Leadership in Organizations Assignment Answer

Leadership in Organizations: Theories, Concepts, and Case Study on Jeff Bezos

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INTRODUCTION

Leadership play a crucial role in every organisation so that it will assist in accomplishing desired goals and objectives in proper manner. Leaders are those person who provide correct guidance to their team members and give advice regarding job and help in reaching targets in less time period. The major motive of leader is to encourage and motivate their employees so that they do not aware about stressed and execute their all task or work in smooth manner (Yukl, 2012). The report is totally based on the leadership in enterprise where different concepts and theories are majorly discussed and analysis of Jeff Bezos' (CEO of Amazon) behaviour of leadership is done. Apart from this, self reflection will leading experience is also described in this project.

TASK 1

1. Reflection on own experience of leadership and recommend areas required development

Leader is a person who is responsible to lead a team or group of members in order to attain certain objectives or goals. In fact an individual who is leading a unit or specific department is responsible for directing their subordinates, implementing plans, encouraging people, as well as tries to enhance the overall personality of entire team. Being a leader of a large company named as a amazon I am responsible to manage all the business activities which is assigned on me in an efficient manner by satisfying needs of customers as well as employees. In an organization major role which is played by me is that I have to handle or manage all the inventory stock of an association and need to ensure that whole products are properly placed in a warehouse. Thus by accomplishing these activities I have learned number of things which is mentioned as follows:-

• Risk handling:- As a inventory head of selected firm it is my obligation to make sure that uncertainty or risk must be reduced and members of my team know how to face various kinds of business challenges. According to my experience I can say that management of stock is a very tough job which requires attentive nature, sense of humour, sharp memory and so on.
• Team management:- I can also learn how to manage or direct a large team which requires leadership quality by effective interaction with subordinates. Along with this able to encourage them towards their personal or professional goals.
• Communication:- One of the major strength of mine which is gained by me during leading a inventory management team is that I have learned how to interact with juniors while working in a group. As a result healthy environment will be maintained at workplace as well as friendly relations between me and my team members.

Hence, according to above information it has been analysed that I am fully active while managing inventory team because I have gained number of things which is very much indispensable as a leader.

According to me leadership process is not an easy task because it needs to change according to situation in order to acquire high performance at workplace. Basically this process includes five major steps that is discussed as follows:-

Thus, above process shows that if any person is becoming a leader of specific team then they have to follow necessary steps so that they can able to accomplished it assigned task in an appropriate manner.

Coming on my leadership style I am using participative leadership style which is also known as a democratic because in this every person are getting chance to express their opinions without any stress and taking equal part in decision making process (Bryman, 2013). As my experience number of companies are following this strategy at workplace due to its effectiveness and supports in creating friendly relations with employees. Mainly number of reason are available due to which I am choosing this leadership styles that are explained as further:-

• Helps in creating healthy environment of an organization.
• Effective interaction between employees and employers which aids in creating a friendly connection between them.
• Meet the needs or demands of customers as well as employees.
• Subordinates can also express their opinion.

Hence it has been analysed that with the use of democratic style of leadership my subordinates become so lenient towards their goals due to which it may disturb the working environment of overall company. Thus, I have to develop number of things in my leading style or behaviour which is highlighted as follows:-

• I have to strict while dealing with juniors so that they can respect me as a leader.
• Required to remove confusion due to involvement of number of people.
• I need to enhance my assisting skills so that I can easily guide my team members.

Thus, it has been understood that these above quality needs to be enhanced with the help of impressive action plan which shows an appropriate path of improving my skills (Fahed-Sreih and Morin-Delerm, 2012). Along with this as a leader I need to improve my hidden weakness so that I can manage all the business activities in an efficient manner by thorough various theories proposed by different scientist.  

TASK 2

2. Leadership theories and Concepts for evaluating leadership of Jeff Bezos

There are different leadership philosophies, concepts and theories of leadership which is developed by different successful leaders and scholars. Jeff Bezos is known as the founder and CEO of Amazon is also famous for his good leadership. He has acquired the idea of doing best leadership from various theories. Some of the important theories of leadership are discussed below :

