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Leadership and Followers within Organization

Written/Submitted by Paulino Oshong
Category: English Articles
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leadership
Introduction
The experience of leadership and fellowship is powerful and simple- almost primitive. but understanding the meaning of it all and working out what to do about it is not so simple.

Things don?t happen by themselves; a goal without action plan is just a wish! If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.


The true power of any organization is the communities within them. The true disappointment of organization is the treatment of their people.

Critical leadership knows that people are the organization. They move with the vital connections.

Ordinary members within the organization know what is best for their organization, what is needed most.

Much has been written about leadership, I have tried to read some of it. I have come to the conclusion that the leadership needs to be examined from a variety of angles, here are some:
1. Human Behavior within organization
2. Authority and Power within organization
3. The Structure, Process, Culture, Design, and Development of organization
4. The Ethics, and Politics (Games, strategies and tactics) within organization
5. Communication channels within organization
6. Conflicts within organization
7. Decision ?Making processes discipline within organization.
Human Behavior within organization
The efficiency of any organization is influenced wholly by human behavior. The relationships among individuals and groups in organization generate expectations for the behavior of individuals. These expectations result in certain roles that must be performed. Some people must perform leadership roles, while others must play the roles of followers.

Authority and power within organization

Organization has systems of authority, status, and power, and people in organization have varying needs from each system. Groups in organization also have impact on individual behavior and on organizational performance. A person?s behavior in any situation involves the interaction of his or her personal characteristics and characteristics of the situation.
  • A leader is a source of help and guidance
  • A leader has a power to influence others
  • Power is the ability to get someone to do something you want done or make things happen in the way you want them to happen
  • Leader drive power from both organizational and individual sources
  • There are at least five different types of power can be used by a leader:
    • Legitimate power: leaders gained power and authority through their positions within organization.
    • Expertise power: from leader?s knowledge, aptitude and ability
    • Reward power: leader has opportunity and control of resources, either to give or withhold things wanted by others. A leader can use reward power well to reinforce effective behavior or can use it badly to manipulate the behavior of others.
    • Coercive power: held when a leader forces others to behave in certain ways.
    • Consultative power: based on a ability to search for information, seek advice from others and make plan with others.
  • Leader can use every type of power or a mixture of them
  • Power and influence can flow from the bottom to the top in an organization.
  • Lower levels can have significant power because of expertise, location, and access and control of information.
  • Some lower levels acquire power through persuasion and manipulation skills.
Leadership styles
1. Authoritarian leader: direct others.
2. Participative leader: share decision-making.
3. Laissez-faire leader: let others direct their own activities. There is no one best way to lead- a leader with any of these styles can be an effective leader.

The Structure, Process, of Organization

An organization?s structure is the formal pattern of how its people and jobs are grouped. Processes are activities that give life to the organization?s structure. Communication, decision-making, and organization development are examples of processes in organization. Sometime, understanding process problems such as breakdown in communication and decision-making will result in a more accurate understanding of organizational behavior than will simply examining structural arrangements.

The Culture of Organization

The pattern of basic assumptions used by individuals and groups to deal with organization and its environment is called its culture. The organization?s culture is personality, the atmosphere, or the ?feel? of the enterprise; a solid?s culture results in shared thoughts, feelings, and talk about the organization. Culture of organization can be positive or negative. An enterprise culture is positive if it contributes to improvement of productivity. A negative culture can hinder behavior, disrupt group effectiveness, and hamper the impact of a well-designed organization

Organizational design

Organizational design refers to managerial decisions that conclude the structure and process that coordinate and control the works of the organization. The result of organizational design is a system of jobs and work groups, comprising the processes that bond hem. These union processes?, including authority relationships and communication networks as well as certain planning and controlling techniques.


Organization development

Organization development is a planned, managed, systemic process to change the culture, systems and behavior of an organization, in order to improve the organization?s effectiveness in solving its problems and achieving its objectives. There are three sub- objectives of organization development
1. Changing in attitudes or values
2. Modifying behavior
3. Changing structure and policy.


Ethics, politics within organization

Politics is present in all organizations and that some individuals are very adapt at political behavior. These adapt politicians as playing games. Here are some games that adapt politicians engage in:
1. Sponsorship game: a person attaches himself or herself to someone with power. The sponsor is typically the person?s boss or someone else with higher power and status. Typically, individuals attach themselves to someone who is on the move. A few rules are involved in playing this games:
i. The person must be able to show commitment and loyalty to the sponsor.
ii. The person must be follow each sponsor ?initiated request or order
iii. The person must stay in the background and give the sponsor credit for everything.
iv. The person must be thankful and display gratitude to the sponsor.
2. Insurgency game: Resist authority
3. Counterinsurgency: Counter the resistance to authority
4. Coalition ?building game: forming an alliance or coalition with others (Build power bases)
5. Line versus: Defeat rivals
6. Whistle blow game: Effect organizational change

Political strategies and tactics:
Individuals and subunits continually engage in political behavior.
Political behavior mean:
1. Behavior that is usually outside the legitimate recognized power system.
2. Behavior that is designed to benefit an individual or subunit, often at the expense of the organization in general
.3. Behavior that is intentional and is designed to acquire and maintain power.

