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Paul gave the same question for both Isabella and Devon, listen to their answers and have a judgment about who should be chosen for the executive position. After hearing answer of both candidates, Paul obviously understands that they both have different leadership styles. Each style has its own advantages and disadvantages so it is a tough decision for Paul to choose who suitable for that position. This essay is going to discuss and analyze about the leadership styles of both Devon and Isabella and point out the organizational culture that is suitable the most for each of them.
There is a fact that every organization always needs a leader to lead the company on the right track of goal. Indeed, this is not hard to be a good manager but not everybody can be a great leader. Therefore, this essay will identify some major leadership styles in reality and then apply to the case of Devon and Isabella to find out whose style is more effective for the organization, any situational factors can affect its effectiveness and whether any downsides to each style. After that, there will be a comparison based on the motivated feelings, job satisfaction, trust in leadership and organizational commitment of Devotes and
Isabella subordinates. Last but not least, it will verify what particular type of organizational culture can be suitable to their different styles. Question 1: Using terms from the text, how would you describe Devotes leadership style? How would you describe Isabella leadership style? First of all, the leadership styles of Devon and Isabella will be decided based on the answers that Devon and Isabella gave to their CEO. Obviously, there are some similarities on their leadership perspectives. The first point is both of them are supervisory leaders.
According to Bateman and Snell (2011), supervisory leadership is behavior that provides audience, support and corrective feedback for day-to-day activities. Applying to this case, both Devon and Isabella “give clear guidance to employees, set appropriate goals to help their employees to complete every project. Second, they all have perspectives and characteristics that a great leader has which are considered as traits under trait approach. Based on Accord (2007), there are five characteristics that make the leaders stand out from other people which are: 1. Drive: includes high level of effort, high level of ambition, energy and initiative.
In this case, Devon and Isabella all ensure that their employees have all necessary kills and resources that need to complete the given task. 2. Leadership motivation: refers to an intense desire to influence and lead other people to reach the goals, usually mentions as the level of power. Here, both of them have a power to give his subordinate rewards or punishments depend on the outcomes of the projects. 3. Integrity: refers to the correspondence between words and actions 4. Self-confidence: this is an important characteristic to make decisions despite uncertainty and to convince employees to follow. . Knowledge of the business: an effective leader has a high degree of knowledge bout the company, industry and technical matter. In this case, by having such knowledge, both Devon and Isabella can help their employees by providing skills and resources to accomplish the projects. Another similarity between Devon and Isabella styles is their behaviors. Both of them have task performance behaviors towards their employees which are the leaders’ efforts to ensure that the work unit or organization reaches its goals (Missus and Peterson, 2006).
As mentioned in the case study, Devon and Isabella will try to help employees who do not have “necessary skills and resources to complete a task” to make sure that the projects re completed on time with quality and accuracy. Beside those similarities, there are also differences between the two styles of leadership. First point is about the participation in decision-making dimension. The way Devon acts as a leader can be considered as an autocratic leadership.
According to Wagner Ill (2008), in an autocratic leadership style, the person in charge has total authority and control over decision making. In other words, this concept is also known as task-centered approach in which the leader is concerned to get tasks completed. He assumes responsibility for all aspects of the work process and communication tends to be one-way” (Souses and Poster, 2007). Applying to the fact, Devon divides projects into different tasks and assigns those parts to different employees without considering about which tasks they prefer to do and the ability to complete.
His subordinates must obey any directions Devon gives and he does not allow them to contribute their ideas into any processes. While Devon is an autocratic leader, Isabella can be seen as a democratic leader. Wagner Ill (2008) also defined a democratic leadership as behaviors that encourage employees to participate in decision making process. The leader is concerned with team harmony and roof cohesion. He seeks the opinions of subordinates and strives for mutual understanding (Souses and Poster, 2007).
As mentioned in the case, Isabella asks for the contributions of ideas from her employees, “consider employee input and the different needs of each worker”. Furthermore, Devon and Isabella are different in consideration of path-goal theory. According to Bateman and Snell (2011), “the theory suggests that the functions of the leader are to make the path to work goals easier to travel by providing coaching and directions, to reduce frustrating barriers to goal attainment and to increase opportunities for personal distraction by increasing pay-off to people for achieving performance goal”.
