Definition of Leadership

Discuss about Leadership and performance management.

Leadership may be defined as the attribute, which is possessed by an individual who has the strength to lead teams in organizations and other arenas to meet missions and visions of the organization. Leadership mainly involves establishing a clear vision to the followers and then sharing the vision with them in ways so that they follow the leaders willingly (D’Innocenzo, Mathieu and Kukenberger 2016). At the same time, they should be providing proper information, methods and knowledge to the followers so that they can realize the importance of the vision and remain aligned towards the goals. Leaders also play the important role of coordinating and balancing the conflicting interests of all the members and stakeholders. They step up in times of crisis, thinks, and cats creatively so that members can overcome the difficult situations in stable ways. Researchers are of the opinion that unlike management, leadership cannot be taught (Bergh et al. 2016). However, it can be enhanced through proper coaching and mentoring procedures. A very good example is Bill Gates who is the founder of Microsoft. Although he had failed previously in his earlier days, he had been successful in driving and software industry towards success due to his continuous passion and innovation. This assignment will mainly contain the importance of leadership, different theories of leadership, and their effects on performance management. It will also show how leaders can handle different issues faced by organizations

Leadership has huge importance in the organization. Leaders are the persons who initiate action by starting with communicating the policies and plans to the subordinates from where the work starts. They also motivate followers with the economic and non-economic rewards, which helps in getting the work from the subordinates. They also provide guidance by supervising and the followers. They instruct the followers about what they have to perform and how they have to perform. Leaders also help in creating confidence among the subordinates explaining them their roles clearly and making them confident in achieving their roles (Wang et al. 2014). They also help in building morale and developing a suitable working environment. This helps in sound and stable growth where human relations are nurtured in proper ways. Proper personal contacts among everyone and listening to their problems and solving them are also another importance of leadership.  They help to maintain co-ordination by properly reconciling personal interests with organization goals (Gioloito and Van Dierendock 2015).

Importance of Leadership in Organizations

Performance management mainly focuses on developing organizations and competencies of the employees. It aims at continuous improvement of the skills and knowledge of the employees. The leaders mainly take the initiatives of offering a variety of learning methods and putting high emphasis on job learning by providing formal training. These in turn help in developing the performance of the employees and meeting the short comings in ways by which the employees can meet the productivity goal. The leaders by managing the performance of the employees help in developing teams that can easily align with the goals of the organization (Wang, waldman and Zhang  2014). The employees find themselves working together with the right set of skills to meet the duties and responsibilities assigned to them. Leaders can undertake different type of programs for performance management of the employees. This may include professional and leadership skills development programs. It also involves personal development discussions and even regular personnel surveys. All these ensure the leaders that they develop all the important attributes required by employees to provide high-level performance. Improving employee competencies and developing strong leadership are extremely important for the leaders to ensure proper performance management of the employees (Pulakos et al 2015).

The trait leadership theory mainly takes into account the fact that people either are born or are made with a particular set of qualities that mainly help in excelling leadership roles. Often different attributes such as creativity, sense of responsibility, intelligence and many other values are important for making a person a good leader.  Famous man like Gordon Allport who was an American psychologist established this theory in 1930. It focused on the importance of analyzing mental, physical and social characteristics in order to understand the common characteristics among leaders. Another is the behavioral theory that focuses on the importance of the different types of behaviors portrayed by leaders unlike the physical,  mental or social characteristics of the trait theory (Devilard et al. 2014). The main point established by this theory is that leaders are established not born. This theory divided leaders in two categories- one that is concerned with tasks and others that is concerned with people. The next is the contingency theories that state that there is not one perfect way of leading. It believes that certain people perform better at maximum level in certain places but at minimal performance when they are taken out of their element (Keune, Mayhew and Schimdt 2015). The next is the transactional leadership theory. This theory mainly is based on the leaders believing on the concept of rewards as well as punishments and these remain based on the performance shown by the followers. This type of leaders is mainly task and outcome oriented. The next theory is the transformational leadership. The leaders following this theory mainly inspire the followers with their vision and personality (Van der moeit 2014). These help to change expectations as well as  motivations towards pursuing for common goals. There are four important characteristics of these leaders. These are intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, consideration for individuals and idealized influence. There are also authoritarian leadership styles where negative reinforcements and punishments are used to enforce rules. No feedbacks are entertained. Democratic leadership style however is complete opposite to the previous style and encourages open communication and participation of the staffs in decision-making. Laissez Faire leadership style where leaders provide a hands off approach where little or no direction or supervision is provided. They allow employees to do things on their own trusting them and do not provide guidance.

