Dynamics of Leadership PDF

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Dynamics of Leadership...

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Introduction To Tesco Tesco is UK largest retailer and it has huge number of employees in its workforce. This report is prepared on leadership. Leadership is a process in which an individual is appointed as leader and he gives direction to his followers on their day to day operations. In this report, concept of leadership is explained through various points of views like culture and value system etc. Further, role of power and influence is also explained in detail in respect to effective leadership. In this report, various things are also covered like situational factors, organization change and group as well as team leadership. Tesco can develop leaders through experience and education. If the individual work in difficult situation he has to experience negative things. On the basis of these experiences, he forms a conclusion and he uses same for solving other relevant problems (Bolden and Gosling, 2006). In order to develop a leader within an organization, top management can educate its selected employee by way of simulation and case studies. In case studies, firm managers take actions in difficult situations and can teach these to selective employees. This will certainly develop leaders in an organization.

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Behaviour change in team – The effectiveness of leadership can be measured at Tesco by measuring change in its team behaviour. If such change in team behaviour is positive then, it is assumed that a leader is performing a leadership function effectively. (House, et.al., 2004). Contribution of team to an organisation- Contribution of team in achievement of organization objective is measured. If this contribution is increased relative to previous quarter then it is assumed that, leader is leading its followers effectively.

Tesco managers can follow following leadership styles 

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The sheep- These are those followers who needs some external motivation from leaders. In other words it can also be said that, without motivation there is a little possibility that followers will actively perform their tasks. The yes people- These are those followers who are fully committed towards achieving team or leader goals. The pragmatics- These are those individuals that provide their support to leaders on critical matters only when majority of supporters are with leaders (Alimo-Metcalfe and Alban-Metcalfe, 2005). The alienated- These are those followers that negatively think and always question leader efforts. The star followers- These are active, positive and independent thinkers and always give support to their leader (Schein, 2006).

Followers play an important role in making leadership successful. Followers by providing positive attitude and good support to the leaders help in taking good decisions. There is a very high relationship between leadership, followers and environment. Followers follow leader but with change in environment leader receives more or less support from his followers. Every follower has some opinion and perception about the current situation. Sometimes, opinion of leader and his followers are different and due to this reason he receives less support from his followers (Nonaka, Toyama and Konno, 2000). Leader by behaving friendly can create a good environment and under which he may receive good cooperation and opinion from his followers. As a result, if Tesco give friendly environment to the employee's then, it can grow at a fast pace in the relevant industry. Leader as individuals can contribute to large extent in the growth of Tesco. Leadership give direction to the firm and therefore, it is necessary that, leader provide good leadership to his followers. Environment to large extent affects the leadership style and it keeps on changing with change in the surrounding conditions (Farh and Cheng, 2000). In order to get desired results, leader must bring changes in his style but he must cautiously take decisions related to change in his leadership approach. Right selection of leadership style will help an organization to expand rapidly in an industry. Every individual has its own value system. Value is simply a set of like and dislikes of an individual person. Every person as per his value system led its followers. In other words it can also be said that, value system of a leader determine his choice of the leadership style. Value system of each and every leader is different from each other and contradictory in nature. In case of inverse value system it may be possible that, a leader does not receive back support from his followers (Judge and Piccolo, 2004). Therefore, leader must make an attempt to understand value system of his main followers and must accordingly behave with them. If any specific follower is angry in nature then, leader must try to handle him by showing cool or calm behaviour. In other words it can be said that, leader must treat his followers as per value system of his followers. Values put a great impact on leadership because as mentioned above value is a set of like and dislikes. Normally, if any important individual commit any act that is disliked by the leader, then he show strong opposition to his follower. This may tarnish his relationship with followers. So, in order to give effective leadership a leader needs to understand his value system and must make an attempt to identify values which act as constraint in maintaining healthy relationship with his followers

