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Sunday, January 12, 2014

Leadership Skills and Values that Bring Change to Organization


Introduction

Discussions on the topic of leadership are almost every day. Many seminars have been conducted to discuss the topic. It is interesting to discuss it because of its importance.  No society, no organization stands without a leader. The direction of society, organizations lies on him/her. Thus, the function of a leader is crucial. This is the reason why people never stop discussing about leadership and proposes their own concepts of what kind of leadership that can affect positive change in the society or organizations. Thus, the question like “what kind of leadership that produces positive results or change” is becoming relevant. The answer to this question is not all about leadership skills but also leader’s values. What we present in this article is based on experience and supported by the theory of leadership given by authorities on leadership theory.  

This article may give us clear understanding about what kind of leadership that is needed in changing the organization. As we know that leadership is not just a position. Position is a venue in which a person given the authority exercises his/her leadership role. However, many people who have been given position in many organizations are often not aware of their leadership role. Some may have the idea of leadership but what kind of leadership that they will apply, the skills and values that will help their role to produce positive change is still unknown to them. Others do not have the idea at all on what leadership is. They assume such position by certain circumstances, not because they are prepared for such position. The result is that they just simply repeat things that have been practiced from years to years and consequently bring the institution to no where and stay as it is. We have witnessed institutions that have been in existence for many decades but there is no difference between yesterday-today and tomorrow. They are just stagnant and slowly deteriorating and finally closed down. No change. No development is a failure of leadership.

Based on experience in managing an organization, the followings skills and values are important for creating change in the organization. The organizations need leaders with knowledge in strategic planning, problem solving, decision making, developing people, sharing information, motivating and appreciating people,  moral values, delegation and empowerment. There are other aspects, but we focus on those issues in this article.    

Leadership Skills

Leadership skills are necessary tools to carry out the job as leader. Many kinds of leadership skills but in this article, the writer just presents skills that are important according to his observations and experience. 

Strategic Planning Skills

            Leader needs to be equipped with the knowledge on how to make strategic planning.  This is the foundation of leadership. He/she should know where to lead and where they want to be in the future and how to get there. Thus, first requirement is a leader should have a vision. This is the end point of where the leader is leading his/her followers. It is the futuristic picture of the organization that is described in words or vision statement, (Morato, 2006) which inspires people to pursue. However, having vision alone is not enough.  Harvey Macey (2003) said, “A dream is just a dream if there is no deadline. Thus, a vision is a dream with a plan and a deadline and it should be executed.

To execute vision into action, the missions of the organization or the basic purpose of the organization have to be determined and clear. It may specify the product or services to be rendered, which in effect also defines the market. Then the mission has to be translated into specific objectives and these objectives have to be measurable. Thus, from the established objectives, specific key result areas have to be determined in order to be measured (KRAs). It is a qualitative statement that defines objectives is being attained. Qualitative statements are always hard to measure, thus, end results must be measured and stated in numerical values or percentage, or what we call Performance Indicator (PIs). Up to here, things are still at the level of ideas unless the strategies are formulated. These are actions to be taken which include activities and tasks, resources required in term of money, facilities and people (Morato, 2006). Unless, the leader knows where to go and how to get there, the leader will never bring any change for a better. Thus, a leader needs strategic planning skills.

Problem Solving Skills

Problems are part of human life. In the same way we may say that problems are part of organizational life, no way of avoiding it. They may be caused internally which is within our control and could be caused externally which is beyond our control. The world keep on changing and the behavior of people follow, then problems become complex. We can not escape change, and then we can not escape problems. It is our ability to adapt and manage change and solve these problems caused by the change determines the survival of the organization.

Organizations within the changing world are always facing problems. Problems may vary; it may be financial problems, human problems, technological problems and management problems. Therefore, leader in this changing environment needs to be equipped with skills to solve such complicated problems. The organization needs a leader who is committed to solve problems and has the basic knowledge in solving problems.

