SBenegaL

Category: Leadership

  • Culture and Leadership 5

    In the last byte, we looked how rewarding could help get the organizational values aligned. In today’s byte, we look at how hiring and firing decisions by leaders could reinforce the organizational culture.

    Hiring and Firing decisions are very strong indicators of the way leaders reinforce the organizational culture. 

    Often leaders unconsciously look out for new members who are similar to the current organizational members in terms of values and assumptions. As a practise in some companies that recommendations by a current employee, and this too helps find new employees who have similar values. The policy of promoting from within also servs to reinforce organizational culture. 

    The way an organization deals with firing an employee and the rationale behind the act are important means to communicate about the organization’s culture. Some companies poor performers are transfered to another department where they could perform better and make useful contributions. In others these employees would be qickly be sent away from the organization. 

    In some case where the reason may not be communicated to the employee, the speculation plays a major role. Imagine: An employee caught displaying unethical behavior and if simply reprimanded even though the behavior is against the organization’s values – other employees in such a context would think that this is a failure to reinforce the values within an organization.

  • Culture and Leadership 4

    In the last byte, we looked at how an organizational culture would be reflected in how the  leaders behave. In today’s byte, we look at how one could understand organizational culture from how leaders allocate resources.

    Rewards are widely used by organizations to get the expected behavior. Leaders could use these rewards to encourage and ensure that the values of the organization are consistently followed by all employees. 

    Lets take a couple of examples:
    1. Imaging a company where it is generally heard that there is a pay-for-performance system implemented. If the company at  point of offering increments decides to increase the compensation based on the years of service with the company rather than performance, think of the feeling an employee who has performed exceptionally well but relatively new into the organization!
    2. Imagine a second company where the company claims its value to be teamwork. They form cross-functional terms and empower these teams to make important decisions, however when there is the point of performance appraisal the criteria for rating employees focuses on individual performances!

    The confusing signals to the employees about the company’s culture could demotivate the employees.

  • Culture and Leadership 3

    In the last byte, we looked at how one could understand the leaders focus by observing what the leader pays attention to and how he would react in crisis. In today’s byte, we look further to understand how leaders could reinforce culture by how he/she behaves.
     
    How Leaders Behave?

    By role modeling, teaching, and coaching, leaders reinforce the values that support the organizational culture. One could often find employees emulating the leader’s behavior and look for cues when they would like to understand what the appropriate behavior would be.
     
    In the dynamic business environment we stay today, we often hear organizations say that they are encouraging employees to behave more entrepreneurially – taking up more initiative, and be more innovative in their jobs. Even in this case, it is required that the leaders themselves behave  entrepreneurially.
     
    One could extend the above example of entrepreneurial culture to any value in an organizational culture. Employees often find themselves observing the leader to find out what the organizations’ values are.

  • Culture and Leadership 2

    In the last byte, we began our discussion on the role a leader in managing the organizational culture and also noted the 5 major questions to ponder over. In today’s byte we look at a few of these questions.

    What leaders pay attention to:
    Leaders n a organization communicate their priorities, values and beliefs though the theme that consistently emerge from what they focus on – one could observe these by noticing what they notice, what they comment on, what they measure and what they control. 

    Leaders must be consistent in what they pay attention to, measure and control; in order to communicate to the employees and give a clear signal on what is important in the organization. In consistency on this front would get the employees confused thanks to the inconsistent signals.

    How leaders react to Crisis:
    Crisis is a situation when leadership is actually tested – how a leader deals with such situations communicate a powerful message about culture. Often emotions are heightened during crisis and learning is intense.

    It has been observed that difficult economic times present crisis from companies and illustrate their different values. Some organizations do everything possible to prevent laying off workers while others claim that employees are important but quickly institute major layoffs at the first signal of economic downturn.

  • Culture and Leadership

    In the last byte, we looked at the benefits of an adaptive culture on firm’s performance. In today’s byte, we explore how a leader could play a role in shaping or reinforcing culture. 

    Leadership in an organization plays a huge role in the way an organization develops its culture. To effectively manage culture, the following five elments need to be carefully throught through:
    1. What leaders pay attention to?
    2. How leaders react to crisis?
    3. How leader behave?
    4. How leaders allocate rewards?
    5. How leaders hire and fire individuals?
    We shall briefly discuss on some highlights of each of these elements over the next few bytes.

  • Guidelines for Leadership

    In the last byte, we looked at the cultural differences that a leader would need to keep in mind. In today’s byte, we look at some guidelines for leadership. 

