Effective and Dynamic Leadership

“The successful organisation has one major attribute that sets it apart from unsuccessful organisations: dynamic and effective leadership. ” What is leadership? A simple definition of leadership is that leadership is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal. It’s one of the important factors in an organisation. Few things are more important to human activity than leadership.
Effective leadership helps an organisation through times of peril. It makes a business organization successful.It enables a not-for-profit organization to full fill its mission. The absence of leadership is equally dramatic in its effects. Without leadership, organizations move too slowly, stagnate and lose their way. When we speak about leaders in organisations first thing that comes to our mind is decision making, but that’s not all. Leadership in an organisation goes beyond this, after making the decision the main thing is to execute it and that’s where an organisation faces a lot of problem and this is the place where effective leadership is required.
A leader in an organisation plays an important role in influencing their follower’s behaviour. Investors recognize the importance of business leadership when they say that a good leader can make a success of a weak business plan, but that a poor leader can ruin even the best plan. (example of a corporate leader). Investors recognize the importance of business leadership when they say that a good leader can make a success of a weak business plan, but that a poor leader can ruin even the best plan (D. Quinn Mills in his book “How to Lead, How to live”).I agree to the statement said by Hersey and Blancard and support this thought of mine with the following literature. As rightly said by Hersey and Blanchard’s (1977) “The successful organisation has one major attribute that sets it apart from unsuccessful organisations: dynamic and effective leadership.

” In an organisation it’s important that they have an effective leader. Because it’s the leader who influences the thoughts, attitudes and behaviour of his followers or in other words of the employees working under him in an organisation.He is the person who sets the direction for the people under him; he helps us see what lies ahead; he helps us visualize what we might achieve; he encourages us and inspires us. Without leadership a group of human beings quickly degenerates into argument and conflict, because we see things in different ways and lean toward different solutions. Leadership helps to point us in the same direction and harness our efforts jointly. A leader in a successful organisation has the ability to get other people to do something significant that they might not otherwise do.They energise people towards a goal.
Without followers, however, a leader isn’t a leader, although followers may only come after a long wait. For example, during the 1930s Winston Churchill urged his fellow Englishmen to face the coming threat from Hitler’s Germany. But most Englishmen preferred to believe that Hitler could be appeased—so that a war could be avoided. They were engaged in wishful thinking about the future and denial that the future would be dangerous. They resented Churchill for insisting that they must face the danger. They rejected his leadership.He had very few followers.
But finally reality intruded—Germany went too far and war began. At this point Churchill was acclaimed for his foresight, and became prime minister of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. During this period almost all Englishmen accepted his leadership willingly. There’s an old saying that the way to become a leader is to find a parade and run to the front of it. We refer to a person “leading” a parade, but walking at the front isn’t really leadership unless the person in front is actually choosing the direction!If the person isn’t choosing the direction, then being at the front of the line is merely a way to pretend to be a leader. Leadership can be used for good or ill. Hitler seemed to be a leader of the German people, but he set an evil direction.
He had great leadership skills, but put them to terrible uses. Sometimes people in business use leadership skills to exploit others. Sometimes people in charitable organizations use leadership skills to benefit themselves rather than the people they are supposed to help.Leadership skills can be perverted to pursue bad ends. This is what sets a successful organisation apart from the unsuccessful organisation because in a successful organisation in most cases the leaders are faithful to their job and lead the people working under them in the right direction; lead them towards the organisational goal well as in an unsuccessful organisation the leader looks for his personal benefit/profit. He does not care of the organisational goal which leads to the failure of the organisation.Leadership can be defined in many ways such as power, influence, path-builder, director.
But most commonly Leader is person who influences the thoughts and behaviour’s of others; a leader is one who establishes the direction for others to willingly follow. One person can serve as a leader or several persons might share leadership. A person may be appointed as leader or may be elected by people within his circle. Leaders play vital role in standardizing performance. Leaders can influence other to perform beyond the expectations.Managers plan, organize, lead and control so that “leading” and “managing” are inseparable, they are both integral part of each other. If one cant influence and inspire others to work willingly towards aims then all planning and organizing will be ineffective.
