Developing Creativity Skills for Effective Leadership

The report highlights the importance of various skills and competencies required to support the success of PepsiCo's change of leadership style into a more flexible organizational structure. The adoption of participative, authentic, and servant leadership styles can bring significant benefits to the company, including increased employee creativity, motivation, and productivity. These leadership approaches promote positive psychological capacities, ethical climates, and community change, ultimately contributing to the design of a flexible working environment.

BA in Business Management
Module Assignment Checklist
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INTRODUCTION
Leadership is an activity of leading individuals or a group of people towards a specific
goal (Levy, 2010). The leadership generally involves establishment of a clear vision and then
sharing the same vision with others (Roe, 2014).
The above report is based on the study of the PepsiCo Foods Mexico Company. Jorge
Rubio, director of Consumer Strategic Insights (CSI) is willing to change the former marketing
research department structure into a more flexible style of organization that will be more that
only the distributor of collected information. His main idea is to create a structure similar to
Google’s corporate creativity centre with a form of brain spa where flexibility and discontinuity
carry out creative processes and productive ideas. However, any change requires specific skills
and competences from a staff and managers that will be helpful in achieving strategic goals
(Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, 2000). Therefore, this report will critically evaluate most
important leadership skills and competencies necessary for CSI department in order to adopt
flexible style of organization and meet the requirement of today`s customer.
According to the skill's theory of leadership, effective leadership depends on three basic
personal skills that must be possessed by leader to achieve success such as technical, human, and
conceptual (Robert Katz, 1955). In respect to the PepsiCo case, where the change in strategic
structure and name of MRD has been introduced, these three skills are most relevant in order to
lead faster reactions to meet consumers’ requirements and preferences (Katz’s Three-Skill
Approach, 2016). Furthermore, technical skills and knowledge are required to perform a specific
type of work or activity. In addition, leader at PepsiCo must have human skills also so that he
can work with people and can effectively manage the team of marketing research department.
Last but not the least, conceptual skills are also required by the leader to think creatively and
develop ideas to attain the strategic advantage for the organization.
Technical skills
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Firstly, technical skills play an essential role in succeeding managing change in PepsiCo
workplace and changing part of PepsiCo into a more flexible style of organization. Due to the
change in style of organization PepsiCo company is going to set up new strategies for
incorporating a flexible and more proactive structure. In the case, the leader will require critical
technical skills for optimizing organizational performance (Higgs, 2011). These kinds of skills
could be closely associated with capacity or ability to carry out predetermined results using tools,
machines, techniques, crafts, systems, and methods of organization. While having technical
skills, the leader must develop analytical ability, as well as should use appropriate tools and
techniques such as computer software, knowledge of accounting principles to a client’s audit.
According to Katz (2009) technical skills are learned capacity which are required to manage
complex set of communicative, technological, and data-organization skills to manage managerial
performance. As the PFM is going to change its marketing department into CSI, the leaders are
required to have technical skills to understand the systems so that other employees can be
supported and helped out. According to Robles (2012), technology plays a supportive role within
the organization as well as it helps in making improvements in working practices. The technical
environment of PepsiCo is going to change its department so the leader must require skills to
manage technical changes at the workplace. Acquiring technical skills, leader can access
intelligence and knowledge of technology which are required to manage the changes at the
workplace. To support the change, leader must have background for effective accomplishments
of technical decisions. At the time of changing in the marketing department, there can be some
complexity and massive integration of systems which need to be understood by the managers and
PepsiCo leaders so they can resolve outages and instability issues. Technical knowledge is a
must for managers so that they can be communicative and optimize managerial performance at
all levels (Katz’s Three-Skill Approach. 2016). A flexible working environment can be designed
while having knowledge and proficiency in a specific work or activity that are going to be done
in PepsiCo CSI. On the other hand, as proven by above theory leaders to implement the new idea
of CSI will need some technical skill to deal with systems and machinery but more human skills
to deal with people. Where the top people i.e. managers are more likely to use conceptual skills
rather than technical abilities to set strategies and long term plans (Katz, 1995)
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(Katz, 1995)
Human skills
According to Katz skills model (1955), human skills are the ones that enable leaders to
work effectively with people. According to the Katz study, human skills are focused towards the
ability of motivating people and improving their performance in order to achieve organisational
goal. Human skills pay important role in motivating staff and encouraging them to adopt
organizational changes. The main motive behind leader is to assist the group so the change can
be fast, flexible and efficient. From the point of views of Certo (2015) most important human
skills includes: trust and belief.
The possession of human skills will be very helpful for Jorge Rubio`s leaders to
understand CSI’s working environment and employees needs. Human skills like positive
attitude, cooperation and trust are very helpful in achieving organizational goals more quickly
and efficiently (Skills Approach: Robert Katz, 2016). Having such skills can be beneficial in
managing workforce in appropriate manner and can lead business to impressive level of success
as well as it can easily increase the morale of employees and improve organisational productivity
(Northouse, 2015). Firstly, Pepsico leader must acquire trust from people working in such
organization. Thus, well developed human skills are necessary for PepsiCo managers who will
directly deal with people (Puccio, Mance and Murdock, 2010) Managers with good human skills
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are able to get the best out of their people. In addition to that, human skills will be useful in
creating environment of trust where people can feel comfortable, secure and engaged in business
activities. As the company is going to change its marketing research department (MRD) into
CSI, leaders should effectively communicate with the employees about new vision of the
organization. Especially, that business is going to change into a new department thus will be
important for leader to motivate individuals for adopting change and to making employees
involved in decision, what will give them greatest motivation. However, human skills are said to
be an art of understating others as it is very hard to recognize and fulfil needs of various
individuals (Katz, 2009) Therefore, leaders at PepsiCo should have good interaction with others
can be crucial in problem solving situations and enhance the success of new department. As
business is going to change the department into new structure, there is possibility that some
issues might occurred, in this case, leader must have openness to hear and appreciate inputs of
others to solve the problem (Tricker, 2015).
