Perception and Leadership Effectiveness in Organizations

This essay discusses how perception impacts on leadership effectiveness and what leaders can do to enhance their perceived leadership effectiveness. It also explores the importance of perception in shaping ethical and moral decisions, performance appraisal, and developing creative solutions in organizations.

Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR AND DESIGN 1
Organizational Behavior and Design
Name:
Institution

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Introduction
For the organizations that seek to reach their goals, decision making is an essential skill.
The excellence of an organization is based on accurate decision making and the consequences of
a decision can either break or make an organization. In the decision-making process, perception
plays a crucial role. As such, decision-makers, often the leaders in a company make use of
perception to come up with, evaluate, and make choices between decision options. Perception is
defined as the process through which people organize and interpret their own sensory
impressions with the intention of giving the environment a meaning. However, perception is not
perfect because it is based on assumptions which are attributed to a person’s personal
characteristics. There are several factors that influence an individual’s perception. For instance, it
is likely that the perceiver may be influenced by their personal characteristics which comprise of
experiences, attitudes, expectations, as well as interests. A person is perceived through their
background, size, distinguishable characteristics, attractiveness, color, and accent. Additionally,
perception is also influenced by situational factors that consist of social setting, the work setting,
including the event. The purpose of this essay is to discuss how perception impacts on leadership
effectiveness and determining what may be done by a leader to enhance their perceived
leadership effectiveness.
How Perception Impacts on Leadership Effectiveness
In the real world organizations, decisions are made on the bases of people reacting to a
certain problem. The organizational decisions are made based on the firm’s finances, goals,
employees, schedules, along with other data (Underdahl, Walker & Woehr, 2014). In the current
world, leaders within organizations have been empowered to make decisions on behalf of the
employees. The leaders participating in intuition, bounded rationality, including common errors
and biases. Typically, the leaders or the decision makers are observed not to exhaust all the
available alternatives to a particular issue. The leaders are adept to coming up with a short list
comprising of the likely alternatives and selecting the alternative that best solves most of the
complexities associated with a problem (Dabke, 2016). Common errors and biases in the process
of making a decision include escalation of commitment, randomness, availability,
overconfidence, hindsight, anchor, representative, and confirmation. All these biases and errors

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can cloud the judgment of the decision makers. As a result, perception impacts on leadership
effectiveness in the following ways;
Perception helps in shaping ethical as well as moral decisions. In ethical decision making,
there are basically three criteria that comprise justice, utilitarianism, and rights. The
utilitarianism criteria are widely used to govern several businesses and it is consistent with goals
such as high profits, efficiency, along with productivity. The utilitarianism forsakes a person’s
individual rights (Brouer, Douglas, Treadway & Ferris, 2013). On the other hand, the rights
criteria entail the act of protecting and respecting a person’s individual rights. Additionally, the
ethical criteria of justice are mostly applied by the unions and it entails having equal rules, pays,
as well as benefits for all staff. The process of ethical decision making puts into consideration
every individual, object, or animal that are likely to be affected by decisions made by the leaders.
Failure to consider all the stakeholders in decision-making results in unethical decisions. Every
person tries to give an explanation about the world around them by use of perception. Making
use of perceptions can result in errors (Chen & Li, 2013). However, a perception which is
accurate may prove to be effective in the process of making decisions. The leaders cannot fully
rely on perception when making decisions but they must attribute an individual’s behavior to a
particular cause. Combining the decision-making criteria, perception, as well as the avoidance of
biases including errors, make it easy for the leaders involved in decision-making to solve
problems correctly, thus impacting on the effectiveness of their leadership.
Being a manager involves expressing good leadership skills and being effective in
leading other people. Particularly, during interviews, the perception of a leader likely influences
their decisions. For instance, if a manager is carrying out an interview, their perception assists
them in recruiting the best candidates (Lakshman, 2013). Additionally, their perpetual biases are
likely to affect the accuracy of the manager’s judgment of the candidates. In the expectation of
effectiveness and performance, perception assists the manager in making judgments that are
effective based on the expectation. As such, perception impacts on the manager’s effectiveness
since it helps them in coming up with the most effective performance appraisal of their staff
when evaluating performance (Danielsson, Wulff & Westerlund, 2013). This implies that
appraisal is subjective to performance appraisal. Having the best perception for a leader within
an organization helps the team to have safe solutions when there are risky ideas.

