My vision of leadership

This blog covers a reflective analysis of my vision of leadership. During the process of learning the Leadership in the CULC, I have gain many meaningful theories and distinct leadership styles, which guides me to think about which one is appropriate for me and what is my vision of leadership. This module really gives me a opportunity to work in teams and play a role of leader. It has a positive effect on my ways thinking of the future career. I will offer some points and examples to reinforce my view.

From my experiences about leadership, it is the activity of leading a group of people to have a high performance and achieve the goals. Generally, it include: sharing vision with your followers; providing the information, methods, and knowledge that relation to the vision; (Martin. 2014). Balancing and coordinating the conflicting interests of all members and stakeholders. (Hand. 2012). During this process, the leader should have the ability to deal with the different issues in any situations. I found that it is difficult to manage and engage different individuals with different background and attitudes. (Wursten. 2013). So I do believe the leadership not just means managing, directing, inspiring and motivation, but it reflect the overall quality of the leader, like attract force, good communicate skills, and sense of humor. Therefore, in addition to learn the basic requirement and skills of the leader, I will develop and improve the personal overall quality to appeals to a group of vision, mission-driven people.

One of the popular public personality I have always appreciate is Mark Zuckerberg who is the chairman and chief executive of Facebook. He said ‘good boss follows his instincts but great boss listens to their employees’. (Samson. 2011) When Mark Zuckerberg disappeared and was busy meeting with venture capitalists, a senior executive told him about his lack of CEO behavior and give him advice. He listened and improved his communication skills. In the company, all the employees love and admire his engaging, enthusiastic gesticulation and informal communication style. (Davies. 2012). As a leader, Mark Zuckerberg do the same thing with his employees and attract his followers by his behavior and personal quality.

 

Personally, I think our leading tutor John as the person who inspires my understanding of effective leadership all the time. When I first meet John, it was my first day to have the class. On the induction class, there were total 4 tutors in the classroom. It was John that talked to us and introduced their colleagues. At that time, my English was not good that I just finished my in-session English class, but his speech was so clear and humorous that immediately attracted my interests. Thereafter, other three tutors all highly praised John’s excellent ability as their leader. After that, I was always curious that how to be a effective leader and what John have done for his colleagues. Finally, after I finished this term’s ten week study, I found my answers. Every time when we have our leading class, John would play some music for us before start. He thought this could help us calm down and own a positive attitude to have this class. Frequently, he would help us check our blogs and offer some useful advice. Besides, he gave us the opportunities to play a tutor role in the case study. All of these indicates that effective leadership to engage their employees and help them involve in the activity.

 

When developing an excellent leader in the automotive industry, it is important to get and analyse the feedback. In order to have a high quality feedback from the different perspectives, I will choose 360 degree feedback model. Additionally, weather the feedback is about my working performance or some personal relationships, I will have a serious attitude to all the feedback that the others give me. Furthermore, based on these feedback, I could evaluate the what is my strengths and weakness, which particularly relation to my job, and improve my performance.

 

To sum up, during my MBA studying life, I have a better understanding of different styles of leadership. Especially, the ethical leadership impressed me deeply. No matter what kind of company I operate in the future, the ethical leadership is vital for my business development. Thurs, I will adopt the ethical leadership as my progress.

 

List of reference:

1. Hand. D. (2012). ‘ Conflict of Interest ‘. [online]. Available from: < http://www.mtu.edu/research/references/training/pdf/Conflict%20of%20Interest%20Presentation.pdf >  [Accessed at 25/03/2014]

2. Wursten. H. (2013). ‘Improve efficiency in your HR capital’. [online]. Available from: < http://www.itim.org/sites/default/files/managing%20people%20across%20culture.pdf > [Accessed at 25/03/2014]

3. Martin. J. [2014]. ‘Evaluation of leadership practices: how to develop a vision.’ Journal of Research in Nursing, 2014 Mar, 19 (2): 102-152.