Political tactics:
1. Rule evasion: evading the formal producers in the organization
.2. Personal ?political: using friendships to facilitate
3. Educational: attempting to persuade
4. Organizational: attempting to change the formal or informal interaction between net workers.

Using the power in organization

Power is used within the formal boundaries of a leader?s authority and within the framework of organizational policies, job descriptions, procedures, and goals; it is really nonpolitical power and most likely does not involve ethical issues. But the use of power outside the bounds of formal authority, politics, procedures, job descriptions and organizational goals is political in nature and ethical issues are likely to be present. Recently, researchers have developed a framework that allows a leader to integrate ethics into political behavior. Researchers recommend that a leader?s behavior must satisfy certain criteria to be considered ethical:
1. Utilitarian outcome: the leader?s behavior results in the optimal satisfaction of people both inside and outside the organization. In other words, it results in the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
2. Individual rights: the leader?s behavior respects the rights of all affected parties. In other words. It respects basic human rights of free consent, free speech, and freedom of conscience, privacy, and due process.
3. Distributive justice: the leader?s behavior respects the rules of justice. It does not treat people arbitrarily but rather equitably and fairly.

Communication channels within organization

1. Downward communication: flows from individuals in higher levels of the hierarchy to those in lower levels in organization. The most common forms of this communication channel are:
a. Policy statements
b. Instructions,
c. Official memos,
d. Procedures,
e. Manuals,
f. And publications.

2. Upward communication: flowing from lower to higher levels in an organization; includes suggesting boxes, group meetings, and grievance produces. It is the most effective one. Upper ?levels frequently don?t reply to messages sent from lower ?level and lower levels often are unwilling to communicate upward.
3. Horizontal: flows across functions in organization; necessary for coordinating and integrating diverse organizational functions.
4. Diagonal communication: cuts across functions and levels in an organization; it is necessary when members cannot communicate through other channels. It is most efficient in terms of effort and time for org.

Conflict within organization
Everyone experiences conflict at some time. Conflict can be positive or negative and occur within organization whenever two people, teams or groups have different:
1. Vision
2. Goals
3. Facts
4. Methods
5. Values
6. Wants.

Levels of conflict1
. Discomfort: a feeling that things are not quite right.
2. An incident: emotions are not running high yet, but something has come between the people worried.
3. Misunderstanding: An interfering relationship between two parties in conflict.
4. Tension: people feel anxious about talking, working, or coming in contact with each other.
5. Crisis: negative attitudes and negative responses.

Mapping the conflict
A map is a useful way to identifying the CAUSE of the conflict. The map allows you to see:
1. The whole picture of the conflic
t2. Your perception of the conflict
3. The other person?s perception and the issues involved.

Conflict resolution
Communication is essential in conflict resolution. We learned to respond to the conflict early in our childhood. These responses become habits and reactions, which we tend to use without, thought in our adult life. By recognizing early behavior patterns and by learning new ways to manage conflict we can sometimes avoid repeating the conflicts of the past and respond more appropriately. And here are some techniques used to resolve conflict.

Type Purpose Behavior Outcome
Fight To be in control and defend a position Aggressive I win- you lose
Flight To escape the situation and its outcome Submissive I lose-you win
Flow To acknowledge the situation and respond appropriately Assertive I win- you win
Source:1. The Conflict Resolution Network, Chatswood, NSW, Australia, www.crnhg.org.
Assertive behavior: builds the mutual respect.
Aggressive behavior: humiliating others
.Submissive behavior: unable to advocate their point of view and ignore their needs and luck self-respect.


Personal negotiation skills in conflict resolution

Personal negotiation styles can help or hinder conflict resolution. Whenever people come together to negotiate, they bring their own personal styles, and these affect the way they communicate and handling negotiation and conflict. Following are personal negotiation skills
1. Self- denying: this type of people may be difficult to negotiate with, as they are shy and reserved with information, especially criticism. They hide their feelings and ideas from others
.2. Self- protecting: they use diversionary tactics such as discussion other people or sidetracking to other issues in order to hide their true feelings and their ideas.
3. Self ?exposing: they wish to be the centre of attention.
4. Self- bargaining: this type of people will show their feelings and ideas if you show yours first.
5. Self ? actualizing: they are ideal negotiators, as they want information and feedback from others.



Decision ?Making Processes

Types of decision:There are two types of decisions
1. Programmed decisions: specific procedures developed for repetitive and routine problems
2. Non-programmed decisions: are novel and unstructured. No established procedure exists for handling the problems.

Punishment and discipline within organization

Punishment: presenting an uncomfortable consequence for a particular behavior response or removing a desirable reinforcer because of a particular behavior response. Manager can punish by application or removal.

Discipline: the use of some form of punishment or sanction when employee deviates from rules or procedures because analysis and discussion of work motivation in any organizational management focus primarily on eliciting desired behavior and performance.

References
1. Organizations ,by James L. Gibson, Kincaid Professor, College of Business and Economics-University of Kentucky
2. John M. Ivancevich, Professor of Organization Behavior and Management-University of Houston, James H. Donnelley, Jr. Turner Professor, Collage of Business and Economics-University of Kentucky
3. Roses and Rust (Redefining the essence of leadership in a new age), by David Clancy and Robert webber.
4. The business communication handbook by Judith Dwyer, 6th edition, Australia, www.prenhall.com/dwyer_au. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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