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Perception impacts on leadership effectiveness since applying perception within an
organization is essential in developing creative solutions when problems arise, it increases
productivity, cognitive thinking, as well as creativity. The impacts resulting from a person’s
perception impacts on the effectiveness of their leadership since perception is crucial for several
reasons which comprise of; individualism-collectivism which refers to the degree of a person to
possess the perception of acting as a group or as an individual (MacKie, 2014). Considering the
case of power distance, the acceptance of the large differences that exist in power between
people are different as a result of the perception that they have on each other. In the case of a
leader, the person would create controversies when they try to control their subordinates. As a
result, perception is important in enhancing leadership effectiveness because it helps the leaders
and other individuals to be time oriented, understand the culture of other people, and avoid
uncertainties. In the workplace, a person’s perception is biased by their culture, socialization,
education, and experience. A person’s behavior is based on what they see and not on the real
situation (Colbert, Barrick & Bradley, 2014). Hence, the staff perceives their leader’s efforts
based on the manner which the leader or the manager successfully plans and organizes their
employees work and how they actually assist them to carry out their tasks in an effective manner.
In case a leader has got a negative perception, it affects the organization’s productivity and
performance negatively. However, having a positive perception boosts a person’s performance
and it increases a company’s productivity.
How to Improve the Perceived Leadership Effectiveness
Becoming an effective and great leader requires that a leader has a clear vision and the
actions that they should take in turning their visions into reality (Nayak, 2016). As a result,
improving the perceived leadership effectiveness requires that the leader focuses on the crucial
areas which possess the highest impact in turning their goals along with their vision into reality.
To develop the perceived leadership effectiveness, the leader should possess the will to learn and
then practice whatever they learn if they are to win in this battle. The more the leader is willing
to learn and the harder they are willing to practice, then the more successful they are going to
become in attaining their goals and vision. Despite that some people believe that leaders are
born, it is evident that effective leadership requires that the leader continuously learns, regularly
accepts feedback, and they practice what they learn consistently (Ramchunder & Martins, 2014).

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In the instance where a leader feel that they know everything pertaining to leading people, it is
observed that arrogance creeps in. Arrogance is considered to be condescending and individuals
feel less inclined in following leaders whose communication style is viewed as being
condescending, thus the need to improve the perceived leadership effectiveness. To improve
their leadership effectiveness, leaders should continuously hone their craft into becoming more
effective. Some of the measures that leaders can take to improve their perceived leadership
effectiveness are as follows;
To improve the perceived leadership effectiveness, a leader should clarify their leadership
vision. A leader spends most of their time thinking about the future. Hence, leaders have got
defined pictures of how they intend their business’s future to look (Gifford, et al., 2013). The
ability of a leader to clarify their vision is among the most essential aspects of improving
leadership effectiveness. When a leader is capable of seeing the direction that they want their
business to head, it makes it easier for them to empower as well as encourage their team to assist
in bringing up that vision’s focus and making it a reality. Having a clear vision is important
because it shows where a person is headed (Crossan, Mazutis, Seijts & Gandz, 2013). Being a
leader requires that a person look forward to where they and the organization are headed, thus
averting catastrophes before they take place. Nonetheless, having a vision provides motivation
and it inspires the leader to keep on moving. Nonetheless, leaders need to have clear visions
since it provides them with focus.
Also, in developing the perceived leadership effectiveness, leaders should build on their
emotional intelligence. A leaders IQ depends on how intelligent they are. A leader’s emotional
intelligence involves how their open their mouth, build strong relationships, as well as achieving
their intended goals (Rich, et al., 2015). A leader that has emotional intelligence is normally very
self-aware. As such, they understand their emotions, and thus they are not ruled by their
emotions. Such leaders are confident since they have a high trust in their intentions, and they do
not allow their emotions to get out of control. Also, leaders with a high level of intelligence have
empathy. This means that they are capable of identifying with as well as understanding the
viewpoints, needs, including the wants of the people surrounding them (Vohra, Rathi &
Bhatnagar, 2015). A leader that portrays empathy is good at recognizing others feeling even in

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instances when such feelings may not seem obvious. Developing emotional intelligence may
equally improve perceived leadership effectiveness.
Nonetheless, to develop their leadership effectiveness, leaders should learn from the
mistakes that they make. Learning from the bad decisions that a person makes may prove to be
the best life lesson. A leader’s experience is as a result of their way of life, their understanding,
along with the adjustments that they make (Lawton & Páez, 2015). Learning from mistakes is
crucial in improving leadership effectiveness since it prevents the risk of not having to repeat a
mistake. A leader should learn to make good choices including decisions if they are to become
effective leaders, and their judgment will only be enhanced if they truly learn from their
mistakes. When leaders make a mistake, they shift their perspective and view it as an opportunity
to strengthen their resolve (Baron & Parent, 2015). Some of the other measures that leaders can
use to improve the perceived leadership effectiveness include being committed, finding great
mentors, treating people right, and understanding and utilizing their strengths and gifts.
Conclusion
Perception is the process of organizing and obtaining meaning by an individual from the
sensory which is received from the environment. This meaning might not be the reality but it
refers to the meaning given to the environment by an individual. The perception of an individual
is based on their motives, expectations, attitudes, interests, along with experience. Within the
workplace, perception is essential where employees carry out duties with the intention of
attaining a common goal. As such, the staff wants to see their leaders making the social climate
of their workplace comfortable and motivate them in attaining the common goal. Having a clear
perception would be very essential for a leader if they are to become effective in their leadership
styles. When a leader possesses a clear idea about the behavior of their followers, it makes many
of the other processes such as staffing, allocation, and recruiting to be carried out efficiently thus
avoiding conflicts. Hence, the workforce feels motivated since there is a clear definition of their
behavior. Perception impacts on the leadership effectiveness because it assists in shaping a
leader’s ethical as well as moral decisions. Nonetheless, perception impacts on leadership
effectiveness since it helps leaders in coming up with the most effective performance appraisal of
their staff when evaluating performance. To improve the perceived leadership effectiveness,

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leaders should take measures such as clarifying their leadership vision, build on their emotional
intelligence, and learn from their own mistakes.

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