Problem solving is a skill because it is a scientific process. It involves methodical thought process. The issues must be identified and then analyzed. Then develop options and evaluate it in which alternatives of choices can be made and finally implement the choice that has been made (Heller, 1998). Systematic method of reaching a decision ensures that all correct issues are addressed. A systematic process enables the leader to prepare a logical and effective plan of actions so that decisions process can be explained clearly to employees.      

Commitment to solve problems is another matter. The life of the organization depends on how he/she commits her/himself to solve problems. Problems can not be avoided but it has to be faced. His/her commitment and ability to solve issues affecting his/her organization determine the survival and the development of the organization.

Decision-Making Skills

Our lives consist of a constant stream of decisions and choices, from the everyday to the highly consequential. Thus, an organization as part of society and composed of human beings naturally consists of constant stream of decisions and choices. The type of decisions then may include routine, emergency, strategic and operational. Based on the nature and type of these decisions, naturally there is a need to have a leader who can make better decision on emergency basis and a strategic decision. There are times that data are not available at hand and so leader must be ready for surprises. In case of strategic decision, the leader should have the ability to process multiple alternatives available out there and to choose an optimal course of action.

As decision makers, they are responsible for making a judgment and often crucial judgment, between two or more alternatives. It is not an instant effort and arbitrary game but it is a process. Making decisions take the leader through the whole process of making good, effective decision, from initial deliberation to final implementation (Heller, 1998).

Developing People Skills

The organization grows not only because of its leaders but because of people who are working for the organization. Naturally, preparing people to handle specific responsibilities is necessary. Thus, the job of leader is to identify the need of the organization and develop people who can handle those particular needs or jobs.  Maxwell (1995) emphasized that the great function of a leader is to develop people around him to their full potential. Developing people is not only their skills related to their job but also to develop them become a leader. His/her success is measured by how many people he/she has developed becoming leaders. 

In line with idea of Maxwell, JP.Maroney (2007) argues that great leaders invest in their people. They understand that their ultimate role is to develop people. They invest in human development and professional training and believe in spending time with their people. He specifically pointed out three resources in the process of helping people become their best and these are time, energy and money. He reiterates that a great leader must invest time. He/she should make a habit of spending time with people in their organization. By spending time with people, leaders come to know more about their people and bring out the best in them. Besides investing time, leaders must invest energy. Leaders must realize that working with people can be taxing. A leader who thinks of their people and their organization will not take things easy but they will use their energy to think of ways to better maximize the results of their people. Finally, he suggests that investing money for the development of people is necessary. Leaders should know that the best place to invest money for organization to grow is in their people. They should realize that the greatest untapped potential for success is in the people who are in the organization. Great leader would rather invest in people than in the furniture or company vehicle.

Bass (1998) as he cited from McGregor Burns (1978) emphasized the importance of building a great organization. An organization may grow if the people grow. Therefore, a job of a leader is to transform their people to be their best. A measure of a great leader is their people, in the sense that they should be able to develop people in their organization to become leaders. Bass recommends four several leadership style in order to develop people and these are idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration. Bass believes that developing people is not always through money but it can be done through role model (idealized influence). They are looked up to because of their ethical and moral conduct. Consequently people are inspired to follow their behavior. However, acting as a role model is not enough; it must be coupled with inspirational motivation. It is the ability of leaders to inspire their followers to go beyond their self interest for the sake of the organization, for the sake of the common good. It should be started from the leader him/herself. Bass also recognized that people are not object in the organization but they are subject, in the sense that people should be involved in solving problems of the organization. Therefore, the function of a leader is to promote intellectual stimulation or discussion in solving problems. It is the ability of a leader to stimulate followers to be innovative, creative in solving problem of the organization and challenge traditional way of thinking and solving problems. Finally, it is also a need for a leader to pay attention to individual needs. Leader should know that different individuals have different needs and leaders see to it that their individual needs are attended to.
 
Information Sharing Skills.

Information and knowledge still represent power. This is truer in today’s economy than ever before. Organizations may grow fast or slow depending on how fast it is adapting to the changes in the outside world. Technologies are changing very fast, the way how things are done is also changing very fast. Thus, leader’s interaction with the outside world is necessary to adapt to change and finally change the organization. Interactions with other people outside the organization may yield new knowledge and information that can benefit their business/work in a tangible ways. As a leader, new information, new knowledge must be shared to people/employees for them to grow and cope with the rapid change. Thus, people and organization need to have the right information to react to changes.

