Table of Contents
Introduction
Behavior of a leader can lead to them being effective or ineffective in performing their roles. For a leader to be effective, they need to master relevant skills, behavior and style of leadership. Personal values, cognitive abilities and experiences also play a significant role in the development of effective leadership (Bruno & Lay, 2008). Bruno and Lay (2008) also state that the effectiveness of the leader depends on the relevance of the leadership style to the situation. The synthesis of the leadership behavior as depicted by different authors involves the analysis of five peer-reviewed journal articles. These articles include Garcia-Morales, Jimenez-Barrionuevo, and Gutierrez-Gutierrez (2012); Malik (2012); Saxena (2014); Khan (2010); and Reb, Narayanan, and Chaturvedi (2014). Although the five articles focus on different issues, there are various common themes in all of the articles. These themes include creative leadership, transformational leadership, and change management. The paper will analyze different themes as discussed in above-mentioned journal articles.
Common Themes
Creative Leadership
Leadership does not follow prescribed rules, nor is it founded on experiment and results. It emanates from the creativity and skills of the leader. The leader’s creativity enables them to think outside the box, which allows them to perform unconventional actions in order to attain their goals regardless of the situation. Creativity in leadership also entails the ability of an individual to understand and make use of their skills and abilities. The leader has to visualize the final product that they would like to attain and work with the abilities of their team in order to realize the vision. Creative leadership is related to the establishment of a climate that would foster the individuals’ innate creativity, which would result in the formation of leaders with the skills that enable them to solve problems using a convenient and innovative approach (Trilling & Fadel, 2009).
Puccio, Murdock, and Mance (2011) define creativity as making something that is useful and innovative. Consequentially, creative leadership can be defined as the deliberate imagination of a leader aimed at influencing the work environment in order to overcome a situation and achieve intended results (Puccio et al., 2011). Creativity in leadership is an essential factor necessary for the leader during the tempestuous times in the organization. Garcia-Morales et al. (2012) bring up the concept of creative leadership in their discussion of the innovative skills of leaders. Innovation involves dealing with the situation based on the ideas generated by the leader in order to find a solution. Garcia-Morales et al. (2012) state that the act of creating a new process or product requires innovativeness, which should be introduced to the organizational environment in order to improve the performance. Malik (2012) also discusses the concept of creativity in leadership through the description of the leaders’ innovativeness, and the ways of dealing with different situations. It is the need to deal with emerging situations that motivates the leaders to be creative.
Malik (2012) adds that the team that a leader has to work with has varied competencies, but it is the responsibility of the leader to understand the usability of these capabilities and apply them to reach success of the organization. Saxena (2014) presents detailed discussions in relation to creative leadership, and states that the survival of organizations depends on the creativity of their leaders, especially in the fast-obsolescent and ever-blustery technological milieu. Saxena (2014) also combines the concept of creative leadership with the transformational leadership. The modern work environment is highly dynamic due to various factors including technological advancement and globalization. These issues necessitate the leadership in the organizations to remain vigilant and exercise their creativity in order to predict and detect changes prior to their occurrence, and develop approaches that will enable their organization to continue with its activity, and take advantage of the vicissitudes (Saxena, 2014).
Khan (2010) also correlates the discussion in his journal article with the creativity of leaders. The authenticity of a leader is determined by their creativity among others. Being creative means that the leader develops authentic approaches to the situation, which is one of the main reasons that enable their organizations to excel even in the times of change. Authentic leaders are aware of their personal qualities, strengths and weaknesses. They analyze their team, and gain loyalty by stimulating and motivating them, rather than through the use of compellation and manipulation. By means of their creativity, such leaders are able to combine the organizational needs with those of their employees, and develop ideal approaches that can transform their situation to promote success and realization of goals (Khan, 2010). Reb et al. (2014) correlate the concept of creative leadership with the process of stimulating the team in order to develop new approaches to dealing with situations and realizing the organizational goals.
Transformational Leadership
It can be defined as the leadership approach that intensifies the awareness of shared interest among the organization's associates and supports them to accomplish their joint goals. It is considered to be a leadership approach that causes change in people and social systems. In its optimal structure, it makes profitable and positive change in the supporters with the ultimate objective of transforming devotees into leaders. Established in its real shape, transformational leadership stimulates the inspiration, assurance what's more, as well as execution of supporters through a range of systems (Garcia-Morales et al., 2012). These incorporate associating the supporter's feeling of character and self to the mission and the aggregate personality of the organization; being a good example for devotees to motivate them; testing supporters to take more noteworthy possession for their work, and comprehension of the qualities and shortcomings of supporters for the leader to adjust devotees to undertakings that would enhance their performance (Malik, 2012).
Transformational leadership is based on a theory that consists of four main concepts. These concepts include individualized consideration, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and idealized influence. According to Khan (2010), transformational leadership takes place when leaders expand and hoist the interests of their representatives, when they produce mindfulness and acknowledgment of the reasons and mission of gathering, and when they guide their representatives to look past their own self-enthusiasm for the benefit of the gathering. Transformational leaders are genuinely required to ensure the prosperity of their workers and attempt to impact them on passionate and scholarly grounds. Transformational leaders are supposed to fortify mindfulness among their representatives about the outcomes of one's own particular activities. Leaders who use transformational leadership approaches animate and challenge their representatives to achieve required results simultaneously, and impart their insight about the issue confronted.
