Unit-8
Leadership Challenges
Conflict is often viewed by leaders as an opportunity that help to build meaningful relationships between people and groups. Conflict handling determines whether it proves to be productive or devastative.
According to Guttman (2004), an important and essential quality of a leader is his/her ability to handle conflicts.
It deals with listening, observing and encouraging followers to help them perform in a better way. Leadership is not only about setting the agenda of work. It also deals with identifying problem areas, taking initiatives for change and making improvements in the current organisational systems
Main leadership theories are:
1.Charismatic Leadership Theory/Great Man theory (by Plato and Confucius)
As per this theory, leaders are born and not made.
It was presumed that leaders possess a charismatic personality that would not be found in an ordinary person. Charismatic leaders would easily stimulate and align others to accomplish a certain goal.
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Robert House stated that leaders were those who possessed a great degree of referent power. As per Robert, the charismatic leader has extremely high levels of self-confidence, dominance, and a strong conviction in the normal righteousness of his beliefs, or at least the ability to convince the followers that he possesses such confidence and conviction.
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iii. To remain unimpaired by external factors and apply inherent skills and qualities to resolve problem
ii. To have innate skills that cannot be changed or enhanced through education, training or development
i. To have phenomenal leadership calibre
The fundamental traits of charismatic leaders are as follows:
2. Trait Theory
2.Cattell’s Trait Theory: It is important to study a number of factors before understanding the personality of an individual. He collected data with the help of a questionnaire and analyzed it with a statistical technique( factor analysis), to identify various traits. The traits a person possesses were identified on basis of responses filled in the questionnaire.
Cattell came up with many traits such as being warm, being vigilant, being lively, being sensitive, and being apprehensive.
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1.Allport’s Trait Theory(Gordon Allport) : The personality of an individual can be studied from the difference between his/her common traits and personal characteristics. According to Allport, the common traits of an individual are compared according to six values such as being religious, economic, political, social, theoretical and aesthetical.
Cardinal traits: These are considered powerful traits and very few people have a personality that is dominated by these traits.
Central traits: These traits are common attributes that many individuals have in different Examples of such traits are being friendly, jovial, loyal agreeable, and more.
Secondary traits: These traits project the reason why a person behaves differently at times than what is his normal behavior. For example, a person who is generally happy can feel sad on listening to some particular news.
3. Behavioural Theory
The approach focuses on the fact that a particular behavior of a leader will make him effective. He needs to have the right behavior for motivating employees and setting goals for achieving the objectives of the organization. Leaders need to have good communication skills and the ability to interact and build team spirit.
⦁ Technical skills refer to the individual’s knowledge of the system, processes and techniques.
⦁ Human skills refer to the ability of the individual to be able to interact with other individuals
⦁ Conceptual skills refer to the ability of the leader to come upwith innovative ideas for running the organisation successfully and strategic decision making
4.Contingency Theory
(Fred E. Fiedler.)
No leadership style is applicable in all situations. Good leaders need to have the right qualities and they should evaluate the needs of their people according to the situation at hand. It states that leadership is a combination of many key variables.
High LPC score: According to Fiedler, a leader with good personal skills depends on building relationships with others to fulfil tasks. A high LPC score highlights that the leader is people-oriented.
Low LPC score: As per Fiedler, a leader with a low LPC score will give priority to the task first and will focus on maintaining relationships only if satisfactory outcomes are This exhibits that the leader is task-oriented.
It is necessary to know the style of the leader, through the ‘Least Preferred Co -worker Scale (LPC). The LPC has a set of questions that are formulated to identify the kind of employee a leader would most prefer to work with, and, in turn, this would demonstrate the leader’s way of working.
The two types of LPC Scores are:
5.Transformational Leadership Theory
According to the transformational leadership theory, a high-performance workforce can be built when leaders are able to inspire their followers to work beyond their job responsibilities.
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Inspirational: Refers to the quality of motivating employees to perform better. A transformational leader should inculcate the feeling of teamwork among employees by his/her enthusiastic and optimistic approach.
Intellectual: It refers to the quality of being rational and logical. A transformational leader should be intellectual to analyse the problematic situations and give appropriate solutions.
Idealistic: It refers to the quality of being morally A transformational leader should be idealistic if he/she wants his/her followers to be devoted and committed. He/she should not be unfair while dealing with his/her followers
A transformational leader should have the following characteristics:
Ledership Styles:
1. Autocratic style
(authoritative style):
5.Charismatic style
2. Democratic style
(participative style):
Leadership style is the method adopted by leaders to guide, motivate and inspire people for following them. A good leader can motivate people and influence them in the desired manner for achieving particular results. Styles of leadership can be further developed with practical knowledge and experience.
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⦁ Leaders believe in assigning work, giving orders, and responsibilities without consulting others.
⦁ Leaders use coercive measures such as punishments and other strict ways to get the work completed.
⦁ Autocratic leadership style helps in reducing mistakes in the implementation of plans and enables fast decision making. e.g Adolf Hitler
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⦁ They do not believe in instilling fear of punishment on people for getting their work done.Eg- Nelson mandela
⦁ Leaders give freedom to the people to share their ideas while making plans and policies. They lead through persuasion and encourage the participation of employees in discussions.
