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Leadership Theories/ Style
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Leadership Theories/ Style
Introduction
Global Delivery Direct (GDD) is a Norfolk, England medium-sized global delivery company that was started in 1968 by four college friends. The owners of GDD saw the rapid growth and competitive advantage of delivery service. In lieu of this, they expanded the service to America and Asia Pacific which turned the company in sizeable growth. GDD envisions to be the delivery company to the business world. To make this happen, the four founders acknowledge the importance of their employees’ relationship with customers that can only be achieved when there are strong leaders who can continuously manage the new niche that will be opened by the company. This paper presents the following discussions: (1) the GDD’s prevalent leadership theory, leadership approach and preferred leadership style; (2) each candidate’s prevalent leadership theory, leadership approach and preferred leadership style; (3) GDD candidate comparison; and, (4) recommendation.
The GDD’s prevalent leadership theory, approach, and preferred leadership style
Taleb explained the concept of leadership as a “process which influences a group of individuals to work towards the achievement of a common goal or vision” (2010, p. 288). GDD’s leaders are classified into four: authoritarian, laissez-faire, participative, and transformational leadership.
Chu (2010) noticed that a leader’s efficiency and strength is rooted from higher personal integrity or self-cultivation, and that it gauged under the atmosphere of ruling people. In this regard, authoritarian leadership is referred to as “highlighting leader’s authority, by not allowing any challenges and requesting the subordinate’s obedience” (Chu, 2010, p. 2). Under authoritarian leadership, the leader has dominant or tyrannical behavior by which decision authority is centered to patriarchal style of work. Research showed that participative style of management is a “joint decision making or at least shared influence in decision making by a superior and his or her employees and offers an array of potential benefits to superior and subordinates (Benoliel & Somech, 2010, p. 285). Growing recognition of styles of management in handling numerous challenges organization to examine the roots of management problems and single out strategies for resolution.
Xirasagar defined laissez-faire as “indifferent or lacks of leadership” (2008, p. 602). Management, who applies this style of leadership, is as if no leadership existing because he does not involve himself with subordinates’ actions and unresponsive with organizational outcomes. Basically noted characteristics of laissez-faire leadership is that, leader is demonstrating an attitude of relinquishing responsibility – to make decisions or address important issues, reassigning proactively the potentials problems of management to the people in lower hierarchy of organization (Brahnam et al., 2005). Transformational lleadership is an art of experience; a great leader can transform from a junk to a thing of value. A person can never realize the essence of being part of an organization without having the experience of leading and be led as well. Bass and Avolio classified five sub-scales of transformational leadership – idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration, and two scale items in transactional leadership – contingent reward and management by exception (as cited in Xirasagar, 2008, p. 604).
Candidate’s prevalent leadership style
Henrietta Raynard is more identified as authoritarian the way she answered Rockfish’s questions as regards the characteristics of a leader as “objective, practical, controlled and fair.” Due to detainment of power or authority, there is tendency of holding it against her subordinates is at high possibility. As authoritarian leader, she creates decisions and turns out that her leadership style has negative impact on working morale of subordinate-superior relationship. As such, it promotes unsatisfied and stressed employees, who are complying with leader’s perceptive standard and prompt to perform what they are asked to be done.
Orson Hernandez, on the hand, is characterized as transformational leader. Spinelli (2006) argued that laissez-faire works in a non-leadership system, in which organization survives in the current climate not because of leader’s effectiveness but due to competent traits of subordinates in self-administering the necessary performance of organization. Noted that, Hernandez inadequacy as a leader in effective management affect to complexities of potential problem to becoming a constructed that conflicts with supervisor-subordinate relationship. Laissez-faire leadership in a way results in the lowest level of group behavior and efficiency of output produced by subordinates, thereby resulting to poor satisfaction of customers in the expectation of access to cost-effective and quality delivery of services.
Jonathan Livingstone is one of the transformational leadership. He has the unique variance of relationship with subordinates that affects their perception to certain way of improving their performance to company. This type of leadership impacts the organization in extent of the power, influence, behavior, motivation, manifest satisfaction, and performance. Hence, in these type of leadership, motivation and innovation are major characteristics that rise in the performance of a leader; secondarily, the attributes of clear vision and empowerment are frequently known as critical elements for employment satisfaction and commitment of employees to the vision of the organization.
Lastly, Adrianna Coyote is a type of participative leadership. She is characterized as servant but authoritarian, in a sense that she is managing organization in a balancing process between productivity of employees’ performance and profitability to attract improvement in terms of customer care and demand satisfaction. In this case, it provides evidence that a participative leadership creates stimulating schemes that prompt ingenuity, commitment, and efficiency among employees the fact that they could relate with their superiors and vice versa such as sharing their ideas and information that collectively influence the effectiveness of organization and input work-related motivation (Angermeier et al., 2009).
Compare and contrast with the candidates
| Candidate | 1 No Fit | 2 Bad Fit | 3 Not Sure | 4 Good Fit | 5 Best Fit |
| Raynard | × | ||||
| Hernandez | × | ||||
| Livingston | × | ||||
| Coyote | × |
Among the four candidates, Coyote is the best fit for GDD’s 21st century leader. Her leadership seems to have an observable set of skills and abilities. It is one which appear naturally from an individual, an innate characteristic that makes the best from the brightest, and discovers the potentials in an approach of development process. Her rational and proper leadership exists from the time GDD hired her as part-time employee until she became full-pledge staff of the company.
Recommendation
The strength of an organization lies not only on the competency of capital, investment, and global connection. The concurrence between subordinates and superior creating a balance relationship renders organization to be productive and profitable even working in limited resources; that is because of the leadership styles employ by management in connecting with people. In this paper, Coyote’s participative management is deemed effective among other styles of leadership because it helps the top-down management to be more responsive, competitive, and efficient in providing better service to customers. As noted, there can be no changes that take place in an organization without the support system of administration. Hence, it is only through the participation of employees to strategic plans of management that it is expected to increase the potential improvement of individual and organization-wide.
References
Angermeier, I., Dunford, B.B., Boss, A.D., Boss, R.W., Miller, J.A. Jr. [2009]. The Impact of Participative Management Perceptions on Customer Service, Medical Errors, Burnout, and Turnover Intentions/Practitioner Application. Journal of Healthcare Management, 54 [2], 127-40.
Benoliel, P. & Somech, A. [2010]. Who benefits from participative management? Journal of Educational Administration, 48 [3], 285-308.
Brahnam, S.D., Margavio, T.M., Hignite, M.A., Barrier, T.B., & Chin, J.M. [2005]. Preview A gender-based categorization for conflict resolution. The Journal of Management Development, 24 [3], 197-208.
Chu, P. [2010]. A Study of the Influence of Paternalistic Leadership and Subordinate-Supervisor Relationship on Working Morale. Journal of Global Business Management, 6 [2], 1-8.
Spinelli, R.J. [2006]. The Applicability of Bass’s Model of Transformational, Transactional, and Laissez-Faire Leadership. Hospital Topics, 84 [2], 11-19.
Taleb, H.M. [2010]. Gender and leadership styles in single-sex academic institutions. The International Journal of Educational Management, 24 [4], 287-302.
Xirasagar, S. [2008]. Transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership among physician executives. Journal of Health Organization and Management, 22 [6], 599-613.
2017/5071
