Best Practices Introduction and Philosophy of Leadership

Leadership study is an evolving field, which attempts to understand the role that leaders play within organizations, and how the best leaders accomplish their tasks. One branch of leadership philosophy specifically examines the leadership-member exchange, which highlights the different ways that leaders communicate their visions as a means of understanding effective leadership. Drinon (no date) argues that because there is no one set perfect leadership style, leaders are free to interpret the different elements of leadership to suit themselves, and to suit the organizations in which they work.

My own leadership philosophy draws on two main traditions. The first is a participative style, which allows the group to have input into the different decisions that they make. This is something that Kurt Lewin identified as one of the most effective leadership styles, because the different people within the organization have already bought into the idea. Either they contributed to its conception, or they were at least aware of the process by which the idea was developed. So any strategy or tactic that comes out of this style should already have strong support among the team members, even if the leader is ultimately the person with the final decision (Drinon, n.d.).

The other element of my leadership style is the transactional style. It strikes me that many people get caught up in the sexiness of transformational leadership, but that there are many instances where organizations thrive not because they are constantly being transformed, but because there is something that they do better than anybody else. An organization that can do something exceptionally well, and repeat that over a long period of time, is an organization built for success. I reject the idea that transactional excellence means standing still, or not being creative. In fact, a high level of creativity often goes into maintaining operational excellence -- entire programs like Six Sigma are built around the application of creativity and innovation to transactional excellence. I also reject the idea that transactional leadership is necessarily autocratic (ChangingMinds, 2016). The idea that operational excellence must inherently come from autocracy is completely false -- again, pointing to something like Six Sigma where a company's workers are highly engaged in the processes because they have made their own contributions and innovations to those processes.

Transactions are much more complex than the simplistic carrot-and-stick version of the transactional model; and the modern leader clearly understands that transactional dynamics can work quite well with higher forms of motivation. In fact, it is this higher forms of motivation at work -- working with teams of talented people the lower rungs of Maslow's hierarchy are a given, and your transactions are only related to higher order needs.

II. Core Leadership Skills

The most important leadership skill is communication. My personal opinion is that listening is the most important of communication skills. The best practice for any company is to have a team that is a well-oiled machine. When there are problems, or even just when there are opportunities to do better, it is important that the team communicates about these, both among each other and to the leader. A leader that knows how and when to listen is one who can work to solve problems more quickly, before they start to cascade. Listening is also a skill that can differentiate a good leader, because so many leaders seem to lack listening. They have bought into their own hype -- they know they have talent because they have been promoted, but ultimately that can create hubris. Listening is a good way to check one's hubris. Study after study has shown the importance of listening in leadership, but has also shown that many leaders are weaker at listening than other communication skills (Riordan, 2014).

Being able to formulate and communicate a vision is also essential, though. The leader needs to understand vision. This means being able to create a vision for the organization, or if there are other leadership higher up to translate their vision to the particular department of which the person is the leader. In either case, the ability to communicate the vision is essential, and this does not just mean telling people what the vision is. It means being able to communicate the vision effectively in terms of getting people to buy into the vision, knowing what role they play in executing the vision and ensuring that the interpretation...

The leader has to know what resources are needed to execute the vision and mission, and then take the steps needed to deploy those resources in the right way to deliver the desired results. So management is another component of leadership, one that often gets set aside as something different. It is different, but leaders are also managers -- few people are in leadership positions without having actual tasks to accomplish.
A great leader is also somebody who can be adaptive. Flexibility is not always easy -- change and transitions can be quite challenging at times. But a high degree of flexibility will allow the leader to not be rigid in thinking, and to adapt to an external environment that is constantly changing. Being good at something does not mean standing still until the organization is surpassed, it is having a high commitment and openness that will allow the organization to continue to excel over a long time period (Rule, 2015).

The Value of Vision

Vision, of course, is an essential element of leadership. What vision does for the organization is that it helps to align the organization around a common set of goals, and it also helps to create motivation. Vision guides people, so the clearer the vision, the more people will understand what their role in executing on that vision is. Further, vision is an important element of motivation. When people know what they are working towards, and they have a desire to get there, this appeals to the higher order needs on the Maslow hierarchy. Working for a common task is something with which people identify socially, and they also gain personal fulfillment from playing their role in bringing the vision to realization.

The vision is something that it broader and bigger than the mission. The vision is an aspirational statement, which is one of the reasons why it has so much power in terms of motivation. Vision is also something that is common to all types of leadership. No matter what leadership style a person prefers, it still relies on vision. In an organization where people can play vastly different roles, vision is something that can bind all people within the organization. Different departments might have different, related, missions but they will all have the same vision of the future (Kokemuller, 2016).

IV Setting the Tone

The tone for a leader is something that starts with the vision. The aspirational nature of the vision and the fact that the entire organization has to buy into it makes it the foundation for the tone. The organizational culture will also play a role in the tone, but after these macro level elements of tone, the leader has to set a tone for his/her leadership. This should be consistent -- a leader is most effective when everybody understands the ground rules. So the tone is something that comes every day. A new leader should ensure, however, to meet with the key people in their organization in order that they establish what their leadership style is up front. It is important for a new leader to set expectations for what the followers can expect, but then to also live up to those expectations.

Challenges

There are a number of challenges that leaders face -- even the best leaders will have issues. The key is how to overcome those issues. One challenge is that there might not be group cohesion. In fact, this is common in organizations where there are out-groups, but the leader has to have those groups function cohesively within the context of their roles and their mission. The out-groups may not be brought in -- it could be problematic to try -- but the work has to flow harmoniously regardless of whatever social order exists within the company. The leader's skills as a one-on-one communicator will be tested, because they will be called upon to resolve issues within the group dynamic that might have existed for a long time.

Conflict of more of a short-term nature is also something a leader must deal with. There are two main approaches for dealing with conflict. The first is that the culture of the organization should ideally be oriented towards one where conflict is handled in a healthy way. This means emphasizing issues-based conflict and open communication. In many organizations this might be far from the norm, but the leader has to build this type of value, so that the inevitable situations where there is disagreement do not result in damaging conflict. In…