4. Samson. N (2011). ‘ 6 leadership lessons from Mark Zuckerberg’. [online]. Available from: <http://www.mensxp.com/work-life/leadership/21016-6-leadership-lessons-from-mark-zuckerberg.html > [Accessed at 25/03/2014]

5. Davies. R. (2012). ‘Leadership Lessons From Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg’ [online]. Available from: <http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/opinion/1131649/leadership-lessons-facebooks-mark-zuckerberg/&gt; [Accessed at 25/03/2014]

Ethical leadership

The main purpose of this blog is critically analysis the ethical leadership form different sides and give example in the automotive industry to illustrating the point.  Also at the end, it concludes the role that ethical leaders play to have a positive effects on the organisations.

Generally, ethical leadership is a leadership style and known as the actions, honesty and the trust that the leaders have. We could divided it into two parts leadership and ethical behavior. The leadership is in the process of directing, inspiring and motivating the individual to do the right things and complete the inspired tasks. (Sarwar. 2013). At the same time, the leaders are required for ethical behavior in their attitudes and interactions. The evidence suggests that ethical leader behavior can have important positive effects on both individual and organizational effectiveness (Rubin et al 2010: 216-17). A high ethical standard in the organisation can helps to develop strong harmonious working relationships between the employees and leaders. Also it could reduce employee turnover and increase job satisfaction and has a positive effect on productivity. What’s more, the ethical leadership could enhance the effectiveness capacity of the firm in achieving the goal. (Ghahroodi, 2013)

Although the ethical leadership can have positive impact on organizational effectiveness, it does not mean that all the organizations suit this strategy. The leader must establish a culture of ethics behavior in the workplace and manage this culture well and keep it alive. (Erin. 2012) Moreover, one of the important disadvantage of the ethical leadership is lack of management support. For instance, if the senior employees want to apply their own version of ethical, it will have a conflict with leader and cause confusion in the workplace. Meanwhile, according to Kvalnes (Kvalnes, 2012). the ethical leader usually faced with dilemmas during the course of their work. The reason is that the ethical decision may not be the beneficial decision for the organization, due to some effective outcome to the enterprise may against the ethical issue. Another challenge for ethical leadership is the difficult process about training and development for leaders becoming the real ethical person. (Ghahroodi, 2013)

 

Related to my industry- automotive industry. The relationship between ethics leadership and automotive industry is quite close. Nowadays, most of the automotive companies are facing the challenges that automobiles should be economical to drive, earth friendly and priced to sell, even including Ford, General Motors and Bavarian Motor Works (BMW). It is not about the economic reason. It is due to the ethical factor. However, if their leader owned ethical leadership, they need to rethink and retool the strategy. They do not have the necessary to do so, but if they did there will be beneficial for their organisations. (Cindy. 2009).

Tesla is a new American automobile company, which sell designs and sells the electric cars. The leader of Tesla Elon Musk has well understood the ethical leadership. Although he knew the difficulty and cost of producing the electric cars, he resisted on his dream and ethics that is environmental to our earth. When Tesla decided to entry the Chinese market, Elon make a decision that they would not follow the old standard that the American automotive company would charge twice price as much as in the America. He preferred to doing things differently and follow the ethics. Finally, he made the price at $121,400 for its high-end Model S electric car. While other big auto firms offer discount to attract China buyers, Tesla is the first to make the price clear and open to consumers, which is the same as the overseas markets. This ethical action help Tesla win the applause of Chinese consumers. A survey on one of the most popular Chinese site QQ.com, which had more than 80,000 votes, showed that over ninety percent of consumers supported Tesla’s move. (Adam, 2014). So the ethical leadership can not only have important effects on individuals but also is of benefits to the organisations.

In summary, we can say the leader is a person that manage, direct, inspire, motivate and influence a group of people to complete the tasks effectively no matter in automotive industry or any other industries. To be a leader, the basic requirement is able to make others follow you, so the ethical leadership become more and more popular. Furthermore, the leader must have a deep-rooted commitment to the goal even if no one to follows them. In a word,the leader is essential and important for the organisation.

 

 

Sarwar.C. (2013). ‘Future of Ethically Effective Leadership ‘. Journal of Business Ethics. Mar2013, Vol. 113 Issue 1, p81-89. 9p. 7 Charts.

 

 

Erin.S. (2012). ‘What Are the Key Elements of Ethical Leadership in an Organization?’. [online]. Available from: < http://smallbusiness.chron.com/key-elements-ethical-leadership-organization-16742.html > [Accessed 17/03/2014]

Kvalnes, O. (2012) ‘Ethical Navigation in Leadership Training’ Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics.