• Trait theory : This conceptualisation basically represents that leaders are born. This shows that some person has special qualities or attributes from their birth or this can be said that they consist of charter traits (Leadership Styles. 2017).
• Behavioural theory : This act as contradict for the trait theory as it is totally opposite in nature and are rejecting all discussion regarding inborn potential approaches to leadership. As per this concept, this is not possible that people have inborn characteristics of a good leader. On the contrary, an individual become leader by getting training and experiences. Any of the person can be a better leader but only when they should receive appropriate teaching and provided health environment.
• Contingency theory : This idea was coined by Austrian psychologist Fred Edward Fielder. This theory emphasis on the importance of personality of team heads and circumstances in which they operate. He and his subordinates provided two important style of leadership which are stated below :
• Relationship motivated : This simply refers to the improvement of interpersonal relations. Such type of leaders generally focus on developing good relationships from their fellows so that they help one another in attaining aims and objectives of venture very easily and smoothly without generating any kind of conflicts. Such type of people used to maintain positive relations with their team members in order to build a healthy surrounding at the working location (Werhane and Painter-Morland, 2011). As a result, employees facing any type of problems come to share it with their heads without being hesitated. Jeff Bezoz comes under this category of task motivated leaders because they encourage their work forces to perform duty by maintaining good relationship with each other so that disputes gets minimises and productivity of Amazon increases a lot.
• Task motivated : These type of supervisors are believes in achieving the goals by doing hard work or labour. They think that employees should motivated towards their performance as it is only their work which can uplift the company and supports it in maintaining good position in market place (Wang and et. al., 2011). For doing this, leaders normally set out some objectives and targets for their fellows so that they get a path which they have to travel by facing several hindrances and at last achieve all the objectives.

Fielder has measured leadership style by taking help of LPC scale that is Least Preferred Co- worker Scale. Individual who scores more in this scaling are thought as relationship motivated. While those workers who receives low scores are considered as Task motivated. The core ideas or concepts to contingency theory are determined by three main factors which are described below :

• Position power : This represents tradition of power which tells which people are at which position and as per that their capabilities are recognised. Employers who are present at higher posts are able to give rewards as well as punishment on the basis of performance of their personnels (Groves and LaRocca, 2011).
• Relationship with leader – members : This highlights environment or atmosphere of work place where members feels trust, reliance, confidence and faithfulness from their leaders. These all factors helps in developing a healthy bonding between group members and heads.
• Task Culture : This is linked with the clarity of task and designation so that job roles can be accomplished effectively.

Situational leadership theory : This concept is referring to those leaders who used to follow different life style according to the development and situational level of their workers (Van Wart, 2017). This says that no particular leadership style is best. On the contrary, it depends on the situation and which types of strategies and planning is best suited to a specific task. Goleman theory of situational leadership are stated below :

• Pacesetting leaders : This type of style is suited to self starters who are highly inspired. They expects more from their associates.
• Coaching leaders : Such group heads concentrate on development of personal as well as job associated skills of their followers. This is adopted by those people who know the weaknesses of their subordinates and can easily eliminate it.
• Democratic leaders : This type of supervisors support the decision taken by the members of But it so time consuming and are not appropriate when there is a deadline of the project submission (Van Wart, 2014).
• Affiliative leaders : These types of leaders give priority to their associates. In some condition where morale of their members is low then they use to praise and assist their team so that they can develop self confidence.
• Authoritative leaders :Such team heads are good at analysing problems and identifying challenges. So, they help their subordinates and partners in developing solutions for such issues which they recognise while working.
• Coercive leaders : Individuals have clear vision and they are familiar with the ways of achieving those missions (Helms, 2012). This style is used at the time of any disasters or in such as a situation when an organisation needs an entire inspection and repairing.
• Ethical leadership- It is the form of leadership where an individual show and demonstrate different activities and functions for the mutual good which is accepted and it is best suitable for the each and every area of the person surviving. There are three main composed factors that are discussed as follows:
  • Be an example- An amazing dimension of a leader is lead by specific example. Leaders follower are judge their team heads on the basis of their work, actions and behaviour (Spisak, Nicholson and van Vugt, 2011). They also begin to earn with their respect from their followers. Most of the people might be more movable to follow those kind leader who respect other individual and correspond with their honesty.
  • Champion the importance of ethics- The major role of leader is to main focus on entire essential part of ethics which includes standard of ethics and also other related problems and issues with this. Mainly champions are give importance to moral duties and responsibilities which improving followers skills and knowledge.
  • Communicate- The best ethical manager and supervisor are good in communication which help in attracting large number of followers towards them. They have such soft and impressive voice which motivate team members for doing best work as to attain targets and goals in proper manner (Shahhosseini, Silong and Ismaill, 2013).

Jeff Bezos will included all necessary factors in their leadership as well as they can create and develop positive environment in whole organisation. Along with this, this will help in becoming good leader and increasing honour of them in front-most of followers.

