Leadership Techniques in the Hospitality Industry

Discuss about the Leadership Issues & Challenges in Tourism Industry.

This essay will focus on the topic of ethical leadership theory and explain the techniques followed by the leaders to implement this in the hospitality industry. Some issues or challenges within the leadership faced by leaders when implementing it will be discussed further and what challenges are expected to be faced by the future leaders in the industry will also be highlighted in this essay.

There are several leadership techniques which a leader can follow and implement while working in the industry. Such technique helps in enhancing and demonstrating the existing leadership skills of the leaders. The broad leadership techniques involve focusing on inspiring other people, dealing up with difficult people, make history a way to move forward with new techniques, willingness to learn new things, and integrity. Apart from these techniques, a good leader must have good communication skills such as listening, complementing other people, managing the meeting and also have a well developed skill set of verbal as well as non-verbal communication. A good leader also has to cope with the conflicting opinions of other team members and the main role of a leader is to inspire the team (Ladkin & Weber, 2011).

The ethical leadership style and theory has attracted a great deal of attention all over the world and from the leaders belonging to all the industries. A significant relationship is established between following ethical leadership and the organisational productivity outcomes specially in the service industry. Ethical leadership can be defined as demonstrating behaviour that is normatively appropriate by developing interpersonal relationships and by personnel actions and decision making while promoting civil econduct across the organization by carrying out open two-way communication and reinforcing ethics and moral values in the everyday decision making for the organisation. The ethical leaders are found to be more attractive, legitimate and credible by the employees as well as the organisation and my promotion of the values including honesty, inclusivity, and treating the employees fairly and with respect makes the ethical leaders role models across all industries and organisations. The ethical leaders are also found to contribute towards the enhancement of the motivation levels, attitude and behaviour of their subordinates and a direct correlation was found between following ethical leadership in the organisation and the job satisfaction level of the employees (Bisk Education, 2018).

Maintaining and ethical climate by the leaders of the hospitality organisation also help in enhancing the organisational commitment for the employees as their values get communicated to their managers and their subordinates working within the organisation. The leaders in the hospitality industry influence all the members of the organisation and by following a utilitarian and rule based ethical decision making style, their subordinates are more likely to embrace their leadership and follow their instructions as it helps in building a high degree of trust across all levels of the organisation. The leaders working in the hospitality industry have to practice a regular and consistent decision making which determines the course of the organisation in the long run. When this decision making is guided by the ethics and moral values, the leaders are able to demonstrate courage and conviction emerging as a role model and instilling a sense of integrity and trust among the members of the organisation. Unethical leaders have to follow the rules and act ethically regardless of any external pressure or influence. We believe in doing the right thing and make ethical choices every time to ensure that the behaviour executed by them matches the values that they strive for. The ethical leaders also carry out objective decision making which does not require any justification or excuse and is aligned with the long-term strategic goals of the organisation and the values that guide their operations and day to day working (Butler, 2018).

The Significance of Ethical Leadership in the Hospitality Industry

An ethical leadership is said to be successful if it is accomplishing the common goals of the industry. The successful leadership establishes beliefs, values as well as goals. To achieve the goals, the organization must require a specific vision. A vision completely helps to explain the trend in which the industry actually wants to move as well as it is comparatively simple to talk, pleasing to the customers, stockholders, and also the employees working within the organization. As a result, it is up to the ethical leaders in the hospitality industry to position and clearly write out a vision, and to motivate the people who are around them to communicate and apply it in their day to day activities and tasks. The key issues that put a major impact on the hospitality industry are technical explosions, improved importance on health as well as well-being, requirement for picture perfect technology, sustainability regulations, and innovative roles for staff members, and real time damage control (Javed, Rawwas, Khandai, & Shahid, 2018). Health and well being has become a major concern which puts a major impact on the entire civilization. The hospitality industry needs ethical leaders who can guide the workforce guided by the values and principles. The ethical hospitality leaders should be cultured to become very good team players as they are the one who can actually set up the best examples for leading the industry. An ethical leader always tries to treat the team mates or other people in the same way in which they expect that the other people should treat them and which is right and just. When everybody is working within the same environment together and shares same goal, then the result can have a great deal of impact on the growth. The ethical leaders in the hospitality industry are equipped with the community skills, the capability to communicate undoubtedly and efficiently, and with an unambiguous vision of the path ahead and are effortlessly able to stimulate and guide others (Sayawat, 2016).

