The Effectiveness of Leadership and Decision Making Skills

Leadership is integral in the management of every organization. It controls the organization and its activities including decision-making. It also assists in managing the people in the organization itself as well as managing the organization. In addition, leadership skills and styles used by specific organization determine the growth and development of that organization. In this manner, leadership is at the centre of organizational behaviour and culture. On the other hand, leadership dictates the ways and effectiveness with which organizations resolve their challenges and difficulties. The challenges may be at the leadership or the organizational level. This paper hence shall discuss in broad the effectiveness of leadership and decision-making skills to understanding and addressing the challenges an organization may experience.

Leadership and Organizational Challenges

Firstly, leadership entails both inbuilt traits and acquired traits. The functions of a leader in every organization are critical in the manner in which leaders contribute to the development of the organization. According to Huczynski & Buchanan (2013), leaders have three major functions, which include evaluator role, arbitrary, and helicopter. These three roles ensure that every leader at the managerial level performs effectively to address the challenges people management might pose. In this manner, the quality of a leader plays a very important function in terms of management.  In addition, organizations need leaders to maintain good standards and status quo as well as maintaining control and structures (Cohen et al 1972). Thus, leaders and their leadership skills perform a fundamental role in management.

Leadership also determines the innovative nature of organizations. Based on the trait approach to the study of leadership, an effective leader should be visionary and innovative. Besides, characteristics of leaders also determine their success. Innovation thus helps to contribute to the effective role of leadership. Trait approaches also indicate personal inbuilt traits that contribute to the successful leadership of every leader. According to Stogdill (1974), most successful leaders normally show traits such as intelligence, ambitious, self-assurance, charisma, and initiative. These traits contribute highly to the effectiveness of the leaders; how they make decisions and tackle challenges eminent in the organization. Intelligence for instance, enables a leader to analyse the challenges and provide appropriate solutions necessary for the development of the organization. Intelligence also gives a leader the understanding to incorporate others in the management so that the leader does not dominate over the employees. Additionally, ambition makes a leader to define and foster organizational dreams and gaols. It gives the leader the urge to address the challenges that may hinder the leader from achieving the goals as stipulated in the mission and vision statements of the organization (Fiedler, 1996). Moreover, a leader that embraces these traits as outlined in the theory makes a perfect leader (Hambrick et al., 1993). The evidence of this is outlined in the module notes, leadership and decision making, which includes the Linkedln’ CEO Jeff Weiner as one of the most effective and successful leaders. The company appointed the leader in 2009; however, through his leadership traits, he ensured a strong customer attraction and huge financial development.

Another factor that determines the effectiveness of a leader is the style approach. This approach dictates the style of leadership each leader uses to sustain success. The approach hypothesises that the styles of leadership organizations implement determine the response the employees give in terms of work responsibility and success achievement.  Behavioural approach to leadership further outlines three major leadership styles that give different results when used by the organization. First, organizations may use autocratic leadership. The leadership style enables leaders to have total power and authority over the employees so that they make most of the decisions. Moreover, autocratic leadership gives variant results based on its implementation and application. According to House et al (2004), the leadership style is more applicable in an organization with a functional structure of management. Nevertheless, the style may seem dictatorial and may bring negative results to organizations that use otherwise structures of leadership. On the other hand, democratic leadership seems to give the best results regardless of the organizational structure where it is implemented. Democratic leadership enables managers to incorporate employees in the management of the organization. It also enables managers to make decisions based on the contributions and consolidated opinions of every stakeholder within the organization (Bates 1984). Consequently, the organization makes the best decisions that lead to the development of the company (Vroom and Yetton, 1973). Lastly, laissez-faire as a leadership style leads to the worst result in organizations where the style is used. First, the style does not control and guide the employees and all stakeholders. Nonetheless, the leadership style allows employees to do as they wish and make decisions that best suit their interests. In this manner, the leadership style poses more challenges than solving the already existing ones. For example, an organization facing lateness of employees as a challenge may not solve the problem if it uses laissez-faire especially because employees have the freedom to behave in a way that pleases them.

On the other hand, organisations need to have both transformative and transactional leaderships. Transformational leadership equips leaders with characteristics and ability to solve problems especially during difficult times. According to Goleman (2009), the leadership approach associates with emotional intelligence. In this assertion, leaders with emotional intelligence are the best at dealing with critical challenges of an organization. This leadership approach also motivates employees through inspirations in order to help them grow in strength and skills to help the company meet its goals and objectives. McColl-Kennedy and Anderson (2002), further underscores that transformational leadership influences and increases sales performance in various organizations. Contrary, transactional leadership gives leaders the power and skills to improve performance by linking organizational objectives to rewards (Zhu et al., 2005).

Conclusion

Leadership is at the centre stage of organizational development and growth. It influences the leadership styles and inspiration a leader makes on the employees in order to make achievements. In retrospect, leadership skills determine the kind of decisions a company makes for its development. Consequently, leadership influences performance and decisions, which are effective the development of the company. In general, the traits of every leader determine his/her effectiveness and the leadership styles the company will use for effective decision-making.

References

Bates, P. (1984). ‘The impact of organizational culture on approaches to organizational problem solving’, Organization Studies, 5,1, 43-67

 Buchanan, D. and Huczynski, A. (2017). Organizational Behaviour, Harlow: Pearson

Cohen, M. D., March, J. G. and Olsen, J. P. (1972). ‘A garbage can model of organizational choice’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 17, 1-25

Fiedler, F. E. (1996). ‘Research on leadership selection and training: One view of the future’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 41, 241-250

Goleman, D. (2009). Working with Emotional Intelligence, Bloomsbury: London

Hambrick, D. C., Geletkanycz, M. A. and Fridrickson, J. W. (1993). ‘Top executive commitment to the status quo’, Strategic Management Journal, 14,6,401-418.

House, R. J., Hanges, P. J., Javidan, M., Dorfman, P. W. and Gupta, N. (eds) (2004). Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

McColl-Kennedy, J.R. and Anderson, R.D., 2002. Impact of leadership style and emotions on subordinate performance. The Leadership Quarterly, 13(5), pp.545-559.

Stogdill, R.M., 1974. Handbook of leadership: A survey of theory and research. New York, NY, US: Free Press.

Vroom, V. H. and Yetton, P. W. (1973). Leadership and Decision-Making, Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Zhu, W., Chew, I.K. and Spangler, W.D., 2005. CEO transformational leadership and organizational outcomes: The mediating role of human–capital-enhancing human resource management. The leadership quarterly, 16(1), pp.39-52.