Final paper

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Section 1

Introduction

Organizational leadership is essential as it promotes the coordination and management of processes and organizational resources, promoting organizational productivity and sustainability. Although organizational management may seem like an easy task, and various theories such as the great man theory have asserted that leaders are born, and leadership traits are natural, organizational leaders must learn how to manage. The article, “ becoming the boss” by Linda A. Hall articulates on the role played by first management jobs towards shaping the management styles adopted by bosses and their respective philosophies.

Leadership and teamwork are interdependent and complementary. Leaders have the overtime responsibility of encouraging teamwork, by delegating team duties and motivating teams to remain committed towards the achievement of essential duties and overall organizational goals. With this regard, leaders ought to involve teams in decision making and communicate effectively with subordinate staff for organizational efficiency. This study aims at evaluating the articles, “the Servant and Becoming the Boss,” “What to Ask the Person in the Mirror,” “Survival Guide for Leaders,” “The Servant and HBR’s 10 Must Reads- On Teams”, “The Servant and HBR’s 10 Must Reads- On communication”, and “The Servant and Online Lectures From the Course” to draw important information about organizational leadership, communication and teams, and their role in enhancing corporate effectiveness.

Section 1

The Servant and Becoming the Boss

The article asserts that career transitions, especially from junior levels to becoming a manager, are characterized by significant new experiences and challenges. Multiple new managers tend to fail on their new management jobs, which incurs high financial and human resource costs in the organization. New managers also have to experience personal transformation as a way of coping with the challenges associated with their new position. Given the overtime business environment dynamism, characterized by the need to adopt lean management by forming strategic alliances that integrate the needs of the stakeholders, career transition for new managers becomes more complicated. For an effective transition, new managers ought to learn about their new job category and its associated roles.

Learning how to manage becomes increasingly difficult, as the effectiveness of managers is not solely determined by their individual efforts but also on team contributions, unlike in other career positions, where personal efforts, accountability, and contribution determines career success. Managers are responsible for formulating and implementing strategies for teams, which is an important role, not taught in their previous career position (Hill, 2007). As a result, learning how to manage ought to become traumatic.

Junior employees aspire to acquire managerial positions, fill significant managerial gaps, and ensure effective management. However, the employees fail to anticipate significant challenges that they might experience at the managerial position. The article hence articulates that the best way to learn how to become a manager is to become one.  To gain credibility and authority for the junior staff, new managers have to exemplify their competence, influence, and character. This entails the establishment of strong positive relationships with teams and everyone else ta the organization.

What to ask the person in the mirror

Despite the level of talent, commitment, and success, leaders fail multiple times, given the significantly dynamic business environment, personal changes, and development of bad habits. The article asserts the need for managers to step back and reflect on their actions, for self-development. Leadership does not entail having a clearly defined roadmap for goal achievement or possessing the answers to all organizational problems. Rather, it entails continuous learning and acquirement of important skills that enable leaders to gain new insight into an effective leader’s definition.

Leaders have the mandate to define organizational vision and priorities. Organizational problems are caused by the lack of a clear vision or the inability by the manager to communicate the vision and organizational priorities to the employees. Vision and priorities provide a sense of direction to the personnel, implying that lacking priorities and vision, or failing to communicate them promotes the extent to which employees direct their efforts to divergent priorities and visions. The devised corporate vision should be clear, while the priorities for the achievement of the vision should be manageable and should not exceed five (Kaplan, 2007).

The way managers spend their time should be consistent with the defined key priorities. Managers should monitor their time for several weeks and evaluate their alignment with priorities. If a mismatch exists between time and priorities, tasks should be eliminated or delegated to personnel in other corporate positions. Managers should also coach their employees on how to offer feedback and also be ready to listen to things they are not willing to hear. This promotes the realization of managerial issues, and hence promoting the extent to which effective solutions are formulated.

