Describe Your Own Leadership Style Essay

Jim Collins and a group of 22 research associates conducted a five-year research project searching an answer on the question ‘how a company from merely good can be transformed to great one’ and identified that behind this transformation lies a level 5 leader. Level 5 leadership refers to the highest level in a hierarchy of manager’s capabilities. A level 5 leader transforms the organisation into a great institution through a paradoxical combination of personal humility plus professional will. Beneath Level 5 leaders, lie four other layers, each one appropriate in its own right but none with the power of Level 5. Level 1 leader is a high capable individual who plays an important role in the success of his organisation through his talent, knowledge, skills and good work habits. A level 2 leader is a contributing team member who is very good with his team members and ensures that his team meets its assigned objectives and fulfils the core purpose. A level 3 leader is a competent manager who is skilled at organising people and resources towards the effective and efficient pursuit of predetermined objectives. A level 4 leader is an effective leader. He sets high-level performance standards. He is remarkable at motivating his people and leading them towards realising his vision of the organisation. (Appendix 1, p. 11 summarises all levels of Collins’ Leadership Hierarchy) (Collins, J. (2005). Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 83. No. 7, p. 136-146) The purpose of this assignment is to conduct an evaluation of my own style of leadership within the organisation in which I work by using the above hierarchy as a frame of reference. In order to produce a thorough assessment on both my style and the usefulness of Collin’s model, a range of other theories and concepts must be taken into consideration. However, before proceeding to the analysis and evaluation, it would be helpful first to know the position I hold as well as its responsibilities within the organisation. A Brand Manager, member of the Marketing Department, is responsible for the planning, development and implementation of the Company’s marketing activities, among others: Launching of new products, market research studies, promotional activities/materials, to organize and execute the raining programs for the Sales Force. In order to become an efficient and effective Brand manager, the company is requiring knowledge (good academic background), experience and managerial skills including: Strategic and analytic capabilities, entrepreneurial spirit, team player, and flexibility and strong skills in communication and leadership. The Idea of Leadership It is most likely to find a topic more important to business success today than leadership. Leadership is defined as the ability to influence people toward the achievement of goals. Leadership occurs among people, involves the use of influence and it is used to attain goals. Leaders are expected to persuade or inspire people, produce cooperative efforts and pursue goals. Leadership is different from management, though the two are easily confused. One may be a leader without being a manager and many managers cannot ‘lead a squad of seven- years –olds to the ice cream counter’ according to Gardner (1989). Gardner believes that there are several dimensions for distinguishing leadership from management. Leaders think long-term, look outside as well as inside and influence others regardless the position that they possess. In order to understand the idea of Leadership and which are the characteristics a leader usually has, studies and research have been conducted and several approaches to leadership styles as well as theories are arose. Some of them are going to be related to Collin’s Level 5 leadership hierarchy as well as to my own style of leadership. (Daft R. L. , Management, ch. 16, Leadership in Organisations , p. 514-515) Level 1 Leader & The Leadership Traits Approach Leadership trait approach is the oldest approach to the study of leadership. From this approach occurs that there are certain qualities in some people that define them as leaders or potential leaders. Traits therefore are the distinguishing personal characteristics such as intelligence, values and appearance. Leaders extend their power and use their abilities to influence events. Effective leaders are usually more intelligent, more dependable, responsible and more active. They usually ask for more information and give out more information. However, the ppropriateness of a trait or a set of traits depends on the leadership situation. The same traits do not apply to every organisation or situation. (Appendix 2, p. 11 summarises the physical, social and personal leadership characteristics) On the contrary, Collin’s Hierarchy is consisted of several characteristics/ capabilities that most can be found also in the leadership trait approach such as knowledge, achievement to drive and working effectively with others in a group setting. However, two characteristics that are of great importance are not included in it. There are the most important ones and are a necessary requirement for transforming an organisation from good to great, humility and professional will. (Diploma in Management, Module book 1, section 6, Teams in Management, p. 6. 16) However, in order to understand in what extent these two concepts can be correlated, we can use ourselves as an example. For instance, my position requires being a highly capable individual (Collin’s Hierarchy Level 1). How can I accomplish this requirement? By demonstrating many of the personal traits such as intelligence, knowledge, judgement and cognitive ability. For instance, the products that I handle have intense competition. Good knowledge of the market as well as intelligent moves made them to differentiate from competition. The creation of a guideline for treatment at home as well as the delivery of the products at home gave a benefit to them. As a result, Doctors preferred to prescribe these products for long term use and hade great impact on the company’s name and reliability. When we speak of leadership, either we refer to the qualities/ competencies of an individual or we can refer to a function of organisation. The ‘trait’ theory of leadership- the traditional or popular management view of leadership- focuses on the concept that leadership is a quality or