This theory includes four concepts of leadership including directive, supportive, achievement-oriented and participative leadership in which only two are relevant to this case. For Devon, the actions of “stating exactly what employees need to do, assigning particular tasks, setting appropriate goals, ensuring they have the resources they need” and showing his expectations from their works not only tell that Devon is an autocratic leader, but also tell us that he is a directive leader who lets followers know what is expected of them and tells them how to reform their tasks (Galilean, 2007).
As for Isabella, she “challenges employees to look ahead, to contribute idea and to make sacrifice for the good of the company”. She also inspires her subordinates to “think outside the box and develop innovative solutions” to the current problems. In other words, Isabella is considered as an achievement-oriented leader who encourages performance excellence by setting challenging goals, seeking for improvement, emphasizing excellence in performance and showing confidence that subordinates will attain high standard of performance.
In addition, the two leadership styles are also efferent in another dimension which has two concepts: transactional leadership and transformational leadership. According to Harris, Wyatt and Patriotism (2008), a transactional leader is concerned with processes rather than forward- thinking ideas. This type of leader focuses on rewards and punishments to gain obedient from the subordinates. In this case, Devon will rewards his employees if they “accomplish a given task or goal” but there will be punishments if they “fail to accomplish an assignment” without acceptable reasons.
Therefore, we can see that Devon is a transactional leader. In contrast, a transformational deader enhances the motivation, morale, and performance of followers through a variety of mechanisms (Harris, Wyatt and Patriotism, 2008). Here, Isabella encourages her employees to implement new ideas by ‘thinking outside the box and developing innovative solutions” as well as to take greater ownership for their works by inspiring them ‘to see the company as their own”. Therefore, Isabella can be seen as a transformational leader.
The last different point here is possessed only by Isabella, but not Devon, which is visioning. According to Bateman and Snell (2011), a vision is a mental image of a possible and desirable true state of the organization. Applying to this case, Isabella thinks of a scenario where the company “will be after 5, 10 and 15 years from now’ to give out decisions that could create competitive advantages to ensure company’s long term successful. By having visions, Isabella can give out appropriate strategies which make her become a strategic supervisor.
Generally, even though both Devon and Isabella have some similarities on their leadership perspectives including supervisory leadership and task performance behaviors, they do have significantly different styles to be good leaders. Specifically, Devon focuses on autocratic, directive and transactional styles; whereas, Isabella mainly applies democratic, achievement – oriented and transformational styles. Question 2: Whose leadership style do you believe would be more effective, Isabella or Devotes? Why? What, if any, situational factors might their effectiveness depend on?
There is a consideration about whose style is more effective and what any situational factors may have effect on their effectiveness. Generally, Isabella leadership style seems to be more effective according to three significant differences that Isabella style has against Devotes. The first thing is vision since only Isabella has a desirable image of what the company will be the next 5, 10 and 15 years. Based on Armstrong (201 1), having visions is always needed as an effective leader. When there are clear visions, there are good strategies to make the visions become reality.
In addition, through the visions with the scope varies and exist at any organizational level, we can see and understand the leaders ambitions for the organization (Allison and Okay, 2005). Therefore, having visions as a leader is very important since it is necessary to an effective leadership. As Robert L. Swigged said “The leader’s job is to create a vision”, that visions will help the leader to make right decisions. Isabella does not only have visions, she also shares those visions to her subordinate so they “will be able to pursue the same goals”.
The same vision gives the followers a dream to take it as their own, motivates people to achieve what might be beyond them (Borer, Love and Towns, 2005). Besides that, visions are important because as a successful CEO named Mark Leslie said “If there is no vision, there is no business”. This means, without visions, works cannot be done strategically, leaders focus on he performing or surviving on day-by-day basis, businesses cannot succeed in the long run. Moreover, Devotes abilities just stay at management level since he focuses on structuring the organization, staffing capable people, and monitoring activities.
In particularly, he concentrate on whether his subordinates can complete their given tasks and appropriate rewards or punishments for the outcomes. However, the leadership requires more than that, it also about inspiring people to attain the vision, and the great leaders will keep people focus on moving the organization toward its ideal future, motivate them to overcome whatever obstacles lie in the way (Jumble and Kelly, 2006). In contrast with Devon, Isabella shares her desirable organization visions with the subordinates and motivates them to take challenges, to think outside the box and to be innovative to make those visions become true.