Similarly setting direction is usually not enough, no matter how inspiring one can be, management skills are crucial. Thus the leaders in an successful organisation have leadership as well as managerial skill which make them stand out from those leaders of unsuccessful organisation.A leader in a successful organisation has the following qualities, having a vision about what can be accomplished; making a commitment to the mission and to the people you lead, Taking responsibility for the accomplishment of the mission and the welfare of those you lead, assuming risk of loss and failure, Accepting recognition for success. These qualities of a leader in a successful organisation set him apart from the leader of a unsuccessful organisation. A leader in a successful organisation is able to express his or her vision clearly and in a compelling manner so that others are engaged by it.He makes a commitment to his or her vision, to the organization, and to the members of the organization. A leader can’t be committed one day and uninterested the next.
People will judge a leader by his or her commitment, and will commit themselves no more than the leader does. He assumes a considerable amount of responsibility not just for the mission that he or she urges others to accept, nor just for the organization he or she heads, but for his or her followers, their lives and efforts, as well. He assumes risk. If there is no risk, little leadership is required.If the effort is easy and certain to succeed, anyone can, and probably will, “lead” it. But where the effort entails a risk of failure, then many people will quail before the challenge and leadership is necessary to get people to make the commitment and the effort to succeed. In most organizations, one associates high levels of leadership with high levels of authority.
The chief executive of a company usually plays more of a leadership role than people at lower levels of the hierarchy in the firm. It is the same in not for profits and government agencies.The higher on the job ladder a person is, the more he or she is expected to exhibit leadership. In the military, however, the opposite holds true, and for a very good reason. In the military the greatest leadership Challenge is to get other people to risk their lives in combat. Generally, the higher one goes in the chain of command, the less exposure he has to the battlefield, and the less exposure to men and women who are in combat. The officers who have responsibility for commanding soldiers in combat have the greatest leadership challenge, for they must get others to risk their lives.
A leader in a successful organisation has a vision on which he is focused on. He leads the people working under him towards this vision in a systematic way. He moves towards his vision with the help of the following strategy; Creating a vision a mission and a strategy, Communicating the vision/mission/strategy and getting buy-in, Motivating action, Helping an organization grow, evolve, and adapt to changing circumstances. The leader provides a mission of what needs to be done and a strategy, a path, for how to accomplish the mission and achieve the vision, a way for the group to get there.But having an exciting vision, an exciting mission, and a careful strategy is not sufficient. The leader clearly communicates with the employees. Because of this communication people grasp the vision to which they commit.
Finally, a vision cannot be rigid and unchanging; it must adapt to changing circumstances, growing and evolving. Otherwise it becomes outdated and obsolete, and loses its power to excite and motivate people. Most of the successful organisations have a common factor, what is this common factor?It is the Level 5 leader that they have. A level 5 leader is a paradoxical combination of deep personal humility with intense professional will. An example of a level 5 leader is Darwin Smith – CEO at paper-products maker Kimberly-Clark from 1971 to 1991 he epitomizes level 5 leadership. Shy, awkward, shunning attention, he also showed iron will, determinedly redefining the firm’s core business despite Wall Street’s scepticism. The formally dull Kimberly-Clark became the worldwide leader in its industry, generating stock returns 4.
times greater than the general markets. When we speak of a level 5 leader in a successful organisation the quality of humility stands out and this is what makes them different from those leaders in an unsuccessful organisation. The leader routinely credits others, external r factors, and good luck for their companies’ success. But when results are poor, he blames himself. Jim Collins in his book “Level 5 Leadership – The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve” explains this concept of Level 5 leadership in the best way.He writes about five different levels of leadership; according to him there are five levels of leaders each having different characteristics. Level 1 are those leaders who are highly capable individuals, they make productive contributions through talent, knowledge, skills, and good work habits.
