Contemporary Leadership Styles: How relevant are they in today’s changing world?

I believI believe that one of the most intricate and multifaceted phenomena is leadership. The most effective leadership style has become extensively researched in recent years, and it is now more vital than ever in today’s fast-paced and globalised culture.  Nevertheless, owing to the subject’s complexity and leadership continues to provoke enthralling and puzzling debate.

Firstly, leadership, and what it is?

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Leadership is the ability to motivate a group of people to work together toward a common objective. (Hughes, Ginnett and Curphy, 1996). In a corporate setting, this might entail leading employees and colleagues with a plan to meet the company’s needs.

Leadership captures the fundamentals of being competent and ready to inspire others. Gardner (1993) emphasizes that effective leadership is based on original and borrowed ideas that are successfully conveyed to others in such a way that individuals are enticed to behave in the manner that the leader intends.

A leader inspires others to act while simultaneously directing their activities. They must be liked enough for others to follow their instructions, and they must be able to think critically enough to know how to best use an organization’s resources. (Gardner, 1993).

Are Leaders Born or Made?

Western leadership philosophy is a dynamic, living entity that changes with time. As a consequence of extensive study throughout the years, many possibilities have emerged.

Table 1: the Developments of Historical Leadership and Contemporary Leadership Theories

Blunt and Jones (1997) emphasize examining the development of leadership concepts across time provides significant context and perspective for understanding the subject’s complexity. Each hypothesis has strength and weakness, and each seems to contribute to the leadership conundrum. In today’s complex, dynamic, and globalised world, organisations are always dealing with change and uncertainty, and no one leadership theory has been able to handle all of the issues. (Blunt and Jones, 1997). Many individuals feel that traditional hierarchical notions of leadership are becoming less and less relevant as our contemporary world becomes more complicated. As a consequence, the focus shifted away from leadership qualities and behaviours and toward a more systemic view of leadership as a collective social process arising from various elements interacting (Westen, 2019). In an effort to cope with the new leadership theories were established in response to changing organisational and corporate realities, resulting in new and more relevant definitions of leader, follower, and situation.

But, what’s the differences to management?

While the terms leadership and management are often used interchangeably, they are not interchangeable. Leadership skills go beyond those of a manager. Kest (2006) argues that leaders and managers must manage the resources they have, but exceptional leadership requires much more. Managers, for instance, may or may not be characterised as inspirational by their direct reports, but a leader must inspire those who report to them.

Leadership V.S. Management
Leadership	Management
Leaders act in the best interests of their followers.	Managers get things done correctly.
Leading is a connection of influence.	Managing entails a power dynamic.
Leading is a catalyst for change.	Stability is achieved by management.
Followers must be inspired.	Those beneath them may or may not be inspired.
It places a strong emphasis on innovation.	It places a strong emphasis on logic and control (Kest, 2006).
It’s possible that they’re careless with protecting old structures.	Attempts to operate within the confines of current corporate structures in order to maintain them.
Typically, it functions with a high level of autonomy (Sharma and Jain, 2013).	A link in the corporate chain of command, in most cases.
Interpersonal concerns may be less of a worry.	Interpersonal concerns may be more important to them.

Table 2: Leadership V.S. Management

The Adair’s Model

The efficacy of a leader is judged in three areas: satisfying the demands of a shared task, meeting the requires of a team, and meeting the requires of individual team members (Gardner, 1993). Adair’s approach argues a close relationships between management and leadership in the diagram below, the three requirements are shown as overlapping circles.

Figure 1: The Adair’s Model

Steve Jobs and His Apple

Source: https://www.cultofmac.com/125063/steve-jobs-finally-reveals-where-the-name-apple-came-from/

Apple’s enormous success is due in large part to the influence of its most renowned boss, Steve Jobs. The early years’ Jobs was regarded as one of the world’s most renowned situational leaders. While the majority of people connect Jobs with an authoritative telling style of leadership, his approach was really considerably more complex than many realise (Isaacson, 2012). Jobs’ infamous product releases had a purpose other than to pique customer interest in new products. Jobs also utilised the launches to persuade his employees to believe in his vision. Despite the ensuing enormous success, Jobs had an extraordinary capacity to push teams to pursue ideas that were controversial internally. He was also capable of leading via delegation. Jobs wanted to employ the top talent in fields in which he was unfamiliar.

The Situational Leadership

Situational leadership is predicated on the ‘readiness’ of the followers to be influenced (Hersey et al, 1979). This leadership style occurs only when leaders recognise environmental signs and modify their policies, attitudes, and actions appropriately. Hersey et al (1979) emphasize telling, selling, and participating are all leadership styles that must be changed and relegating to accommodate their followers’ various levels of religious, personal and psychological development. To influence events, leaders must first understand the environment and the demands of their workforce. This prompts study into the factors that determine a leader’s ability to influence the conduct of followers (Hersey et al, 1979).

