Leadership: Styles, Power, Influence, and Change

This document explores different styles of effective leadership, the role of power and influence, and the importance of leadership in driving change. It discusses motivational theories, contingency theory, decision-making models, and the dark side of leadership. The paper emphasizes the process of leadership and the need for leaders to build trust and involve employees in decision-making.

Running head: LEADERSHIP
Leadership
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note:

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Introduction:
There is a saying regarding the powerful term leadership which is there are almost as
many definitions of leadership as there the person who attempts to define the concept. The word
leadership defined as the process, by which a person exerts influence, inspires, motivates and
directs the activities in an organization in order to achieve a common goal (Holten & Brenner,
2015).. The term leadership provides crucial insights which highlighted that the leadership must
consider as a process, not position. While the majority of the time manager tends to play the
role of a leader, there is a distinct difference between manager and leaders. Leaders are the
person who creates a vision in an organization whereas manager adapts the vision in order to
create a goal. Hence, leadership and management are two individuals who work in symbiosis
with others in order to bring rapid growth to the organization. Iqbal, Anwar and Haider (2015),
stated that the key component of effective leadership is influence and authority an individual has
in his behavior in order to lead other people of origination. This paper will reflect on leadership,
values, power, ethics, attributes and behavior and influence in the following paragraphs.
Discussion:
Different styles of effective leadership:
Effective leadership incorporates the form of power that such as legitimate, information,
reward, expert, coercive, referent in order to establish a goal which has the desired outcome. As
a part of the management, I have gained an in-depth understanding of the topic leadership until
the eleventh week of curriculum. The first-week curriculum focused on different perspective
and aspects of leadership and how it is inseparable from management, manager. The first
curriculum emphasized on the fact that leaders must follow as a process of gaining rapid growth

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of the organization, not a position. Nguyen et al. (2016), suggested that one does not require a
conventional role of leadership in order to bring growth and to be successful leaders. Effective
leadership is defined as the behavior of individuals through which an individual exhibit
fundamental skills and competencies of directing the activities of a group towards shared goals
and encourage the input of others to achieve the shared goal (Yusuf, 2016). Considering the
above-discussed factors it is crucial to mention one example that was highlighted by my
professor such as issues experienced by Uruguayan rugby team which was involved in a plane
crash in Andes Mountain. While it was a story of survival and heroic act, it is also a story of
leadership in a dynamic and critical situation. This is one of the examples which highlighted that
effective leaders may experience a diverse range of challenges while dealing with people who
have different personality, values, and motive in order to accomplish a goal in an adverse
situation. However, it is noteworthy to say that the skills exhibited by effective leaders in such
situations are crucial to achieving goals (Fiaz & Saqib 2017)..
Considering the understanding I have gathered from the first-week curriculum is that
leadership is not a position but a process by which one aims to encourage a group of people
towards a specific goal and objective. Moreover, I have gained an understanding that leadership
is associated with creating a suitable environment who individual plays the role of leader, exhibit
competencies to take individual decisions and able to influence others to work according to it.
The literature has exhibited different styles of leadership charismatic, transactional,
transformation, each with unique attributes to achieve the desired outcome (Masa'deh, Obeidat,
& Tarhini, 2016). Without proper culture and style, the organization may lose talents as well as
business and clients (Wang, Kim & Lee, 2016). Hence, effective leaders should have

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competencies to motivate others, well-established skills to build goal-oriented teams in order to
accomplish desired goals (Behrendt, Matz & Göritz, 2017)..
A motivational theory of developing leadership:
The ability to motivate others is a fundamental leadership skill which allows leaders to
accomplish the objective of organizations (Behrendt, Matz & Göritz, 2017). Considering the
curriculum explored in class and literature evidence, I have gained the understanding that while
motivation is the fundamental approach of leadership which provide others a direction towards
mission and objective and services results from those behaviors. However, the curriculum also
highlighted that this approach varies from effectiveness which involves making judgments about
the capability of behavior with respect to certain criteria. Hence, on an organization level, while
an adequate level of motivation is crucial for the organization, the insufficient for performance
and effectiveness. In the current context, engage in order to achieve the desired goal and engage
as well as satisfy employee, a potential leader is required to gain the understanding of different
motivational theories and choose right motivational theory (Neubauer & Martskvishvili, 2018).
Maslow hierarchy of needs is an effective motivational theory in psychology which comprises a
five tire model of human needs that enable leaders to shape their skills according to human needs
(Fisher, M. H., & Royster, D. (2016). The literature has documented numerous situations where
organizational leaders experienced a financial crisis or loss of talent because of low wages. This
motivational theory assists potential leaders to develop a safe environment for workers in order
to align with basic needs (Harrigan & Commons, 2015). Hence, through this curriculum, I have
gained an understanding that by applying this motivational theory, potential leaders should have
all competencies in order to meet the basic needs mentioned in the five-tier model which will
further flourish personal growth. In recent time, the leaders develop competencies to meet the