She cares about their needs, allows them to contribute ideas and encourages them ‘to see the company as their own”. By this way, the subordinates are inspired, motivated to work better, to overcome the challenges and to achieve their same goals. The idea of “seeing company as their own” can be seen as a huge inspiration for the employees to maximize heir effort because once people own something, they will try their best to make it better. Besides, by having transformational leadership, Isabella can revivalist organizations and generate excitement to her employees in several ways.
She is charismatic leader who can build excitements based on her self-confident and the moral of righteousness of her belief. In addition, she gives her attention to each of the employees by considering input and “different needs of each worked’ which is known as individualized attention. Under this individualized attention, the employees receive challenges depends on different individual’s ability as well s they are allowed to contribute ideas and have discussions with her. Moreover, she is also intellectually stimulating which means Isabella raises her employees’ awareness for all the problems with potential solutions.
Thus, the problems are recognized, solutions with high quality are identified and “implemented with the full commitment of followers” (Bateman and Snell, 2011). Coming along with the ability to generate excitements, by being a transformational leader, Isabella has four skills: 1. Having a vision of the company in the next 5, 10 and 15 years to attract people’s attention 2. Communicate the visions by sharing through words, manner or symbolism 3. Ability to build trust (by being consistent, dependable and persistent) as integrity is one of the traits that she has 4.
Having a positive self-regard by developing and challenging employees’ abilities. Therefore, this is possible to conclude that Isabella leadership styles are more effective than Devon in point of visioning, how to share it to the followers, by being a transformational leader. Next, the essay will discuss about some situational factors that may affect the effectiveness of their leadership. In act, a decision should be made autocratically or democratically depends on the characteristics of the leader, the followers & the situation. Thus, a situational approach to leader decision styles is appropriate.
According to Morehouse (2006), situational approach ignores all the important traits and behaviors and emphasizes that there is no best leadership style as an effective leadership style will varied for different situations. Under situational approach, the situation must be identified and analyzed first and then the leaders will decide what to do by considering three main factors: 1. Forces in the manager: depending on what the managers require which include the target of sales, the need of completing project in exact time frame, the request to involve in the monthly investigation, etc. . Forces in the subordinate: there might be a demand for higher salary, an improvement in protection health and safety work, a better promotion, and a need for establish a labor union, etc. 3. Forces in the situation: may include the rise of competitors, the problems of higher input prices due to natural disaster, the higher demand for products, the situation of customer’s complaint, etc. Through every circumstance of forces, the good leader will know how to control the situation, satisfy the managers, motivate the followers and please the customers.
There is no doubt that this is very important to equip the appropriate skills to be an effective leader. And shortly, it seems to support that Isabella leadership styles are more effective than Devon based on her vision, her ability to share it, inspire followers and build trust. Last but not least, as being a transformational with flexibility in leadership style, she will be able to adapt more with the changes in environment caused by situational factors. Question 3: What are some potential downsides to each candidate’s leadership styles?
Another essays point is identifying any drawbacks of both Devotes and Isabella leadership styles. The first disadvantage is about trait approach, if any traits or characteristics are over used, that will be the weakness of the leaders. In particularly, for drive, if the leaders are too ambitious for personal achievements instead of organizational achievements and involve to the works personally, “they do not delegate enough authority ; responsibility’ from the higher-level managers (Bateman and Snell, 2011).
In addition, for leadership motivation and self-confidence, if the leaders over use their power and be over confidence, it will be different to build a good relationship between them and their employees as they are seen to be arrogant and arbitrary (Jung and Kiosk, 2006). Also, the task performance behaviors that both Devon and Isabella have means that the leaders have to make sure that the projects must be completed as scheduled at any prices. Therefore, they will monitor and supervise their employees at all time.
There will be a high level of pressure that each of the employees must suffer. Under such high pressure, not NY workers can endure. So, complains and high rate of turnover are predictable. Moreover, it is about visioning. Without visions, Devon just concentrates in completing day-to-day activities instead of giving out appropriate strategies to help the organization grow and expand in the long run. As for Isabella, she does have visions but those visions might be inappropriate in some cases.