Although there is no best leadership style that can be stated for the hospitality industry, the ethical leadership style is found to be well suited for almost all the industries and situations. A person with the ethical leadership style will be able to influence and build up the perspective of their team mates. Such type of leaders has a convincing vision which is simple to communicate to. Ethical leaders become a role model and also an inspiration for the people who are led by them as their performance has confidence which is very pleasing to others. These leaders in the hospitality industry help their team mates to overcome the restrictions by inspiring them to transform to give better to the organization. The ethical leaders who follow this style of leadership control other people by making use of their different personality and are guided by a strong sense of what is right and fair (Media, 2017). Such leaders possess an exceptional vision, and are filled up of self-confidence as well as they are recognized for using alternative approaches within the industry. The appealing personality of these leaders puts a positive impression on others. These types of leaders also display greater self-confidence in their team mates and put up trust throughout the visible give up.

The Importance of Maintaining Ethical Climate in Hospitality Organizations

Ethical leadership is required to further explore the requests of multifaceted hospitality business surroundings as well as change the requirements of all the stakeholders. The observation of this hospitality industry as being balanced or unbalanced verified itself to be vital to the suitable choice of their leadership style and also puts a major impact on the general health and success of the organization. Presently, the hospitality companies are facing five common significant business challenges which include globalization, productivity through development, tools, intellectual assets, and modification. Such type of challenges provides company with a chance to play their role of leadership in the growth of new potential to meet up all the challenges. These five challenges describe a new authorization for hospitality human resource administration in order to deliver excellence in organizational excellence in three simple ways which are by becoming an associate with the senior as well as line managers in policy implementation, execution to guarantee the costs are reduced and maintain the quality, by strongly representing their apprehensions to the senior management and also to boost up role of employee (Brown & Trevino, 2006).

Trust is the fundamental element that empowers all relationships including relationship between a leader and their subordinates. Leadership is about building relationship between the managers, employees, suppliers, competitors and the surrounding community. With the actions of a leader match their words and execute a consistent approach people perceive them as being trustworthy. Ethical leadership also demonstrates loyalty of the leaders towards the organisations and their devotion to their duties and responsibilities. It involves not making use of or disclosing any confidential information of the organisation and having the best interests of the organisation and its members at heart. The ethical leaders also believe in treating everybody fairly and reflect regularly on their beliefs and practices which facilitates an improvement in the employee performance and reduces resentment, employee turnover and helps in the improvement of the employee performance which ultimately results in an improvement in the productivity and the profitability of the organisation. The employees are able to trust and ethical leader since they maintain a reasonable expectation and ensure fair treatment of all the members of the organisation.

Ethics in any organization must be identified and followed at all times. It does not matter what type of culture has been adopted by the organization but the main thing to understand is that the culture must fit in the strategies made by organization. Every organization has its terms and conditions or in other words they have their policies, to maintain ethicality. The integrity of the system must be maintained. There are number of impacts of ethics in hospitality industry such as quality, turnover of an employee, satisfaction of employee, and also decision making (Coldwell, 2016).

Success of Ethical Leadership in Accomplishing Common Goals

The ethical decision making is generally prejudiced by the category of ethical issue which is faced, ethical problem that are categorized according to the strength of company with contributors more likely to counter as per the ethical belief if the problem is measured as one of the important problem. The leaders in the hospitality industry have the accountability of preserving the maximum level of services, company approval and most favorable return on venture. In order to meet such objectives, hospitality leaders have to deliver the services which can meet the need of customers. Usually hospitality leaders are confronted with the ethical issues such as sexual harassment, the departmental relations, capitulate management, visitor rights, empowerment, dealer relationships, equal opening as well as public relations (Kim & Brymer, 2011).

