Characteristics of organizational leadership
Organizational leadership is the ability to support and guide people to achieve the goals of an organization. In my opinion, there are some characteristics of organizational leadership that are important for all profit or non-profit organizations. Firstly, a leader must understand the culture and behavior of the organization they are working for. This includes but not limited to company’s policies, code of ethics and behaviors of employees.
The leader also needs to have knowledge in his field as well as in leadership. This can be acquired through an academic degree or working experience. If he is not an expert in the field, he should know how to build a team that people could complement the weakness of each other. With the knowledge, he would be able to inspire employees to perform their jobs better. Besides, the leader should show his vision by creating developing plans for the organization and those plans need to be viable so that they will not waste resources.
Organizational leadership characteristics by researchers
In the journal “Transformational leadership and organizational culture” by Bernard M.Bass and Bruce J. Avolio, the researchers mentioned some characteristics of organizational leadership. Organizations require leaders to have cultural building and strategic thinking to build vision.
Transformational leadership has four separate characteristics including idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration. Idealized influence provides a role model of high ethical behavior and gain respects, trust from followers. Inspirational motivation is the ability of leaders to make their vision appealing and provide the energy to followers to drive a group forward. Leaders will need to have communication skills to make the vision understandable and engaging so that followers can be inspired and willing to focus on the tasks. Intellectual stimulation requires the leader to stimulate and encourage the creativity from their followers. Leaders will always need to learn more from unexpected situation and followers’ questions, therefore, they will be able to find better ways for their tasks. Individualized consideration is how leaders can keep communication and support to each follower, always listen to their concern, needs and appreciate contribution what they have made to the group.
In contrast, transactional leadership has the two characteristics which are contingent reward and management-by-exception styles of leadership. The leaders develop agreements with their followers and provide them with positive and negative rewards based on their performance. The leaders monitor the work of their followers and if there are deviations from standard operating procedures, they can take corrective action to prevent mistakes.
Characteristics of organizational management
Organization management is the process of organizing group of people to achieve a common objective. In my opinion, there are three characteristics for the organizational management. The first one is communication skill, this characteristic is very important because manager should be able to explain decisions, giving directions to subordinates. Manager also needs the ability to organize and motivate their staff to get the most out of them and they could reach their potential. Another characteristic of management is integrity, manager should always the person that employees could trust and rely on. Employees need manager to treat them fairly and ensure that the business is being run in an ethical manner.
Case study of leadership, ethics, and organizational success
Jack Welch has turned General Electric Corporation (GE) into one of the world’s most successful companies. In his 1997 annual letter to shareholders, he said that a leader must have “a vision and the ability to articulate that vision so vividly and powerfully to the team that it also becomes their vision … [These leaders have] enormous personal energy … and the ability to energize others … [The leaders] have the … courage to make the tough calls … [In engineering,] they relish the rapid change in technology and continually re-educate themselves. In manufacturing, they consider inventory an embarrassment … In sales, they emphasize [the] enormous customer value of the Six Sigma quality program that differentiates GE from the competition. In finance, ‘A’ talents transcend traditional controllership. The bigger role is full-fledged participation in driving the business to win … ” (Henry, 1998). Jack grew GE from a $24 billion company to into a $74 billion company and it is ready to face competitors and future challenges. His approach includes three main areas which are goal setting and preparing GE for its competitive challenges, empowering employees at all levels of the organization and communicating his new goals and visions through the entire organization. He uses goal setting to motivate higher levels of achievement throughout the company. He always motivate performance of employees by requiring them to achieve either number one or number two status in terms of market share in their respective fields. Businesses with low competition and low potential were closed and replaced by other businesses that have more potential. Even when many GE’s businesses were already the leaders of the markets, Welch still want them to set higher goals to keep the position and grow their leads. Therefore, employees felt they were parts of the success of the company and always wanted to contribute more.
By empowering employees, Welch gave employees ultimate responsibilities for their own work. They felt more comfortable to share companies’ goals and ideas, and more motivated to perform their jobs better. Jack implemented some programs like Work-out to take advantage of the creativity and intelligence of employees and optimize the company’s performance.
Jack also encouraged communication throughout the company. By doing that, employees felt they are contributing the success of the company, at the same time, they also share their concerns and ideas to work towards an issue. He used “Crotonville training center” as an important communication tool at GE. This is the place for employees to join in team building exercises and all GE managers can learn about GE goals and get to face-to-face problem solving. Under the leader of Jack Welch, GE has become one of the largest and most successful multinational corporations. He is also a successful business leader by being more participative and relations-oriented.
Case study of leadership, ethics, and organizational failure
Dale Sundby of PowerAgent was an example of an ineffective CEO. He made investors believe in his business plan to revolutionize on-line advertising and become the next big thing on the Internet. PowerAgent planned to launch ad-delivery products in June 1997 that ads could be delivered to customers’ email, displayed as banners on desktop, and on Web browser. In exchange, customers could receive points to discount the cost of purchases. Sundby believed these personalized ads would transform online advertising and it was more persuasive with high profile Board of Directors, $13 million of venture capital financing and 60 employees. However, he could not see beyond his own vision and think that everyone would have the same thinking as him. The company didn’t have product or production staff, he outsourced coding to other companies and this cost twice as expensive as building a team of engineers. He also ignored market research and spent $10 million on advertising campaigns and other promotions.
“He didn’t listen when told that many prospects were lost because registration was too long. Also, prospects wanted daily tips, not daily ads. As he did not tell anyone else in the organization what was happening, morale and support disappeared. The Board split on his spending and business plan. In 20 months, he burned through $20 million and 60 employees.”
The failure of Sundby is the failure of strategic visions for the organization which involves too many personal interests of the leader and not enough of the organizations’ interests.