Blog 2:  Contemporary Leadership Styles: How relevant are they in today’s changing world? (739)

Leadership is one of the essential and important factors in organizational behaviour and management which leads employees toward the organizations aims and stimulates them to conduct all activities efficiently. In addition, the theoretical leadership styles in relation to the realistic situation that is impossible to apply mechanically to all organizations (Mullins, 2016).

In 1997, Belbin claimed that leadership could be fulfilled into their work as one type of quality rather than as a component of the job. For instance, automobile management plays the role that collects the tasks and resources, afterwards reallocate them to the workers, in other words, employees passively assign work and schedule their working hours. Following this situation, the job leader do is not distributive but comes naturally.

Before the discussion of the contradiction between the leadership in reality and the leadership theory put forward by previous scholars, people can recognize the distinction between management and leadership by the bellowing table (Kent, 2005):

Management	Leadership
Managers do things right	Leaders do the right things
Managing is an authority relationship	Leading is an influence relationship
Managing creates stability	Leading creates change

As a leader who must have two functions in the corporation, there are motivate subordinates and create a suitable working environment for employees to complete the entire organization activities efficiently (The Advanced Institute of Leadership research, 2005). Like Charler Silva, Regional Vice President of the Western Region who always maintain communication with customers and different hierarchy of colleagues, meanwhile, took advantage of their opinions and improved BMW’s customer orientation, operations, customer satisfaction, and brand loyalty from different angles (Sparks, K., 2016).

However, a difference between a leader and a manager is not accepted by Mintzberg (2009) who asked the rhetorical questions how you expect to be managed by someone without leadership or give a reason why you want to be led by someone with no management skills. In a general way, leadership and management can be divided into two parts in theoretically. But in fact, we cannot really separate them as two independent sectors. Such as the two arguments that Moorcroft makes about the debate between the two are presented in extreme form in 2015: hierarchical relationships with top leaders; the two are on an equal footing, but just like the two ends of a seesaw.

As above mentioned their distinguishes that management is employees passively wait to be assigned to work, when the job is in a short-term period, management-oriented leaders can use power to force subordinates to effectively achieve task performance; and the leadership is the use of their own personal charm to make subordinates willing to work and follow the leader, when the job is in long-term runs, leadership-oriented leaders successfully completed effective team building through long-term teamwork and interaction with members .

Approaches to leadership

In order to analyze the complexity and diversity of origins, we can examine the impact of management leadership on different industries and societies from different leadership perspectives according to the leading theory proposed by scholars.

Nowadays, leadership styles are no along recognized as four fixed essential characteristics, and they are constantly growing and changing, some of them even incorporate one or several kinds of features. And I will use the Managerial Leadership Framework to analyze and evaluate the modern leadership compare with the experience of our predecessors in the following statement.

In 1989, Drucker indicated that leadership is innate and self-confidence became a public symbol for them. This is known as Traits Theory, through the assumption of leaders generate naturally, not developed by learning. It could be composed by familial inheritance or personality trait. In addition, it shows that people are concerned about the choices of leader instead of leadership training.

Subsequently, Kotter (1990) points out Functional Approach Leadership that contrary to Drucker’s theory, successful corporations actively seek out people with leadership potential and put them in the right place to be fostered. The former focuses more on the personal development of leadership to lead the team responsible for effective performance. According to this notion, Benne and Sheat (2007) conducted an experiment in which they recruited a group of volunteers and then asked them to complete different types of tasks in groups. The following conclusions: task roles (prosocial) work together to determine the character’s completion; Group building and maintenance roles (prosocial)  modify the way they work to bring the team unity; The more anti-social (individual) roles do nothing, seriously affecting the quality and efficiency of the task.

Reference

Belbin, R. M. Changing the Way We Work, Butterworth– Heinemann (1997), p. 98.

Hamel, G. (2011), ‘FIRST, LETS FIRE ALL THE MANAGERS, Harvard Business Review, 89, 12, pp. 48-60. Available through Locate

Mullins, L.J. (2016), Management and Organisational Behaviour, 11th Edition, Pearson Higher Education

Sparks, K. (2016). BMW of North America Announces Management Change.BMW Group [online] Available at: https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/usa/article/detail/T0262748EN_US/bmw-of-north-america-announces-management-change?language=en_US [Accessed 1 Jan. 2019].

Mintzberg, H. Managing, Financial Times Prentice Hall (2009), p.8.

Moorcroft, R. ‘To Lead or to Manage? That Is the Question’, Manager, The British Journal of Administrative Management, November 2005, p. 4.

Drucker, P. F. The Practice of Management, Heinemann Professional (1989), p. 156.

Benne, K. D., & Sheats, P. (2007). Functional roles of group members. Group Facilitation: A Research & Applications Journal, 8, 30-35. Kotter, J. P. ‘What Leaders Really Do’, Harvard Business Review, May– June 1990, p. 103.