set of qualities particular to an individual. On the contrary, the group dynamics theory sees leadership as a function of organisation. Level 2 Leader & Task versus people perspective styles Task versus people perspective styles of leadership do not take into consideration the organisation as a whole. They focus on teams. Every group of people has a task to accomplish. However, since groups are composed of people, several needs arise from them. According to the group dynamics theory of leadership, the person who adequately fulfils the needs that the group perceive to be the most important could be considered as an effective leader. A working team need to fulfil two functions. First, its formal tasks must be fulfilled. In order this to be accomplished; a set of competencies must be evolved. Technical knowledge, innovation and sense of achievement are related with the instrumental need to perform the tasks. Second, needs for affiliation, interaction and mutual support are usually observed within a team. Such needs are called expressive needs. The person who becomes leader must facilitate the satisfaction of some of the teams’ needs. This leader emerges to the group because he is the best able to help the group survive and succeed. ) (Master in Business Administration, Module book 3, section 1 The Theory of Leadership, p. 1. 7-1-11) According to Collin’s leadership hierarchy, the leader that is described in the group dynamics approach could be characterised as a level 2 leader. A contributing team member who is very good with his team members and ensures that his team meets its assigned objectives and fulfils the core purpose. Both group dynamics approach and Collins hierarchy are useful in helping us to see how leaders may relate to team members and to situations. (Collins, J. , (2005). Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 83. No. 7, p. 136-146) As a Brand Manager, one of my responsibilities to support our sales team by providing them with moderate amounts of detail and focus on why it is important for the team members to complete our objectives. However, I believe that co-owning the objective/action plan with team members and asking team members ideas as well as offering my own ideas is more efficient and can lead us easier to our goals. Besides, It is better to have, for instance, five people to think rather than one. Therefore, I strongly believe that teamwork can lead to better results. Level 3 Leader & The Contingency Theory According to contingency models, leadership depends as much on the situation of the group as on the leader himself or herself. Thus, we have a choice; either the leader can fit to the situation or change effectively the situation to fit the leader. As we can understand, leadership is different for first-level supervisors than for chief executives and the kind of leadership needed for skilled and highly motivated followers may not work for followers who are alienated and untrained. According to Fiedler, contingency model divides the leadership situation into three variables. In order to determine the most effective leadership style, we must consider the inter-relationship of the three contingencies: leader – member relations, task- structure and position power. 1. Leader – member relations, where mutual trust, respect and open communication exist and can be consider as advantageous. This means that tasks are clear and structured and members are aware of the power the leader holds. On the other hand, where there is little or no trust, respect of communication, then the relationship can be characterised as disadvantageous (control over the situation is needed and a focus on a task will not detract from the leaders/ team relationship because this is not essential to start with. 2.  Task- structure, when work is highly structured and easy to know when somebody has not complied with an instruction and it is easy to impose sanctions. However, when work is unstructured, leaders cannot enforce compliance with external controls and therefore, the leader has much less power than when work is highly structured. 3. Position power, is the extent to which a leader has formal authority over the followers. When position power is high then the leader has the power to plan and direct the work of followers, evaluate it and accordingly reward or punish it. On the other hand, when position power is low, the leader has little authority over followers. (Appendix 3, p. 11 presents Fiedler’s examination on how Leader Style fits the situation) Finally, according to Fiedler, task-oriented leaders tend to be more effective in situations that are either highly advantageous or highly disadvantageous to them and that relationship-oriented leaders tend to be more effective in situations that are moderately advantageous to them. (Bolman,L. G. , Terrence,D. E. , Reframing Organisations, Ch. , Reframing Leadership, p. 342-344) According to Collin, a level 3 leader is a competent manager who is skilled at organising people and resources towards the effective and efficient pursuit of predetermined objectives. However, as it is showed above, an efficient leader must differ from situation to situation or from team to team, according to its special characteristics. Analysing a level 3 leader in correlation with Contingency theory, we understand tha t a level 3 leader should consider both leader –member relations and tasks. Predetermined objectives cannot be achieved, if mutual trust, respect and open communication do not exist in a team and if tasks are not highly structured and followers do not know precisely their responsibilities. However, we must never ignore the extent to which a leader has formal authority over the followers. (Collins, J. , (2005). Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 83. No. 7, p. 136-146) For instance, according to my position, my everyday contact is with the sales team. According to my opinion, it is clear that trust, respect as well as open communication and mutual understanding exist within our team. One of the responsibilities of my position is to organise in some extent, their work by indicating them what is our goal and how we can reach it, with what tools and where we want to focus. Another one is to monitor our products sales and ask questions whenever I believe it is necessary. However, my position power is not as high as to evaluate them and reward or punish them accordingly.