Maribeth Achterberg (2001) argues that information sharing is always better than hoarding information. However, she emphasizes that sharing information is not just for the sake of sharing but it must have a business purpose as its root. In contrary, information hoarding is the other extreme. Holding information results from a lack of trust. In this case, leader and employees do not trust each other. Such situation hinders the growth of the organization because opportunities that are seen by both are not shared.

Sharing information is a necessary when a leader wants to empower his people and allow them to join in building up the organization. When leaders share information, the employees feel trusted and feel owning the organization and this can generate positive energy of employees to bring out their best to do whatever required of them. The organizations grow not because only of its leaders but by how leaders empower employees to do their best. Thus, the job of a leader is to share information related to what is happening within and around the organization for people to be aware of what is happening and make the necessary adjustment or response to problems/issues that affect the organizations.

Motivation Skills

Motivation is getting others to do something because they want to do it. To motivate others is one of the most important management tasks. It comprises the ability to understand what drives people, to communicate, to involve, to encourage, to set example, to develop and coach, to obtain feedback and to provide a just reward (Kotelnikov, 2009).

 The underlying concept is that leader-manager can not do things alone; he/she needs others to do it for him. So, the challenge is not in the work but in the leader who creates and manages the work environment. Success comes through people. For the manager who knows how to energize people and maintain their enthusiasm, then the art of motivating is one of the success secrets. Thus, if the leader/manager understand what motivates people, he/she has at her/his command the most powerful tool for dealing with them to get them achieve extraordinary results. Motivation and power are so closely linked together that one can say there is power in a motivated person.

Motivation is not all about money or right compensation. Money does not buy love, happiness and commitment. That’s why people say that man does not live from bread alone because you might end up toast. Thus, recognition and praise for the job well-done is also a motivation tool. Usually in the corporate world, recognition is used for one reason: to drive more business (Gostick, 2001).

Delegation of Authority Skills

A leader can not do everything alone; he accomplishes things through other people. That is the essence of delegation.  Leader empowers people to make decisions for the organization on behalf of the leader without being restricted. Thus, the concept of delegation is based on trust. The trust is given to subordinates to make things happen on their own. The trust is given because of perception of competence. The leader perceives the ability of others with whom he/she works to perform competently at whatever is needed in the current situation (Heathfield, 2009). Once the delegation and trust are given to subordinates, they can not be withdrawn back and the leader should accept whatever the consequences would be. When things go wrong as a result of delegation, a leader can not wash his hands and blame others but has to accept it as his own.  

Thus, delegation is not the same as blanket authority. There are things not to be delegated; only the leader can do it. Thus, the leader should know what to delegate and what not to delegate. Clear boundaries have to be drawn so that the one who is delegated will not go beyond the limit.

Delegating things to others involves some risks and the leader should accept the negative outcome of delegation. Often time negative outcome may happen. These things may occur unintentionally or intentionally. The leader should embrace the responsibility and accept it as his/her own. These risks may be a good lesson for the leader to know how to delegate and whom to delegate and maybe not to delegate.

Leader’s Values

Leadership is not all about skills but it has also something to do with values. It is about their belief and philosophy that guide and inspire their actions or behavior. Success is not only resulted from applying the right skills in executing their functions but both skills and values. Skills and values may affect performance of organization and organizational climate. Latest study on the impact of leadership skills, ethics/values toward performance and organizational climate pointed out that leadership skills and ethics/values affect performance and organizational climate (Foronda, 2010). Thus it is important to see the personal values of leaders as important ingredients to leadership success. Core values of leaders remind leaders what it takes to get the mission done. Values inspire the leaders to do their best at all times  The following values are considered necessary values that accompany leadership skills.  

