Leadership Roles in Organizations

Over the period of time, leadership has been the central theme in the organizational literature. It has been operated and defined in several ways by most renowned researchers. Besides, leadership roles in organizations became highly recognized, during the nineties and thus various roles of the leaders came into light. The diversity helps in reflecting various leadership models and under this the Competing Values model falls. The model is based on the specific leadership theories that include the performance standard of various roles. The leadership model depends on the four models of rational goal, internal processes, human relations and open systems (Cameron et al., 2014).

The overall purpose of the report is to demonstrate the usefulness of the Competing Values Framework and the need for Managerial Leadership. Moreover, the report discusses about the shared leadership within self managed teams and why leadership theories are not applicable to the SMTs. A real life example of this is, in an organization where I used to work for a limited period of time, the managers let its developers as well as engineers to work in their own self managed teams, where the leadership theories could not be applied. The outcome of this had been great and the organization is an extremely successful one, which developed its own technologies, which their rivals also could not match.

 

(Figure: Competing Values Framework

Source: Gimenez-Espin, Jiménez-Jiménez & Martínez-Costa, 2013)

The model of human relations includes the roles of mentor as well as facilitator. It emphasizes on cohesion, morale and commitment. The involvement results into commitment as well as the core values, which are consensus building, conflict resolution and participation. The specific role of the managers is to become a process focused facilitator as well as an empathetic mentor. The facilitators motivate and encourage the collective efforts of the employees, promote team work and cohesion and also manage personal conflicts. The mentors completely dedicate themselves in order to develop people through careful empathy and guidance. The manager highly contributes to planning and enhancing skills which the individuals develop among themselves (Kim, 2014).

The open system model results from the leadership needs in a changed world, where changes are rapid and knowledge is vast. On one hand, the leaders have very little time to organize a company and make plans for their development, while on the other the leaders are forced to take quick actions and decisions. The key procedures are change management, innovation, creative problem solving and adaptation. Thus, according to several researches, the managers must become a negotiator as well as a creative innovator. They must have a power to influence their followers for the betterment of the organization. Innovators are basically the visionaries, who help in facilitating change and adaptation. On the other hand, the negotiators are the ones who help in obtaining external legitimacy as well as resources (Kim & Mauborgne, 2014).

The Competing Values Model and its Four Models of Leadership

They must have the ability and power to influence as well as persuade others for this specific reason. The rational goal model helps in maintaining the productivity of the organization, as well as keeps a track of the organizational profit. From this perspective, it can be said that the role of the leaders is to become a pragmatic producer as well as a deciding director. Being the directors, leaders basically give importance to goals establishment, planning as well as the definition of the objectives. This in turn proves that the producers are task oriented; they focus on their works by showing higher level of interests as well as personal motivation. In addition to this, the internal processes model mentions about the effectiveness criteria, continuity and stability on the basis of the procedures promoting stability. Thus, it can be said that as monitors, the managers need to know what occurs within their units. Moreover, they must also keep an eye on the people of the organizations, complying with the rules. Managers must check whether the employees are coordinating with others or not (Lindgreen et al., 2012).

In addition to this, this model mentions about an effective and efficient leader, who is able to play eight different roles of leadership, simultaneously. He/she may face complexity, contradiction and paradox, which characterizes the overall health of the organization. This problem is actually regarded to be amplified in relation with the health structures, given that the need of the leading professionals belongs to the major operational structures. In addition to this, these structures are of great technical and scientific differentiation, where majority of the decision making procedures are generally concentrated. For these reasons, assessment of the leadership roles is considered to be a crucial factor. In the recent context, profound changes tend to occur within the organizations. Therefore, proper measures need to be taken in order to understand the perception of the leadership roles within the organization (Onorato, 2013). 

It is a very challenging task to define management as different authors have given various definitions to the term. However, management can be defined as an art of getting the things done with formally organized members and through others. It is also a way of knowing what an individual wants to do and also checking the best as well as cheapest way of performing that task (Van Wart, 2013).

Taking the self managed teams into consideration, it is seen that they are becoming an essential component of the organizational effectiveness and efficiency. The usage of self managed teams helps in enhancing the performances, behaviors and attitudes of the individual employees. In addition to this, such teams comprise individuals who are responsible and self regulated for a number of operations. In such teams, the role of leaders is considered to be immensely important in leading the organizational teams as well as them-selves. It is necessary to mention that majority of the leadership theories are not applicable to the self managed teams and therefore, it becomes a challenging factor to identify the leadership roles within the teams. However, the Competing Values Framework seems to fit the need of the self managed teams (Quinn et al., 2014).

