Assessment: Comparing Leadership Models

Shared leadership has emerged as a response to rapidly changing organizations and an increase in the complexity of tasks (de Cruz, 2019). Shared leadership can quickly and effectively solve problems, increase performance, and improve organizational productivity. With a team of experience, skills, and resources a strong leadership foundation can be formed to solve complex problems and initiate change to improve the overall productivity of organizations.

Chapter 12 Case Incident One: Sharing is Performing

Obstacles that can be encountered with shared leadership are social loafing, conflict with roles, differences in opinions, beliefs, values, negative mental models, task conflicts, and diversity issues (Robbins & Judge, 2019). Undefined roles can cause conflicts of ideas, opinions, leadership authority, and social loafing. All of these can have a negative effect on the team.

In this case, Christ looked to McGinley, as did Martin, to Barrs to form a shared leadership to solve two complex organizational problems (Robbins & Judge, 2019). The organization I work for formed a shared leadership quality team made up of leaders from the entire organization to determine clinical competencies for nursing. When the findings indicated that competencies were not standardized or based on evidence-based practices, they developed a program that would improve nursing competencies aligned with the vision and mission of the organization. This program was aligned with the mission of the organization to ensure that nurses were competent in their skills to provide high-quality care.

The leadership style that would best promote shared leadership in this case, would be Hersey and Blanchard’s situational leadership theory where the focus is on “directing, coaching, supporting, and delegating behavior” (Thompson & Glaso, 2018, p. 575). Leading a shared leadership team as CEO it would be important to define roles, assess team readiness, skills, knowledge, commitment, performance, and provide structure. Leadership styles would need to be adjusted based on the skills, knowledge, and readiness of the follower. Recruiting team members that are highly motivated, positive, conscientious, and have high abilities and intelligence can help improve the success of a team (Robbins & Judge, 2019). Provide an environment of trust, and openness allowing individuals the freedom to express opinions, views, and disagreements. Open communication can empower, encourage creativity, build trust, and promote confidence.

To reduce social loafing, goals, roles, and tasks need to be defined so team members know how they will collectively contribute to the team effort and success. Organizational support, adequate resources, building a climate of trust, and providing rewards to individuals based on team performance are all strategies that contribute to the success of a shared leadership team (Robbins & Judge, 2019).

Job design and redesign could be accomplished by defining roles and allowing for an increase in autonomy and decision making. Communicating effectively to each team member that individual efforts will contribute to the overall team effort, and tasks will be shared. Redesigning roles can allow for autonomy, empowerment, and confidence among followers to feel valued that they are contributing to the success of the organization. Tasks could be divided, and sub-divided as needed to accomplish the goals of the team. By utilizing a situational leadership style, each team member’s readiness to contribute will require a leader to adjust their leadership style. As CEO, the leadership style is redesigned in shared leadership. The focus becomes not on assessing information and making decisions, but managing teams by being aware of relationships, progress, and motivations (Fitzsimons, 2016).

A nonshared, traditional leadership approach is seen in the aircraft manufacturing industry like Spirit AeroSystems. In this industry CEO’s make all important decisions and delegate tasks to managers below. These tasks then get passed down to employees. In a traditional leadership model, individual roles and jobs are well defined to focus on a product, performance, and results. Employees have little decision-making opportunities or input. The CEO has the power to make decisions and execute orders in a top-down style (Robbins & Judge, 2019). Building airplanes is based on safety protocols and following procedures in a traditional hierarchy of leadership. This is a preferable leadership style for this type of industry because of following policies and procedures helps ensure that aircraft are being built safely while also meeting productivity.

Chapter 15 Case Incident Two: Turbulence on United Airlines

In this case, passengers were removed from United Airlines flights, I do not agree that these situations were handled appropriately. United does have the right and power to remove an individual if the concern is a violation that could jeopardize the safety of others. If United did not instill a bureaucratic leadership style but instead utilized a leadership style based on Fiedler’s contingency theory, relationship-oriented managers, rather than task-oriented, could respond to follower needs by adjusting their leadership style to match the situation and manage conflicts. Building strong relationships with followers can improve confidence, and empowerment so that followers feel safe in asking for decisions to be made that are exceptions to the rules and regulations of United. Followers could look to leaders for guidance based on trust that they would not be reprimanded or lose their jobs for requesting protocols and policies to be adjusted to meet customer needs.

Roles and job descriptions in this model would be still be well defined, but followers and managers would work together to make decisions that would meet customer needs rather than focus only on following the strict rules for United’s “efficiency-boosting strategies” (Robbins & Judge, 2019, p. 537). Leaders in this model provide direction, support, build confidence, and assess situations before making decisions and adjust their leadership style to build strong relationships with followers (da Cruz, Nunes, & Pinheiro, 2011).

