Introduction
The competitive capabilities managerial leaders perpetually seek besides human potential within the walls of their own organizations. If human resources are appropriately developed, all else should fall into place or be strategically put into place by these developed human resources. The case of DGL International shows that some organizational leaders do not act as if they consider people to be their most valuable asset, despite what their formal policies say. Managerial leaders must more competitively create value for the customers of their products and services. Managerial leadership involves setting and directing the transcending organizational purpose. The appointment of John Terrill is the right decision which helps the company to identify weaknesses and problems of management.
Discussion Section
The traditional leadership paradigm thus defines leadership behavior as a composite measure of different but related activities. An examination of these activity items would suggest that the measured behaviors are not unusual activities and represent behaviors that would likely be observed on a day-to-day basis in many leader-subordinate relationships (Charan et al. 2001). The strength and need for these leadership effects on subordinate’s motivation will vary depending on the structure of the work task, the subordinate’s psychological and skill attributes, the workgroup norms, and the organization environment.
Three leadership styles can be identified: transformational leadership, democratic leadership, and situational leadership. Transactional leaders are those who “approach followers with an eye to exchanging one thing for another: jobs for votes, or subsidies for campaign contributions. Such transactions comprise the bulk of the relationships among leaders and followers, especially in groups, legislatures, and parties” (Mabey and Salaman 2003, p. 3). John Terrill exercises transformation leadership, trying to change the situation but accepting the norms and culture of the company. In this case, the transforming leader can be described as a person who recognizes an existing need for a potential follower but then moves forward, seeking to arouse and satisfy higher needs (Maslow’s need hierarchy) to engage the full person of the follower. The followers themselves may be converted into leaders. John Terrill, as a transforming leader, is seen as a father who remains friendly and treats the respondent as an equal despite the leader’s greater knowledge and experience. The leader provides a model of integrity and fairness with people as well as being one who sets clear and high standards of performance (Price, 2004). The case study shows that a leader should follow different leadership styles in order to solve the problems faced by the organization. Following Segriovanni and Glickman (2006), the supervisor’s leadership behavior can be represented as a time series of stimulus events for the subordinate where the intensity of specific events and the frequency of events may vary in different dyads. When an active leader demonstrates an intensely satisfying or dissatisfying behavior, the strength of the subordinate’s opponent process will dampen the hedonic disturbance and quickly return the subordinate to an equilibrium position derived from the normal leadership experiences with that supervisor.
John Terrill uses some principles of democratic leadership, asking employees about ideas and wants problems, and conflicting situations. As a democratic leader, John Terrill studies the situation and makes the final decision. He encourages followers with advice, help, support, recognition, and openness. He gives followers a sense of confidence in his intellect yet is a good listener. He seeks others’ highest good, treats others with dignity, shows respect for others and genuine interest in them. He also is seen to be firm and to reprimand when necessary, to give autonomy to followers, to encourage self-development of followers, to be participative, to be willing to teach followers, and to mix easily socially with followers (Segriovanni and Glickman 2006). He could be formal at work and be firm and reprimand if necessary. Situational leadership traits are evident as John Terrill uses different leadership styles according to the situation. He is informal and close to his employees but formal to the top management. Such a leader could be counted on to stand up for his followers. Frequent reactions of followers to the leader included trust, strong liking, admiration, loyalty, and respect. Ethical dimensions involve fair treatment of employees and evaluations of their problems and conflicts. A fairly common reaction is the feeling that one wants to try to satisfy the leader’s expectations of the follower and to give the leader all the support asked for (Schien, 1996). As a manager, John Terrill can be found who fits the description of a person to whom followers form a deep emotional attachment and who in turn inspire their followers to transcend his own interests for superordinate goals, for goals higher in level than previously recognized by the followers. There are even bureaucratic leaders whose competence and good connections, whose ability to mobilize and husband resources, keep their eyes on the bigger issues, take risks required for “creative administration,” give them credit to arouse in their subordinates faith and trust in the leader (Summers and Smith 2006).
John Terrill behaves like a real transformational leader trying to resolve the situation and protect his employees. A decision to show top management an enormous stack of reports is the best one because it will help John Terrill and top management to understand the problem and introduce a new form of reporting. Although the general model involves both contextual (situational) and person-related information, categories at the same vertical level are related by the resemblance principle, which may cause perceivers to overemphasize the similarity between the basic leaders while minimizing situational differences in the function they fulfill (Topping, 2002). Thus, leadership may be viewed as a dispositional factor that generalizes across situations. In short, leader perceptions based on subordinate-level categories may provide an efficient way to process information relevant to needed judgments in a given context. Though cognitively economical, this heuristic is not necessarily optimal. Since the leader prototype would be extracted from common characteristics of managers exhibiting leadership, it may include many characteristics irrelevant to performing required managerial functions (Mabey and Salaman 2003). This result is easily understood if judgments concerning successful middle managers were based, in part, on comparisons to prototypes extracted from the predominantly male population. Thus, behavioral dimensions or traits which are prototypical of the same categories may be difficult for respondents to separate when describing others. Thus, behavioral dimensions on traits that are prototypical of the same categories may be difficult for respondents to separate when describing others (Zaccaro and Klimoski 2001).
John Terrill’s leadership vividly portrays that managerial leadership consists of managers leading purposeful, value contributing organizations and providing the means of achieving the purpose by improving strategic position. The interpersonal leadership processes of influence, inspiration, guidance, and direction are clearly important to managerial leaders and managers of all levels of the organization. Interpersonal and social leaders will be necessary for managerial leaders and managers to sustain their efforts to manage suprasystems that create value for customers (Mabey and Salaman 2003). Managerial leadership focuses the manager’s efforts on the task of managing the effectiveness and efficiency of strategic suprasystems, and thereby creating customer-valued outcomes. Providing strategic focus and equipping organizational suprasystems to enable organizational members to succeed in creating value for customers constitute the backbone of managerial leadership.
Conclusion
In sum, leadership styles used by John Terrill allow him to lead the organization to (1) the appropriate purpose, that is, best net customer value, (2) knowledge of what customers value, and (3) creating, providing, and improving the means of achieving that purpose. Within this context, the tasks of managers are subordinate to and necessarily congruent with the tasks of managerial leaders. Managerial leaders determine what customers value, identify the strategic suprasystems that create that value, and in conjunction with managers, assess, standardize and improve these suprasystems. The goal of an aligned team of managerial leaders and managers is to ensure the competitive future of the organization by creating value for the customer of its products and services.
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