Quality can be achieved only by maintaining the standards of an organization. Basically it cannot be called as occurrence; it is called as a habit. It engrosses an appropriate estimation of guest needs, outlook and supplies and tries to establish a suitable standard. Quality in simple words can be made by the good employees who can admire ethics as well as morality in both aspects i.e. life and work. Thus ethics must be part of each activity in hospitality with defines the responsibilities as well as work of each section. Hospitality leaders with excellent skills always make certain that the vision, task, principles and most importantly ethics of the organization imitate a responsible culture in a social context. Ethical leadership basically includes individual competencies; yet, leaders’ possess a larger impact on the ethical actions of their inferiors (Qin, Wen, Ling, Zhou, & Tong, 2014). The employee who are working within the hospitality industry need a very high ethical awareness than the other working industries and must have a stronger ability to review the ethical issues according to the strategy of the association.

In conclusion, it can be described that this essay gives a brief knowledge about the ethical leadership in the hospitality industry. The role of leaders is properly defined in context to ethical issues that might be faced by the organization. There are several challenges that an ethical leader has to face while working in a hospitality organization and these challenges are discussed in the above section of the essay. There are various challenges and issues which every organization has to face but the duty of ethical leaders is maintain the integrity and promote team work so that the challenges can be solved easily and interaction and open communication is facilitated among the team mates.

References

Bisk Education. (2018). Leadership Challenges of Hospitality Management. Retrieved from https://www.michiganstateuniversityonline.com/resources/hospitality/leadership-challenges-of-hospitality-management/#.Wwo078K6bIV

Brown, M., & Trevino, L. (2006, December). Ethical leadership: A review and future directions. 17(6), pp. 595-616. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104898430600110X

Butler, B. (2018, March). Big issues in hospitality: leadership, culture and recruitment. Retrieved from https://ehotelier.com/insights/2018/03/16/big-issues-hospitality-leadership-culture-recruitment/

Coldwell, D. (2016, April). Ethical Leadership in Crisis Management: The Role of University Education. Retrieved from https://www.intechopen.com/books/contemporary-leadership-challenges/ethical-leadership-in-crisis-management-the-role-of-university-education

Javed, B., Rawwas, M., Khandai, S., & Shahid, K. (2018, February). Ethical leadership, trust in leader and creativity: The mediated mechanism and an interacting effect. Journal of Management & Organization. Retrieved from https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-management-and-organization/article/ethical-leadership-trust-in-leader-and-creativity-the-mediated-mechanism-and-an-interacting-effect/C14CD246C21DFAB41EAF1683F391522F

Kim, W., & Brymer, R. (2011, December). The effects of ethical leadership on manager job satisfaction, commitment, behavioral outcomes, and firm performance. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 30(4), 1020-1026. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278431911000417

Ladkin, A., & Weber, K. (2011, May). Leadership Issues and Challenges in the Tourism Industry: A Hong Kong Perspective. Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, 16(3), 273-288. Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10941665.2011.572662?data-src=recsys&journalCode=rapt20

Media, B. B. (2017, August). Top 10 Trends Impacting the Hospitality Industry. Retrieved from https://www.smartmeetings.com/news/trends/74256/top-10-trends-impacting-hospitality-industry

Qin, Q., Wen, B., Ling, Q., Zhou, S., & Tong, M. (2014). How and when the effect of ethical leadership occurs? A multilevel analysis in the Chinese hospitality industry. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 26(6), 974-1001. Retrieved from https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/IJCHM-02-2013-0073

Sayawat, N. (2016, October). Top 5 Emerging Trends Affecting the Hospitality Industry. Retrieved from https://www.smartmeetings.com/news/93559/top-5-emerging-trends-affecting-the-hospitality-industry