Discussion: Leadership Paradox and Inter-team Relations

Leadership Paradox

1. Leadership often comes with an assumption to influence the crowd while you are defining yourself. A Leader is expected to direct the crowd and instruct them of the things to be done or the way of living or what actions are to be taken which eventually give rise to the either or mindset. Leadership paradox is the vision of Leadership wherein you maintain different relationships and promote openness, freedom and self determination with transformation of the entire system. (Robinson and Rose, 2004)

Though participative management system has good participation of employees, Leaders face few challenges and issues as the Decision-making process takes more time than usual. Employees are willing to provide their inputs leading to needing more time to verify and validate the accuracy of the facts. This might not be feasible in case of any urgent decisions. People involved have too much of information and there is a possibility of conflicts when you carry out multiple discussions with people having different opinions on it. Leaders can face issues while taking a decision wherein less experience workers are also given chance to provide inputs towards Decision making process.

2. Participative environment is often essential for the growth of Organization. Leaders encourage employees to participate in all the discussions and important meetings which involves critical decision making related to the project. Several strategies can be implemented to encourage the participative management. There are several potential benefits which empowers the employees if participative management is implemented in Organizations. Employees feel accountable and a sense of pride is instilled in them if participative management is introduced. Their views and opinions should be respected and should not be judged. Leaders should have a clear vision and there should be a transparency in the communication building trust among the teams. This helps to bolster the employer employee relationship and encourage the employees to express themselves freely. (Savolainen,2000). Employees should be given access to all the available resources which makes them feel accountable towards their duties and work for adding value to their Organization. Training sessions can also be conducted in the Organization to provide exposure towards others features and aspects and not just their field of expertise in order to improve their skillsets essential for Organizational growth.

References:

1. Evers, C., & Katyal, K. (2007). Paradoxes of Leadership: Contingencies and Critical Learning. South African Journal of Education, 27(3), 377–390.

2. Robinson, G. and Rose, M., (2004). A Leadership Paradox: Influencing Others By Defining Yourself: Revised Edition. AuthorHouse, pp.1-2.

3. Savolainen, T. (2000). Towards a new workplace culture: Development strategies for employer-employee relations. Journal of Workplace Learning, 12(8), 318– 326. https://doi.org/10.1108/13665620010355566