She thinks that she creates visions for company but those visions are based on her personal interests and needs instead. In addition, Isabella might ignore the stakeholders’ needs or the environmental changes when she creates the visions. As a result, this leads to wrong strategies and the organization will not be beneficial or will be harm. Another problem belongs to the supervisory leadership style that both Devon and Isabella have requires them to monitor and supervise the subordinates closely to be able to give guidance or instruction in time.
Because of this, staff will have less chance to work independently. Besides that, Isabella is also a strategic leader. With the shared visions, it is difficult to direct and to guide each of the employees to follow the same path as well as the visions must be clear and realistic so it will be easier pursue for all staff. On the one hand, being an autocratic leader means there is only one way of communication which is from Devon to his employees. Because of the one way communication without feedbacks, misunderstanding and communication breakdown could occur.
Besides that, an autocratic leader makes decisions on his own which can be very dangerous because he could make mistakes and unable to realize those mistakes. In addition, because of the dictatorship, employees tend to show their negative attitude towards their leaders(Tuba and Kelley, 2008). On the other hand, Isabella – as a democratic leader, the employees will have positive attitudes. However, the performance will be less effective than autocratic leadership because the leader can be turn out as she has no managerial decision making.
The democratic leadership can be inappropriate when the decision needs to be made in a short time or when the employees wants an assertive leader who decide which employee is responsible for which parts (Tuba and Kelley, 2008). Next, according to Fiddler’s Model, for task-motivated leader as Devon, this type cannot suitable in a situation in which the leader – member relations is good, the task structure is unstructured and the leader position power is low.
While for relationship-motivated leader, Isabella leadership style cannot suitable in a situation in which the leader – member relations is poor, the task structure is unstructured and the leader position power is low. In concern of path-goal theory, for Devotes directive leadership, it can create very dependent followers who rely too much of the time for too many things in too many circumstances on the leader. This problem will minimize the creativity and the willingness to think of the employees. About Isabella, she is an achievement- oriented leader.
It seems to have no backwards since it will encourage followers ND that brings benefits to not only the employees, but also the organization. Finally, as a transactional leader, it is difficult for Devon to encourage and inspire his employees to focus on the interests of the group or organization (Bateman and Snell, 2011). In addition, team members may not get job satisfaction but because of the rewards and/or punishments, it assumes that people are only motivated because of money and not because of the reason why they actually want to do it.
On the contrary, Isabella who is a transformational leader, she might be concerned with the overall big picture and sometimes neglects the daily operational details. Besides that, by giving her followers individualized attention, the feel of discrimination may occur between them. Sometimes, encouragements will not work well comparing to complain and punishments are necessary and transformational leadership is not suitable for such circumstances (Anderson, 2011).
Moreover, becoming a transformational leader means that Isabella is also a charismatic leader. For a charismatic leader, superior verbal skills to communicate the vision and motivate followers are needed. A good charismatic leader can help people to overcome the difficult circumstances or uncertainty, and thus, a bad charismatic leader will make people exhausted and discouraged. Besides that, with the superior verbal skills, it is possible that as time goes by, Isabella employees might lose their abilities to think as their own and to give out ideas.
Therefore, it is possible that Isabella gives decisions based on her personal perspectives or show off her ego just like the CEO of this company also gave a comment that Isabella is “egotistical”. Obviously, there is no perfect leadership style in reality and this means the good leader will need to concern how to apply what style in what organizational culture, to what kind f employees, for how long, etc. Also, comparison between advantages and disadvantages help the leaders make better and more appropriate decision for the organization. Question 4: Whose employees do you think are likely to be more motivated, Devotes or Isabella?
Whose employees are likely to have higher job satisfaction, trust in leadership, and organizational commitment? Why? Now, this is necessary to evaluate their leadership style decision based on their subordinates’ feeling, satisfaction, trust and commitment with the company. Firstly, motivation is defined as forces that will energize, direct and sustain meson’s efforts (Bateman and Snell, 2011). In fact, an appropriate and effective motivation can bring a lot of benefits to the organization since the employees will work harder and be highly productive.
Thus, it is important for good motivators to know what behaviors they want to exhibit to people so the result can be reached. Specifically, according to Bateman and Snell (2011), there are some main purposes for motivate others which are joining the organization, remaining in the organization, coming to work regularly, well performance related to high output and high quality, and presenting good citizenship. In order to do that, the leader should accept many obstacles to create a working environment where can attract active and energetic employees (Bartlett and Shoal, 2005).