(Carroll, Levy and Richmond, 2008). On the other hand, he also requires understand value system of those who works around him as followers. Leaders of Tesco by making changes in self value system and by understanding others value system can create and maintain good relationship with his followers (Kouzes and Posner, 2006). This will promote cooperation from follower’s side. Thus, leader will be able to give good leadership to his followers. Culture differences also affect a leadership style like value system. Mostly, it has been seen that, in a team, people from different cultural background works together. In many workplaces it has been seen that, those followers have same cultural background which their leader is having and get very high importance from leader side (Bass and Riggio, 2006). As a result other followers who do not have similar background get very less importance form leader. This creates dissatisfaction among followers and entire team is divided several parts. As a result, leader does not get cooperation and opinions from his followers. Personality and leadership both are correlated with each other. Personality is basically a set of individual look and his thinking which is an internal factor. Every person acts on the basis of his thinking. If manager at Tesco has negative thinking about his specific follower then, he will treat him in negative way even though his follower is right. Therefore, personality to large extent affects leadership which is delivered by the leader to his followers (Drath, 2001). Tesco needs to select those employees for the top position that have calm behaviour and maintain good relationship with the employees. Such kind of people gives a good leadership to their followers or subordinates. Every leader is intelligent in different things like communication and logical intelligence. If any leader intelligent then, he will logically evaluate each and every thing and by applying logics he will take his day to day decisions. Such kinds of leaders also play a mind game and use their followers in order to satisfy their needs. On the other hand, there is a leader that has interpersonal intelligence but has lack of logical intelligence (Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee, 2013). Then, such kind of leader will have good communication skill but he will not be clever in nature and will treat and utilise each and every follower equally. So, intelligence certainly affects behaviour of leaders. As a result, leadership of every leader is quite different if compared with the other leader. Therefore, Tesco must appoint person as per needs with specific intelligence on its top position. There is a difference between power and influence. Power refers to authority to do something. It can also be defined as capacity to give order to someone or to perform any specific act. On the other hand, influence refers to capacity to put impact on

other person or group. Influence originates after power. In other words it can be said that, an individual after receiving power can influence any other person or group (Pye, 2005). However, it is possible that, an individual have power but he failed to influence other person or group in an organization. Therefore, Tesco must appoint any person as manager in an organization who has skills and ability to influence others by using powers which is delegated by the top management. There are different sources of power in an organization and some of them are discussed below. Legitimate power- It refers to power that a person receives due to his designation. If a person is CEO then, he will receive powers to take core business decisions. By using such kind of powers, CEO influences his managers and forces them to give best performance at their level. result, they exert influence on other people very easily (Dirks and Ferrin, 2002). Referent power- In an organisation, many people gets selected through reference of someone. Such kind of employees uses their reference power in an organization to fulfil their interest or wrong demand. Leaders understand power of motivation and they often use this practice to motivate those who follow them. By motivation, leaders energise their followers and create commitment among them to achieve objectives which are determined by the leader. In an organization, there are many teams and each team which have their own team leader. Team leaders in order to achieve their tough objectives on time motivate their team members by motivating them (Pearce and Conger, 2002). Normally, employees are motivated by praising their performance, putting pressure on them and giving them financial and non-financial incentives. In this way, leaders by motivating their followers influence and lead others. Group and team both are different from each other. Group refers to employee’s cartel that is formed by them and it is also known as informal group. Other group is formal group which is formed by the organization. But in such group, tasks of every individual are different from each other and they are not linked to the specific objective. Team is also a group but it has specific objective and efforts of all its team members are directed towards achievement of the pre-determined objective. Following are few steps for successful development of group which Tesco can follow:

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Forming- At this stage, a group is formed in order to achieve specific objective. Storming- In this stage, conflict arises between team members. Group members do not know each other and due to this reason, conflict arises between them.

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Norming- At this stage, rules and regulations are framed to remove chance of conflict in upcoming time period (Judge and et.al., 2002). Performing- After forming rules and regulations and determining everything, group start performing. In this, each and every member of group perform allotted responsibility. Adjourning- In earlier stage, objective is achieved and due to this reason group is adjourned at this stage.

Process of building effective team             

Setting clear goals Setting clear objective Developing a mechanism for clear and consistent communication Defining a process for solving a problem Developing staffing procedure Determining time frame for starting and terminating team Determining membership of team (Bolman and Deal, 2011) Assigning role of leader Assigning role of communicator Identifying needs of resources Planning team building activities Monitoring of team members performance Accomplishing objectives Leadership for group and team are different from each other. In case of group leader, main objective is to enhance performance of all group members by motivating them or by using coercion power (Zohar, 2002). On the other hand, leader in case of team wants timely completion of work in an efficient and effective manner. Objectives can be achieved in proper manner and on time. In order to lead virtual team conferencing can be done on software like Skype. Through such kind of software, team leader will communicate with his team members. This meeting will be conducted in morning in which team leader will get information about work which members do on previous day like selling of number of units to customers on single day on Tesco outlet. After getting this information, he will communicate the satisfaction or dissatisfaction from monitoring the employee’s performance (Ford, 2006). After this, he will give necessary guidelines to his team members for improving their performance. Along with this, he will also communicate deadlines for achieving goals to his team members. In this way, he will lead his virtual team. Leader to large extent motivate the follower. As mentioned above conflict in value system tarnish leader and follower relationship. Many times followers are motivated but leader implement specific policy which does not get support from follower’s side. This affects their motivation level of the employees in a negative manner (Aaker and Joachimsthaler, 2012). On the other hand, if leader take some positive action and it