    Leadership plays a very influential role in organizational behavior and achieving organizational effectiveness. Following are 5 useful guidelines for leadership:
    • No two leaders are the same – leaders and organizations should appreciate the unique attributes, predispositions, and talents of each leader. There is value in this diversity.
    • There is no single best style of leadership – there are organizational preferences in terms of style. The choice of leaders who challenge the organizational culture, when necessary, without destroying it.
    • Participative, Considerate leader behavior demonstrate a concern for people appear to enhance the health and well-being of followers in the work environment. This doesn’t imply, however, the leader cannot ignore the team’s work tasks
    • Different leadership situations call for different leadership talents and behaviors. This may result in different individuals taking the leader role, depending on the specific situation in which the team finds itself.
    • Good leaders are generally good followers too. Although there are distinctions between their social roles, the attributes and behaviors of leaders and followers may not be as distinct as is sometimes thought of.

  • Leadership – Cultural Differences

    In the last byte, we looked at dynamic followers. Today we look at the aspect of cultural differences in leadership.

    We have discussed about situational leadership where in leadership is influenced by the situational context in which the leadership act is shown. Extending this, we could say – we would need to consider the cultural influences in leadership scenario. Culture is definitely an important situational variable when exercising influence and authority. Leaders who think could groom themselves into being global leadership would need to be flexible enough to alter their approaches when crossing national boundaries and working with people in foreign cultures.
     
    Here is a small illustration of how the culture influences: Leadership in the American context where the American workers follow traditional Protestant work values. In China the influence is from three perspectives – Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism; these are harmonized to create work values such as trust, hierarchy, loyalty and network.
     
    To be effective, leaders must understand other cultures and be sensitive to the minor diversities and not assume homogeneity to be existent.

  • Effective Followers

    In the last byte, we looked at some of the characteristics of 4 groups of followers. Today we discuss about effective followers in a bit more detail.
     
    Effective Followers: These followers are active, responsible, and autonomous in their behavior, while also being critical in their thinking without being subordinate or disrespective.
     
    These followers have been found to be most valuable to a leader and an organization because of their active contribution. They possess four essential qualities:
    1. They practice self-management and self-responsibility. This implies that a leader could delegate to an effective follower without anxiety about the outcome.
    2. They are committed to both, the organization and a purpose, principle or person outside themselves. They are not self-centered and self aggrandizing.
    3. They invest in their own competence and professionalism and focus their energy for maximum impact. They are on the lookout for challenges and ways in which to add to their talents or abilities.
    4. They are courageous, honest and credible. 
    Given the above, they could be understood as self-leaders who do not require close supervision.

  • Leadership: Role of followers

    In the last byte, we looked at the concept of servant leadership. In today’s byte, we begin our discussion on the role of followers.

    The way we are generally thought to distinguish any two segments is by strict compartmentalization. In this context, we distinguish the two roles – leadership and followership as being completely separate from one another! But it is important to understand that this is just a view and as individuals in real world we could be doing both these two roles not just at different times but also at the same time!
     
    The traditional view of followership is generally one where the followers are passive, but in the contemporary setting the follower’s role is an active one with a potential for leadership! This could also be interpreted in some forms as special case of leadership: self-leadership; where the follower assumes responsibility for influencing his or her own performance.
     
    In such cases, the emphasis is on his or her own responsibility and self-control. Being self-lead would mean that the self-leader would perform motivating task with ease, but they would also need to do finish work that is not naturally motivating.
     
    Self-leadership would also help followers to be disciplined and effective; and in fact this forms the first essential steps for an individual to become a leader.
     
    Organizationally, one could use programs like – empowerment, self-managed work teams etc to encourage and activate the follower’s role.

  • Leadership – Trust

    In the last byte, we began our discussion about the emerging issues in leadership specifically – emotional intelligence. In today’s byte, we look at the role of trust in leadership.

    Trust refers to the willingness to be vulnerable to the actions of another.

    Trust is an essential element of leadership. Trust plays an important role in emotional intelligence.

    The implications of the above definition of trust, is that the followers believe that their leader will act with the followers welfare in mind! In an organizational setting where top-management trusts each other, implementing a strategy would be easier – since the team members trust each other, it would be easier to have a “buy-in” from employees on the direction of the company. If employees trust their leaders, they will have a buy in more readily!

    Note, it is important to note that effective leaders know whom and how to trust. At one extreme we find leaders who trust no one, they are generally lonely. At the other extreme, we find leaders who trust a close circle of advisors, listening only to them and gradually cutting themselves off from dissenting opinions! Leaders need to evaluate both the competence and the position of those they trust, seeking out a variety of opinions and inputs.