Managers should also have an effective succession plan, through which they can develop potential successors. Also, managers should clearly define and point out organizational areas that may require change, either in the long run or in the short run. While acting as a role model for employees through important aspects such as time management, managers should also realize their full capabilities and optimize their efforts towards the realization of these capabilities. Managers should also be passionate about their roles for the achievement of performance sustainability.

Survival guide for leaders

While leadership is perceived as exciting and admirable, as it involves influencing followers to follow a leader’s good and bad times, the dark side leadership aspect of multiple attempts to push the leaders aside is often overlooked. Leadership involves influencing and persuading others to let go of their beliefs, attitudes, and practices for the adoption of the suggested change. In instances where the people are not ready to adopt the suggested changes, they are likely to challenge the leader to adopt their perceptions or challenge their personality and authority to bring them down.

A hostile environment is a significant challenge with regard to achieving change. Leaders must, therefore, effectively manage their environment by setting a vision, clarifying values, and having a strategic plan. Employees must also be included and well trained to reduce resistance. The article also articulates the need to offer tactical advice about the organization and personnel to reduce resistance before the intended change is achieved.

Managers should also focus on their vulnerabilities and personal needs to enhance leadership effectiveness. As a way of focusing on vulnerabilities, the article suggests the need to court the uncommitted by establishing relationships with people who are aim at pushing the managers down. Managers should also hire supportive people, who are also likely to recognize dangerous faults in the strategic plan. Also, as a way of managing the vulnerabilities, managers need to effectively resolve conflicts that ought to enhance resistance and assign responsibilities, such as answering questions to others (Heifetz, & Linsky, 2002).

Managers should also focus on personal needs. The article asserts the need to manage the dangers within, by focusing and managing intellectual, physical and emotional issues. Stabilizing or anchoring oneself, and managing self needs are essential aspects of self-management. Defining the need to lead, such as organizational transformation and solution formulation and communicating the need to the personnel, is also an essential way through which managers can deal with and overcome resistance.

Section 3

 The Servant and HBR’s 10 Must Reads- On Teams

The new science of building great teams

Although team building and management have overtime been classified as an art, MIT researchers defined the new science of defining great and effective teams using data from divergent sectors and industries; communication was articulated to be the most effective strategy for developing highly productive teams. Three communication patterns for teams were identified and evaluated in the article. These include energy, exploration, and engagement. Energy involves the communication and contribution of individual team members with the entire team, measured through information quality. The exploration entails how effectively team members communicate with other people outside teams, while engagement measures how effectively team members communicate with each other. Other factors that promote the development of effective and productive teams, as asserted in the article, include intelligence, talent, and personality.

The power of small wins

Managers play a significant role in enforcing and developing their employees. Managers influence the level of employee wellbeing, creativity, and motivation. Making substantial progress in relevant work significantly impacts the inner work life of employees, through the development of positive work-related emotions and motivation. Appreciating and recognizing employees on small wins, providing sufficient time and resources plays a vital role in enhancing employees’ inner work life and motivation. On the other hand, little losses and drawbacks may significantly demotivate employees and hence adversely affecting their work life. Small wins play a vital role in promoting employee motivation, creativity, and productivity.

Virtuoso teams

Virtuoso teams are comprised of elites and intellectuals, who are revolutionists for influencing significant change. The teams are usually challenging and less comfy. Although virtuoso teams are usually regarded as significantly risky, if the right people are brought together and effectively managed, exemplary results ought to be achieved. Organizations tend to avoid Virtuoso teams as they are considered to be risky, egocentric, and challenging to control and manage. The adoption of the traditional teams hinders the realization of significant results, an aspect that holds back the organization and reduces their competitiveness in the current highly dynamic business environment.

Is silence killing your company?

Silence does not solve organizational problems, but rather contains the conflicts within the organization, as people avoid uproars and heated arguments. Silence promotes anxiety, anger, and bitterness. Over time, if the conflict is unresolved, individuals ought to become defensive and insecure, which ought to persist in the instance where the conflict is not resolved. This may promote resistance and job dissatisfaction and frustration, an aspect which increases the rate of employee turnover. Communication should hence be encouraged, and individual confidence fostered to enhance the ability by the employees to air their grievances and disagreements, the conflicts should then be effectively solved to promote the extent to which new ideas are generated for organizational productivity.