 

Ghahroodi. H. (2013) ‘Examining Ethical Leadership and Its Impacts on the Followers’ Behavioral Outcomes’ Asain Social Science 9(3).

 

Cindy.B. (2009). ‘Ethics and the automotive industry’. [online]. Available from: < http://www.examiner.com/article/ethics-and-the-automotive-industry >. [Accessed 16/03/2014]

 

Adam.J. (2014). ‘Carmaker Tesla wins China fans with ‘fair’ price strategy’. [online]. Available from: < http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/04/us-china-tesla-idUSBREA131KM20140204 > [Accessed 16/03/2014]

change and resistance to change

 The propose of this topic is research and discuss the change. Change is nothing new and a simple fact of life. Some people actively thrive on new challenges and constant change, while others prefer the comfort of the status quo and strongly resist any change.( Mullins 2010: 753)

 In everyday life, as people grow older, they always face with the changes with or without they realize it. Change is a process of becoming different and better than before. In another word, it is a power of making things move from one stage to much better stage. Furthermore, change is an unavoidable feature that can influence all parts of the organisational operation and functions. According to Mullins, whether one resist change or not is decided by the personality of the individual and there is little management can do about resistance to change. (Mullins 2010: 753) To a certain extent, it is true, due to the resistance might come from technical or social change or the employees. However, I do not agree that little management can do about resistance to change. For instance, if the resistance come from social change, the manager can solve it by training the staffs in order to increase their skills.

Using a case study JC penney to analysis the role that managers play in overcoming resistance to change and increased benefit for the company. JC Penney (JCP) is an oldest business retail organisation and has long tradition about one hundred years. It was challenging for the new CEO, Myron E. Ullman due to the bad situation of the company. As the company was too rigid and formal, Ullman believes it is need to change the organizational culture in order to better adapt to the current business situation. As a result, he successfully changed JCP’s organisational culture form rigid and traditional style to a more flexible style. The company opened more retail outlets, the sales improving month by month and earnings edging towards a break even point and profit was dramatically increased.(Walter. 2013). During the process of change, generally, resistance was come from employees, for example, when he imposed the ‘Just call me Mike’ and abolish the old formal addressing of names, there was a group of employees felt uncomfortable to adapt this change of organizational culture and even show they were forced to accept this change. Even the resistance that come from employees is a tough problem during the process of change. The managers should deal with the resistance according to the different personalities and differences of employees. (Paul. 2012).

In my chosen industry- automotive industry, There is a typical examples- Ford, which is a positive example to explain how the management changed to save Ford from the problem.

 In 2005, Ford Motor Company was downgraded by American two major credit rating agencies due to providing the long-term employees with over excellent retired health care and benefits. By contrast, the Japanese automakers were not as good benefits as Ford. Meanwhile, the rising oil prices made the sales of SUV sport reduced and the competition from Japan and Korea became more competitive, which involved Ford in deep dilemma. Ford had loss of up to $1.6 billion in 2005 and $12.7 billion loss for 2006 which is its biggest in its 103-year history. (Sholnn. 2007). In order to solve this problem, Ford has established a series of programs to recover from the trouble over the next years and named it as The Way Forward. (Case Study). These programs included:

•  Cut between 25000 and 30000 jobs in North America.
•  Close 14 factories by 2012 to reduce losses in North America.
•  Stop the production of some unprofitable models.
•  Reduce some material costs
•  Focus on R&D crossover vehicle, hybrid vehicles, small cars
•  Consolidate the existing product line of Ford- Lincoln.

 With all these changes, Ford has gradually recover from this crisis. In 2013, Ford China sold 935,813 wholesale vehicles, which is a 49 percent increase from 626,616 vehicles in 2012. Besides, the European car sales was increased by 9.2 percent in January of 2013, benefiting from strong demand in the region’s top markets Germany and the UK. (Andreas. 2014)

 

Conclusion

Change is inevitable during the modern information age. The examples of JC penny and Ford have indicated that continuously changing with the vary of the environment is the key to the success. Furthermore, Although the management probably cannot totally eliminate the resistance to change, it can help unfreeze it. 