Additionally, human skills are strongly connected with individual characteristics and
personality. Myers Briggs distinguished 3 main types of leaders personality such as extrovert,
introvert and observant that can work as an indicators of ability to posses human skills (Hayes,
2014). By definition, extrovert, it is a person that focuses on effective development of
communication system in order to express things (Raelin, 2011) Introvert is an individual who
does not have much sharing with the person. On the other hand, observant considers sensible
aspects in order to meet objectives in appropriate manner (Daft and Marcic, 2014) Base on
Myers Briggs theory, type of indicator, management of PepsiCo should look for extroverts who
will be most effective in human relations and communication.
Conceptual skills
Conceptual skills are significantly known as the ability to understand the complexity of
the organization, its core processes as well as the capabilities of business in order to develop
future strategic plans (Puccio, Mance and Murdock, 2010). The major point behind conceptual
skills is to think through and work with ideas to provide strategic direction and motivate others to
pursue the organizational goals (Griffin, McGaw and Care, 2012) According to the words of
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Griffin (2013) this skill is most important for top managers as it is them who will decide future
courses of actions.
The leader of new department at PepsiCo should definitely have conceptual skills in the
form of creativity, decision making, critical and strategic thinking. As the business wants to
become closer to Google environment they need people with creative thinking and holistic view.
According to Raelin (2011) creative leadership is about a combination of one's ability to generate
innovative ideas as well as to execute that idea into actions of others. It can be further said that
creativity need to be the heart of business, not only on top of the management agenda. PepsiCo's
leader must have ability to develop and work with new ideas that came out by the process of
brain-storming (Dubrin, 2015). In respect to the present case of PepsiCo company creative
leaders are required to places new thinking to make success of new department that is going to
be changed in CIS department. As stated that creative leaders tend to pursue revolutionary
strategies instead of improving the existing system (Proctor, 2014). PepsiCo change in marketing
department will also require from leader capability of creating visions, setting directions and
predicting issues. Conceptual skills enable leader at PepsiCo to understand work environment
and decide on actions that are to be taken for improvement. However, the leader must then
communicate it effectively to different stakeholders where the human skills will take an
important part. Involvement and communication with stakeholder will also facilitate in decision
making process and provides various opportunities for sustainable development of business.
In respect to this, the creativity in terms of problem solving or innovations is a must
for leaders at PepsiCo during the business structure change. The Leadership Competency
Framework (2016) outlines importance of effective decision making and creativity skills in
delivering desired targets. The team leaders and supervisors use conceptual skill to manage
business day-to-day operations where top management use it to look at their company as a
holistic entity, to see the interrelationships between its divisions in order to develop most
effective strategic plans. However, the model is often based on best in class leadership which is
not very realistic (Northouse, 2013).
CONCLUSION
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The above report showed that various skills and competences are required to support the
success of PepsiCo change of leadership style into more flexible organisational structure. It must
be said, that it is essential for PepsiCo to focus on different leadership skills while dealing with
change of MRD. Changes in leadership will provide various monetary and non-monetary
advantages to the PepsiCo. Firstly, it has been proven that leadership style transformation will be
significant for development in the aspects of employees’ creativeness. With a diverse
transformation in leadership styles the business firm can easily increase the morale of employees
and improve organisational productivity too. In order to manage newly recruited employees the
management of PepsiCo should not focus on autocratic leadership style as it will limit the
creativeness and staff motivation but direct more into human skills approach (Vroom and Jago,
2007). Participative leadership style will be the most beneficial as the workforce can easily
provide innovative ideas and recommendation to management in order to overcome issues and
improve work culture. This is because they are well known of culture and understands the
organisational needs. Secondly, there are two other leadership styles that can be used to support
the change into leadership style of PepsiCo. First one, authentic leadership promotes positive
psychological capacities and positive ethical climate. This approach of leadership focuses on
building the leader's legitimacy through honest relationships with followers (Roe, 2014)
Authentic leaders are positive people along with this, they possess truthful self-concepts and
promote openness. On the other hand, servant leadership is based on a natural feeling where
leaders share power and try to fulfil the needs of others at first by helping people to develop and
perform as highly as possible. However, in the case of PepsiCo, to make a flexible organization,
in which employees to be more self-responsible, a servant leadership style is most recommended.
The application of servant leadership will lead to community and societal change as servant-
leader builds trust among employees and encourages people to perform better by considering
their needs (What Is Authentic Leadership, 2013). In this way, use of servant leadership style will
help to design a flexible working environment as seen in Google. Secondly, it will also allow top
level official to communicate effectively with different stakeholders and accomplish J.Rubio`s
vision of CSI in more effective manner (Daft, 2011). Achieving strategic advantage can only be
done by using various leadership models and making sure leaders skills are in place. Moreover,
servant leadership style can be very useful for manager in improving the leadership skills. New,
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more flexible leadership style of PepsiCo Foods Mexico will bring trust among employees and
encourages them to be more self-responsible what will be beneficial for whole organization.
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