LINK BETWEEN STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP
Management and leadership must be intertwined to achieve the goals of the organization. Strategic management is the organized development of resources in all the functional areas of a company (Goetsch 2014). The functional areas are financial and management manufacturing among others. Strategic management is a set of policies that the management of a firm or organization adopts and guides the direction of the entity. It takes into account the environment which the entity is operating in (Goetsch 2014). In other words, strategic management aligns with the organizations mission and goals through effective utilization of the resources (Goetsch 2014). Leadership, on the other hand, is the guiding of an organization towards the desired result. It also takes into account the desired mission and vision of the organization. It works on the precedence of strategic planning and management in order to achieve long-term success (Goetsch 2014).
Strategic management and leadership are linked in that leadership is the bridge between strategic management and the desired results (Goetsch 2014). Through leadership, a firm or an organization is able to achieve its set mission and goals. Strategic management is how the top managers formulate and implement the objectives of the company. Leadership, on the other hand, involves leaders influencing the subordinates to make their own decisions for the improvement of the organization. It is worth noting that neither of these two aspects is self-sufficient when it comes to the attainment of the organizational goals (Goetsch 2014). Apart from that, management and leadership should be effective for the success to be realized at the end. Ineffectiveness in the core components of the organization may result in failure of the business. The organization is productive when both management and leadership coordination are effective. While the managers come up with innovative ideas for the future prosperity of the organization, it is the duty of the leadership personnel to implement the ideas by influencing their minors positively and coaching them in order to actualize the ideas.
The impact of management and leadership styles on strategic decisions.
Leadership style refers to the way in which the leaders motivate employees, implement plans and also give guidelines on how duties and responsibilities should be carried out. There are various types of the leadership styles that can be adopted in different scenarios depending on the strategic decisions put in place by the top management. These leadership styles include transformational leadership, charismatic leadership, transactional leadership, situational leadership and laissez-faire leadership style. Leaders lead people while managers manage people (Goetsch 2014). Leaders are the people that bring changes in an organization while managers sustain the changes in the organization.
Transformative leader constantly shares the vision of the organization with the employees. This kind of a leader usually delegates some of the responsibilities to the subordinates and gives them the authority to execute their decisions deemed necessary for the success (Armstrong and Taylor 2014). Another type of the leadership style is charismatic leadership. In this case, the leader influences the subordinates by use of enthusiasm (Turner 2014). The presence of this leader symbolizes motivation to the workers and he/she is always in a position to encourage the employees to work toward the set goals. Unfortunately, a leader who is charismatic tends to believe more in himself/herself than he/she believes in others. This can be a major drawback to the strategic decisions. The subordinates may feel reluctant to go on with their duties when their leader is in absentia. It is, therefore, logical to say that decisions cannot be effectively made without the leader’s direct oversight. To avoid this, there is a need for a great deal of responsibility and commitment on the part of the leader in question for the success of the organization (Turner 2014).
The other type of leadership style is transactional leadership. It is a two-way traffic where the leader expects obedience from the subordinates and in return the employees may have either rewards or punishments based on their obedience or disobedience respectively. This type of leadership is mainly applied in short term tasks as it can be very disastrous for strategic goals. Employees may develop unrests and demonstrations due to strict measures brought about by the transactional leader.
Nowadays, situational leadership style has become the most adopted one among the leadership styles. It stresses that there is no particular way of dealing with a situation (Turner 2014). For a strategic decision to be made there must be consideration of some aspects such as the personality of the leader, the skills of the employees and the kind of work involved. The leader in most cases uses intuition to make decision, hence, resulting in high personal judgment in decision making.
Finally, strategic decisions can be affected by laissez-faire leadership style. The leader delegates all the authority to the subordinates. Consequently, employees have freedom to execute their own decisions without having to consult their leaders first. This can affect the strategic decisions in two ways (Turner 2014). First, the employees may misuse the authority delegated and fail to implement the decisions. Second, highly self-motivated employees may appreciate the honor of being delegated the authority and put more efforts in accomplishments of the goals of the organization.
How leadership styles can be adapted to different situations
