Why should anyone be lead by me

I’ve been privileged to see many great leaders all through my life like Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, Nara Chandra Babu Naidu, Mahatma Gandhi. I tried hard to learn exactly what it is that makes them so effective. It’s very surprising that although these leaders lead different sectors of people in different situations, they all have few things in common. May be these are the fundamentals to be an effective leader! Vision is always one of them. These leaders give utmost importance to ideas, values and activities they are passionate about. Inspired from all of them my perception of vision of leadership is chalked out. According to me, it’s very important for a leader to have clear ideas. For Living out the vision persistence matters as much as the inspiration. Great leaders never give up.

 

Transformational leadership and situational leadership are those that interests me. In this highly volatile and diverse world I believe that these two leadership styles will have a huge impact on an organization. When there is so much volatility around us transformational leadership has to be practiced as organizations fail terribly if they don’t change. Companies like Nokia, Kodak were once market leaders. But due to lack of transformational leadership these companies reached the bottom end. As world has become a global village and there are diverse work teams, it’s important for a leader to act according to situations. Hersey and Blanchard theory of situational leadership should be practiced when there are diverse teams. CEO of Apple after Steve Jobs, Tim Cook follows situational leadership. Situational Leadership demands leaders to be both directive and supportive according to the situation. Tim cook follows that.  Tim Cook is used his situational leadership skills when addressing the US government when “demanding that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers” (Cook, 2016). Mr. Cook opposed and did not fulfill the requests of the FBI to create a new phone and bypass security measures that put users at risk. Mr. Cook addressed the issue and also provided legislation which supports his directive stance.

Among all the leaders, Warren Buffet really inspires me. Being a finance student, I find it very fascinating how Warren Buffet moves the stock market. He created Buffet Effect in stock market, people buy what he buys, they sell what he sells (Fortune 2014). He also leads 300,000 employees with a values-based, hands-off style which comes under laissez faire leadership style that gives managers lot of freedom and incentives like owners (Fortune 2014). As a result of his leadership, the company Berkshire hathaway became the fifth most valuable company in America (Fortune 2014).

I was a school pupil leader in my school where i was leading and representing all the students of school. I was a democratic leader without even knowing what it’s called. I gathered opinions from all the class heads while taking decisions. But now i realized that when leading more number of people autocratic leadership is more suitable as democratic style would be chaos to gather opinions from so many people.

In my MBA class, I had to lead a team which is very diverse. For getting a task done, I dealt it by being a democratic leader.  I encouraged participation of my team members in decision making as that would make them feel involved and responsible. At that point of time i thought that’s the best leadership style i could adapt. Democratic leadership suited that particular situation. It got us good results.

I am a student representative of Finance department, in one of the cirumstances i followed laissez faire leadership style.

Therefore, I believe it all comes down to what kind of team and situation we are leading to choose a leadership style. Without this flexibility it’s very difficult to get success at all situations.

In the feedback provided by my team members about my leadership, my team members were satisfied with democratic leadership. They felt important when i asked for their opinions. They worked with more enthusiasm as they felt responsible and involved. However, some of them couldn’t agree on few decisions taken. They felt their views were not valued. This is something I should improve on. Convincing everyone and getting everyone on the same path is very important for a leader. From MBA, I learnt how and where to use different kind of leadership styles. I learnt how important it is to observe the nature of team members. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of team members is also very important. I also learnt that motivating people is the most important quality of a leader.

 

Leadership and Change

When you’re finished changing, you’re finished – Benjamin Franklin.

The price of doing the same old thing is far higher than the price of change – Bill Clinton

 

 Change is the only constant in the world. Change is inevitable to organizations in this highly volatile world. Once upon a time Nokia, Kodak, Blackberry were the leading companies. Where are they now? This is because they failed to change with the trend. Why is Apple so hyped? Release of IPhone 8 and iPhone X created so much buzz around the world because it innovates, it changes according to the demands of the customers. Therefore, to be successful it’s very important for the organizations to change according to the trend.

According to Mullins, Change is nothing new and a simple fact of life. Some people actively thrive on new challenges and change constant, while others prefer the comfort of the status quo and strongly resist any change. It is all down to the personality of the individual and there is little management can do about resistance to change.

 To some extent Mullins is right about some people welcoming change very easily and some people resisting change.  Some of the reasons for resistance could be high degree of uncertainty, loss of security, loss of convenience, loss of relationships (Alasadi 2014). Mullins statement of management’s ability to do only a little about resistance to change is debatable. Managers cannot let resistance to change be a factor for organization’s failure like Nokia, Kodak. This is where managers have to play a crucial role and there are so many change management theories to help managers deal with resistance to change.