Integrity

Strategic planning is not only the concern of leaders. Supporting values to carry out the strategic plan is crucial. One of the values leader should possess is integrity. It is a concept of consistency of actions, values, measures, methods, principles, expectations and outcome. A person who has the integrity is the one who behave according to the values, beliefs and principles they claim to hold. It is the opposite of hypocrisy. Such value is crucial to lead people in the organization. Some groups claim that people are led not by the hand but by head. This group would claim that intelligence is a prerequisite to be a successful leader. Justin Menkes (2006) in his “Executive Intelligence” book argues that executives do not lead companies with their hands; they lead them with their minds. So without possessing the requisite amount of cognitive ability for the workplace, a leader has little chance for success. Thus knowledge is crucial. However, such ideas have been contested by several people.

 Without dismissing such claim, other author on leadership would also claim that integrity is a powerful influence to create a positive change. Bass (1997) in his book on the Ethics of Transformational Leadership emphasized the idea of idealized influence, in the sense that identification with the leader is one major process that enables leaders to influence the perceptions, needs, values and behaviors of followers. The question here is how can people identify themselves with their leaders? People identify themselves with their leader not only because of their intelligence but because of their good example, their life and their values. Or in other words, leaders should have self-integrity. It is moral values that leader upholding that matters. It is a guideline, benchmark, point of reference that is used to make decisions that rely on truth and honesty. To maintain integrity, the leader must remember to refer to truth and honesty in all decisions, thoughts, actions and reactions. It is not an option (Chris Zach Hidalgo, 2002). Thus, leader with knowledge but without integrity is just like a house built on the sand.  

 Creativity and Innovativeness

Many people say that the game of business survival is creativity and innovation. It means that there are no permanent product or services, everything have to be changed and innovated according to the taste of the market, the demand of the market. Market is the king of the products and services. Products and services have to serve the needs of the king. It is the key to success and to stay in business.

Two terms are often used interchangeably. However, they are not really the same. Creativity is referred to the act of producing new ideas, approaches, methods, strategies or actions, while innovation is the process of both generating and applying such creative ideas in some specific context (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/creativity). In the context of organization, innovation refers to the entire process by which the organization generates creative new ideas and converts them into useful products, services and business practices, while the term creativity is referred to the generation of new ideas by individuals or groups as a necessary step within the innovation process. It is the starting point to innovation. No matter they are different, they go hand in hand. In order to be innovative, leader and employees have to be creative to stay competitive. 

Reflecting on the importance of the value of innovativeness and creativity, thus, it is necessary to inculcate those values in the leader and the employees. If the leaders do not possess such values, it will be hard to inspire his /her followers to be creative and innovative and it will be hard to change the old face of the organization. Such situation may lead to downfall.     

Teamwork

A leader who possesses the value of teamwork will inspire people to work in the team, and will reward group performance and not individual performance. A leader supports a group of people working for one goal, the goal of the organization, where each individual brings forth his/her skills in a concentrated manner and coordinates it with others skills, to produce a desired ends.  Thus, the challenge of a leader is form a team and how each team member will be able to work together and contribute their different skills for the achievement of the goal. Working together all the time must be taxing but it has to be done to produce results (Chevalier, 2007)

The tough question posted by a leader is how to makes effective team? Good teamwork does not happen automatically but there are number of factors required to develop effective team. Thus a leader should know what factors contributing to effective team. Thus, the following are factors that vital to building a good team that works successfully:

-Effective teamwork is about good leadership. This means that the team leader should have the skills to create and maintain a working culture or working climate that is positive or conducive. A Study conducted recently on the relationship between leadership and organizational climate found that leadership significantly influence organizational climate (Foronda, 2010).  

-Effective teamwork is about effective communication.

Communication is a vital factor of interpersonal interaction and the very term (teamwork) represents interpersonal interaction. Thus, one requirement for team member to be effective is open communication.

-Effective teamwork is about defining clear cut roles.

A team is not the same with biking group or lunch group. Each team member possesses certain skills to contribute to the success of a team. Therefore, each member should be given clear-cut responsibilities, what is one person responsible for. 

- Effective team should have procedures for conflict resolution.