 

List of Reference

 Andreas.C. (2014). ‘Ford European sales up 9.2 percent in January’. [online]. Available from: <http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/14/us-fordeurope-carsales-idUSBREA1D0OT20140214&gt; [Accessed 15/03/2014]

 Case Study. (2007). ‘Ford- The ‘Way Forward’ Restructuring Program.’ [online]. Available from: <http://www.icmrindia.org/casestudies/catalogue/Business%20Strategy/BSTR204.htm&gt; [Accessed 15/03/2014]

 Paul.R. (2012). [online]. Available from: <http://hbr.org/1969/01/how-to-deal-with-resistance-to-change/ar/1&gt; [Accessed 15/03/2014]

 Sholnn.F. (2007). ‘Ford Had Its Worst Loss Ever In 2006′. [online]. Available from: <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/25/AR2007012500811.html >. [Accessed at 15/03/2014]

 Walter.L. (2013). ‘J.C.Penney: Ullman’s Team Is A Reason For Optimism’. [online]. Available from: <http://www.forbes.com/sites/walterloeb/2013/08/21/j-c-penney-the-past-was-horrible-the-future-a-challenge/&gt; [Accessed 15/03/2014]

Management and Leadership

Comparison of management and leadership

When we talking about management and leadership, many dictionaries suggest they are quiet similar. Actually, there are some essential difference between leadership and management. This blog will compare the management and leadership and analyse the relationship between them.

 

Management is a processes of keeping an organisation functioning and they control or direct people in a group according to principles they have already been established. Leadership is setting a new vision and aligning people to the vision, and have a communication, motivation and inspiration with their followers. (Rebecca, 2013)

Management and leadership comparison

 

In summary we can say management is do things right while leadership do the right thing. On the other hand, there have some similarities and connection between management and leadership. The executive management involves a good leadership style. Although the management focus on manage people on the basis of their institution, they need the staff have a positive attitude to be managed. The good leadership can play a good role for guiding them. If a company want to run effectively, the management and leadership must exist in tandem. The management just know as target-setting, an excellent organisation also have good leadership. For example, in hospital, the manager might set target in a period of time. At the same time, the leader will show the leadership and inspire the employee to reaching the target.

 

The best approach to managing the work of subordinates may vary according to circumstances and individual characteristics.

 According to the CMI, currently, the general consensus has moved away from ‘command and control’ to management and leadership towards more consultative and participative approaches. I strongly agree that the best approach should according to circumstances and individual characteristics. Every organisation has their own internal factors and external environment conditions, so there is no signal ideal approach can apply to any organisation. The key to successful management is to fully understand both the inside and outside situation of the organization and have the effective response strategies. In addition, one of the important factors of the management is the communication. Therefore the relationship between the managers and members is essential for the management. How to deal with this relationship mostly depends on the different circumstances and individual characteristics. (Goleman. 2000). In details, In the manufactory industry, the common type of management is “command and control”, because the workers has limited space to bring their image into play. What they need to is just follow the rules, which is simple and easy, but it can make the work complete. For example, the famous company Foxconn, which is well-known for its strict management. However, In the hi-tech industry, the previous rules are not suitable any more. Because in this industry the core value is the imagination. The way of management should encourage all the employees to participate in the group. They all need to contribute their power to the company. For example, the famous headquarter Apple engaged each of their employees to come up with the creative idea for their company.

 

If I am a member of a team, I would like to be managed like… …

To sum up, no matter which approach the mangers apply to, the ultimate goal is to obtain the maximum leadership effectiveness. If I am a member of a team, I would like to be respected supported and accepted during the process of the work, due to it can give me more confident and motivation to work hard. Therefore, in my opinion, I do believe that be managed by the consultative and soft approach is more suitable for me. Another reason is my character, I can comply the provisos and complete the task in time without the manager’s control and command.

Reference:

Goleman. D. (2000). ‘Leadership that gets the results’. Harvard Business Review. pp:78-90.

 

Rebecca.R. (2013). ‘What’s the difference between leadership and management?’. [online]. Available from:

< http://careers.theguardian.com/difference-between-leadership-management > [Accessed at 2 March 2014]