Executive Summary
In any organization today, change leaders who are responsible for ensuring that change for the better exist with an organization play very important part. However, there are two types of change leaders; external and internal. They both have the disadvantages and advantages. It is worth to notice that any good management on either side should lead to a positive change in the organization. Otherwise, the organization will suffer in the hands of poor leadership. In this report, I am going to explain a bout the change leaders both internal and external; their merits as well as their demerits.( Ulrich, D.1996).
Introduction
The Research Background
The main aim of this report is to discuss about the change leaders both internal and external with an aim of recommending the better one. There are several sub topics to back up my arguments with good referencing for the reader to refer later.
Limitations of the Report
The report had been broken down into very important areas. There are short but extensive explanations in each sub-topic. This is due to short time which was given to me.
Discussion Report
What is Change Leaders?
These are people who ensure that whenever there is renewal of leaders in an organization, the higher performance is still maintained or initiated when it was not there before. Their main goal is to always bring positive development to the organization. It is always the CEO of the organisation who is marked as the change leader but it can as well be mangers and non-managers as well as employees who practise leadership skills in the various capacities they serve. The change leaders can also be external consultants who are hired by the organisation for management purposes.( Ulrich, D.1996).
Organization development agents, deals with the problems in stages, systems, teams, individuals following the organization culture in each and every area they work in. Through consultations and interventions, they ensure that the organization run effectively. This requires good relationship within the team and consultation skills.
When an organization hire consultants then they should realize that there are various department in the organization which work interdependently. Any change in any department will affect or will be felt by the other. (Merkle, A.2009). For instance, when the production goes down, this will greatly affect the organization through other departments like supply chain within the organization. The demand will now be higher than the supply. Within the organization their might be collaboration within various teams to boost the morale and enhance the effectiveness of the organization.
The Need for Change Leaders
As the sys goes that change is inevitable. One cannot avoid change and this no exemption to any organization. Change shapes the future. The common type of change in the modern world is transformation change. (Merkle, A.2009).This type of change does not require close supervision in that each and every individual participate to his/her capacity to ensure achievement of a common goal.
Human resource managers have also contributed a lot in betterment of various organizations for a very long time as business partners. Human resource managers ensure that there
Internal Change Leaders
These are leaders who have continuously worked for the organization and know its way of operation and how the employees are treated. (Merkle, A.2009). They understand deeply the problems of the organization and have the capacity to improve solve these problems. These internal change leaders are being appointed from inside the organization and they are from different ranks. They are assigned the duty of supervising in various departments and divisions. They are termed as employees of the organization who are employed full time and are undergoing change.
Pros of Internal Leadership
The internal change leaders understand best the employees whom they have been working with for along time. For instance, for a project to be executed well and in a timely manner there must be a long relationship of the team members which have worked for quite some time. This will be realised well through an internal change leader. This type of leader knows the weaknesses and the strengths of each and every employee. (Merkle, A.2009). Therefore, he/she is in the best position to award the duties in the areas which they can perfume best. This will enhance the effectiveness of the organization hence better performance. The time and resources which are used in finding an internal change leader are less consider to the process of finding an external leader. The process is not tiresome as the person has been known for long in the culture of the organization.
Cons of Internal Leadership
On the other hand, getting anew leader from inside the organization has also some consequences. May be the former leader did not achieve a certain goal; he/she might be reluctant too to achieve this particular goal.(Argyris, C. & Schon, D. 1978). These new internal leader might continue with the toxic culture if any that was originally existing. This is the worst thing ever since this culture might continue in the organization for a long time leading to poor performance by the employees. Secondly, the leader new leader in question obviously must come from a lower position and this might result to an autocratic type of leadership. This is where a leader defines, design and solve problems a lone without involving the team members. This can as a result of seeing the team members as now his/her juniors. This might be dangerous since decisions which are always made by one person may be highly affected by emotions hence poor results. (Western, S. 2010).
External Change Leaders
External leadership is where the external consultants are hired by the organization to carry out the management work. It should be noted that they do the same job as the internal change leaders.
Advantages of External Leadership
`This kind of a leader is vetted in genuinely without the interference of the staff. Therefore, they dispel the rumours of corruption which might Hoover around the employees. Furthermore, External leader does not have any leakage a bout the organization be it gossip or investigation. This way, he/she will be able to work professionally to accomplish a given target. (Merkle, A.2009).
Secondly, external leaders are those who are consistently working with the corporate world and therefore they have a lot of skills and knowledge about the managerial positions. They can manage the organization well and achieve the unbelievable goals.
Cons of External Leadership
. One needs to work from inside in order to understand fully how the organization works. When a person is brought from outside to lead an organization, then a number of changes can be made and since he/she has not worked there for long, some of these changes might affect the organization negatively because of lack of experience.
For instance we might find that for a very long time, the organization has being using the transformational type of leadership which is more visionary and more inspirational. (Carter, L. 2004).But the new external leader who has not experienced this type of leadership might decide to use transactional leadership and everything will be confused.
Recommendations
Even if both the external and the internal leaders are put together to work, the external leader will rely mostly on the decisions of the internal leader. This is simply because the external leader to not understand the operations of this organization. (Merkle, A.2009). According to the above discussion, the internal leader stands the best chance to lead an organization because of vast experience and skills he/she has learned in the organization. Therefore, the internal leader is recommended.
Conclusion
Leadership should be viewed as the property of any organization but it is the mandate of every individual in the organization to practice and show the qualities of a good leader. This is because each and every work place should place leadership roles. This will help to develop future internal CEOs within the organization. (Conaty, B.& Ram, C. 2011). A good leader also must be in apposition to encourage each and every individual to exercise leadership for the purpose of working under minimal supervision. This might also help in that the organization may continue to do well even if the overall leader does minimal. This explains the idea of attribution theory, each and every individual in a group should understand the weaknesses and strengths of the group members to produce better results. The issue of finding an internal leader to replace the outgoing one should be adopted and put into use. As earlier been explained, it has several advantages than an external leadership.
References
Argyris, C. & Schon, D. (1978), Organizational Learning: A theory of action perspective, Reading MA: Addison-Wesley,
Bradford, D.L. & Burke, W.W. (2005). Organization Development. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.
Carter, L. (2004), Best Practices in Leadership Development and Organization Change. Jossey Bass.
Conaty, B.& Ram, C. (2011). The Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers. Crown Publishing Group.
Merkle, A.(2009). Management and Ideology. University of California Press.
Newton, M. (1972). Organizational Development: Values, Process, and Technology. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Book Co. p. 3
Putnam, T.(2001).The New Handbook of Organizational Communication: Advances in Theory, Research, and Method. Sage: Thousand Oaks, CA
Ulrich, D. (1996). Human Resource Champions. The next agenda for adding value and delivering results. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press
Weisbord, M. (1987). Productive Workplace: Organizing and managing for dignity, meaning and community. Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco.
Western, S. (2010), What do we mean by Organizational Development, Krakow: Krakow: Advisio Press