How to become an authentic speaker

The article discourages practicing body language and gestures and advices authentic speakers to focus on four areas. Being open with the audience requires the speaker to imagine that they are comfortable with the audience. This promotes the achievement of natural body language that reflects on real emotions, thoughts, and feelings.  The second area that speakers should focus on is connecting with the audience. This encourages natural behavior and correct timing. The aspect of being passionate about the topic enables the speakers to focus on their speech, and the feeling it generates while listening to the audience promotes the identification of the audience’s emotions.

Telling tales

The article advises on the need to be analytical and advises against being anecdotal. The author articulates the important role played by stories in enhancing the extent to which organizations achieve their goals, and as a management tool. Telling the right stories at the right time is a significant leadership trait and skill that is significantly applicable in highly unstable business environments. Tale telling can be used for seven purposes, including leading people into a more sustainable future, passing on important information and knowledge, communicating about oneself, transmitting important corporate values, sparking actions, nurturing a collaborative working environment, and taming grapevine. Stories are effective tools for achieving organizational change and instituting advice. The stories used for these purposes should be short and precise, and should not be too positive, as people tend to dismiss extremely positive stories, and also tend to learn from mistakes.

The discipline of teams

Four essential elements drive team performance. These include common goal and commitment, mutual accountability, defined performance objectives, and possession of important complementary skills. Katzenbach and Smith categorize teams into three. These team categories are teams that run things, recommending teams and teams that make or do things. Teams and good performance are interconnected and inseparable. This is a significant discipline that promotes team performance. Team output or results are a function of collective team efforts and individual contribution if team members (Katzenbach, & Smith, 2008).

When teams can’t decide

When teams can’t decide, the CEO has the automatic mandate to make the final decision, which may be very disappointing for teams. Frisch terms this as “dictator-by-default-syndrome.” To avoid this, teams resolve to increased communication and team building, which may not generate an effective solution, as the situation occurs due to a fault in the decision-making process and not the personnel. Voting exercise, on the other hand, tends to waste time and promote cumbersome psychological exercises. To avoid this situation, leadership teams should identify problems and comprehend its root causes. Once decision making constraints or bottlenecks are established, the following tactics can be employed. These include clearly asserting the targeted outcome, defining key alternatives for achieving the outcome, surfacing the preferences early, listing the merits and demerits of the alternatives, and developing new options that integrate the best features of the prior alternatives (Frisch, 2008).

How management teams can have a good fight section

Management teams understand the need and necessity of conflict towards promoting a better understanding of their choices, and the development of significant alternatives from which effective choices or decisions are made. Since organizations are characterized by increased uncertainty, it is reasonable that management teams disagree and challenge each other’s’ thinking in defining the most effective path for the organization. A major challenge, however, occurs with regard to ensure that conflicts are focused on establishing a clear organizational path and do not develop into interpersonal conflicts. The article recommends six tactics that characterize effective teams. These include the ability to work with more rather than less information, the development of numerous alternatives for a detailed debate, the establishment of common goals; the injection of humor to enhance rapport and develop a friendly environment, to maintain a balanced organizational power structure, and resolution of issues without consensus calls. The tactics enhance collaboration and fair decision making between and among team members. The effectiveness of such teams ought to be lost without conflict.

Section 4

The Servant and HBR’s 10 Must Reads – On Communication

Change the way you persuade

People tend to focus too much on content, during an argument, and neglect the way they communicate the content or deliver the message. People can have their proposals approved by enhancing their persuasion ability by tailoring their arguments around the chief executives’ decision making strategy and style. The article articulates the key decision-making categories employed by executives, and the proportion they account for in the decisions. Charismatics contribute to 25% of the final decisions. These are the leaders who are initially cheerful about an idea and make the final decision based on data relevance. Thinkers are contradictory review options of an idea before making a decision and count up to 11% of the final decision. Skeptics tend to be significantly suspicious about data and make decisions based on their feelings. They contribute to 19% of the final decision. Flowers count up to 36% of the decision and base their decisions on prior self-made decisions while controllers review the facts presented to them and uncertainty and risk analytics. Controllers count up to 9% of the decision. Understanding the category of the CEO is important in devising standard strategies for delivering information (Williams & Miller, 2002).