Source: https://expertprogrammanagement.com/2018/11/situational-leadership-model/

Each Coins have Two Sides

Advantages	Challenges
Leaders are free to choose the leadership style that they feel is most appropriate in any particular scenario (Blanchard, Zigarmi and Nelson, 1993).	Situational leadership may create uncertainty inside an organisation, since a situational leader’s style may alter often to meet the demands of each team or person (Thompson and Vecchio, 2009).
For competent leaders who understand how to apply it, a situational leadership style may be more comfortable.	Situational leadership is prone to concentrate only on short-term objectives, oblivious to long-term objectives.
This form of leadership is quite straightforward, since all that is required is the capacity to analyse and respond to changing circumstances (Thompson and Vecchio, 2009).	Situational leadership is often ineffective when repeated tasks must be accomplished, since this kind of leadership is adaptable, but many task-driven situations are not.
Situational leadership may help create a more pleasant work environment for workers by matching the leadership style used to their requirements.	Situational leadership is contingent upon the leader’s capacity to assess the maturity level of an employee. Certain leaders are unable to accomplish this successfully and may therefore utilise a leadership style that is inappropriate for a specific individual or team.
This style of leadership takes into consideration workers’ varied stages of growth and assists in meeting each employee’s skill level and demands.

The Legend and Changes of His Style

The focus shifted away from leaders and their traits and onto the complex and continual interactions and interrelationships that exist between the leader, the followers, and the situation. Despite being forced out of office during his first term owing to authoritarian tendencies, Steve Jobs returned with a more transformative approach. (Deutschman, 2001). Jobs’ charismatic and imaginative leadership involved selecting key members of Apple’s marketing, design, and product teams, as well as bringing everyone together. He urged them to consider things that consumers didn’t even realize they needed and to pursue them aggressively. He utilized leadership to help reform his company’s structure, increase employee happiness, and use goods to make a difference in the world. Apple is famed for its innovation, which is primarily due to Jobs’ encouragement of employees and use of transformational leadership to empower everyone to express themselves creatively.

Source: https://www.helpscout.com/blog/why-steve-jobs-never-listened-to-his-customers/

Bass and Riggio (2006) point out that transformational theories look at how leaders inspire followers to seek objectives that are bigger than themselves. A transformational leader creates and communicates a vision that gives people direction, concentration, purpose and inspiration in their work.

Conclusions and the Enlightenments

Experience, competence and decision-making abilities are essential for accomplishing tasks, achieving objectives and ensuring self-interest. Values and ethics are not given enough weight in the shaping of a leader’s personality, which many believe is at the basis of the current leadership issue (Bass and Riggio, 2006). Constructed equivalency is a critical topic in modern cross-cultural study.

Leaders who are knowledgeable of a culture’s beliefs and practises may make informed judgments about their leadership styles and how they will affect day-to-day operations and crisis management in their organisations. A leader’s acknowledgement and explanation to his followers that a traditional cultural practise will be broken and why might assist prevent or reduce conflicts and complications.

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Reference

• Hughes, R., Ginnett, R. C., & Curphy, G. J. (1996). ‘Leadership’. Chicago, Irwin.

• Gardner, J. (1993). ‘On leadership’. Simon and Schuster.

• Blunt, P., & Jones, M. L. (1997). ‘Exploring the limits of Western leadership theory in East Asia and Africa’. Personnel Review.

• Western, S. (2019). ‘Leadership: A critical text’. Sage.

• Kest, R. T. (2006). ‘Principles of leadership: Leadership management’. Futurics, 30(1/2), 52.

• Sharma, M. K., & Jain, S. (2013). ‘Leadership management: Principles, models and theories’. Global Journal of Management and Business Studies, 3(3), 309-318.

• Koopman, P. L. (2000). ‘Feminine leadership: A review of gender differences in managerial behaviour and effectiveness’. Women in management: Current research issues, 2, 120.

• Isaacson, W. (2012). ‘The real leadership lessons of Steve Jobs’. Harvard business review, 90(4), 92-102.

• Deutschman, A. (2001). ‘The second coming of Steve Jobs’. Currency.

• Hersey, P., Blanchard, K. H., & Natemeyer, W. E. (1979). ‘Situational leadership, perception, and the impact of power’. Group & Organization Studies, 4(4), 418-428.

• Blanchard, K. H., Zigarmi, D., & Nelson, R. B. (1993). ‘Situational Leadership® after 25 years: A retrospective’. Journal of Leadership Studies, 1(1), 21-36.

