INTRODUCTION
The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of effective leadership of the overall growth and development of the organization. To do so, the study focuses upon defining leadership along with its importance within an organization. In addition, the benefits that are provided to an organization have also been taken into consideration. In the end, the impact of effective leadership on the overall growth and development of the organization have been taken into consideration. All the information provided regarding the importance of leadership, and its impact on the overall growth along with the development of the organization has been supported with relevant theories along with examples.
Leadership, in simpler words, can be defined as a collection of processes and procedures that can be used by a person to enhance collaboration and coordination while pulling the team to focus on the accomplishment of a specific objective. On the other hand, leader can be defined as a person that is responsible to establish direction for the people. The leader is also responsible for influencing and aligning the people toward the attainment of shared goals and objectives, while motivating people to take responsibility of their performances (Hackman, & Johnson, 2004).
Similarly, leadership is often considered to be interpersonal dynamics that is built within an individual. This reflects that leaders are not born but made with the passage of time. Leadership is the art to influence others, to pull others together to do something better day by day (Bolman, & Deal, 2002).
A leader is one that takes responsibility for the creation of plan, security and allocation of resources, as well as correction of errors. But an effective leader takes responsibility for the creation of plans according to the given situations and scenarios, collecting the right resources in right quantities. Effective leaders are also responsible for allocating the resources in the most effective and efficient manner to take optimum advantage of the available resources, and being proactive to search for deficiencies within the organization to make things right before any problem arises. This reflects that for an organization to be successful, it must ensure effective leadership at all time.
IMPORTANCE OF EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP
Effective leaders are the ones responsible for influencing others to work towards the accomplishment of common goals. Effective leaders consider them not only responsible for the accomplishment of organizational goals but also help people to maximize and connect with their immense potential. This provides the individual with an ability to accomplish purposeful things in life. Through effective leadership, the organization is provided with the power of the people that work for and with others within the organization, rather than working for personal gains at the expense of others. This clearly reflects that effective and good leadership fuels the progress of the organization (Hartel, and Fujimoto, 2010).
Some of the dominant reasons that clearly reflect the importance of effective leadership are as follows;
- Direction
Effective leaders have always been the source of direction for the team. To hold a team together is quite essential for the success of an organization. This responsibility is taken by leaders to provide directions to different people with different working capacities within an organization while aligning their abilities towards the accomplishment of desired task.
- Evaluation
Effective leaders ensure work productivity and performance through the evaluation (i.e. accountability). The assessment of work productivity ensures continual growth of the organization and helps the leader to provide feedback to the team members for improvements.
- Mediation
Interpersonal conflicts within the team have always been reported to be the reason for failure. This conflict can even stem from competitiveness, or just by frustration, but can impact the working process significantly. This is also the responsibility of an effective leadership to resolve interpersonal conflicts by forcing both parties to compromise. This reflects that becoming a mediation source, an effective leader makes a significant difference.
- Prioritizing
Leaders are always in charge for the completion of projects on the scheduled time. To ensure that the group members may not lose sight of the larger objectives, effective leaders set priorities in work schedule. This significantly helps in completing the task in the desired manner while remaining focused on the larger objective.
- Motivation
An effective leadership has always been a source for inspiration to others. Effective leaders not only supports team members, provides mentoring, or uniting the people towards the attainment of better and bigger things, but also pushes the people beyond their limits for the accomplishment of tasks that were once considered impossible.
BENEFITS OF EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP
An effective leader fuels the progress and growth of the organization through unparalleled experience and decisions. Some of the benefits that an organization is provided through effective leadership are as follows;
- Morale Building
Effective leadership within an organization helps in the development of morale of the employees. The leader helps an individual to fulfill his vision. A leader constantly pushes his employee to maximize their potential to achieve objectives that were once considered impossible. In addition, effective leadership helps in the development of personality which eventually influences the employees to raise their performance.
- Creating Confidence
Effective leadership promotes creative thinking to provide the organization with new innovative ideas. By doing so, the leaders are able to recognize the qualities and capabilities of every individual, thus creating and enhancing the self-confidence within the employees to take hard-decisions themselves based on their intuition and experience.
- Co-ordination
An effective leader focuses highly on fostering mutual consideration and understanding among the group members. Being a mediation source, the leader tend to resolve issues and conflicts to create a community of common interest to deliver best results and outcomes for the growth and success of the organization.
- Goal setting
Effective leadership at an organization helps in the creation of vision along with the long-term goals and objectives. In addition, an effective leader provides guidance to the employees and helps them to understand the vision and core values of the organization.
- Motivation
The most significant benefit of effective leadership at an organization is the motivation of employees to continually accomplish more. Under effective leadership, the potential of the workers is transformed into performance that eventually provides the organization with significant opportunities towards the accomplishment goals, including short-term as well as long-term.
