Introduction
OrgX is a global architectural company. Because of its long history and dedication to innovation, OrgX has become a pioneer in the architectural sector. The company’s primary goal is to produce effective, visually beautiful, and sustainable solutions tailored to its clients’ specific requirements. Projects by OrgX cover a range of industries, including residential, commercial, healthcare, and education, demonstrating its depth of knowledge and versatility. The company is devoted to improving the communities it supports.
OrgX designs each project with the community’s requirements and future expansion in mind. Beyond the physical structures it builds, OrgX is committed to environmental sustainability, working to reduce the environmental impact of its projects and encourage environmentally friendly business practices. Additionally, OrgX emphasizes cooperation and teamwork a lot. It thinks a collaborative approach, including many viewpoints and specialties, produces the finest architectural results. The firm’s project teams are cooperative, permeating its interactions with clients, stakeholders, and the broader community.
Leadership Practices
Transactional Leadership
The Office Director at OrgX practices transactional leadership, which is defined by a different system of incentives and sanctions to encourage workers. This management strategy is predicated on an exchange process in which workers are expected to perform to a given level and are then rewarded or penalized depending on their output (Jensen et al., 2019). The Office Director in OrgX employs a variety of awards to recognize and promote exceptional performance. These benefits may be observable, like bonuses or promotions, or intangible, like increased duties or acknowledgment in the public. For instance, employees who routinely achieve project deadlines or surpass customer expectations can be given a bonus or the chance to head a project.
Conversely, the Office Director also uses penalties to ensure the organization’s standards and procedures are followed. Suppose an employee does not fulfill their performance goals or breaks corporate rules. In that case, they might receive punishments, including verbal or written warnings, promotions, or, in extreme circumstances, termination.
For instance, an employee could receive a notification or be dismissed from the project team if they routinely fail to follow project timeframes. Although this method might help keep things in order and ensure that tasks are completed, it can also foster a culture of fear and conformity rather than creativity and innovation. Therefore, the Office Director’s transactional leadership style significantly affects the productivity and morale of the OrgX staff.
Myopic Vision
The Office Director at OrgX’s leadership style is myopic or shortsighted. This myopia appears as a concentration on urgent issues and duties, frequently at the expense of long-term strategic planning and creative thinking (Sankaridurg et al., 2021). This strategy can effectively perform critical responsibilities, but also restricts the team’s and organization’s capacity for growth and development.
For example, the Office Director’s narrow perspective may result in missed chances for innovation. Keeping up with current design trends, technology, and sustainable practices in the fast-paced, always-changing architecture industry is essential. However, a myopic CEO can fail to make R&D investments or motivate staff to investigate and apply novel ideas, causing the company to lag behind its rivals.
A shortsighted leader could also make inadequate plans. This may entail failing to create a succession plan, foreseeing market shifts, or not investing in employee training. For instance, the Office Director’s blinkeredness may prevent staff from having the chance to advance professionally, which could impede their development and result in lower job satisfaction and higher turnover rates.
Indecisiveness
The Office Director at OrgX has exhibited a propensity for indecision, significantly impacting the staff and the company. Decision-making delays, uncertainty, and a team’s decreased effectiveness and production can all be caused by indecisive leadership (Caemmerer et al., 2021). Decisions made by the Office Director in the context of OrgX are frequently delayed due to their indecision, which can cause delays in project schedules and workflow. For instance, if the team’s leader cannot make a swift decision on a design proposal or a project direction, it may result in delays that harm not only the productivity of the team but also customer satisfaction and the company’s image.
Additionally, a leader’s indecision might foster an atmosphere of uncertainty. Confusion, irritation, and a lack of direction can result from team members not knowing what decision will be taken or when it will happen. Employees may become unmotivated, and morale may drop, reducing production (Caemmerer et al., 2021). Additionally, being indecisive might make it more difficult for the leader to assign work efficiently. Without clear decisions, delegating tasks and establishing expectations for team members can be difficult, resulting in inefficiencies and misunderstandings.
Impact on Organizational Culture
At OrgX, the office director’s leadership styles have had a considerable impact on the organizational culture, resulting in a setting characterized by favoritism, prejudice, and conflict. These procedures have hurt the team’s morale and production as well as the organization’s general state of health. Under the present leader, favoritism is a significant problem in the corporate culture. It has been seen that the office director treats some employees more favorably than others, frequently those with whom she has a personal connection.
Favoritism may take many forms, such as giving preferred staff the first pick of the projects or giving them extra perks (Maltseva, 2020). For instance, while saying that contract workers would have to pay for parking, the leader gave a new contract worker, a personal acquaintance, a free parking card. Other workers feel treated unfairly due to this apparent partiality, breeds resentment and discontent.
Another critical problem is prejudice; it affects how the leader interacts and makes choices, and results in the unjust treatment of some personnel. Some employees may feel devalued or neglected due to this prejudice, which might harm their performance and job happiness. The leader’s partiality and prejudice have also sparked disputes within the company. Employees who believe they are receiving unfair treatment may become irate, resulting in friction and conflicts within the team. This disagreement can undermine workplace harmony, impede teamwork, and reduce output.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths
- Expertise and Reputation: OrgX is proud to have a team of highly qualified individuals with extensive experience in various architectural fields. Due to the type of abilities available, the company can handle a wide range of projects while meeting the demands of various clients. Additionally, OrgX has developed a solid name in the sector for its cutting-edge and eco-friendly designs. This reputation increases its credibility and allure to potential clients and partners.