Shared Leadership within Self-managed Teams

The usage of Competing Values Framework is highly necessary in gaining an understanding of the self managed teams as well as the role of leadership in such teams. The Competing Values Framework refers to the framework that is made up of different leadership models as well as theories. It helps in providing an understanding of how the teams can become effective as well as efficient by utilizing different roles of leadership. It adopts and understands the requirement for a shared and balanced approach to the leadership roles. The individual employees within the self managed teams must rely on each other and trust them in order to accomplish the given tasks. Majority of the leadership theories and models focus on the specific qualities and the abilities of a single emerging leader. On the other hand, the Competing Values Framework helps in addressing the usage of numerous roles of leadership by each and every employee (Rothaermel, 2015).

The leadership profiles are linked to the Competing Values Framework in order to characterize the effectiveness and efficiency of the self managed teams. Team effectiveness is highly characterized by the performance levels and attitudes of the employees. The attitude of the employees is defined as the commitment of the team members by creating a positive work environment. On the other hand, the performance of the employees is defined by the grade received by the team members as well as the instructors. In addition to this, the instructors have the power to respond to the performance levels as well as behaviors of the team members. The leadership roles are highly measured by the managerial behavior assessment tool which is developed by Quinn, Lenk and Lawrence. Moreover, the effectiveness of the team, in any organization, is measured through the response of the instructors, grade reports of the each and every employee and through attitudinal questions (Sharma & Good, 2013).

Team work activities assist in getting the members of any organization, work as an individual unit. In addition to this, various organizations implement several team work methods like cooperative learning, active learning, collaborative learning and others.  The ever increasing global competition among the organizations has led to the need for faster working structures and more innovative employees. A common remedy to this challenge is the utilization of teams within the organizations. The team is considered to be one of the fastest growing units inside the organization. Now a day, the organizational leaders look out for employees who have good skills of team work. In addition to this, the leaders also give trainings to the new employees in order to make them capable of working in an organizational team (Van Wart, 2013).

Examples of Successful Self-managed Teams

It is immensely important that organizational leaders must determine the type of leadership that is required for the particular company. The Competing Values Framework is generally designed to reflect the complexity of the roles played by the leaders of the organization. It is generally made out of for profiles of leadership, which highly influences the effectiveness as well as efficiency of the organizations (Yukl, 2012). This particular framework helps in providing an understanding of how effectively the leadership roles can be utilized within the organizational setting. Most of the leadership theories tend to focus on the specific qualities as well as abilities of one emergent or external leader. In reference to this, the teams have been used to respond to the changes within the organization. The leaders play a vital role in leading the teams towards achieving higher level of performance (Wiewiora et al., 2013).

Conclusion

To conclude, it can be said that the Competing Values Framework help in highlighting the contradictions as well as inherent tensions faced by the organizational leaders, as they navigate the changing environments as well as its complexity. The structure of the model, its relation with the organizational leadership as well as justifications of the self managed teams is given in a descriptive manner. In addition to this, the report clearly mentions about the organizational leadership and their roles in relation with the Competing Values Framework. The report also mentions about the leadership theories, which are not applicable to the self managed teams. Thus, it can be said that the Competing Values Framework is fit in this aspect. 

References

Cameron, K. S., Quinn, R. E., DeGraff, J., & Thakor, A. V. (2014). Competing values leadership. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Gimenez-Espin, J. A., Jiménez-Jiménez, D., & Martínez-Costa, M. (2013). Organizational culture for total quality management. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 24(5-6), 678-692.

Kim, H. (2014). Transformational leadership, organizational clan culture, organizational affective commitment, and organizational citizenship behavior: A case of South Korea’s public sector. Public Organization Review, 14(3), 397-417.

Kim, W. C., & Mauborgne, R. A. (2014). Blue ocean strategy, expanded edition: How to create uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant. Harvard business review Press.

Lindgreen, A., Hingley, M. K., Grant, D. B., & Morgan, R. E. (2012). Value in business and industrial marketing: Past, present, and future. Industrial Marketing Management, 41(1), 207-214.

Onorato, M. (2013). Transformational leadership style in the educational sector: An empirical study of corporate managers and educational leaders. Academy of Educational Leadership Journal, 17(1), 33.

Quinn, R. E., Bright, D., Faerman, S. R., Thompson, M. P., & McGrath, M. R. (2014). Becoming a master manager: A competing values approach. John Wiley & Sons.

Rothaermel, F. T. (2015). Strategic management. McGraw-Hill Education.

Sharma, G., & Good, D. (2013). The work of middle managers: Sensemaking and sensegiving for creating positive social change. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 49(1), 95-122.

Van Wart, M. (2013). Lessons from leadership theory and the contemporary challenges of leaders. Public Administration Review, 73(4), 553-565.

Wiewiora, A., Trigunarsyah, B., Murphy, G., & Coffey, V. (2013). Organizational culture and willingness to share knowledge: A competing values perspective in Australian context. International Journal of Project Management, 31(8), 1163-1174.

Yukl, G. (2012). Effective leadership behavior: What we know and what questions need more attention. The Academy of Management Perspectives, 26(4), 66-85.