Tag Archives: Organizational Success

Leadership

Develop a Leadership Philosophy

A leadership philosophy is a set of beliefs and principles that strongly influence how we perceive ourselves within an organization and those that we lead. It is an essential ingredient in forming our vision, goals and behavior within the organization that we lead.

First it is useful to define leadership. Leadership is the individual phenomenon of influencing others, inspiring them to do their best, Giving them purpose, guidance and motivation. The best leadership style is one that is adapted to the situation, otherwise known as situational leadership. Leadership is different from management as management does not have to involve inspiring or motivating others.

Most leaders in any role agree that vision, values, adapting to change, knowing oneself and others, professional knowledge and good communication are essential components of leadership. I believe that one of the most important elements of these is vision. Without vision a leader is lost.

Burt Nanus, a noted consultant in leadership, vision, and strategic planning for business, government, and non-profit organizations is a Professor at the University of Southern California. Nanus writes that vision must be idealistic and a “mental model of a future state of the organization.” He asserts that vision must be appropriate and include standards of excellence, purpose, and direction. Organizational vision must be ambitious, easily articulated, and well understood.

Forming a mental image of where you want your organization to be and what it should look like in the future is essential before you plan, decide and direct others on how to get there.

Before directing others on how to attain that vision it must first be communicated, shared and understood by all within the organization. Ensure that the vision is clear, unambiguous, energetic, imaginative, inspiring, achievable and relevant to the organizations goals.

Values
Values are crucial to organizational success. Leaders know what they value and recognize the importance of ethical behavior. The best leaders practice both values and ethnics in the workplace.

People don’t know what they can expect in a leader if leaders never identify their values. If leaders identify and share their values, living the values daily will help to create trust.

As a leader, choose the values and the ethics that are most important to you, the values and ethics you believe in and that define your character. Then live them visibly every day at work. Living by your values is one of the most powerful tools available to you to help you lead and influence others.

Adapting to Change
Adapting to change can make the difference between organizational success and failure. It is essential you have a philosophy that embraces change. An organization that is resilient is one that can effectively innovate, adapt and perform in the face of adversity.

To cope with change ensure you have a clear focus around purpose and goals. Be flexible and open to new approaches, encourage a climate of learning and creativity and a culture of trust and cooperation combined with good communication.

Knowing oneself
True leaders posses the ability to analyze their own motives and decisions and make accurate judgments about their behavior. These judgments can result in constructive improvements in how they relate to others and help identify unhelpful reactions or traits.

Perhaps you have a tendency to control or dominate based on a fear of failure; perhaps you have a fear of conflict and a desire to appease others; or an excessive competitiveness that leads to distrust. Knowing yourself better will help you improve and make adjustments that will make you a more effective leader.

Knowing others
Knowing others is important to situational leaders who adopt different leadership styles depending on the situation and person they are dealing with.

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Leadership

Leadership Transitions – the Key to Organizational Success

Introduction

There is a growing recognition in the business world that a good leadership strategy can significantly improve business results. At the same time, good leaders seem to be rare things these days. According to recent study, it has been found that recruiting and retaining qualified leaders has become crucial challenge facing businesses today and in the future.

However, organizations are feeling the pressure of implementing a leadership strategy quickly and effectively. However, they seem to be faced with three interlinked difficulties such as:

1. They lack an understanding of which factors constitute an effective leadership strategy.

2. They remain unclear on the impact of leadership on organizational performance.

3. They are not doing enough to encourage leadership development internally.

Now first let us understand what we mean by Effective Leadership.

Effective Leadership is a self-sustaining organizational practice that transcends the personalities of individual leaders. The key to establishing a sound leadership approach is to identify which factors make up an effective leadership strategy and to understand how each of these factors affects overall results.

Does Effective Leadership influence organizational success?

Yes, Effective Leadership with its top seven factors does assign positive influence on organizational results. These top seven factors are:

1. Initiating and Managing change: Organization must encourage a culture of change leadership internally in order to assert leadership externally. Today’s turbulent organizational environment is characterized by a continuous race between competing businesses. Therefore, organizations must seize existing opportunities and create new ones in order to thr8ive. To reap the full benefits of change, they must also need to have a systematic change management approach that will enable them to react with agility and speed to changes within and outside the organization.

2. Communicating a Common Vision: In order to lead their organization successfully, leaders needs to have a clear vision (See Exhibit 1: Dynamic pattern of organizational structure) for the firms and must also possess the ability to think strategically. Recent survey reports indicates, “Creating an environment of shared values and goals” has been one of the most important factors in improving employee productivity and financial results. Also a well-developed personal vision and the ability to sell that vision is the key skill needed for effective leadership in today’s evolving economy. In order to create a culture of common goals, regular communication at all levels of the organization is required.

3. Empowering others to lead: Good leaders today understand that in the present economy, creating a culture of leadership and empowering others to make decisions are essential for long-term business success. The study shows that it is more important for an organization to have in place the systems and processes that enable leadership to emerge naturally and that is those systems that often explain why some organization outperform their competitors throughout the terms of many different CEO’s and why some leaders can succeed in one organization and final in the next. The sharing of the leadership role is essential in the fragile and uncertain times that leaders face and will continue to face in the future. Teamwork and “Cooperative leadership” (See Exhibit 2: Leadership attribution) can only increase in importance as a way of staying ahead of the competition. Leadership through teamwork also works to keep people, processes and ideas to check and to prevent a single personality from making foolish or irrational decisions.

4. Global Sensitivity: Effective leadership in the present economy must adopt a global perspective and must integrate global experience and cultural sensitivity. There is no escaping the trend towards globalization, which is presently taking place within organizations. However, organization needs to be ready to face competition locally and form global. In order to be well equipped to deal with the competition, they need to recognize the importance of having qualified leaders who are capable of applying a global perspective in their business dealings and are able to approach issues from different angles.

5. Cultivating Relationships: The ability to cultivate and manage relationships both within and outside the organization is an integral aspect of effective leadership. Forming and maintaining relationship with employees, customers and suppliers is essential to safe guard the interests of the organization. The ability to network effectively with relevant parties is essential because it maximizes an organizations chance of capturing new business opportunities in the future and also enables leaders to learn from others and to gain expertise in new areas. Trying to walk alone in an increasingly competitive business environment is a self-defeating act, particularly since organizations are increasingly being rated on their innovation and knowledge capabilities.

6. Growing Top Talent: Building great leaders are a hot topic in today’s business media. Due to a growing shortage of talent in the world economy, leadership skills needs to be developed internally so that employees can be prepared to assume leadership roles in the future. Retaining the people who had key leadership skills has found to be difficult.

7. Managing Performance: An effective leadership strategy needs to include a performance management system, which is geared towards positively reinforcing employees at all, levels of the organization and which is aligned with the end goals of the organization. A performance management system needs to involve recruitment and selection, training and development, coaching and feedback, performance appraisal and reviews.

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