There is always possibility of conflict between team members. Team members should have a way of expressing their opinions or grievances without fear of causing offence to anyone. A hands-on approach that resolves them quickly is better. The team leader should sit down with the parties in conflict and work out the differences among them.

- Team leader should set a Good example.

Team leader should set good example which can be emulated by member. A good team leader should have all the good qualities to keep the team motivated and inspired. After all, a team leader is the person the team looks to for support, direction and guidance. It is with him, the team member find strength and inspiration. Thus, a team leader should maintain a supportive and positive attitude.     

There are three condition for team work as pointed out by McCrimmon (2008):

-          Resources and commitment. Does the team have the resources to support in carrying out duties and responsibilities and is the team committed to the common goal?   

-          Ownership and heart. Team member feel “belonged” to the team and own the team and believe it from the heart and act in a way that is aligned to team principles and live a common team values. Team is not a place for politicking and competing each other for popularity. 

-          Learning. Each member must be ready and willing to learn from team member. 

Excellence

Excellence has become common core values in all organizations. All organizations aspire to be excellent. However, excellence must first be a personal core value of a leader, and then all members of the organization. Employees may not be inspired if leaders have no ambition to excellence. Mediocre leader will not attract followers to follow. Thus, it should become inspiration for all in conducting their activities. Therefore, such values have to be translated into product/service excellence, community service excellence, instruction excellence, and faculty excellence. The leader and the member should focus on providing quality products/services, community service, instruction and faculty that fully respond to customer needs (students’ needs), and must do so within the established excellent criteria.        

Conclusion

After all, leadership is not just a position and authority. These are only instruments to exercise certain leadership skills. Leadership without skills will never produce a good result. Thus, someone can not be assigned to leadership position if he/she does not have the necessary skills and qualities to perform the job. Training in related skills and other qualities of leadership is necessary to be given to those who are and will be assigned to leadership position. If not given training, at least those who are planned to be given leadership position must be assigned in lower position to learn the necessary skills to carry out the job before they are assigned to be manager/leader.

            Leaders are not only a dreamers but doers at the same time. Position and skills are going hand in hand in order to become effective leader. Skills are not born but they are learned. A leader then has to learn how to make a better leader. A better leader is determined by how good he is in carrying out his duties and responsibilities.

References

Books:
Bass, B.M. 1997. The Ethics of Transformational Leadership. Maryland: The James MacGregor BurnsAcademy of Leadership Publication.
Bass, B.M. 1998. Transformational Leadership: Industrial, Military and Educational Impact. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 
Chevalier, Roger. 2007. Improving Workplace Performance. AMACOM: New York.
Foronda, Lalaine. 2010. The Impact of Leadership Skills, Ethics/Values Toward Organizational Climate, Dissertation. Makati: Philippines
Gostick, Adrian & Elton, Chester. 2001. Management With Carrots. GIBBS-SMITH Publisher: Salt Lake City.
Heller, Robert & Hindle Tim.1998. Dorling Kindersley: New York
Maxwell, John. 1997. Developing the Leaders Around You. Thomas Nelson Publisher: Nashville.
Menkes, Justin. 2006. Executive Intelligence. Collins Publisher: New York
Morato Jr, A. Eduardo. 2006. Strategic Planning and Management. Singapore: Prentice Hall

Internet:

 1. Achterberg, Maribeth. 2001. Information Sharing Versus Information Hoarding. http://www.kwork.org/white_paper/cultural.html

2. Hidalgo, Chris Zach. 2002. Integrity. http://www.webweevers.com/integrity.htm

3.  Heathfield, Susan M. Delegation and Trust. http://www.humanresourceguide.com
4. Kofelnikov, Vadim. 2009. Effective Motivation. http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/crosscutting/motivating_main.html

5. Maroney, Jp. 2008. Investing in The Developme of People. http://www.asiaselect.com.ph/content/investing-development-people

6. Macey, Harvey. 2003. Leadership and Direction. http://www.leadership&planning.html.

McCrimmon, Mitch. 2008. Leadership and Teamwork. http://www.leadershipteamwork.com


 

 

 

 

 

 

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