Harnessing the science of persuasion

Persuasion involves swaying the undecided audiences and influencing the opposition to convert. Persuasion involves charisma and speech eloquence and entails promoting eagerness on the part of the converts to do what they have been requested to do. The article suggests six important processes that persuade and influence people, enabling them to say yes to assertions. Reciprocation involves the obligation to repay what has been offered, consistency involves the overtime commitment to public matters, social validation involves the assessment of what others are doing to determine individual actions, liking involves the establishment of significant social networks and relationships, authority involves the harnessing of power and authority and scarcity asserts on the need to avail scarce opportunities as a way of persuading people. These heuristics are, however, dependent on culture, although they are applicable across national borders. In the USA, employees adopted a reciprocation approach, while the authoritative approach was adopted in China. The article goes ahead to warn that managers are personally responsible for the use of the six heuristics and have the overtime obligation of observing ethics in persuasion (Cialdini, (2001).

The power of talk

The article asserts that women’s linguistic styles affect their power of talk, hence undermining the extent to which they are heard. The linguistic styles learned during childhood affect self-confidence and competence judgments. Meetings, discussions, and presentations are essential tools for managerial work. Through the meetings, individuals are expected to talk, evaluate others’ assertions, and be judged by others. The linguistic style applied by an individual in such meetings plays a vital role in determining what the individual says. This affects who gets heard, who receives credit, and the actions are taken. Comprehending the linguistic styles promotes listening and communicating, and hence enabling managers to effectively carry out their managerial roles and obligations (Tannen, 1995).

Section 5

The servant and online lectures from the course

The servant expounds on the important concepts learned from the course lectures. The various strategies of becoming an extraordinary leader are well explained in the book. The leadership book prompts leadership thinking, and together with course lectures, pass on important messages and strategies for becoming an effective leader. The course materials and the book provide important guidelines for persuasion, communication, and the importance of conflict in management teams. This information can be utilized to enhance competence and effectiveness in leadership.

Section 6

Conclusion

The power of telling tales is an important lesson that I derived from the articles. Stories not only have an entertainment or amusement role but also challenge individuals to reflect on their mistakes, strategies, and actions. Stories should hence be well planned and should be strategic, as they should pass on specific information to the listeners. Another memorable lesson learned from the article is the role of management teams’ conflict in generating relevant alternatives, from which solutions to organizational problems are established. The need to air grievances and disputes for the achievement of a better organizational environment, the role of small achievements in enhancing employee motivation, and the importance of having self-confidence and understanding linguistics towards becoming an effective listener and communicator are also memorable lessons that were derived from the passages.

References

Cialdini, R. B. (2001). Harnessing the science of persuasion. Harvard business review, 79(9), 72-81.

Frisch, B. (2008). When teams can’t decide. What Makes a Decisive Leadership Team, 2.

Goleman, D. (2017). Leadership that gets results (Harvard business review classics). Harvard Business Press.

Heifetz, R. A., & Linsky, M. (2002). A survival guide for leaders. Harvard business review, 80(6), 65-74.

Hill, L. A. (2007). Becoming the boss. Harvard business review, 85(1), 48.

Kaplan, R. S. (2007). What to ask the person in the mirror. Harvard Business Review, 85(1), 86.

Katzenbach, J. R., & Smith, D. K. (2008). The discipline of teams. Harvard Business Press.

Tannen, D. (1995). The power of talk: Who gets heard and why. Harvard Business Review, 73(5), 138-148.

Williams, G. A., & Miller, R. B. (2002). Change the way you persuade. Harvard Business Review, 80(5), 64-73.