The most fundamental tool among them is Kurt Lewin’s 3-step change model (Levasseur 2001). According to him, the first step in the process of changing behavior is to unfreeze the existing situation. Only then can change, or movement, occur. Finally, to make the new behaviors stick, a third, refreezing step is necessary. The first step of this model helps to minimize the barriers to change by involving the employees in the change process (Levasseur 2001). In the second step, Movement takes place after people have bought into the need for change (Levasseuar 2001). At this point examining the existing system and developing the new system gets underway (Levasseuar 2001). In the refreezing step, managers should make sure that new behaviors have replaced those that existed prior to the change.

 

Although this model gives the important steps for change management, it doesn’t give the details of what change agents to do effective change (Levasseuar 2001). This model has also been criticized for being too simple.

In regards with the change management, Apple also faced struggles. In the era of John Scully, their product Newton became the biggest failure in Apple’s history because he failed to accelerate change (Kaliannan 2014). John didn’t pay much attention to employee feedback when he should have. Employees who were accustomed to working in the open and creative environment set by Steve Jobs were forced to perform in a strict top down bureaucratic system (Kaliannan 2014). This affected company negatively. Later Steve Jobs introduced Think Different campaign to restore Apple’s damaged brand. Communication became horizontal with employees, he injected energy into his team, made employees part of decision making that could ultimately affect the company’s success.

Therefore, fundamental principle of effective change management is that people support what they help to create. Managers have to involve employees in decision making about changes so that resistance can be minimized.

As the Lewin’s model is criticized for being too simple many more change management theories evolved. Among them Kotter’s eight step model seems to work for present day’s organizations. It’s advisable for managers to follow these 8 steps to get better results. The 8 steps are:

 

• Creating a sense of urgency
• Building a credible team
• Create clear visions
• Effective Communication
• Empower action
• Produce short term wins
• Maintain momentum
• Nurture a new culture

 

In my chosen Finance Industry, Kotter’s change management theory seems to work better to minimize resistance. As Kotter’s model is a linear structured model, it is more effective. On a research done on company UGF which is part of Australian finance and insurance, it was concluded that Kotter’s model was found to be an effective way of managing the change, although some adaptation was required to suit the process to the needs of the organization (Pollack 2015).

 

REFERENCES:

 

• Pollack (2015), ‘Using Kotter’s eight stage process to manage an organizational change program: presentation and practice’ Systematic practice and Action Research [online] 28(1), 51-66. Available from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1650847035?accountid=10286 [05/08/2017]
• Alasadi (2014), ‘Employee Involvement and the barriers to organizational change’ International Journal of Information, Business and Management [online] 6(1), 29-51. Available from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1511381944?accountid=10286 [05/08/2017]
• Levasseur, Robert E (2001), ‘People skills: Change management tools – Lewin’s change model’ Interfaces [online], 31(4), 71-73. Available from https://search.proquest.com/accountid=10286 [05/08/2017]
• Kaliannan (2014), ‘Apple was sweeter when Steve Jobs held sway: Company illustrates contrasting attitudes to organizational change’ Human Resource Management International digest [online] 22(4), 25-28. Available from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1658761962?accountid=10286 [05/08/2017]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most effective Leadership & Management Styles & approaches

 

Are you one of those who thought management and leadership are same? Well, you are not alone. People often mistake that management and leadership are same when they are not. According to William Bennis, leadership and management are independent of each other but their combination of skills is useful for optimal performance (Koh 2008). He stated that, what makes up a leader is education and what makes up a manager is training (Koh 2008).

The manager maintains; the leader develops

The manager imitates; the leader originates

The manager counts the value, leader creates the value.

 

Management is controlling a group to accomplish a goal whereas Leadership is an individual’s ability to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward organizational success. There are few similarities between a leader and a manager. They both have supervising power over certain people. As manager has sub-ordinates, leaders have followers, but the difference is managers create circles of power while leaders create circles of influence (hbr 2013). Influence and inspiration make leaders different from managers, not power and control.

 

There are many approaches to manage sub-ordinates in an organization. One of them is McGregor theory.The McGregor argues that management behavior is a function of their attitude to people and assumptions about human nature (Mullins 2010).This theory X and Y are two extremes which was originated in 1960’s. This theory attempts to show how manager’s behavior towards the team is influenced by his perception of his team. If manager thinks his team is lazy and unmotivated, theory X is followed where manager’s behavior is commanding. If manager thinks his team is ambitious and self-motivated, theory Y is followed where managers try to provide right conditions for his team to perform well.