LEADERSHIP AND ITS IMPACT ON THE OVERALL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF ORGANIZATION
Leadership within an organization plays a dominant role in the overall success of an organization. Some of the areas that are continually improved due to effective leadership are as follows;
- Changes in Organizational Culture
Creation of culture is the core responsibility of effective leadership as it can help the organization to influence the employees to enhance their performance as well as productivity. Leaders act as role models for employees within organizations. Effective leaders influence the organization’s culture along with the values and philosophy. As a result, the employees tend to work towards improving their behavior to meet the organizational values and philosophy set by their role model (Kaiser, Hogan, & Craig, 2008). For instance, leaders set the context for employees to strive for excellence while working together for the profitable accomplishment of organizational goals and objectives. In return, the employees tend to follow the footsteps of their leader i.e. acting in a way that mirrors their leader).
This clearly reflects that effective leadership at an organization helps in changing the organizational culture. As a result, employees tend to mold their behavior to subconsciously please their role model.
- Learning and Development of Employees
Effective leadership always looks for energetic and responsive employees that could work day and night for the success of the organization in terms of performance and productivity. Effective leaders provide employees with significant opportunities to enhance their competencies along with skills and knowledge to provide the organization with outstanding outcomes (Kotter, 2007).
Mentoring and coaching are some of the approaches that have been commonly used by the leader for the training and development of employees. On the other hand, some other approaches that are taken into consideration to provide the employees with an opportunity to learn include simulation, on-job training and job rotation. As a result, the employee adds significant value to their work.
- Quality Improvement
Quality work has always been the core goal of organizations in the constantly changing competitive landscape. To make this happen, organizations rely on effective leadership to motivate employees to enhance their performance to attain goals that are impossible. Effective leaders’ focus on efficiency and effectiveness has always been appreciated by the employees which eventually results in the quality of work from the employees. This eventually reflects that employees tend to focus highly on efficiency and effectiveness along with responsiveness to please the leadership at the organization.
- Employee Engagement
Driving employee’s engagement plays a dominant role in the success and overall growth of the organization. To drive employee’s engagement, effective leadership tends to place right people at the right place (i.e. jobs). In addition, empowering the employees to gain outstanding outcomes has played a dominant role in driving engagement along with the creation of value (Deloitte, 2013).
(Deloitte, 2013)
- Overall Company Ranking
The image and the rank of the company also rely highly on the effective leadership. Providing the employee with poor working condition can result in negative publicity – for instance, the usage of Foxconn in China for the production of Apple products resulted in the negative publicity and ranking of Apple.
This reflects that decisions taken by the leadership at an organization can either boost the ranking or can deflate the entire organization at the same time.
EXAMPLE OF EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP
Bill Gates has dominated the entire world due to his significant and outstanding leadership qualities. It would be wise to say that Microsoft would not have achieved such growth and success, if Microsoft would have any other leader than Bill Gates.
The success of Bill Gates is basically due to the innovative thinking and leadership style i.e. transformational and charismatic). Despite the constantly changing competitive landscape, Microsoft has taken advantage of every opportunity it could find within and outside the industry. Under the leadership of college dropout, Microsoft went from zero to $230 billion in decades. Some of the dominant qualities of Bill Gates that provided Microsoft with an opportunity to become the market leader are as follows;
- Ability to seize the moment
- Play to win and learn
- Integration of technology
- Hiring smart people from time to time
- Limited team members within a group
On the other hand, Tim Cook is another prominent example of an effective leader. Tim Cook is in charge of one of the most dominant tech-giants in the globe. Being a team player, Tim Cook has changed the direction of Apple to enhance its worth to $300 billion. The effective leadership of Tim Cook clearly reflects that he follows democratic leadership style. The employees at Apple are empowered to take quick decisions to enhance the overall growth and success of the organization along with the development of the most appreciated asset; human resource.
This clearly reflects that the overall growth and the development of organizations are dominantly supported by the effective leadership. Microsoft and Apple are just two from thousands of successful organizations that have accomplished unexpected level of success and growth.
CONCLUSION
Effective leadership has played a dominant role in providing the organizations of the world with outstanding opportunities to accomplish its unmet goals and objectives. Effective leaders are considered to be the role model for every single employee. Due to this fact, the organization is provided with several benefits to influence the employees to become the reflection of leaders. Some of the benefits that are provided to the organization due to effective leadership include; changes in organizational culture, overall company image and ranking, employee engagement, quality improvement and, learning and development of employees.
References
Bolman, L. G. & Deal, T. E, (2002). Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership (3rd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey- Bass.
Deloitte. (2013). Leadership Effectiveness. Retrieved September 18, 2013 from http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_ZA/za/services/consulting/humancapital/human-impact-development/6162e1a4d8a36310VgnVCM3000001c56f00aRCRD.htm
Hackman, M. Z., & Johnson, C. E. (2004). Leadership: A communication perspective. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.
Hartel, C., and Fujimoto, Y. (2010). Human Resource Management. Pearson: Australia.
Kaiser, R. B., Hogan, R., & Craig, S. B. (2008). ‘Leadership and the Fate of Organizations’. American Psychologist, 63(2), 96.
Kotter, J. (2007). Leading Change: why transformation efforts fail. Harvard Business Review, 85(1), 96-103.