The pros for having a bureaucratic organizational structure for an aircraft manufacturing plant is that rules are set, policies are enforced, and job roles are well defined for safety. The downside to this type of structure is limited employee decision making, the focus is on productivity and not on meeting customer needs. Employees and managers may become unmotivated because they are not able to voice their ideas, concerns, and must follow strict rules and regulations or face possible termination.

If United keeps this structure, they need to allow managers the ability to make decisions that benefit meeting customer needs within the safety regulations of the airline. In the future, the airline should allow the opportunity for decisions to be made by leaders, and possibly in the future by qualified employees. Building positive leader and employee relationships would improve the productivity of the organization, and the work environment. I would consider restructuring the leadership style for United to allow leaders more opportunity to assess situations and make decisions based on customer needs so that customers are not forced to exit a plane for reasons of clothing, overbooking, and seat assignments. Each of these situations could have been handled differently without causing stress and harm to customers.

The policy at our clinic is that we do not draw lab for outside providers. This can cause problems for patients if they are elderly and require a great deal of assistance to ambulate. There are also insurance conflicts where the lab costs may not be covered if lab is drawn in our facility. Utilizing Fiedler’s contingency model, employees can assess each situation and decide based on what is best for the patient which may be outside the policy. With strong relationships, trust, and confidence with leaders, followers can feel safe to either reach out to their leader for guidance or make a decision that will benefit the patient without repercussion. Occasionally writing off the cost of a lab draw and having the specimens picked up, is more beneficial for meeting customer needs than strictly following a policy that no outside labs will be drawn.

Chapter 16 Case Incident Two: Active Cultures

The key dimension of the Patagonia culture is to meet the needs of the employee while providing a work environment that is conducive to productivity. This culture is fostered by providing flexible work schedules, having a café, and encouraging employees to be active in allowing them to become familiar with the Patagonia products. By promoting healthy lifestyles, and allowing flexible schedules, employee motivation, productivity, and retention will improve for the overall success of the organization. This type of leadership model follows the Burn’s transformational model where the organization strives to provide a positive work environment and meet the needs of its employees (White, 2018). This leadership style is also seen in companies such as GOOGLE, Apple, and Tesla. These three companies strive to provide a positive work environment to encourage creativity, productivity, and meet employee needs. As a leader these leadership qualities are important to me. I strive to provide a positive work environment, encourage, motivate, and coach employees to perform at their highest level to provide quality patient care.

The drawbacks of this type of culture may be too much flexibility causing lack of productivity and motivation. This culture is built on trust that the work will get done. Encouraging “playtime” could inhibit productivity and become a liability if the products are poorly designed. For example, a faulty designed surfboard could cause injury to customers resulting in large expenses for the organization. Expectations would need to be set for the quality and consistency of work in this type of organizational culture.

Conclusion

Each of these leadership models is designed to encourage, motivate, and improve follower productivity whether it be applied individually or to a group. Each scenario required a different leadership style to meet the needs of the followers and the given situation. Transformational models focus on providing a positive work environment, whereas the two transactional models focus on a task, role definition, and adjusting leadership style to encourage follower motivation. All three are leadership models to improve follower retention, satisfaction, motivation, build trust, empower, guide, and coach followers to improve productivity of organizations.

References

da Cruz, M. R. P., Nunes, A. J. S., & Pinheiro, P. G. (2011). Fiedler’s contingency theory: Practical application of the least preferred coworker (LPC) Scale. IUP Journal of Organizational Behavior, 10(4), 7–26. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=shib&db=bth&AN=71490543&site=eds-live&scope=site

de Cruz, N. P. (2019). A conceptual overview of attaining, maintaining, and regaining shared leadership in high performing teams. Journal of Leadership Education, 18(1), 213–226. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.12806/V18/I1/T3

Fitzsimons, D. (2016). How shared leadership changes our relationships at work. Harvard Business Review Digital Articles, 2–5. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=shib&db=bth&AN=118686162&site=eds-live&scope=site

Robbins, S. P. & Judge, T. A. (2019). Organizational behavior. (18th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson.

Thompson, G., & Glaso, L. (2018). Situational leadership theory: A test from a leader-follower congruence approach. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 39(5), 574–591. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-01-2018-0050

White, S. K. (2018). What is transformational leadership? A model for motivating innovation. CIO. Retrieved from https://www.cio.com/article/3257184/what-is-transformational-leadership-a-model-for-motivating-innovation.html