The leadership all over the globe is the influence of the person to accomplish their objectives. This memorandum is written to discuss the factors of the effectiveness of leadership. Further, this memo discusses how different country’s cultures effects the leadership principles.
Concept Of Leadership
Leadership requires a number of abilities and willpower in a person to accomplish its desired goals. A good leader is required to have a habit of conducting a continuous process of self-study, training, and gaining experiences. It is the ability of a person through which it could gather workers in to theta. A person is not a leader since birth as the leaders are made. However, some believe that leaders are born, and they enhance their skills with time. Leadership is a process in which person influences others to organize cohesive and coherent ways to accomplish the set target directly. The main attributes that an effective leader must have values, ethics, beliefs, skills, knowledge and good moral character.
There are three ways in which a person could become a leader. The leader could lead number of people naturally through some qualities in his or her personality. This theory could be variable in the personality while conducting effort in the crisis moment to raise an event with extraordinary quality in a personality. On the other hand, the way that takes a person towards leadership is the learning skills. It is the transformational leadership that is extremely valuable. Another way is the respect of a person. Most of the people follow a person who is honest and carry a good character.
According to Snjezana et al. (2012), leadership universally is based on many components that are focused on the employee’s satisfaction. A leader can only have excellent leadership if the confidence and trust are built by the employees on that single personality in the organization (Snjezana Kovjanic1, Jonas, Quaquebeke, & Dick, 2012).The effective leadership could be achieved through developing a strong communication to develop employees trust. The quality of developing trust among employees is helpful in achieving the organizational goals. These practices show that the leader is trustworthy and honest with them. It is also important to acknowledge here that leadership attributes and styles vary according to the culture and country.
Principles Of Effective Leadership
There are many points that define principles of leadership that are globally followed, and it is a proper guide that helps as tools in implementation of effective leadership.
- One of the foremost steps is to do a self-assessment. This method is helpful in understanding the personal attributes, strengths and weaknesses. It is one of the best practices towards leadership to conduct self-improvement for personality and undergoes through self-study, reflection, formal classes, and a way to interacting with other people.
- For a leader, it is extremely crucial to create a positive approach in solving problems, planning or decision making. This helps in improving the approach and motivation of the team.
- Leader should be a role model and a great example for the employees. The leader must follow the instructions that are given to its team.
- It is extremely beneficial for the leader to develop a sense of responsibility in the team or workers and help them to develop a good character in the society.
- Communication is significant in effective leadership. Communication is critical in sharing information about the task.
- Training the employees and assigning tasks accordingly.
- Ignite team spirit by motivating team members with the aim of achieving more from each.
Universal Elements Of Effective Leadership
The leadership globally is identified through a set of certain attributes that are endorsed through 62 countries from around 17,000 people for the positive, effective leadership aspects. Universally there are 22 leadership attributes that make an effective leader. These attributes help a person to form characteristics in personality to form outstanding leadership. There are both positive and negative attributes in the leader. From the 22 universal leadership attributes; this memo has discussed only a few in details. The attributes discussed in this memo are; trustworthiness, and foresight. From the list of the negative attributes, egocentric is discussed in this memo with appropriate examples.
Trustworthiness
Communication skill of the leader is critical in creating a trust between the leader and employee. Communication is extremely beneficial as this enhances trust in the team for their leader. The basic element that drives a simple person towards leader is the trust of its team. It is also important that the leader possess technical skills as this helps in leading from the front. Knowledge regarding the subject is helpful for the leader to develop trust and faith in their team. Thus, technical knowledge is helpful for the organization in achieving the organizational goals.
Effective leaders do not blame others when things are not going as planned. First, leaders analyze the situation and then take decisions accordingly. It is extremely essential to take good care of the employees or team members to earn the trust and loyalty of the team.
Universally the trustworthiness factor in leadership is highly effective. In leadership, the element of trust is extremely essential to establish among the employees and management. For example, according to Lekka & Healey, (2012), distrust of the leader badly impacts his skills and abilities to lead the team. Worker’s trust and distrust are completely measured or monitored towards the management, workmates, supervisors, and organization. The distrust, towards the managers, of the whole team of worker is notified. This distrust predicted that workers are involved in offshore accidents. It has been analyzed that when team members trust the leader, then the performance of the team is improved. According the cross-sectional survey, it has been examined that trust between leaders and their subordinates in the context of safety environment reduced actual number of injuries as dragged from the medical records of the organizations. The leaders have both direct and indirect impact on organizational safety.
Foresight
Foresight is the central quality of leadership. It is not the term referred to do strategic planning, forecasting, and so on. Foresight is about those activities that organization undertakes with the government, make assumptions for the future, and drive policies accordingly. Foresight is associated with the traditional planning of activities through which one could take the idea about future outcomes. It is a practical strategy that helps the leader to make correct decisions and lead for long term. It is challenging for a leader, to make hard decisions, but the attribute of foresightedness gives him or her ability to see over the horizon.