- Global Presence: OrgX operates worldwide and has access to various markets. This strengthens the firm’s capacity to develop and adjust to various customer needs and market demands and enables it to rely on international trends and practices.
Weaknesses
- Leadership Issues: OrgX’s current office director’s leadership style has posed several difficulties. Her transactional mindset, narrow perspective, and indecision have produced a culture of prejudice, strife, and favoritism. These problems might damage the company’s performance and image if not resolved. They have also had a detrimental influence on staff morale and productivity.
- Lack of Innovation: The company’s innovation ability has been constrained by the leader’s narrow perspective and attention to urgent tasks. The capacity to innovate and change with emerging trends and technology is essential in an industry that is quickly developing, such as architecture. The absence of an emphasis on innovation may eventually hurt OrgX’s ability to compete.
Opportunities
- Sustainability: The architectural sector increasingly needs environmentally friendly and sustainable designs. By increasing its investments in sustainable techniques and establishing itself as a pioneer in sustainable architecture, OrgX can profit from this trend.
- Technology Integration: An untapped area for OrgX is using technology in architectural design, such as VR and AI. Adopting these technologies might improve its design capabilities, increase client engagement, and acquire a competitive edge.
Threats
- Competitive Market: The architectural sector is highly competitive, with many businesses providing comparable services. OrgX risks losing its competitive advantage and market share if it does not solve its leadership problems and innovate.
- Economic Instability: The architectural sector is vulnerable to economic changes. Economic turbulence or instability may result in a decline in the demand for architectural services, endangering OrgX’s income and expansion.
Leadership Evaluation
Strengths
Despite her flaws, the Office Director at OrgX does have specific leadership skills, especially when seen through the prism of Transactional Leadership theory. This idea strongly emphasizes the value of organized work, distinct lines of authority, and incentives like rewards and penalties (Jensen et al., 2019). However, it is crucial to remember that although these advantages might support the business’s productivity and organization, excessive dependence on transactional leadership can also stifle creativity and employee engagement. Some of the shortcomings in the Office Director’s leadership style may be addressed by combining this strategy with aspects of transformational leadership.
- Clear Expectations: Setting clear expectations is one of the Office Director’s talents. She gives her staff clear directives and sets definite objectives in keeping with the transactional leadership approach. Employee understanding of expectations is aided by this clarity, which can increase productivity and lessen misunderstanding. Additionally, it permits a clear foundation for performance evaluation, a crucial component of transactional leadership.
- Reward System: The Office Director actively motivates staff members with prizes. She rewards exceptional achievement with both material prizes, like bonuses or promotions, and intangible benefits, like praise from others. The transactional leadership strategy of rewarding employees fits with this practice (Jensen et al., 2019). When done equitably, recognizing and praising their efforts may raise staff morale and productivity.
- Maintaining Order: The Office Director’s transactional management style contributes to the preservation of organization-wide order. She ensures policies are followed, which helps maintain an organized and tidy workplace. This is especially useful in the profession of architecture, where following rules and regulations is essential to the practical completion of projects.
Weaknesses
The Office Director at OrgX demonstrates certain qualities of transactional leadership. Still, when examined from this perspective, her leadership style also has several apparent flaws. These problems have a detrimental effect on the team and the company and undermine the foundational ideas of transactional leadership.
- Overemphasis on Punishment: An incentive and sanction-based system is a component of transactional leadership. The Office Director, however, seems to emphasize the issue of punishment too much. Instead of encouraging a supportive, collaborative work atmosphere, this strategy may develop a culture of fear and conformity. Employees may become more concerned with staying out of trouble than with coming up with new ideas or taking chances, which can impede innovation and growth.
- Lack of Personalized Feedback: In transactional leadership, feedback is frequently given based on performance results. However, the Office Director’s strategy seems to lack the kind of tailored criticism that would enable staff members to develop. Feedback in a transactional system often takes the form of a reward for achieving goals or a penalty for failing to do so. This strategy may ignore the subtleties of a person’s performance and pass up chances for coaching and improvement.
- Favoritism and Bias: Favoritism and prejudice displayed by the Office Director represent a substantial departure from the values of transactional leadership, which strongly emphasize fairness and consistency in the administration of rewards and penalties. The leader undermines the merit-based model that transactional leadership is predicated on by giving some employees preferential treatment. This can eventually affect the productivity and effectiveness of the team by causing individuals who believe they are being treated unjustly to lose motivation and morale.
Recommendations
To improve the effectiveness of the Office Director at OrgX, the following recommendations are proposed, each relating to the Transactional Leadership theory:
Balance Rewards and Punishments. The office director should try to balance the use of incentives and sanctions in her leadership style. While consequences can stop bad conduct, placing too much focus on this component might harm the workplace atmosphere. To inspire workers, the leader should put more emphasis on rewarding good behavior (Schuckert et al., 2018). This fits with the transactional leadership tenet of rewarding workers to motivate them. The manager may, for instance, put in place a more formalized recognition program that often recognizes the efforts and accomplishments of staff members. As a result, the organization can experience an uptick in morale, motivation, and corporate culture.
