Leadership Styles in Different Settings

Organizational Behavior
Case Incident 1: Sharing Is Performing
12-13. Shared leadership obstacles occur when there is no consensus or alignment in terms of vision. The leaders butt heads and block one another. They cannot agree or, worse, no one in the group wants to make the go-ahead decision. Leadership is about deferring and making decisions, so to solve these problems, the people need to be aware of the reality of their role and position.
12-14. I would implement a shared leadership initiative in a limited way because I would not want a committee mentality. I would want leaders to communicate and foster ideas but at the end of the day I want decision makers who make informed decisions calling the shots.
12-15. I think that traditional approaches to leadership are always to be preferred because not everyone wants to be a leader. Leaders have duties and responsibilities and they get paid more to shoulder those. People lower down the chain of command should not have the same sway as their leaders; their voices might be important but they are not the ones making the decisions and their job is not to question their leaders but to respect their decisions and execute.
Ch. 15
15-13. United handled the incidents very poorly. United should not be removing customers from flights without their permission and never by force. If employees need to get back to a certain city by a certain time, that is on them to make that happen—but it is bad form to bump paying customers so that employees can catch a flight. That is not putting the customer first.
15-14. The pros of bureaucratic organizational structure for an airline are that it produces standards, enables monitoring, and creates equitability. The cons are that it prevents good decision makers from learning how to lead at lower levels. They do not know how to act unless they are told exactly what to do from on high. United should not keep this structure but should put out guidance related to ethical standards for all its hubs.
15-15. Restructuring could help but only if the company promotes good leaders in a decentralized environment. Leadership is essential, and structure is only part of the problem. Leadership is really the essence of the issue and the company needs to focus as much on building great leaders as it does on restructuring.
Ch. 16: Case Incident 2: Active Cultures
16-16. Patagonia is successful because it puts people before profit. It does not downplay profit, it just knows that the way to make a profit is to make people happy. The organization accomplishes this by making sure people are taking time to rest, recharge, get to know the products in the real world and have a good time with their work. They create a culture of care.
16-17. Other companies could easily follow in Patagonia’s footsteps. It is not a complex strategy. It is a strategy merely that allows the firm to recognize the needs of its workers and take steps to satisfy them. It is the basic application of Maslow’s (1943) hierarchy of needs and human motivation theory.
16-18. There are no drawbacks to Patagonia’s culture. It is a humane culture that helps to create a positive environment for everyone who is part of it. It would only create instances of liabilities if the people being hired are immature and do not know how to be responsible when being treated fairly.
Final Part
In the first case, the leader sought the opinions of others and shared leadership responsibilities and duties with his team. He fostered a spirit of community by using communication effectively to generate ideas and get people involved in the decision-making process. This gave everyone a feeling of belonging and a sense that they were genuine stakeholders in the organization. This style of leadership was effective at the college because there is already a culture of community and shared responsibility in that environment and it is what is expected there.
At United, there is no sense of sharing responsibility. The leaders panicked not knowing how to respond to situations in which conflict arose. Instead of acting sensibly and recognizing the rights of their customers, they reacted like authoritarians because that is what they see from their own leaders in their own bureaucratic organizations. To get the kind of leadership at lower levels the company wants to see, it has to have those same kind of leaders demonstrating that leadership at the top (De Vries, 1998).
At Patagonia, the culture of the company is aligned with the mission and vision of the company, which is to be innovative and caring about the environment and the products. The people place an emphasis on quality and care and that translates into how workers are viewed and cared for. Everyone is on the same page because the culture is positive and deep and the values are reflected at the top and down to the bottom. It is not just lip service but authentic leadership.
Leadership styles differ from place to place because the environments have their own challenges and qualities that required unique approaches. Leadership is not a one size fits all glove that everyone can wear in all instances. Some gloves are good for driving, others for gripping a baseball bat, others for keeping fingers warm, and so on. Leadership is the same way. There are different styles because there are different needs in organizations.
References
De Vries, M.F.K. (1998). Charisma in action: The transformational abilities of Virgin's Richard Branson and ABB's Percy Barnevik. Organizational Dynamics, 26(3), 7-21.
Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370.