Leaders have a unique and colossal mission that focuses on people with the diversity of worldviews, opinions, characters, and lifestyles. In simple words, the goal of a leader lies in uniting people in a single team of professionals sharing the same vision, mission, and values. Leaders should be creative enough in finding approach to every subordinate, targeting employees needs, and nurturing their spirit to be ready to excel personal capabilities. In addition, leaders are the ones regulating experience of the employees by inspiring them to engage in the most unexpected activities requiring them to mobilize internal resources and utilize personal abilities. It happens under the influence of the leader willing to change old habits of the employees and replace them with new behavioral patterns that expand the boundaries of the employees capabilities. A skillful leader not only changes the vision of employees but also proves them that success is possible by showing various approaches towards accomplishment of tasks leading to long-term goals. One of the leaders responsibilities is to split complex goals into simple short-term tasks that ensure success achievement.
The skills approach fits the processual nature of leadership in several ways. It fits a qualitative characteristic of the processual side of leadership by considering work-related processes, human behavior, and organizational mission, vision, and values simultaneously. The core of the processual nature lies in the monitoring of processes influencing implementation of the organizational strategic plan. The skills approach allows applying appropriate skills to specific processes involving employees in order to ensure successful implementation of the strategic plan. The same connection refers to skills approach and influence, since leaders are regulating employees performance in the context of customer service, teambuilding, implementation of tasks, and communication between departments. In this way, leaders have a direct influence on the organizational climate, which sets appropriate workplace environment for success achievement initiatives thanks to the utilization of personal skills of a leader. The group context of leadership lies in keeping employees interdependent in order to ensure mutual support and understanding. Leaders envisioning employees as a group of people sharing the same ideas and goals are fostering collective thinking and decision-making by means of applying appropriate skills to organize others. Finally, goal attainment is impossible without a skills approach, which allows leaders to derive benefits from specific skills necessary to achieve current goals.
Impoverished management style is the most inappropriate behavioral model for a leader. From my viewpoint, this type of behavior devastates organizational balance and harmony. The impoverished leader means an indifferent leader who does not care about organizational mission, vision, values, and strategic plan. Impoverished leaders are not capable of creating a sustainable environment, which could motivate employees to complete the assigned tasks and excel personal abilities. As a result, this style is a guaranteed way towards chaos and dissatisfaction of employer, employees, and consumers who do not receive appropriate service.
There are two possible behavior outcomes for the employees who are different from the mean and do not match the leaders style and approaches accommodation of the minority to the leaders style and outburst of disagreement leading to conflict. The latter is less likely to occur because of the human factor, which does not allow many individuals to disagree with opinion of the majority. As a result, it is highly probable that more or less committed employees will prefer accommodating to the situation instead of facing the risk of losing job position because of contradicting to the leadership concept that is appropriate for other colleagues. In general, personal priorities of every individual not fitting the leadership style are the main factors influencing further actions of the employees different from the mean.
If a leader attempts to apply different leadership styles to every person, it may confuse employees and create an illusion that he has favorite workers because of differences in monitoring their activity and guiding them towards success. For example, an autocratic leader contradicts to the values of a democratic one, which means that employees will not understand strict attitude of a leader compared to semi-formal communication with other staff members. The only solution is to apply a situational leadership style, which will allow a leader to address multiple needs of employees without having to change a leadership style.
The main benefit of a high-quality leader-member relationship for top executives lies in becoming an iconic leader of employees willingly following the directions of the director. A high-quality leader-member communication allows leaders to learn more about the team of employees and their internal environment that influences productivity and organizational climate. The CEO becomes aware of the workers concerns, trust issues, and communication problems. As a result, it becomes easier to target problems, which are not visible from the viewpoint of a superior. Having a like-minded person among followers helps the leader to monitor reactions of the staff to new policies, plans, and regulations. In this way, he can delegate duties to employees and work on implementing multiple tasks simultaneously without risk of failing to meet quality standards. Thanks to close relations, the organization expands its boundaries under the influence of a good rapport in the workplace.
The main difference between transactional and transformational leaders lies in the scope of the performance that sets divergent expectations of their work. Transactional leaders focus on the current operations instead of associating employees productivity with long-term goals or strategic plans. It means that expecting from transactional leaders an explanation of long-term plans or instructions on how to achieve strategic goals is naive. Transformational leaders, in their turn, have a long-term vision that allows them to use the potential of the employees, improving their skills and abilities continuously, and assigning tasks according to the strategic goals of the company. In contrast to transactional leaders, transformational leaders are capable of working on teambuilding and setting the milestones of success achievement for every employee. It does not mean that one style is more effective than another. It means that the company should choose leaders with appropriate qualities and characteristics according to the strategic orienteers.
According to Bass Leadership Theory, there are four factors of transformational leadership including individual consideration, intellectual stimulation, inspiration, and idealized influence. Individual consideration means that a transformational leader focuses on the needs of a group member if it is necessary. Intellectual stimulation means that a leader works on the improvement of the followers skills and knowledge by fostering continuous support. Inspiration, in its turn, has a context of showing the meaning of every assigned task. Finally, idealized influence refers to becoming a role model to followers with perfect attributes and characteristics, which others are willing to obtain. In my own experience, individual consideration and inspiration took place simultaneously. A manager addressed my personal needs when I faced difficulties in accommodating to the new workplace. Later, he inspired me to work on the implementation of the assigned tasks with full dedication and persistence by showing the potential in the career building.
The history of leadership research started along with the Industrial Revolution, when it was necessary to understand the way people can cooperate with each other based on their skills and attributes. It was necessary to unite mechanization and teambuilding in a single system, which became the core of the bureaucratic leadership. Later, in the middle of the 20th century, the researchers started focusing on the employees needs in order to foster their motivation, which brought Maslows Hierarchy of Needs. Nowadays, the focus of the research has shifted to organizational needs through the lenses of the transformational leadership, which considers long-term success as the most crucial objective in the companys performance.