Level 2 leaders are those leaders who are contributing team members; they contribute to the achievement of group objectives and work effectively with others in a group setting. Level 3 leaders are leaders who are competent managers; they organize people and resources toward the effective and efficient pursuit of predetermined objectives.Level 4 leaders are effective leaders; they catalyze commitment to and vigorous pursuit of a clear and compelling vision; stimulates the group to high performance standards. And finally are the level 5 leaders who Collin terms as executives. They build enduring greatness through a paradoxical combination of personal humility plus professional will. These are the leaders we find in most of the successful organisations. These are leaders with highest capabilities in the hierarchy of leaders.
Leaders at the other four levels in the hierarchy can produce high levels of success but not enough to elevate organizations from mediocrity to sustained excellence good-to-great transformations don’t happen without Level 5 leadership. Level 5 is not the only requirement for transforming a good organization into a great one. Other factors include getting the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and creating a culture of discipline. Level 5 leader is on top of a hierarchy of capabilities, four other layers lie beneath it each one is appropriate in its own right, but none with the power of Level 5.We do not need to move sequentially through each level of the hierarchy to reach the top but to be a fully-fledged Level 5; we need the capabilities of all the lower levels, plus the special characteristics of level 5. Level 5 leaders are extremely modest, they don’t talk about themselves instead they would talk about the organization, about the contribution of others and instinctively deflect discussion about their own role unlike big personalities like Lee Iacocca, Jack Welch. Besides extreme humility, Level 5 leaders also display tremendous Professional will.
They possess inspired standards, cannot stand mediocrity in any form, and utterly intolerant of anyone who accept the idea that good is good enough. Level 5 leaders do not have any ambition for themselves instead have an ambition for the organisation they work for. They routinely select superb successors and are very particular about this because of which the organisations performance is always positive. They want to see their organizations Become even more successful in the next generation comfortable with the idea that most people won’t even know that the roots of that success trace back to them.Level 5 leaders, inherently humble, look out the window to apportion credit – even undue credit – to factors outside themselves if they cannot find a specific event or person to give credit to, they credit good luck (Window and Mirror concept by J Collin). All these characteristics of the level 5 leader leads the organisation towards success setting it apart from the unsuccessful organisations. While most would agree that leadership is an art, it is also the ability to lead others toward a common goal or objective and to influence others.
As the old age saying goes “Lead by example” makes a powerful statement about leadership.To lead by example simply means to lead as you would have your followers lead or to do as you would have your followers do. Many people believe that leadership is a way to improve how they present themselves to others. Corporations want people who have leadership ability because they believe these people provide special assets to the organization. Essentially, one’s leadership knowledge, skill and ability, is based upon personal motives. Some people are motivated to lead because they believe in an inherent ability to do so these are the leaders in a successful organisation.While others lead for personal gain including position, power and money who resemble leaders in an unsuccessful organisation because of these types of leaders in most cases organisations fail to achieve their goal.
A leader’s skill determines how effective a leader is because followers are more likely to follow a leader who appears to know what he or she is doing. Behind every effective leader is a good follower. Good followership is critical to the success of every leader and eventually to every organization. In a successful organisation in most cases the employees are dependent upon their leader/boss for the day to day operations.They have the confidence in their leader and thus follow his instructions; this helps the organisation in its smooth running. Where as in a unsuccessful organisation the employees lack the confidence in their leader/boss and thus they try doing the work in their own way which disrupts the working enviourment and leads to conflicts in the organisation. A leader influences the behaviour of the people to work willingly and enthusiastically for achieving predetermined goals of the organisation.
According to Terry “Leadership is essentially a continuous process of influencing behaviour.A leader breaths life into the group and motivates it towards goals. The lukewarm desires for achievement are transformed into a burning passion for accomplishment. ” It’s very important for the leader to carry him in an appropriate manner at all times because his followers always look up to him as a perfect example. A perfect example of how a leader impacts the running of a organisation is of Rich Teerlink, former chairman and CEO of Harley Davidson Inc. In the 1980s Harley-Davidson was almost knocked out of business by competition from other firms. To survive, it needed to change dramatically.