Provide Constructive Feedback. The team leader needs to provide her team members with more constructive, individualized comments. The leader should give feedback on employees’ performance, stressing areas of strength and pointing out the potential for improvement, rather than only concentrating on whether goals are achieved (Schuckert et al., 2018). Employees may learn how to improve with the aid of this strategy, which is advantageous for both their personal growth and the effectiveness of the team as a whole. Giving feedback based on performance results is a transactional leadership principle that is related to this suggestion. However, it also offers a level of customization and usefulness that could improve the efficacy of the comments.
Promote Fairness and Consistency. The Office Director has to change her leadership style to address the concerns of prejudice and partiality. She should make sure that incentives and penalties are given out regularly and equitably, based on work results rather than interpersonal relationships. This can entail putting in place more impartial procedures for evaluating performance or getting input from a variety of sources before deciding whether to give awards or sanctions. Promoting justice and consistency is consistent with the merit-based system’s transactional leadership philosophy (Jensen et al., 2019). The leader may boost morale, build trust, and raise the efficacy of her leadership by making sure that everyone is treated equitably.
Future Leadership Development
The Office Director at OrgX should commit to lifelong learning to keep current on the most recent leadership theories and techniques for future leadership growth. This can entail taking part in leadership workshops, reading pertinent books, or registering for online classes, among other things. She should also support candid feedback from her staff and utilize this input to reflect on her performance and make improvements. Working with a mentor or coach might also be advantageous, giving her direction, encouragement, and a different viewpoint as she faces obstacles and learns new abilities (Schuckert et al., 2018).
The Office Director should also think about creating a plan for leadership development. This plan should set forth her leadership objectives and the methods she will employ to accomplish them. It should be constantly evaluated and revised to account for her development and changing circumstances. These actions will help OrgX succeed and expand overall while also enhancing the efficacy of her leadership.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the Office Director at OrgX displays a transactional leadership style defined by a compensation structure, an emphasis on upholding order, and clear expectations. Although these advantages boost the company’s operational effectiveness, they are significantly outweighed by disadvantages. A work climate characterized by fear, a lack of creativity, and a sense of injustice has been produced by the leader’s overemphasis on punishment, lack of customized feedback, and practice of favoritism and bias. These problems have harmed the team’s overall productivity, personnel morale, and organizational culture.
According to OrgX’s SWOT analysis, the company has several strengths, including its knowledge, standing, and worldwide presence. The company does, however, have some significant flaws, notably in the area of leadership. In addition to fostering prejudice and conflict, the current leadership approaches have resulted in squandered possibilities for innovation. OrgX still has untapped potential in the areas of sustainability and technological integration, which might help it become more competitive in the architectural sector despite these obstacles. However, a very competitive business and probable economic upheaval may present dangers to the company.
Several suggestions have been made to enhance the performance of the existing leader and the general health of the business. These include distributing constructive criticism, encouraging fairness and consistency, and balancing incentives and penalties. By implementing these suggestions, the leader could better overcome some of her flaws, increase her effectiveness, and foster a happier and more successful work environment.
The examination of OrgX and the study of the Office Director’s leadership styles offer critical new perspectives on how leadership affects an organization. It emphasizes how crucial strong leadership is to establishing a company’s culture, inspiring workers, and ensuring its success. The transactional leadership style used by the Office Director has advantages. Still, it also has some serious flaws that must be fixed.
The leader may increase her effectiveness and help OrgX succeed by taking a more impartial and balanced stance, offering helpful criticism, and encouraging innovation. Effective leadership is essential in the dynamic and cutthroat world of architecture. Leaders must be able to inspire their groups, create a supportive workplace, and direct their teams and organizations toward their goals. Leaders can ensure they effectively serve their teams and organizations by regularly assessing and enhancing their leadership techniques.
References
Caemmerer, B., Goerne, J., & Mulki, J. P. (2021). Consequences of managerial indecisiveness. International Journal of Bank Marketing. Web.
Jensen, U. T., Andersen, L. B., Bro, L. L., Bøllingtoft, A., Eriksen, T. L. M., Holten, A. L., & Würtz, A. (2019). Conceptualizing and measuring transformational and transactional leadership. Administration & Society, 51(1), 3-33. Web.
Maltseva, K. (2020). Wearables in the workplace: The brave new world of employee engagement. Business Horizons, 63(4), 493-505. Web.
Sankaridurg, P., Tahhan, N., Kandel, H., Naduvilath, T., Zou, H., Frick, K. D., & Resnikoff, S. (2021). IMI impact of myopia. Investigative ophthalmology & visual science, 62(5). Web.
Schuckert, M., Kim, T. T., Paek, S., & Lee, G. (2018). Motivate to innovate: How authentic and transformational leaders influence employees’ psychological capital and service innovation behavior. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 30(2). Web.