Strategies to implement change
Part one
Though the terms management and leadership may sound interrelated, the two are very different. This is clear because leadership is the ability to give directions to people who cannot go alone. Leaders do not need to be managers. On the other hand, management is where there is overseeing and controlling of businesses and organizations.
According to my understanding regarding my leadership style model, The variation between leadership and management is that, leadership is doing right things and making good decisions on the actions to take while management is doing things right. The act of leadership brings about the act of management. Managers therefore must use some leadership skills and vise versa. Understanding the differences in a working place and working on the framework can greatly improve it and make it more productive like it has been the case with me.
The function of a leader in leadership involves working closely with those in management to ensure that the company is going to the right direction. It also involves looking and examining at the trends and data to ensure it remains competitive. Effective leadership involves management since managing people is all about understanding individuals’ weaknesses and strengths within a working team. Management and leadership of people only depend on the role assigned within an organization. The mock therapy acted as platform for me to have more insight and awareness into therapeutic growth that I have today. Therapeutic growth includes confidence and maturity in terms of culture.
Through self-assessment, I discovered I have strengths that help me when relating with employees from other cultures. I allow my fellow workers with a different culture from mine to take the lead. I do not compete on which culture wins or loses. I like seeing to it that every worker is comfortable regardless of where he or she comes from, his or her beliefs or their cultural values. I can confidently say that I have familiarized my self with several culture as well as different cultural settings as strength. When evaluating workers based on culture, I know the dos, don’ts, and I hardly make decisions based on personal issues while at work. If I did not have the mock therapy, I could still have not developed intercultural skills, which help me to discover my strengths and work on them to get even stronger.
One of the areas I noted I have to improve concerns my attitude towards fellow workers with different beliefs and values. Leaders should appreciate the differences and build on what unites us as workers. Appreciating the differences will help me learn more about other cultures thus widening the scope of my leadership skills. To achieve this, leaders ought to be open-minded, understand that no culture is greater than the other is.
Secondly, it is important leaders become the change they want to experience. Instead of complaining about other workers’ behavior, they should change to accommodate them. By setting an example, leaders are able to influence my work mates and the society positively. Changing how people view a certain community in relation to a culture is not easy but with commitment and confidence that leaders gather, they will empower communities deal well with different cultures to improve socialization standards.
Styles in leadership include how the leaders relate to those who are around them. In addition, how leaders receive information and come up with conclusions. Some examples will best compare and contrast the theories in leadership. Two of these dramatically displayed theories are those of Commander Jones colonel who became popular because of assaulting a trench and as a result, he died. The other theory is that of major john who lead an assault successfully on Colonel Jones. Both characters have opposite approaches on their leadership styles. There is the autocratic style of leadership and leaser faire. For one to become a successful leader, he or she has to use a decision tree.
Part 2
Going by the list that Kotter developed for the factors leading to successful change and those leading to failure, the innovative organizations such as the Brazilian airline company did not have effective leadership of change. The leaders within the company did not follow the devised eight-step method. In the eight-step method, the first four defreeze the organization, which they followed effectively. They failed in the next three steps that follow which make the change happen. Change took time to take place and this is where other organizations overtook them. As for the last step, which was supposed to refreeze the company with a new culture, they effectively followed it but the fact that they did not follow the steps in order made it inappropriate (Roberto, 2009).
Kotter says that for big companies to have effective leadership of change the eight steps must happen in order and rearranging them could change the meaning. There are several lessons learnt from the steps they skipped. Failure to remove the obstacles to the new vision is one of them where obstacles included the structure of the organization and narrowly defined categories of job. The reason as to why organizations change culture is to reverse the situation when it does not support the existing performance and strategy. Most companies however change the culture when strategy shifts which most refer to as strategic shift (James, 2010).
Changing of cultures can be through various ways but the Brazilian airline uses founders, critical events, and hiring and top management team to change their culture. Stories and rituals as well as rewards in terms of monetary, benefits and promotions terms to change their culture. The steps that the Brazilian airline skipped made their leadership of change ineffective.
Part 3
There are many reasons as to why people resist change when it comes to leadership but the greatest of them all being distrust. Many people fail to trust the change that leaders talk about implementing and see as if it will not have a successful ending. For example, my previous work at Google Kenya required new strategies to be able to translate the English language to suit other people using the facility but people did not see how tat could work.
It seemed as if the change could not be successful. Rarely do people trust potential change coming from leaders. The only way to manage this kind of change is through performance to prove people wrong. implementation takes a lot of courage as there are many challenges associated with it thus working hard is the only way to overcome the obstacle because once implementation is done, the rest comes by easily. Negotiations is the gene one scenario that greatly hinders the change effort both to people receiving the change and those bringing the change, in this case the leaders.
References
Hardy, J. (2010). leadership. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
James E. (2010). Empresa Brasileira de Aeronautica S.A. Teaching Note. New York: New York Times.
Kotler, P. & Keller, K. (2006) Management, 12thed. New York: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Roberto B. (2009). The Embraer Case, Privatization and Management Change from
Technological Imperative to Market Focus. New York: New York Times.
