Company Expanding and Restructuring Many Organizations Nowadays

Company Expanding and Restructuring

Many organizations nowadays are undergoing revolutionary and unprecedented change (Robbins & Judge, 2007). With this in mind, it is always advisable for the leaders in the company to change their leadership style (Mintzberg, Lampel, Quinn, & Ghoshal, 2003). This is because the old style may not be flexible with the current form of the company.

According to Yuki (2006), leadership refers to the process of influencing other peoples in order to understand and agree about what the requirement to be done as well as how to do it. In addition, it involves the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts for the purpose of accomplishing shared objectives. Leadership as a process influences the followers either positively or negatively depending on the leader (Yuki, 2006). Leadership involves influencing others (Robbins & Judge, 2007). A leader must have the ability to influence his or her subordinates, peers or bosses in an organizational context.

Various types of leadership styles exist in different organizations (Mintzberg et al., 2003). These include Laissez-Faire, Autocratic, participative, transactional and transformational among other styles. There are advantages as well as disadvantages of each leadership style (Yuki, 2006). The goals and culture of an organization are ones that determine the leadership organization that best suits the organization. Some organizations offer several leadership styles depending on the departmental needs of the company.

My Leadership Style

As my company expands, the position that I am willing to take is the company manager. My leadership style is participative. A participative leader usually values the input of team members as well as peers (Yuki, 2006). However, the duties of making the final decisions lie with the leader himself. A participative leader always boosts the morale of the employees. This is because employees usually make a contribution in the process of decision making. When the organization wants to make changes, a participative leader helps the employees to adapt to changes as they play a fundamental role in the process.

There are several advantages of participative leadership styles. First, it helps the participative leader to identify potential future leader from his or her team (Yuki, 2006). Through allowing team members to take part in decision-making, the participative leader can check their capabilities hence able to determine future leaders. This helps in continuing the good chain of leadership. Secondly, participative leadership styles helps in expanding the spectrum of success in an organization. Since most of the employees take part in decision-making, their decisions as well as opinions are most likely to realize the objectives of the organization. Lastly, participative leadership styles helps in retaining employees in an organization. Through allowing employees to contribute in the issues of the organization, it encourages them to stay in the organization in order to see their plans materialize to success. This improves the retention rate of employees besides cutting down the turnover costs.

Despite the numerous advantages of participative leadership styles, there are several disadvantages. First, it is time intensive. In participative leadership style, it takes a lot of time to solve a problem (Yuki, 2006). This is because of the different opinions from the many people who take part in decision-making. Secondly, this style is not effective with unskilled workers. If the majority of workers in an organization are not skilled, they may hinder business decisions as it becomes difficult to arrive to a conclusion. Lastly, information sharing is also a disadvantage of this style. Confidential information may be shared irrespective of its sensitive nature. This can lead to conflict among workers. In addition, it can also lead to information leak to third parties.

Leadership Theories

Various are the theories that explain the practice and concept of leadership (Robbins & Judge, 2007). Among the main theories, we have the trait theory, situational theory, contingency theory, transformational theory, behavioral theory and participative theory (Yuki, 2006). For the purpose of my leadership style, we are going to compare and analyze trait theory, situation theory, participatory theory and contingency theory.

Under trait theory, there is an assumption that people usually inherits certain traits, which make them suitable to lead. This theory identifies particular behavioral characteristics and personalities with leaders. This theory argues that some people have inborn leadership qualities.

Situation theory explains that different situations call for different leadership style (Yuki, 2006). This implies that effective leadership requires one to have the ability to adjust or adapt to his or her style to the situation. Situation theory suggests that leaders always choose the best action based on situation variables.

Participative theory it is argues that the ideal style of leadership is the one that takes into consideration the input of others into proper consideration (Robbins & Judge, 2007). The theory continues to state that a participative leader encourages contributions and participation from team members. In addition, the leader helps team members to feel more committed and relevant to the process of decision-making. Nevertheless, the participative leader remains with the right to make the overall decisions including allowance of the input of others.

In contingency theory, there is the focus on certain variables associated to the environment, which determine the style of leadership that can best suite the situation. The contingency theory clearly states that there is no universal leadership style. The theory states that success of an organization is dependent on several factors such as leadership styles, aspects of the situation and qualities of the follower.