Gary Yukl is a well-known professor of management and leadership, who has served as a faculty and board member of the leadership quarterly Journal published by the State University of New York in Albany. He has written several articles about leadership and its application and impact on business. The first version of the book leadership in organizations was published in the year 1981 and there were various other versions which were published after which the fifth version was published in the year 2002 where the pre-existing 19 chapters were consolidated into 15 chapters and a new chapter on ethical leadership and diversity was also added. With the fifth edition, this book primarily became a 15 week course for the management students and consisted of 15 different chapters based on different aspects related to organizational leadership.
This book provides a detailed view of managerial leadership in large organizations and provides the key ingredients of converting managerial academics into actual management practitioners. Every chapter in this book provides a detailed list of the learning objectives which are covered in order to help the students to understand about, what they should expect from those chapters. The research work which is done as a part of this book, is primarily targeting the areas related to the leadership roles and their impact on organizations due to the specific approaches that are taken by people at managerial positions. Mentioned below is a discussion based on a few selected chapters from the book.
This is the Chapter 3 of the book and provides a perspective about the effectiveness of leadership behavior. Yukl provides a detailed understanding of the various researches that have been done in order to understand about a particular leadership behavior which can be considered to be the most effective however the results of all those researches are quite vague. In a nutshell, out of the various researches that have been conducted this fact has come as a proof that the leader is to show a behavior where both performance and relationships are given equal importance are mostly seen to be effective.
Participative Leadership, Delegation and Empowerment
It is very important for employees, apart from the leaders are also encouraged to feel an integral part of the organization and therefore this chapter provides useful information about the participative leadership, delegation and empowerment. Participative leadership is the approach where an involvement of the others is encouraged rather than decisions which are taken by managers on their own. It may also be another case where, the decision May be taken by the managers however changes can be made if not agreed upon by the relevant population. Yukl emphasizes on the quality of involving people in the decisions of an organization even in cases where a decision can be individually taken by a leader and therefore these types of decisions would have far more positive perception than the ones which are taken alone.
Yukl also talks about in this chapter about the delegation, which is defined as a tool in order to share the responsibility or allocate the responsibility to a subordinate in order to achieve motivation and reduction of workload. He also provides various reasons for delegating and not delegating certain tasks within an organization. The discussion about empowerment includes meaningful work, high self-efficacy,self-determination, and ability to influence relevant events; the approach provides an insight into how leaders can achieve the above through participative leadership and adequate delegation.
Change
The chapter 10 of the book provides an insight into one of the most challenging areas related to the responsibilities of leadership, and that is change management. There is a concrete discussion about the change process and specially the situations when there is a change which is expected in the places or in the culture. There is a clear-cut emphasis on the importance of a well planned process of managing the change, which is helpful to implement the change gradually while sustaining the business as usual. It is also necessary according to Yukl, to have a vision related to the change which should come true as the change takes place gradually and therefore he also provides guidelines related to the political, organization or people oriented actions which are taken within the organization by the leader in order to make the change acceptable to those who are a part of the organization.
Teamwork
Moving on from the topic of change management, Yukl picks up another hot cake, but discussing the topic of teamwork. This is one area, which can do wonders to an organization however the question is that how can the right culture be set by a leader of an organization in order to maintain excellent and sustain teamwork. The approach taken by Yukl is simple however systematic, and is a clear explanation of how and in which situations different types of teams like functional teams, cross functional teams, self managed work teams, Virtual Corporation teams and self defining teams operate and be successful. There is a lot of effort that gets wasted in getting the teams together and in order to build the right mutual cooperation, group identification and cohesiveness hence this chapter also provides tips on how to attain the above within a team through positive leadership. The meetings are important part of every organization and process, and these meetings can be extremely fruitful if the required leader-centered and group centered approaches are applied. Yukl also highlights the still existing controversy of the theory where there is a confusion about the importance of executives and their impact on the organization as compared to that of the leadership.
Leadership development
The chapter 13 of the book provides reviews on leadership development within an organization and the key facilitating conditions which can be helpful in the development. Former training, developmental activities and self-help activities are suggested to be the three most important pillars of leadership development with an organization and the training is primarily associated with creation of courses which concentrate on particular leadership theories like the leader member exchange theory.
Ethical Leadership and Diversity
There has been a drastic increase in the discussions based on ethics and leadership in the past decade. The learning culture, human resource activities, staffing decisions, performance appraisal and succession planning are few areas where ethics are extremely important in order to maintain the dignity and decorum of an organization. This chapter which is the second last chapter of the book provides a systematic approach towards maintaining ethics in all the above important aspects of functions of an organization. The chapter not only provides, a specific criteria for evaluating ethical leadership but also discusses about the two most important aspects of ethical leadership behavior. Sex-based discrimination and cultural issues are also given the required importance in this chapter.
Diversity is the other topic which is raised in this chapter, and Yukl believes that it is the responsibility of the leaders to ensure that diversity is properly respected, which means that equal opportunity should be available for like and unlike thinkers and it is in the favor of the organization to have a strong organizational culture with shared values and collective identification.
Summary and Conclusion
Undoubtedly, the book is an asset for all those who is tired to become a leader in future and therefore the various aspects of leadership which are examined in this book provide a summary of the consistent findings from various researches that have been done in order to study the importance, impact and effectiveness of leadership. It starts with the idea of interpreting the meaning of events and to create an alignment on objectives and strategies. The importance of commitment and optimism is highlighted however trust and cooperation are defined to be equally important. Teamwork is defined as a collective identity of an organization, and leaders are encouraged to organize, coordinate activities, encourage and facilitate collective learning. It is the responsibility of a leader to work on self-improvement and obtain necessary resources and support in order to develop and empower people while keeping in mind that social justice and morality (ethics) are also as important as it is to run the business successfully.
