Aspects of Guiding and Leading a Group, Essay Example

Abstract

Leadership encompasses many aspects of guiding and leading a group of individuals to obtain a certain goal or objective.  Within the leadership process there is a need to monitor and control the team through management.  This includes planning, increasing awareness of challenges, forecast potential impacts to the organization’s health, create objectives for the team to achieve and ultimately guide and direct the team to achieve those goals and objectives.  During the process there is also a need for the controlling function of the team to have an evaluation and redirection capability that the leader must evaluate and implement.  Leadership is the ability to drive change, promote organizational growth, develop strategic intent and assign accountability throughout the organization.

Strategic Leadership

Leadership and management are linked together and are very complementary but they are not the same thing. Leadership is inspiring, motivating and guiding while managing is coordinating, organizing and administering.  Leadership can be described as “management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” This simple statement places the emphasis on how leadership is more than accomplishing goals and objectives but how those achievements are obtained and implemented while also imparting guidance and strategic intent throughout the process.  Within the role of a leader, the objectives are to monitor and control the organization to reach certain goals and objectives.  This is done through influence and guidance.  There are four distinct areas in which a leader must take an active role in order to optimally perform their duties.  These include planning, organizing, leading and controlling the management process.

Within the role of a leader in a management position, there are five core components which include planning, organizing, motivating, staffing and controlling.  Each of these areas has their own critical success criteria and a variety of ways to accomplish their intended results.  Within the controlling function there are four basic steps and objectives to encapsulate the controlling function.  Leadership’s ability to plan, organization, motivates and staffs the organization are critical but if there is not a level of controlling and guidance the strategic intent of the organization could be lost in differing purposes.  The controlling function is a way to monitor, grow and define the key performance indicators for the organization.  The four areas include the establishment of performance standards, measuring individual and group performance, compare the realized results with the expected results and ultimately taking action to eliminate the gaps in performance or establish other goals to increase the reach of the organization.  The goal of the manager is to manage the specific, tactical and operational functions underneath his or her span of control (Zaleznik, 2008).  The manager will more than likely be compared and appraised upon how well he met the metrics established for his group.  Establishing the performance standards, for example, includes alignment of goals and objectives of each level of the organization with the strategic plans of the senior leadership and driving the individuals with measurable goals.  The metrics of the organization will drive the behavior of the organization.  Staffing of the teams is an art of mixing talent, limited resources and organizational needs.  The staffing of the organization is balancing the resources, projects and organizational structure to successfully implement the right activities to accomplish the performance standards.  Leading those efforts is an active role by those in the leadership positions throughout the organization to guide and direct the resources and fall hand-in-hand with the controlling or evaluation of progress that is occurring within each tactical implementation (Zenger, 2009).

Leadership represents the ability to guide a group of individuals with initially separate and distinct goals into a concerted and synergistic focus toward the same objective.  The foundation for a successful leader come in a variety of skillsets and abilities but the common foundation of the leaders remains a constant (Forester, 2011). This foundation is the ability to lead a group of individuals while not only focusing on obtaining the goals and objectives in which they are in charge of but also building the relationships between themselves, the organization in which they are leading and the followers that are providing the vessel in which to achieve their visionIn essence, leadership is the ability to guide and direct while management is ensuring tasks are completed, checklists are checked and criteria for tollgates are accomplished.  This is a critical component to managing the four areas of the controlling function.

References

Forester, N. (2011).Maximum Performance: a practical guide to leading and managing people at work. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Zaleznik, A. (2008)Managers and leaders: are they different? Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Review.

Zenger, J. H., & Folkman, J.. (2009). The extraordinary leader, turning good managers into great leaders. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Professional.