• Thompson, G., & Vecchio, R. P. (2009). ‘Situational leadership theory: A test of three versions’. The leadership quarterly, 20(5), 837-848.

• Bass, B. M., & Riggio, R. E. (2006). ‘Transformational leadership’. Journal of European industrial training.

Can cultures be managed within organizations?

The term “organisational culture” refers to the set of beliefs, expectations, and practises that impact and shape all team members’ behaviour. (Mullins, 2007). Frost et al (1985) emphasize that a combination of thoughts, behaviours, processes, symbols and values that organizational culture is a term used to describe how an organization views itself.

A positive company culture generates attributes that may derail even the most successful businesses, whereas a poor corporate culture elicits qualities that can ruin even the most successful businesses. (Bratton, 2020). By establishing and executing processes and systems that allow employees to conform to the organization’s values, organizational leadership sets the tone for corporate culture.

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Handy’s Framework

In 1994, Jeff Bezos establish Amazon. Amazon is now one of the Big Five corporations in America, and Bezos has become the world’s richest man. By using the Handy’s Framework that a power culture company is intrinsically related to its founder or founders’ personality, background, ideas, as well as their vision for the organization’s future, especially during its early years (Patnaik, 2011). Furthermore, Bratton (2020) emphasizes that there may be moments in an organization’s lifecycle when an established culture has to shift in order for it to develop and sustain its business.

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One of the reasons why changing a company’s power culture is so difficult is because it is developed early on (Schneider, 2002). When entrepreneurs create their own businesses, the organization’s policies, the company’s structure, and the individuals they hire are all predicated on how they intend to do business.

Source: https://www.aboutamazon.eu/press-release/amazon-to-expand-amazon-nl-later-this-year

The Single Character ‘?’ Emails

Yukl and Mahsud (2010) emphasizes that leadership as the process of influencing others to comprehend and agree on what has to be achieved and how it should be done, including the process of supporting personal and team resources in pursuit of common objectives. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has an Amazon email address to field customer feedback and complaints. That is an email address well-known in the public, jeff@amazon.com, why bother with an account that must receive a mind-boggling quantity of emails as the world’s richest person and a CEO?

Because it impacts not only overt organisational behaviour but also shadow-side behaviour, it is the most controlling of the systems (Egan, 2016).

Bezos and Lsaacson (2020) explained that every issue that a consumer brings up is a chance for him to improve. Even though he can’t read all the emails he gets there himself, he points out that he still personally see a lot of them, and by using his curiosity to pick out certain emails. According to Bezos, the bulk of the emails he receives from consumers are complaints, with the majority of them claiming that Amazon messed up their purchase in some way.

And when Bezos takes those emails ‘seriously’, everybody must to.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/jeff-bezos-steps-down-amazon-ceo-n1256540

The ‘Organizational Iceberg’ model

There are some elements that firms could be able to observe and control, which are the formal There are some elements that firms could be able to observe and control, which are the formal aspects. Behavioural aspects such as attitudes, communication patterns, informal team processes and personality, are more complicated (Mullins, 2008). The New York Times described Amazon as a place “where overachievers go to feel bad about themselves,” where employees are encouraged to tear each other’s ideas apart in brutal meetings or stab colleagues in the back with anonymous reviews, and where the lowest-ranking employees are sacked in a kind of ritual, annual cull.

Source: Hellriegel, D., Jackson, S.E. and Slocum, J. W., Jr., Management, Eighth Edition, South-Western Publishing (1998), p. 6. Reprinted with the permission of South-Western, a division of Thomson Learning (www.thomsonrights.com)

Back to the Amazon example, if Benzos receives a defect report, he will have his staff do a case study to determine the core cause or reasons. He frequently sends those emails to the top executives with a single character: a question mark.

Source: https://slab.com/blog/how-ceos-email/

And then, the manager or any members in the firm gets the email, who is then responsible for dropping everything, doesn’t matter what you are doing and how important, the person have to research the matter and craft a thoughtful answer ASAP.

“I see them and forward them to the executives in charge of the area with a question mark. It’s shorthand for, ‘Can you look into this?’ ‘Why is this happening?'” Bezos said.

The good side is: Amazon will and can do the real root fixes.

Bezos believes that when they fix a problem, they’re not just repairing it for that one client; they’re repairing it for all customers, and that process is a huge part of what Amazon does. So if a consumer has a terrible experience or a botched order, Bezos addresses it as such.

The Challenges:

Receiving such an email is a typical occurrence at Amazon, and it’s something more than significant. One of them recently informed that the executive will frequently forward it to the local manager, who will look at the email with a sinking heart. That’s because the manager is then responsible for putting everything on hold, conducting an investigation and providing a response. According to one Amazon manager, this might sometimes include a lot of research on evenings and weekends.