Nothing is perfect. This theory X and Y also has its limitations. In a commanding style of Theory X management, the employees might end up dissatisfied if they are continuously being controlled by the manager. Theory Y style is not practical in the current era of organizations as the teams are diverse in nature as mentioned in my previous blog. Because every individual is different in the team and has different requirements creating an environment which fits in all is impossible.

According to CMI, the best approach may vary according to circumstances and individual characteristics and there is no single ideal (CMI 2016). I completely agree with CMI because in practice, management style adapted is influenced by the demands of given situation and type of work. For instance, management style of leading a team of amatuers should be different from management style of leading a team of experts. In both cases, same management style cannot be implemented. Similar to management style, leadership style is the way in which functions of leadership are carried out. Leadership style is classified into:

• Authoritarian (Autocratic) style
• Democratic style
• Laissez-faire (genuine) style

SITUATIONAL LEADERSHIP:

In late 1980s, Hersey and Blanchard developed the idea that different situations require different types of leadership depending on the willingness and abilities of employees.

• Telling/directing style (unwilling and unable)
• Selling/coaching style (some competence but no commitment)
• Participating/supporting style (competent but unwilling)
• Delegating style (competence and commitment high)

As a member of a team, I would prefer to be led by democratic or laissez-faire style of leadership. The CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Warren Buffet is the best example of laissez-faire leader. More popular as an investor, he also leads 300,000 employees with a values-based, hands-off style that gives managers lot of freedom and incentives like owners (Fortune 2014). As a result, company became the fifth most-valuable company in America (Fortune 2014). His influence does not stop there. Warren Buffet moves the stock market. People buy what he buys, they sell what he sells. He created a ‘Buffet Effect’ in stock market (Adam 2017). The world looks to the ‘Oracle of Omaha’ for guidance on investing, management, philanthropy and more.

Another example of a great leader is Bezos, CEO of Amazon. He is a rare combination of visionary and master builder. Seeing something no one else could see 20 years ago and turning it into 2^nd most admired company (after Apple) in the world is very inspiring. Prospective employees are still drawn to his vision, though highly demanding, thousands aspire to work for him (Fortune 2014). That’s one way to know a great leader when you see one!

There are few things that managers can learn from these great leaders to produce better results. Managers should lead the change, create a friendly environment among teams. Feedback is crucial to achieve good results. Communication is a key component in any task.

REFERENCES:

• Koh, Shana E. (2008) ‘Leadership and management skills of preservice teachers’. Proquest Dissertations Publisher [online]. Available from https://search.proquest.com/docview/304672058?accountid=10286 [05/08/2017]
• CMI (2016) Understanding Management style Checklist 236 [online]. Available from https://www.managers.org.uk/~/media/files/campus%20CMI/checklists%20management%20styles.ashx [05/08/2017]
• Anon (2014), ‘World’s 50 greatest leaders’ Fortune [online]. Available from https://fortune.com/2014/03/20/worlds-50-greatest-leaders/ [05/08/2017]
• Adam (2017), ‘’Buffett Effect’ : Buy what he buys’ USA today [online]. available from https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2017/02/16/buffett-effect-buy-what-he-buys/97965132>/ [05/08/2017]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Challenges of managing a diverse team

Long gone are the days when we greet each other in our native language and celebrate same festivals at work place. Migrations for work are increasing rapidly due to which workplace is become more diverse. For instance, 303,000 people immigrated for work to UK in 2016 till March (Warrell 2016). Wow! Isn’t that number surprising? Yes, work place environment is changed and changing more. Digitalization and globalization are the main reasons for this scenario. This is why managing a diverse team has become an integral part of HR strategy.To demonstrate managing diverse teams meaning of diversity and development of teams should be illustrated.

Team development:  There are 5 stages of developing a team according to Tuckman.

-Forming

-Storming

-Norming

-Performing

-Adjourning

Among these five stages, the first two stages will be very difficult for managers to handle as there will be so much resistance from the team members.

Diversity: Diversity refers to any perceived difference among people: age, sexual orientation, functional specially, religion, geographic origin and lifestyle, culture (Sharma 2016). In this post cultural diversity is examined.

Cultural Diversity: Let’s look at Hofstede cultural dimensions which is one of the largest bodies of work done on understanding the cultural differences so far (Mullins 2014). Hofstede provided six cultural dimensions: Power Distance, Individualism, Masculinity and Uncertainty Avoidance, Long term orientation and indulgence vs. Restraint. The chart below shows the score of UK and India in all 6 dimensions of Hofstede model.