get full support from employees side then, this enhance motivation level of the team members to large extent. Leader hugely affects the satisfaction level of the employees. Many times, leader does partiality with their team members and on the basis of priority and biases they give more powers to wrong candidates. Hence, other team member gets dissatisfied from the team leader. On the other hand, if team leader creates environment friendly environment surrounding his team members. Then their satisfaction level increases (Marzano, Waters and McNulty, 2005). Therefore, it depends upon leader that he creates dissatisfaction or satisfaction among his team members regarding his leadership. There is a relationship between motivation, satisfaction and performance. Employee is motivated when his needs are satisfied in terms of monetary, non-monetary incentives or praising from top manager.. If employee is satisfied from company and from his job then, he put his extra efforts in enhancing its performance. Hence, due to high level of satisfaction and motivation, employee performance certainly gets improved (Eagly, Schmidt and Engen, 2003). In many organizations, top managers do not give required support to their subordinates and always embarrass them for not giving maximum expected performance. As a result, a gap comes in existence between employees and managers. Due to this reason, team member’s satisfaction and performance fall. Therefore, Tesco must make sure that, its leaders behave with their team members in a proper manner.

Leaders Achievement of team leader objective depends on performance of activities by the team members. Many times, they fail to perform their tasks on time and in proper manner. As a result, team leader fails achieve his objective and he creates a bad impression in the eyes of top management (Bass, 2003). This brings negative change in his behaviour and team leader start shouting and coercing his team members. In this way, job characteristics and task structure affects behaviour of team leader.

Employees Employee’s tasks are interrelated to each other and if one team member does not perform his task in proper manner it affects other team member’s performance. This leads to conflict among team members (Elmore, 2000). Further, pressure from team leader also fuels this problem. Therefore, task structure and job characteristics affect employees’ performance and their behaviour at the workplace.

Therefore, Tesco must initiate some steps which reduce chances of conflicts among team leader and team members. In an organization there are two kinds of organization structures namely formal and informal. In formal structure, if we talk about top managers then it can be said that they give accountability to middle level managers for achieving organisation objectives. These middle level managers are held accountable to the subordinates who work under them. So, leadership of both top level and middle level managers are different because nature of operations they perform varies in nature (Sveningsson and Larsson, 2006). In case of organization design, under middle level managers several departments operate. Managers of these departments are accountable to the middle level manager. These department leaders lead their department members. So again difference in leadership comes in existence due to difference in nature of operations of both middle level and departmental manager (Spillane, Halverson, and Diamond, 2001). Organization culture determines the behaviour which will be acceptable in an organization. This affects leader leadership and he cannot breach organization culture policy. Legal environment affects leadership and in order achieve target at any cost, leaders cannot behave badly with their followers. In order to achieve target, if leader does discrimination then, it will be illegal and employee has the right to register his grievance in the court. Economic environment also affects leadership. When economy is in downturn there is lot of pressure on company to gain profit in business. In such a situation team leaders face same pressure on their job and in such kind of business environment they become more aggressive towards their followers (Shamir, Dayan-Horesh and Adler, 2005). Apart from this, political environment also bring changes in leader behaviour. This happens when industry does not receive support from government regarding expansion of business. In such a scenario, business leaders at their level take aggressive business decisions to bring their organization on growth track. In this way, all these three components of business environment affect leadership in the firm.

Conclusion On the basis of this report it is concluded that, leadership play an important role in the growth of the firm. Leaders manage employee who work at ground level and play an important role in the growth of an organization. Therefore, managers must carefully use their leadership style and must avoid or abstain from doing partiality with the subordinates. Leaders must motivate their subordinates continuously because this will enhance their performance and ultimately lead to achievement of team leader objective. Motivation and satisfaction from the job performance will also

enhance employee productivity in an organization. In this regard, managers must treat each and every subordinate in an equal manner irrespective of cast, creed and religion....