⦁ Leaders consul to others and let them participate in the decision-making process. They make decisions while taking the opinion of others at work and believe in the decentralization of authority.
3.Laissez-faire style:
free-rein style/no leadership
4.Bureaucratic style:
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⦁ Leaders are non-interfering and do not exercise any power and Instead.
⦁ They believe in complete delegation of authority. They prefer to take less initiative and pass on the responsibility for decision making to their subordinates.
⦁ They give employees full authority to set their own goals and also take care of their problems. They believe that if the employees have the freedom and are left to themselves, they will put in their best effort for obtaining results.
⦁ Since there is no control of the leader on employees, leaders fail to provide continuous feedback leasds to increased costs, lack of coordination and low productivity.
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⦁ Leaders follow a structured way of working and prefer to work according to the preset standards. They ensure that employees also follow the set.
⦁ This type of leadership is normally followed in hospitals, universities, banks and governmental organisations to bring down corruption and increase security.
⦁ Self-motivated individuals who are highly energetic often feel frustrated in this leadership style because of the organisation’s inability to adapt to the changing environment
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⦁ Leaders infuse a lot of enthusiasm and boost the energy levels of employees.
⦁ They work with a goal or a mission and are visionaries who drive their team to gear to a high level of performance.
⦁ Leaders are dedicated to their organisation and are a boon to the organisation. Leaders who adopt this leadership style have the ability to engage large For example, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, etc.
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6. Directive Style
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⦁In the directive leadership style, leaders monitor and guide employees in their work.
⦁ They delegate tasks, schedule work, maintain records and increase the performance levels of the employees.
⦁ Directive style is very useful when the employees have a low level of motivation or if a conflict arises between different people. It is mostly used in organisations where there is hardly any scope of error. For example, law enforcement, military, etc.
7. Supportive Style
⦁ Leaders are friendly and approachable towards others.They show concern towards employees and help them in facing problems while performing work.
⦁ Leaders listen carefully to their employees and help them deal with stress. Leaders also train their employees to deal with conflicting issues.
8.Situational style
(Kenneth Blanchard and Paul Hersey):
⦁ Leaders of the organisation adjust their style to fit the development level of their followers.
⦁ In situational leadership, the style may change continually to meet the needs of the situation in the Hence, situational leaders follow various styles of management to suit the organisational requirement. .
Leadership Challenges
- Honing Effectiveness
- Inspiring Others
- Developing employees
- Leading a team
5.Guiding a change
- Managing Stakeholders
Leaders across the world found that developing relevant skills such as time-management, prioritization, strategic thinking, decision-making, etc., are essential for being more effective at work.
it is quite a challenging task to inspire and motivate their team members and subordinates so that they are satisfied with their job and work diligently.
For leaders, it is difficult to develop employees by mentoring and coaching them.
Leaders have to do difficult tasks of building, developing and managing teams. Some of the leadership challenges usually include instilling pride, providing support, leading a big team and taking over a new team.
Leaders usually face challenges in the case of change management which includes managing, mobilising, understanding and leading Dealing with change also includes deciding mitigating consequences, overcoming resistance of employees to change, and dealing with employees’ reactions to change.
Leaders also find it challenging to manage relationships, gaining managerial support, and getting buy-in from other departments, groups or individuals.
Negotiation (Conflict Process Model)
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Negotiation can be referred to as a process by which entities having varied preferences and interests try to concur on a common solution.
Bargaining is the negotiation regarding price only.
Negotiation can be termed as a conflict-resolution process used in situations where the interests of two or more parties clash with each other and no party wants to sacrifice for the other.
A negotiation process can be defined by the following characteristics:
:
⦁ The minimum number of parties required for negotiation is two.
⦁ There is no pre-determined set of rules and procedures to resolve a conflict.
⦁ Parties involved in negotiations trying to reach a mutual agreement.
Bargaining strategies are of two types:
1. Distributive negotiation: In this, one party’s gain is dependent upon the other party. It is a type of competitive bargaining strategy, which is used to distribute fixed resources among conflicting parties. These resources may include money, properties, assets, etc. As the assets or resources to be distributed are fixed in such cases, distributive negotiation is also known as zero- sum negotiation.
2. Integrative negotiation: In this bargaining strategy, parties strive to find a win-win solution in which both parties are mutually benefited. Solutions are put forward and instituted by offering the maximum benefit to both the parties involved
Importance of Negotiation
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1.At starting job in a company: Before even you have started doing a job at a company, you are negotiating with them to gain a place and secure a salary to your liking. It is essential that both parties strike a good balance and leave the company in a good financial position while keeping the new employees motivated.
2. Building supplier and customer relationships: Everyday a company has to negotiate suppliers and customers and this is a negotiation. When an employee learns to negotiate the best prices with vendors or customers without being rude and damaging relationships, the company can build longstanding ties.
3.Conflict resolution: As an employee’s career moves up into management positions, they also need to settle disputes within the internal departments. In such a case, a good manager should negotiate in such a way that both parties are satisfied and continue to work in a productive manner for the company.