Some wrong leader decision can cause great harm in the future. For example, an automaker leader faces the decline and closed plants as they follow layoffs. This situation is created as a leader was highly focusing on selling large vehicles, and earns big profits; rather than considering the rising cost of gas and management of its alternatives. There are many leaders who fail earlier just because they do not consider future aspects, and lose their ability to contribute as a leader for the survival. Society for organizational learning, founder Deniel Kim (Kim, 2002), suggested that all the leaders should take ethical responsibilities as these practices are significant in predicting the better future.
In 1967, CEO of a paper company, Mead Corporation, James McSwinney, declared that the world is going digital and if the world goes towards digital technology the company will lose customers. This leader act on his foresightedness and then he bought a small company that cork on inject and database technology. The company developed databases like Lexis and Nexis that are today’s most respected source of digital database information all over the world.
Charismatic
Charismatic leader is able to produce effective results and the trait is effective in all cultures without any differentiation. According to the Pinto (1998), a charismatic leader has the ability to induce an effect on the followers that has profound results in moving towards objectives. According to the Jung and Sosik (2006), a charismatic leader is also distinguishes him/herself from the other leaders as a result of leaders consistent self-monitoring. Such leaders are also found to have participation in the management process that has impression on the people. Importantly, charismatic power of the motivating people also enables the leaders to have social influence. Such attributes are valued in every culture and the charismatic leader is considered to have universal acceptance. For example, the President Barack Obama is often recognized to have charismatic leadership traits in a world that led him to the win the presidential elections in the United States of America as a first African American president. Hence, leaders can be effective in any part of the world and in any culture with the attributes of charisma for their followers.
Cultural Aspects Of Leadership
The leadership all over the world is highly influenced by different culture. According to the research conducted by House, Javidan, Hanges, & Dorfman, (2002), the national culture has a great influence on the attributes of effective leadership in terms of performance, assertiveness, power distance, and group collectivism . There are some leadership aspects and qualities which are culturally contingent; meaning that these aspects are considered as positive, negative, and neutral in different cultures. Some of these aspects are as following:
Bureaucratic
In any global culture, leadership is the ability to inspire people and support organizational goals. The bureaucratic leadership is based on the normative rules and policies of authorities. It is different from transformational leadership. The bureaucratic leader must be strict to the rules, and systematically follow the business conduct in the workplace. It is critical that followers must obey their leaders. The bureaucratic leader needs to solely strict to the organizational policies or rules. Different countries have a different perception about the bureaucratic leader. The bureaucratic leader has an important role in reforming developing countries that are frequently ending in failure. According to Weber’s perception the ideal bureaucrat leader must be politically natural and could technically handle political leaders. For example, in many countries, political and bureaucratic relations enable to reform the organization through various characteristic. This term had applied on industries of East Asian countries and achieved a high level of economic growth.
Humane orientation
The humane orientation leadership contributes among culture and clusters. It is the effective leadership that varies in degree of global culture. In Asian countries, it has different behavioral consequence that is rooted in societal culture. In these countries, humane leader aligns the Confucian principles. It has been examined that low humane oriented leadership could provide a high degree of control on individual behavior. However, the collectivism cultural practices in the humane orientation leadership roots manifests in different societies.
In Finland, Humane orientation culture is perceived to be effective leadership. It is top ranked leader attribute that is measured at the scale of self-effacing, being generous and compassionate that overlaps on the behavior of society of Finland. In the context of Germany, the concepts of leadership about humane oriented has a great impact on the interpersonal behavior of a leader and its effective leadership. However, there are some countries where humane orientation is not perceived to be an effective leadership quality.
Status conscious
The concept of status conscious leadership is concerned with the restricted opinions of individuals. The status conscious leader is aware of social position and easily gets motivated through elevated position. The status conscious leader is postulated positively in societies and could create a high level of power distance in cultural context. They usually enjoy the position of power and enjoy the privilege to access many resources. For status conscious leader, the gender egalitarianism is used to discourage them as the diversity enjoys accessing position of authority and decision-making. Finally, organizations value to discourage status-conscious leadership as it establishes dominant and tough behavior for everyone. It contributes to cultural context and highly valued power distance, gender egalitarianism, avoiding uncertainty and assertiveness.
Conclusion
It has been examined that humane oriented leadership is predictive for every leadership behavior. The principles of leadership in cross cultural context show that a leader behavior globally is different. There are many cultural practices done on leadership. It is required to position the major contribution in organizational behavior and leadership. The attributes and leadership practices distinguish culture and organizational strategies to predict the leader behavior and accept the best suitable attributes. The leadership effectiveness is culturally contingent and limited. It has been concluded that humane oriented leadership shows cultural moderation, but it is particularly dependent on its variables. The leadership or culture directly fits the cross-national differences because of the different cultures.
The difference among individuals within culture overwhelms country differences that could be reveal by justifying society, to make interesting leadership in the world.
Hence, it is important for the leaders to understand the difference in the leadership styles and attributes in different cultures and countries. An effective and efficient leader is the one who can adapt and transform according to the changing environment and situation. This allows the leader to come up with effective and efficient leading strategies.
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