Rich Teerlink, the company’s leader, was able to save the firm financially, but with the pressure off, the challenge of continuing to improve seemed even more daunting. Could Teerlink get his managers and employees to make the significant, and to many of them inconvenient, changes necessary? He did it by building a different company, one driven from the bottom up by employees rather than from the top down by managers. It’s a story of successes and failures, advances and setbacks, dead ends and breakthroughs, ending in a much stronger company than before.The leader in an organisation decides who is going to be assigned to the necessary tasks and how they will fit into the organization. She supervises the actions people take, ensuring that they are doing the right things, that no money is being misappropriated or wasted (we call this “controlling”), and when problems arise the leader helps to resolve them. Finally, by combining these tasks into a coherent whole, the leader in an organisation makes the organization operate efficiently. Running an organization effectively requires administration, management, and leadership.
Leadership is ordinarily in shorter supply than administrative or managerial competence. Leadership is more important and more demanding for most people. Fewer people are able or willing to be leaders, so it tends to be a higher calling than administration or management. There is a large literature discussing the differences between leaders and managers. There is also an important distinction to make between leaders and administrators. In general, a leader takes a broader view and points an organization toward necessary, even critical, change. True leadership is special, subtle, and complex.
Too often we confuse things like personal style and a position of authority with leadership. No matter what type of leader you are, a leader’s motive determines how they lead and why they lead the way they do. In a successful organisation the leader plays a very important and lead role. His followers are totally dependent on him for important decision making and guiding them in the right direction in achieving the organisations goal. It further reveals that some leaders ‘lead by example’ while others want followers to do what they are unwilling to do.This is due to a chosen leadership style, trait and character based upon who they are and their individual motives. The leaders who follow the concept of “Lead by example” resemble leaders in an successful organisation.
For these leaders, leading the organisation towards its goal is a passion they have no personal benefit thoughts behind it. Observation is based on the premise that leaders lead with an individual purpose, which may or may not be based upon the goals and objectives of the organization. Are they leading for results, personal gain or for the advancement of others?It could be skill or character based or based upon leadership style. Yet, the leader has motives that make up who the individual leader is and why they lead the way they do. Good leaders are made not born. If you have the desire and willpower, you can become an effective leader. Good leaders develop through a never ending process of self-study, education, training, and experience.
To inspire your workers into higher levels of teamwork, there are certain things you must be, know, and, do. These do not come naturally, but are acquired through continual work and study.Good leaders are continually working and studying to improve their leadership skills; they are NOT resting on their laurels. Leaders in a successful organisation will simultaneously fill many roles interacting, motivating group members, solving conflicts as they arise. Leaders in a successful organisation set vision, strategies, goals, and values in order to guide for desired action and behaviour. Effective leaders in a successful organisation have two major qualities: knowledge and communication competence. Leader needs knowledge of issue and the ways of effectively leading a team.
This knowledge will enable leader to identify alternatives available. He also needs to be an effective communicator as equally listener and speaker. Leaders should acquire qualities of flexible, openness, empathetic, courage, interactive, and positive attitude. Finally, a leader in a successful organisation is flexible in accepting the views of his followers after which making the right decision. All these qualities of a leader in a successful organisation set him apart from those of an unsuccessful organisation.References: Books 1. John P.
Kotter, “Leading Change” USA Harvard Business School Press, 1996 2. Michael Useem, “The Leadership Moment: Nine true stories of TRIUMPH and DISASTER and their lessons for all of us” Three Rivers Press, 1999 Articles 1. Jim Collins article, “Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve”, in Best Of HBR, HBR, July-August, 2005, pages. 136-146 2. Katz, R. L. (1955).
Skills of an Effective Administrator. Harvard Business Review, 33(1) pages 33-42. Internet 1. Angelia Arrington, “A Leader is as a Leader Does” Leader lab vol:1 Issue-1 www. theleaderlab. org 2. D.
Quinn Mills, “Leadership: How to lead, How to live” 2005 http://www. mindedgepress. com 3. www. hbr. org