Performance Management and the Role of Leaders

In the recent days, multicultural issues often come up which act as an important barrier. The need to communicate overseas with different culture or among different team members with different cultural backgrounds has resulted in different types of issues among employees. Cultural insensitivity, cultural incompetence, cultural miscommunication, ego clashes and many others destroy smooth flow of work and interrupts productivity. Therefore, in such situation, it becomes important for the leaders to help the employees develop cultural awareness and sensitivity through proper counseling, training, workshops, internet surfing and many others (Hornstein 2015). The employees need to develop bonds with each other overcoming their cultural biasness so that teamwork takes place in proper ways. Overcoming cross-cultural issues is one of the most important attribute for multinational companies to ensure uninterrupted flow of work.

Leaders also help organizations to overcome competitions faced by them in the markets by providing innovative and creative ideas to the teams. Choosing the proper competitive advantage and aligning the skills of the team-members in creative and innovative ways to overcome competitions is a skill of leaders. The ideas selected by the leaders help the employees to face the competitions in effective ways and continuously boosts the confidence of the employees. Continuous motivation and inspiration helps them to align with new innovative ideas to face competition and thereby makes them try their best to handle the issues successfully ensuring the meeting of organizational mission (Lussier and Achua 2015).

Gender diversity is one of the most important issues that should be focused in the area.     It is mostly said that women with equal skills with men are treated differently than their male counterparts. They do not often get the chance to serve in higher roles even if they deserve to do so according to their skills and prior achievements. Researchers are of the opinion that the females get very less acknowledgement of the males even when they achieve success. 19% of males do not agree of women reaching the top management, as they doubt the contribution and dedication of such women in the top roles (Meuser et al. 2016). All these affect the emotions and enthusiasm. These result in loss of productivity of an entire team, which needs to be looked after by the leaders. Leaders need to handle the condition effectively. They need to inspire both the male and female team members to overcome the biasness and improper attitudes towards each other. They need to develop proper relationship building among themselves. The leaders need to empower the females to continue working with their best effort and manage their performance to an extent where they can try for higher roles. Not only that, the leaders should counsel the males and females in ways where they could value the diversity of gender and look on them as their strength rather than weakness of the team.

Different Theories of Leadership

Besides, leaders are the main agents of change, sustainability and future of the organizational activities and decisions taken for the betterment of the firms. It is very important for the leaders to look over each of the aspects of the change with care so that team members can properly align with new changes, solve their clarifications and prepare them for new job roles effectively. This would ensure meeting of the new goals set by organization (Roueche, Baker and Rose 2014).

Conclusion:

Leadership is one of the most important aspects of an organization or teams working within it. An effective leader can not only provide proper guidance to ensure smooth work flow from the employees but also can ensure proper management of performance in ways which help to increase the productivity of the organization. Different sorts of leadership theories like transformational leadership, democratic leadership and similar others have gained fame in the recent decades. An effective leader can help in solving gender diversity issues, multicultural issues, and handle competition. They also act as agents for change and hence they help to ensure sustainability and future of the organization and their goals

References:

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Hornstein, H.A., 2015. The integration of project management and organizational change management is now a necessity. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2), pp.291-298.

Keune, M.B., Mayhew, B.W. and Schmidt, J.J., 2015. Non-Big 4 local market leadership and its effect on competition. The Accounting Review, 91(3), pp.907-931.

Lussier, R.N. and Achua, C.F., 2015. Leadership: Theory, application, & skill development. Nelson Education.

Meuser, J.D., Gardner, W.L., Dinh, J.E., Hu, J., Liden, R.C. and Lord, R.G., 2016. A network analysis of leadership theory: The infancy of integration. Journal of Management, 42(5), pp.1374-1403.

Pulakos, E.D., Hanson, R.M., Arad, S. and Moye, N., 2015. Performance management can be fixed: An on-the-job experiential learning approach for complex behavior change. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 8(1), pp.51-76.

Roueche, P.E., Baker III, G.A. and Rose, R.R., 2014. Shared vision: Transformational leadership in American community colleges. Rowman & Littlefield.

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Wang, H., Sui, Y., Luthans, F., Wang, D. and Wu, Y., 2014. Impact of authentic leadership on performance: Role of followers’ positive psychological capital and relational processes. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 35(1), pp.5-2