Besides, being good citizenship shows that their behaviors will make the manager’s job easier and the organizational functions work more smoothly. It is said that the leaders should get rid of the notion “loyalty is dead” to be more motivated in employees’ eyes; however, in a newspaper published by Fisher (2007), “employee loyalty exists, but it depends upon what the company is willing to do for its employees”, affirmed Vein – a New York investment bank’s staff as a reason for his decision to remain at the same job with lower wages.
Indeed, there are processes of basic and powerful actions that the managers should take to be effective motivators may be found in the goal-setting, the reinforcement, and expectancy theories: 1 . Goal-setting Goal-setting theory of motivation is a theory which states that here is an inseparable link between goal setting and task performance. It states that specific measurable and attainable goals motivate an employee to achieve the goal (Herbert, 2009). Based on Locke (2006), any important thing can be set s goals including performance quality and quantity, innovation, speed, etc. Depends on each employee.
As Bono and Judge (2007) stated, “followers of transformational leaders view their works as more important and as highly congruent with their personal goals compared with transactional leaders”. Moreover, goals should be acceptable to employees and allowing people to participate in setting their work goals is a great way to generate goals that people accept and pursue willingly, instead of having the boss set goals for all. Finally, acceptable goals will be challenging but attainable which means the level of faculty must be high enough to inspire better performance but not so high to reach (Bateman and Snell, 2011).
Applying to this case, it is clear that Isabella as a transformational leader has focused on the vision of the company in the five to ten, even fifteen years in the future and tried to share it with her employees. While Devon with his transactional style is more likely to set up by himself a goal and then force people to follow and do it. 2. Reinforcement Under this dimension, there are 4 concepts that are categorized under 2 categories: same behavior likely to be repeated and same behavior less eke likely to be repeated.
The first category includes positive and negative reinforcement. According to Statistic and Lutheran (2009), positive reinforcement is a consequence that maintains or increase the likelihood for a person to repeat behavior. In contrast, negative reinforcement means “removing or withholding an undesirable consequence” (Bateman and Snell, 2011). These 2 concepts will have positive results on the received person by either gain something or avoid something negative. Thus, the person who receives such consequences will have motivation to have a behavior which those consequences aim for.
Another category which is about the same behavior but less likely to be repeated, it includes the other 2 concepts which are punishment and extinction. Based on Bateman and Snell (2011 punishment means “administering an aversive consequence” and extinction means “withdrawing or failing to provide a reinforcing consequence”. This second category will give negative results to reduce unwanted behaviors. It is very important to manage rewards, punishment, mistakes and provide feedback. As for rewards and punishment, these reinforcement methods sometime will give out results that are opposite hat are expected.
Such as employees will absent more if there is a punishment for absent more than the allowed limit (Bateman and Snell, 2011). Therefore, these methods need to be considered carefully before giving out to any employees to prevent unwanted outcomes. Besides that, if the managers over use the punishment to prevent mistakes, there will be “a climate of fear in the workplace” (Prefer and Sutton, 2010), then the employees can only concentrate on the short term leading to problem in the long term. Thus, if people make mistakes, don’t punish, give them second chance, encourage them to try new hinge -said Lubing (2007).
Finally, when employees ask for feedback or want to have a discussion about their performance, leaders should give them useful feedbacks so they can learn and improve from that. In the case of Devon and Isabella, it obviously shows that both of them are trying to provide a fair punishment and rewarding in order to motivate their followers. However, Isabella seems to be easier to sympathy with the employees since she would like to encourage them to do a job in new ways how to make them feel motivated, and have a discussion more frequently to make sure the ideas can be fully hared and willingly followed without forcing here. . Expectancy Based on Bateman and Snell (2011), expectancy “is people’s perceived likelihood that their efforts will enable them to attain their performance goals”. There are three managerial implications of expectancy theory which are crucial and will be applied in the case of Devon and Isabella: * Increase expectancies: by providing an environment that facilitates good performance, setting realistically attainable performance goals, training, support, required resources and encouragement.