 

UK scored 35 in power distance where people believe inequalities shouldn’t exist, India scored 77 which indicates top-down structure in society and organization. In individualism UK scored 89 which indicates UK people are more independent than India which scored only 48. Although Hofstede theory is of great use to analyze and compare Country’s culture, there are few drawbacks to this. The analysis of Hofstede model is based on the data collected through questionnaires. Problem here is the accuracy of this data. And how updated is this data? There are no clear answers for these issues.Let’s now consider benefits and challenges of managing a diverse team.

Managing a team with lot of diversity could benefit an organization in lot of ways like more resources for problem solving, creative thinking, innovation etc. According to a CEO survey in 2015 conducted by PwC, 85% of corporate executives think that their company’s diversity strategies have improved the bottom line (Watts 2015). This is why these days it’s difficult to find companies that does not say it favors diversity. Many organizations have diversity policies, initiatives and champions (Morrissey 2016). For instance, consider the global management consulting company Accenture.

Accenture was ranked in top 15 for 4^th year consecutively in 2015 DiversityInc top 50 company for diversity (Anon 2015). Accenture was also ranked 2^nd for global diversity, 6^th for Mentoring, 8^th for LGBT employees (Anon 2015). Accenture does number of initiatives which reflect these rankings. Some of them are:

• Investing US$841M in employee learning and development in fiscal 2015- delivering 15 million hours of training, at an average of 45 hours per person (Anon 2016)
• Reporting, for the first time, demographics of its workforce in markets around the world (Anon 2016)

Putting all the advantages aside, managing a diverse team is not a cakewalk. It has its own challenges like resistance to diversity, poor communication, disorganization etc. According to a journal, when there is high diversity, due to different perceptions of the strategic environment, teams might enter into a debate (Agrawal 2012).

The personal experience of mine made me realize that sometimes managing a diverse team can be a hell of a task. My MBA class is highly diversified. As a part of class group activity, we were divided into group of 5 people. My team is diversified in terms of age, gender, culture, lifestyle, geographic origin. I still remember the initial five minutes of awkwardness among us. We were asked to build lego towers by giving instructions to one of our team member who is blinded. All of us had different perspectives and strategies on how to go with it. We spent five minutes on deciding the strategy when we were given only fifteen minutes to finish the task, as we all had different perspectives and ideologies. Finishing the task wasn’t easy, although we managed it, we didn’t win. Co-ordination and communication were the issues we were lacking on.

 

Hence to manage a diverse team it’s very important for managers to understand the differences of the individuals in the team. Managers should create a common workplace culture to achieve better results. Communication is the key for managers emphasizing on policies, objectives to achieve desired goals from a diverse team.

REFERENCES:

 

• Warrell, Helen (2016) ‘Net migration to the UK stays at near-record level’. The Financial Times limited [online]. Available from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1822728615?accountid=10286 [05/08/2017]
• Watts, David (2015) ‘the HR pro: Diverse reasons for building workplace diversity’. Valley news [online]. Available from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1692132034?accountid=10286 [05/08/2017]
• Morrisey (2016) ‘The next diversity frontier lies beyond board rooms’. The financial Times Limited [online]. Available from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1846164956?accountid=10286 [05/08/2017]
• Anon (2015), ‘Accenture ranks 15^th on DiversityInc top 50 companies for diversity; Also recognized among top 10 for global diversity, supplies diversity, mentoring and LGBT’. Normans Media Ltd [online]. Available from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1675839755?accountid=10286 [05/08/2017]
• Agrawal, Vidhi (2012) ‘Managing the diversified team: Challenges and strategies for improving performance’. Team Performing Management [online] 18 (7/8), 384-400. Available from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1112036399?accountid=10286 [05/08/2017]

 

 

 

Leadership and Ethics

Do you remember the investment bank Lehman brothers and its unethical practices due to which it became the largest bankruptcy of all time in the world?  (Duggan 2015).

 

This shows us how unethical leadership and practices could harm the business and also disrupt the global economy. Being an MBA Finance student, this scandal intrigued me about ethical and unethical leadership in business and its impact on society.

But what is ethical and unethical leadership anyway? Let’s break it down and see what an ethical behavior and leadership is.

Ethical behavior: The difference in the perception of ethics comes from a different level of idealism and relativism in every individual (Jha 2015). Idealists while taking decisions avoid harm to others, they believe in universal moral values in all situations (Jha 2015). Whereas relativists disagree to universal moral values if values are de-benefiting them (Jha 2015). These two concepts of idealism and relativism attribute to the two theories of ethics (Jha 2015). They are:

1. Deontological: These are based on one’s own stand on issues of untruthfulness, deceitfulness, uprightness and fairness irrespective of consequences (Jha 2015). Idealism is rooted in the deontological theory (Jha 2015).