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upper-level needs of this five tire model. Employees also feel motivated and improve their
potential by increasing responsibility for organizational growth.
Power and influence, a fundamental part of leadership:
Considering curriculum that has explored in the class, the curriculum emphasized on
difference between power and influence and explored the various source of power which is
required in order to shape leadership roles (Porath, Gerbasi, & Schorch, 2015). Taking a deep
insight into the literature, I have gained an in-depth understanding that utilization of power is
fundamental competency of effective leadership where leaders can use power for organizational
wellbeing and a leader can utilize various form and source of power available depending on the
ethical code and standard. The literature highlighted several incidences where utilization of
power and ethics of a leader was questioned that further intensifying the need for evaluating the
ethics of recent leaders and management studies focused on evaluating these ethics (Sousa & van
Dierendonck, 2017). Our curriculum highlighted that leader’s explicit as well as implicit
expectation in association with goal attainment impact the performance of followers and team.
Considering this piece of information, I have gained the understanding that a potential leader
must set a desired but attainable goals in order to enhance the performance of an employee. This
set of goals and influencing employees to achieve the goals further boost the level of confidence
and empower the follows that they have the potential for accomplishing the goal (Beer et al.,
2019). In this case, the Pygmalion effect can be applied which occurs when leaders express
high expectations for followers and it can be applied to different essential, sectors (Howard,
Tang & Austin, 2015). This high expectation of leader’s influence the follows which further

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facilitate the performance of individuals and team, resulted in organization growth. Hence, a
potential leader must apply the Pygmalion effect to enhance the performance and growth of the
organization.
Contingency theory of leadership:
Our curriculum explored that different Contingency theory of leadership which helped
me to gain the understanding that one if the crucial attribute of effective leadership is situational
leadership where leaders use their knowledge of how a situation affects the leadership in order
adopts different strategies to improve the situation (Lynch et al., 2018). Situation engineering is
an effective approach to adopt the attributes of leaders and leaders requires through training in
order to manage the situation and it will help leaders to take maximum hold of the situation
(Meier, 2016). The program instructs leaders to evaluate their strength in a certain situation and
expected to use an effective strategy to improve the situation.
The normative model of decision making in leadership:
Vroom’s model of decision making is a leadership model that helps the manager to
decide to which degree their team members can participate in the decision making the process.
Team members usually have a common goal or task and have more specialized roles compared
to group members. Hence, by applying the normative model of decision making, potential
leaders can take control of the situation through the most effective decision making the
procedure and can incorporate team members in the decision making (Pandey et al., 2016). It
will also enable leaders to facilitate group survival, help to avoid embarrassment and bring the
growth of the organization.

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Leadership and change:
After gathering in-depth knowledge, I have understood that organizations are designing
innovative strategies in order to meet the demand of clients and stakeholders. In the recent era,
leaders gained the understanding that leaders cannot resolve every issue with the assistance of
financial factors rather they require innovative strategies and highly skilled workforce. Hence,
I believe that potential leaders required an action plan for attaining the desired goal and first
action plan is to develop trust amongst the workforce for implementing change through Lewis’
change management (Barbuto, 2016). Through implementing leadership techniques, potential
leaders can bring changes and motivate employees to incorporate their skills in order to
implement changes. Hence, the trust between employees and leaders further facilitate the
performance of the team, facilitate the changes management process and leaders can bring that
trust through sharing the vision, providing incentives.
Dark side of leadership:
While exploring the curriculum and a diverse range of the literature, I have gained an
understanding regarding the dark side of leadership. Chreim (2015), noted that while a leader
has to encounter the demands and depending on the attribute and competencies, a leader
experience either success or failure. The literature documented certain attributes which facilitate
the achievement and progression towards the desired aim. However, after exploring my
curriculum I have developed a belief that in order transform the dark personality of leadership
into attributes of success, potential leaders must be aware and facilitate the understanding of
ways which would be appropriate to handle the certain situation and identify the strength and
weakness of their behavior (Lehnert et al., 2016). In order to handle the situation in an effective
way and identify underlying factors that influence behavior that may turn the dark personality to
success, leaders must involve themselves in development of self-awareness and obtain the

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knowledge of constructive personality that shapes effective leaders (Lehnert et al., 2016). The
only effective way of gaining understanding is a detailed survey of organizational growth and
feedback session. The organization must identify individuals who show a high level of dark
personality which results in inhibition of growth. While it is easier to say theorize the process of
identifying the dark side of leadership, it is difficult to implement it in the process. Hence, in
order to develop effective leadership skills and identify the dark attributes of leadership, the
Five-Factor Model of Personality is most suitable mean (Demirtas, 2015).
Followers:
Our curriculum has highlighted the concept of followers which contributed to effective
leadership. There are certain characteristics of followers such as confidence, optimism, skills and
expertise, trust in leaders, Task commitment and effort, Satisfaction with job and leader which
facilitate the success of leaders. Hence, the follower readiness model can be implemented by
potential leaders who are more inclined to adopt the situational leadership style. To my
understanding, I believe that a leader is must choose accurate leadership style depending on the
readiness of followers. They may like to see followers to increase their readiness for a particular
task. This readiness can be attained when leaders following situational leadership offer
supportive and motivating behaviors to their employees and thus providing an opportunity for
the employees to share their opinion and take part in decision making (Barrs & Rustin, 2017).
Conclusion:
Thus it can be concluded that leadership is an individual who is able to direct and
motivate other people to achieve organizational goal. While change management and highly

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skilled workforce can bring rapid growth and facilitate the growth of the organization, leaders
with their effective styles are the fundamental factors of success that encourage the employees to
attain the desired goal and drive them for change. The paper highlighted that leadership is a
process rather than the role which brings growth to the organization. In order to shape the
leadership style and adopt effective leadership skills, leaders must involve themselves in the
feedback session and build trust in their employees.
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