Leadership Within All Types of Organizations, Essay Example

Abstract

Leadership within all types of organizations requires leadership and management in multiple facets.  Leadership is the ability to drive change, promote organizational growth, develop strategic intent and assign accountability throughout the organization.  There are multiple tactics and cultural influences including leader, organization and change-centric focus within each sector, all three of which have different positive and negative aspects.  Leadership within these sectors is dependent upon the needs of the organization and the capabilities of the leadership implementing the public stewardship.  Change management falls into the area of responsibility of those in charge of the success of the organization.

Change Management

Management is the activities and skills to coordinate the efforts of those within the organization, either directly or indirectly assigned to the manager, to accomplish the goals and objectives of the organization.  Management is the human interaction within a business system to utilize the limited resources of capital, time, technology, human resources and physical resources to generate an outcome for the business.  The key focus of the management role is to align those limited resources to the appropriate tasks and activities to meet the goals and objectives of the function they are currently managing while also aligning their goals and objectives with those priorities of the managers up the hierarchical chain of command.Leadership is what will drive change and new processes as well as methodologies that will take business, government and other entities to the next level of performance and goal achievement (Kotter, 2012).Leadership is used to push change, drive results and increase capability.

There are multiple ways to implement change within an organization but there are three commonly used core change management techniques and strategies.  The three include forced change, educative change and rational or individual’s self-interest.  These three do have proven track records of implementing change but as with many choices there are positives and negatives associated with the choices.  The forced strategy evokes a feeling of a direct order, similar to the stereotypical military order where an officer gives a direct order to his or her subordinate and they follow that order to reach an objective.  This is a one way directive with little to no feedback from those carrying out the order.  The advantage is a direct and concise order that implicitly directs those to a specific goal.  The disadvantage is a high potential for resistance and the commitment to the effort could be low.  The educative change management technique includes providing information to those involved and gradually gaining their concerted effort to move forward.  This effort is strenuous and time consuming but since those adopting the change are doing so on their own freewill, the commitment for adoption is high.  Lastly there is that of self-preservation or self-interest which the change is focused on a personal advantage for those adopting the change.  If the change can be focused on an individual level for personal interest the change can be implemented in a relatively easy manner.

Within the role of leader, change management formulates a unique opportunity to promote growth and expansion, redirect misguided efforts and work on a process of continual improvement for people and the organization (Atkinson, 2014).  There are different aspects of change management including business operation changes, tool changes and cultural changes.  All of which have their own unique tactics for successful implementation.Leading and managing change can be a daunting task and the leadership of the organization must drive the culture as a change agent.  Change management is the process of transitioning people, places, things, processes, inputs, outputs or an assortment of other variables that impact the business to a new and desired end state.  The change management process follows the process of creating a change, requesting change, approval of the change, communication of the change, implementation of the change and sustainment of the change.  No matter how large or how small the change should go through some varying degree of that process.  Larger changes or changes that impact a breadth of areas would focus not only on the core area that is changing but all the change that will result in the other depending or impacted areas.  As a leader and a catalyst of change, the transformational stewardship builds trust, empowers the people, shares power and builds the teams throughout the organization (Kee and Newcomer, 2008).

References

Atkinson, C. (2014). Managing for excellence in the public and nonprofit sectors. Florida Atlantic University.

Kee, J.E. and Newcomer, K. E. (2008). Transforming public and non-profit organizations: stewardship for leading change.  Management Concepts.

Kotter, J. (2012). Leading change. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.