2. Teleological: These emphasizes on benefits of the decision irrespective of universal moral values (Jha 2015). Relativism is rooted in the teleological theory (Jha 2015).

As an example of these theories, let’s look at how the beauty brands Body shop and NARS  come under deontological theory and teleological theory respectively.

For international companies to sell cosmetics in China, it is mandatory to test cosmetics on animals in government laboratories (Ungoed-Thomas 2017). As Body Shop is strongly against animal testing for ethical reasons, it refused to sell its products in China (Hall 2014). Here Body Shop believed in moral values irrespective of consequence of losing huge market  in China. From this we can say that, Body Shop comes under deontological theory of ethics. On the other side, NARS announced that it will sell its products in China which means they will test their products on animals (Telegraph 2017). Although they believe in non-animal testing methods, just to comply to the rules and to increase market size NARS agreed to test cosmetics on animals (Telegraph 2017). NARS comes under teleological theory.

Now talking about leadership, is it important for an organization? The answer is YES, there is a famous quote about importance of leadership which is “Without a leader the black ants are confused”. Therefore, to define Leadership, “It is the process of INTERACTIVE influence that occurs when, in a given context, some people accept someone as their leader to achieve common goals” (Silva 2016).

Putting it all together, ethical leadership is where leader demonstrates conduct for the common good that is acceptable and appropriate in every area of their life in all situations.

Now let’s see ethical and unethical leadership in the beauty brands Body Shop and Mario Badescu respectively

Ethical Leadership: The founder of Body Shop, Anita Dame Roddick is an ethical leader and under her leadership, the organization is helping a major population across the world.

Her vision was ‘Business can be a force for good’. Their mission is ‘To Enrich and not Exploit’ and it’s a 100% vegetarian brand. Today the aim of the organization is to become world’s most ethical and truly sustainable business. To achieve this, Body Shop set 14 targets to achieve by 2020 and to measure their progress and analyze, a commitment report is released along with management reports. They also conduct various campaigns to fight about social issues. They conduct community fair trade, they do not use ingredients which are derived from animal slaughter, they are against animal testing. This ethical leadership of Anita Roddick got good reputation to the organization all over the world and also helped many people.

Unethical Leadership: The beauty brand Mario Badescu has a different story from Body Shop. The founder of this brand, Badescu is an unethical leader because It’s customers of two face creams which were marketed as products containing only ‘BOTANICAL’ active ingredients filed a law suit against the company stating that they were injured by potent and undisclosed steroids (PR newswire 2014). In 2013, the brand settled this law suit for failing to disclose the inclusion of strong steroids in their products (Danicki 2017). This unethical leadership damaged the reputation of the brand majorly and also caused harm to its customers.

The examples given above of Lehman Brothers, Mario Badescu and Body Shop clearly states the importance of ethical leadership in business. It also proves how unethical leadership cause severe damage to organization as well as society.

 

Therefore, ethical leadership has to be practiced by today’s leaders to create positive impact on organization and society as well.

 

 

REFERENCES:

•  Duggan, Wayne (2015) ‘The 10 largest bankruptcies of all time’. Benzinga Newswires [online] Jan 26, 2015. Available from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1648132804?accountid=10286 [05/08/2017]
• Ungoed-Thomas (2015) “UK cosmetics linked to annual tests in China”. Sunday Times [online] Dec 27, 2015. Available from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1751761314?accountid-10286 [05/08/2017]
• Anon (2014) ‘Law suit filed against Mario Badescu for undisclosed steroids’. PR newswire [online] October 14, 2014. Available from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1611050397?accountid=10286 [05-08-2017]
•  Jha (2015) ‘Linking Ethical positions and organizational commitment. The mediating role of job satisfaction’. South Asian Journal of Management [online] 22(4), 63-84. Available from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1773047097?accountid=10286 [05/08/2017]
• Hall, Ashley (2014) ‘Body shop withdraws products from china over animal testing: The Body Shop says it will with draw its products from sale in airport duty-free shops after claims they could be subjects to animal testing. The consumer group choice says the retailer can’t continue to claim ‘Cruelty-free’ status if it sells in China, where local laws for taking products off the shelves for testing on animals’. PM-Australian Broadcasting Corporation [online] March 11, 2014. Available from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1505435286?accountid=10286 [05/08/2017]
• Anon (2017) ‘As another brand announces it’s going to start testing on animals, we explore the ones that don’t Telegraph Media Group Limited [online] July 3,2017 available from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1915430989?accountid=10286 [05/08/2017]