Khan (2010) operationalized this leadership style by applying particular practices to transformational leadership. A transformational leader should be charismatic and represent a moving inspiration to their workers, conveying vision in an eager and motivating way. The second norm for transformational leaders is to attempt to meet the passionate needs of their representatives, being exclusively chivalrous. They think about their representatives, pay close attention to their disparities and act like a mentor or coach to help them develop and be creative. Creativity is achieved by mentally animating workers to go for new statures, consider issues to be challenges, and convey better approaches to solving issues. Transformational leadership aims to make enthusiastic connections with the adherents and rouses higher qualities. Such leadership transmits the significance of having a common mission and introducing the feelings of reason, bearing and significance into the adherents' work (Reb et al., 2014). Transformational leadership turns into the engine and transmitter of creative society ensuring the spread of learning focused on looking for the most ideal hierarchical execution.
The case of transformational initiative conferred to the organization's objectives and their disguise in its devotees tries to urge duty to ensure respect for the organization's workers (Saxena, 2014). Transformational leaders have charisma, give motivation and advance scholarly incitement (Saxena, 2014). Charisma creates the pride, confidence and appreciation that leaders use to urge their representatives to have the same in themselves, their leaders, and their organizations. Transformational leaders give motivation by propelling their devotees mainly through correspondence of elevated requirements. Such leaders likewise advance scholarly incitement by advancing representatives' insight and information, as well as realizing the goal that workers can be inventive in their own way to deal with critical thinking and arrangements.
Change Management
Change is a continuous process in any organization. For an organization to be successful, change has to be implemented on three diverse levels, which are personal, team and organizational. On every level that change occurs in an organization, the leadership plays a significant role, as the leader plays a role of managing the employees and making sure that they perform optimally even in case of organizational changes (Saxena, 2014). The management of change is a critical area of focus for the healthy growth of an entity. It is critical for the survival of any organization in the modern business world. The active participation of the leadership in an organization is critical for the successful implementation of change. Respondents of change are influenced by both external and internal components. Study uncovers that internal elements are revealed in the administration style and initiative that impacts the procedure of change (Chirimbu & Vargolici, 2011). Saxena (2014) analyzes the characteristic problem of authoritative change: the individuals and the HR of organizations are all a fundamental component of the authoritative change and the greatest snags to accomplishing change. Along these lines, it is proved that the essential component for a fruitful change in any organization is leadership (Puccio et al., 2011). Leaders are known as change champions, since it is the top administration of any organization that keeps the procedure of change going on and keeps up the operational unwavering quality of the organization (Puccio et al., 2011).
Khan (2010) change is an irrational and emotional procedure. Being a leader of change, one needs to concentrate more on human elements of change as people are the primary on-screen characters in the circle of scholarly capital. Authoritative change is a multifaceted and long haul errand. Change administration is revealed in an indispensable arrangement in terms of how the organization is to move from its current state to a desirable future state (Khan, 2010). Hierarchical change is an arranged action as it serves as a linkage between the distinctive parts of a change procedure, setup needs and courses of events, doling out obligations, building up components for audit and making amendments where necessary (Malik, 2012). For a successful change administration process, it is required to be appropriately arranged. Successful anticipation of change must start well before changes produce results and conference should also be done (Khan, 2010). For fruitful accomplishment of any change administration arrangement, it should be an appropriately arranged and completely planned change (Garcia-Morales et al., 2012). Along with these critical requirements, administration additionally plays a role of a soul for the manager to engage workers into work and to derive the most extreme advantages from change. It means that leaders are more emotional than managers during the procedure of change (Garcia-Morales et al., 2012).
Change as a procedure was in fact firstly conceptualized by Lewin in 1947 (Reb et al., 2014). He fragmented the change as a procedure undergoing three stages, which include unfreezing, moving and refreezing. Unfreezing is related to the preparedness to change which involves reaching a state of an understanding that change is essential and being ready for leaving the present condition of solace for the sake of future benefits (Reb et al., 2014). Moving is the stage during which individuals need to push ahead to embrace an alternative situation. Individuals are frightened of this phase of change procedure as they need to leave their present comfort zone (Reb et al., 2014). Refreezing is the stage during which change is acknowledged as another standard in an organization in which case the change becomes part of a continuous process (Reb et al., 2014). Consequently, the net impacts the state of no change and creates more significant tension within the organization than before in an attempt to bring about change.
Conclusion
Any organization requires leadership that guides its operations and leads the team towards the attainment of the organizational goals. Different journal articles analyzed in the paper provide a wide range of ideas in relation to the role of leaders and their influence on the employees. The behavior of the leaders can be seen as a source of their influence and reaction to different events in the organization. The overall message in the reviewed articles indicates that the behavior of the leadership in an organization has an impact on the organizational performance, and ultimately influences the results of the leadership efforts. It is seen through the different themes presented in the journal articles that are also analyzed in the above essay. It is the behavior of the leader than influences the way of them being transformational, change managers, and creative, and their use of the three factors influence the employees, and ultimately the success or failure of the organization. The identity, worldview and membership in a socio-cultural group might influence the effectiveness that a leader exhibits in a variety of ways. The identity of a person means that they have a way that they want to be considered. As such, their behavior will be in-line with their identity. Their perception of the world and affiliation to a socio-cultural group means that their beliefs and actions are influenced by these factors. For example, if a leader is affiliated to a socio-cultural group that supports cultural diversity, their effectiveness might improve as they might be more supportive of the workplace diversity.