• Critical leadership perspectives- It is states that critical position of leader in an organisation. This will find out for difficulty the mutual assumption which emotionally coherent in each manner. It will describe the emotion of a leadership and uncover or disclose that how dysfunctionality and toxicity are not simple, confining phenomena, negatively coercive, but it can also impact on production.
• Style of leadership- There are different leadership styles which should be followed by Jeff Bezos. Some of these are explained as under:
• Laissez Faire leadership style- They are those leader which have lack of direct supervising power among workers and after this they fail in providing correct feedback to followers for reaching potential targets and objectives. They mainly experienced person needs so that they fail in this style of leadership.
• Autocratic leadership style- Such type of leadership allow the managers for taking individual decisions without taking any permission with top management. In this style, supervisor use their power and enforce control on their followers (Hoch and Kozlowski, 2014).
• Participative leadership style- These type of leadership style provide importance to the input of their team members and colleagues and participative leaders are responsible for developing accurate final decision in appropriate manner (Schneider and George, 2011). This leadership style give encouragement to the personnel by providing them power to take part in decision making process.
• Transformational and transactional leadership- This is that leadership style which motivate and encourage different type of team members for achieving required goals and objectives in effective manner. This style will encourage compliance the existing and present goals of an organisation and also analyse performance of their team members by doing monitoring and supervising. They also give them rewards for good work and punishment for bad performance within an enterprise. Mainly leaders are task and result oriented in each manner. In this style, leaders are provide major focus on that how employees are done their jobs and give warning to them for completion of required work at given time period. Jeff Bezos follow transformational leadership (Owens, Johnson and Mitchell, 2013). On this context, transformational leadership focus on increasing the motivation level of workers and participation and try to related employees sense of self with corporation-al value. Leadership style, leaders concern regarding building strength and reducing weakness of their followers by enhancing their abilities and capabilities and they also do commitment to achieve desired goals of entity. They use this style for analysing transferring ability and share their views with their team members and colleagues.
• Distributed leadership- It is that style of leadership which mainly concerned with different activities of leader instead of specific roles and responsibilities of leadership in proper manner. This will help in distributing various types of views and reviews among each member and focus on the end point of major goals and objectives. It also considered with shared, collective and extended leadership practices which generate capabilities and capacities for alteration in development and growth of the company (Northouse, 2015). This mainly includes mobilize skilfulness of various leadership at different levels by which more opportunities will be formed for making accurate changes and build strong capacity for improvement.

By going through all the above based theories of leadership, it can concluded that Jeff Bezoz is a best leader as well as chief executive officer who fall under Behaviour theory as they learns the qualities and attributes of a good team heads by doing hard work and from their working experiences. In addition to this , they also receives training and teaching for becoming a good leader. Thus, this violates the trait theory of leadership as this stated that leaders are inborn.

CONCLUSION

As per the above mentioned report it can be concluded that leadership play an essential role in functioning of each entity so that leader should be exist to provide correct direction to their employees by show them their fault issues. They also motivate and encourage the employees so that they reach with the target goals and objectives of the organisation. There are various leadership theories and concepts which are given by different authors and successful leaders for make their business better. Jeff Bezos is considered as a leader and he required to follow different types of style of leadership in Amazon that has been discussed in this project report.

References

Books & journal

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Fahed-Sreih, J. and Morin-Delerm, S., 2012. A Perspective on Leadership in Small Businesses: Is the Need for Achievement a Motive in Predicting Success?. International Journal of Entrepreneurship.16. p.1.

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Northouse, P.G., 2015. Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.

Owens, B. P., Johnson, M. D. and Mitchell, T. R., 2013. Expressed humility in organizations: Implications for performance, teams, and leadership. Organization Science.24(5). pp.1517-1538.

Schneider, S. K. and George, W. M., 2011. Servant leadership versus transformational leadership in voluntary service organizations. Leadership & Organization Development Journal.32(1). pp.60-77.

Shahhosseini, M., Silong, A. D. and Ismaill, I. A., 2013. Relationship between transactional, transformational leadership styles, emotional intelligence and job performance. Researchers World.4(1). p.15.

Spisak, B. R., Nicholson, N. and van Vugt, M., 2011. Leadership in organizations: An evolutionary perspective. In Evolutionary psychology in the business sciences (pp. 165-190). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Van Wart, M., 2014. Contemporary varieties of ethical leadership in organizations. International Journal of Business Administration.5(5). p.27.

Van Wart, M., 2017. Leadership in public organizations: An introduction. Taylor & Francis.

Wang, G and et.al., 2011. Transformational leadership and performance across criteria and levels: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of research. Group & Organization Management.36(2). pp.223-270.

Werhane, P. H. and Painter-Morland, M., 2011. Leadership, gender, and organization. In Leadership, gender, and organization (pp. 1-8). Springer Netherlands.

Yukl, G., 2012. Effective leadership behavior: What we know and what questions need more attention. The Academy of Management Perspectives.26(4). pp.66-85.

Online

Leadership Styles. 2017. [Online]. Available through: <http://www.leadership-central.com/leadership-styles.html>.