All of the actions above are what Isabella – a charismatic leader does. Identify positively valet outcomes: understand what people want from the work, what they can receive from the jobs. Indeed, Isabella has always encouraged her followers to “think out of the box”. Consequently, her subordinates may have a chance to be more creative, develop their highest ability, say what they think and need. By this way, it might help them to have a clear career path, a clear purpose to work, a willing to sacrifice for the organization’s goals. Make performance instrumental toward positive outcomes: Recognize and praise for good performance, increase in pay, etc. Also, working hard and doing things ell will prevent negative results. The rewards for outstanding employees may be extrinsic as given by the boss and the company – under Devotes leadership styles, or intrinsic as derived directly from performing the job itself – under Isabella styles. However, the intrinsic rewards and the freedom to be creative are keys to innovation and it proves that Isabella will likely to provide more effective motivation to the employees.
On the other hand, Devotes employees seem to be more satisfied with their job, have trust in the leader as he always give a clear guidance and correction, and therefore have higher organizational ointment. In fact, under Devotes leadership style, people will feel fairly treated from the outcomes they receive or the processes used. They do not really have to work very hard, perform very well but they satisfy with their job and the company with employees having high job satisfaction will benefit in many ways.
For example, the organization will never face the problems of “high turnover, high absenteeism, less good citizenship, high grievances and lawsuits, strikes, stealing, sabotage and vandalism, poorer mental and physical health (causing higher job stress and insurance costs), fewer injuries, poor customer service, ND lower productivity and profits” (Bateman and Snell, 2011). Obviously, Devon always provides a fair guidance to his employees, they just need to follow and finish on time with high quality, and then the opportunity to be rewarded is equal to everyone.
He does not require people to be creative, think “out of the box” likes Isabella, so people who like a stable job for daily routine will really satisfy with Devotes leadership styles. It is so obvious that Isabella employees will be more motivated since she has democratic, relationship-motivated, achievement-oriented, charismatic and transformational leadership. As she said, being a good leader must require more than what Devon could do and not all people have abilities to be a successful leader.
Particularly, she not only follows to gives guidance to the employees and provides a fair punishment and rewarding as Devon does, but also has a vision and knows how to share it to the followers as well as inspire them in their daily work. In general, Isabella with transformational styles really has appropriate qualities to be a successful in the organization in ways of motivating employees and ensuring to achieve organizational aims. While using transactional styles will help Devon to build employees’ trust in leadership, improve satisfaction in job and commitment to organization.
Question 5: Based on their leadership styles, what type of organizational culture would Devon shape? What about Isabella? Why? The last point to be considered in this essay is about what particular organizational culture should be applied to their different styles of leadership. According to Visceral and Morrison (2008), organization culture is ‘the set of important assumptions about the organization and its goals and practices that members of the company share”. For instance, organization culture could be the way people Reese and behave, interact with each other and with customers, etc.
Culture of an organization can be classified into 2 categories which are strong culture and weak culture. In weak culture, there are several characteristics: inconsistency in value from different people, confused cooperate goals and uncertainty in the next principle to guide decisions (Scheme, 2005). Thus, there are confusion, conflict and poor performance in any organizations with weak culture. Therefore, no managers or leaders want to build a weak culture that cannot help the company in a currently competitive environment.
In contrast, strong culture an influence the way people think and behave. In an organization with strong culture, company’s goals, priorities and practices are understood and followed by all employees. So, it will be an advantage if the behaviors the organization encourages and facilities are appropriate ones. Here, both Devon and Isabella are trying to create such strong culture. On the other hand, they should concern that a strong culture in which encourages inappropriate behaviors will weaken the organization’s ability to adapt with the changes of external environment.
Besides, to merger and acquisition decision, the organizations having strong ultras should be careful as it can raise the problem of incompatible behaviors between each different culture. In concerning another dimension between the flexibility versus control and internal or external focus of the company, organizational cultures can be divided into 4 types based on the Competing- Values Models of Cultures: group culture, hierarchical culture, rational culture and autocracy. . Group culture: Group culture is a combination between flexible process and internal maintenance. Based on Hefted (2009), under group culture, instead of the rules and procedures of hierarchies, typical characteristics of this culture are marker, employee’s trust, programs involvement, and corporate commitment to employees by which the leaders raise up member’s loyalty.