case together, act your own way into new thinking, engage yourself, lead outside the lines, leverage formal and informal solutions and assess and adapt the changes (Aguirre, .D. & Alpern, .M., 2014)

Reflection:

During my work occupation in my organisation which is also considered to be one of the most traditional companies in India, Initially, when I joined the organisation I found that there was a synchronization between every department (sales, marketing, finance & procurement) and most importantly the level of trust between different department heads was very high which lead to increase in the motivation among the employees and success of an organisation. Managers had the power to take some decisions on their own which will contribute to organisations goal and employees had the flexibility to choose from different tasks (transformational leadership approach).