Some say that is because Amazon believes ‘The customer is always right’, nothing is more important that the customers. But some argue, in fact, Amazon is fulfilling to the world that ‘The boss is always right’, which is lacking of effective communication.

Could Amazon’s culture be better?

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‘Knock, Knock’ – The Open Door Policy

Shenhar (1993) emphasizes an open door policy means that every manager’s door is open to every employee. The purpose is to encourage open dialogue, feedback, and discussion on any issue that employees care about (Shenhar, 1993). Employees don’t have to fear about addressing their working problems, questions or suggestions to someone beyond their immediate management. Companies use an open door policy to develop employee trust and guarantee that vital information and criticism reaches management, which may make necessary changes.

To enhance constructive contact with workers, forward-thinking organizations should implement an open door policy. Companies have an open door atmosphere when every employee realizes that he or she may go to any manager or senior-level employee and communicate with them about any problem.

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Internally, Amazon should be dedicated to establishing the finest work environment possible, one in which everyone’s voice is heard, concerns are addressed and resolved quickly, and communication flows freely across all levels of the organization. Openness is important to promptly handle consumer problems, detect business challenges as they develop and accommodate the changing demands of varied and global workforce.

The essence of Amazon’s Open Door Policy could be open communication in a culture of trust and mutual respect, which lays the groundwork for cooperation, development, high performance, and success across the company.

• Managers and staff should communicate openly and honestly on a daily basis.
• Employees may seek advice, provide or receive criticism, or express issues inside the firm.
• Managers are responsible for fostering a work atmosphere where workers’ participation is valued, advice is freely offered, and difficulties are brought to light early and expressed frankly without fear of reprisal when done in good faith.

An Enlightenment

The majority of difficulties may and should be resolved by conversation with employees’ immediate supervisor. This is recommended as their initial step in resolving a problem. An open door policy, on the other hand, indicates that anyone may share their difficulties and concerns with higher-level management and/or Human Resources personnel (Shenhar, 1993). Managers at all levels of the business will listen and assist them discover a solution or clarification, no matter how they approach their problem, complaint or suggestion.

Employees can meet with managers to:

• Inquire about comments.
• Pose a question on a topic.
• Make a complaint or express a concern.
• Inquire about resolving a conflict with another co-worker.
• Make recommendations for improvement.

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Conclusion

Cameron and Quinn (2011) emphasize that the early values of a company’s culture have an influence on its future values. Organizational culture may be thought of as a product that fights itself against outside influences.

‘Can cultures be managed within organizations?’ The answer is simply a YES.

But the fact is – does the firm want to?

The culture of a company influences which kinds of people are hired and which are not. As shown by Amazon, once new workers are hired, the organization assimilates them and trains them on how to function inside the company, which makes the organizational culture even harder to be changed. Companies utilize phrases like attraction-selection-attrition and onboarding procedures to characterize these processes. (Cameron and Quinn, 2011). It’s also crucial to recognize that executives and compensation systems have a role in shaping and maintaining a company’s culture. A new culture creation is more difficult and disorderly than the term implies. Furthermore, each component influences culture creation in a reciprocal manner. Just as leaders may have an effect on the company’s values, the culture can have an impact on the kind of behaviors that leaders display.

Reference

• Mullins, L. J. (2007). ‘Management and Organisational Behaviour’. Pearson Education.
• Frost, P. J., Moore, L. F., Louis, M. R. E., Lundberg, C. C., & Martin, J. E. (1985). ‘Organizational culture’. Sage Publications, Inc.
• Bratton, J. (Ed.). (2020). ‘Organizational leadership’. Sage Publications, Inc.
• Schneider, M. (2002). ‘A stakeholder model of organizational leadership’. Organization Science, 13(2), 209-220.
• Shenhar, A. (1993). ‘Keeping Management′ s Door Open: How to Establish an Open‐door Policy that Works’. Leadership & Organization Development Journal.
• Amazon (2020). ‘Amazon Annual Report’, Available at: https://ir.aboutamazon.com/annual-reports-proxies-and-shareholder-letters/default.aspx
• Bezos, J., & Isaacson, W. (2020). ‘Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson’. Harvard Business Press.
• Cameron, K. S., & Quinn, R. E. (2011). ‘Diagnosing and changing organizational culture: Based on the competing values framework’. John Wiley & Sons.
• Yukl, G., & Mahsud, R. (2010). ‘Why flexible and adaptive leadership is essential’. Consulting Psychology Journal: practice and research, 62(2), 81.
• Patnaik, J. B. (2011). ‘Organizational culture: The key to effective leadership and work motivation’. Social Science International, 27(1), 79.