The Assignment on Strategic Management and Leadership Skills

RUNNING HEAD: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP SKILLS
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Strategic Management and Leadership Skills

Strategic Management and Leadership Skills
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Introduction
Strategic management is considered as the managing of resources of the organization in
the different functional areas such as manufacturing, financial, technological, marketing and
manpower in order to achieve organizational goals The role of CEO in this changing business
environment and industry revolution 4.0 become complex. As they have to make strategic plans
in accordance with changing scenario due to automation and technology advancement it become
necessary for organization to focus on strategic talent recruitment and development in order to
survive and gain competitive advantage (Graham,2016). In this report, various leadership
theories and styles of leadership are explained; leadership theories are trait theory, behavioral
theory and situational theory and leadership styles are democratic style, autocratic and
transformational. Further, in relation with leadership style its impact on management is identified
so that proper strategic decisions can be taken. These leadership styles can be changed as per the
situations that are faced by the leader. At last, reflection is given on which style is best suitable
according to my perspective in the era of IR 4.0 and along with that some recommendations are
given on the way the company can head in future.
LO1 Understanding the relationship between Strategic Management and Leadership
1.1 Link between strategic management and leadership
In simple terms, strategic management is a process in which the organizations work
effectively by allocating the limited resources as per the mission of the organization (David &
David, 2016). On the other side, leadership plays an important role because a leader guides the
organization and brings result from rest of the team. Strategic management and leadership are
connected together as leadership is a bridge between target and managing of resources, with the
help of leader organization strategic plans can be implemented effectively and efficiently
(Rothaermel,2017).
1.2 Impact of Leadership style on strategic direction
Leaders and managers play an important role in strategic planning and implementation. As
leaders use different approaches to lead a team and managers have different approaches to run an

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organization (Popli & Rizvi, 2016). Such as if a leader adopted autocratic leadership style than
he will not delegate work to its subordinates and in the strategic direction the planning and
implementation is done according as per his traits such as centralization structure will be used if
the leader use autocratic leadership style and if he use democratic leadership style he might use
decentralized structure in order to get work done from its team quickly and creatively. Hence, the
leadership style used by a leader directly impact on the strategic direction. For instance,
leadership style further can be seen as leaders who are people oriented and leaders who are task
oriented (Csazar,2012).
Leaders who are people oriented focus on building relationship with employees and with that
they influence them to achieve goals. Leaders who are task oriented focus on working and
production rather than building relation and network (McCleskey, 2014). For example, I use
democratic leadership style and in that situation I use people oriented approach, this impact on
the productivity, operations, satisfaction and culture of the company. Hence, it is clearly
analyzed that leadership style impact on each and every area of an organization so on strategic
direction. In a nutshell, approaches used by leaders or managers have direct impact on the
strategic direction and the way organization.
1.3 Leadership style in different situation
In different situation, different leadership style is been adopted. Autocratic leadership style if
used by leader help in fast decision making process in the organization but leads to low
employee satisfaction as the employees don’t feel valued in the organization this affect the
overall management or organization structure as employee turnover and dissatisfaction becomes
higher (Berg & Karlsen, 2016).
If leader adopt democratic leadership style then most of the decisions are taken by
subordinates or with participation of followers. This leadership style changes the management
way of doing work and motivate others to follow two way communications so that feedback
system in the organization can be strength (Bhargavi & Yaseen,2016).
Laissez faire leadership style states that the role of leader is less and all the decisions and
work are done by group or team without any involvement of leader. Due to this leadership style,
management faces problems during accountability and responsibility of tasks this can create
conflicts amounts the employees at different managerial level (Kelly,2018).

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LO2 Management and Leadership Theories to support organization direction
Leadership theories that are associated with leadership are; firstly trait theory focuses on
the aspect that there are some personality traits and characteristics that differentiate a leader from
non-leader. Some of the traits of leadership are intelligence, attractiveness, self-confidence,
charisma, long term vision and ability to lead. On other side, behavioral theory states that leaders
can be made by learning behavior and there are two type of behavior of a leader one is people
oriented and another is goal oriented (Northouse,2018).Situational leadership theory is used to
the greater extent, as this theory states that leaders adopt different leadership style according to
the situation. This theory is applicable to all types of organization and is beneficial for leaders
and followers as it depend on leader what style can be used for successfully leading its followers.
This theory majorly based on perspective of Hersey and Blanchard, they suggested four
leadership styles that can be used by leaders that are telling, selling, participating and delegating.
The right style depends on the situation and readiness of the followers (Shamin, Cang, Yu &
Li,2016).
Leaders take decisions for the success of organization and their leadership style helps the
organization to build and change the behavior and attitude of employees. Leaders and managers
work hand in hand, leaders can change and influence behavior of employees by using different
leadership styles and managers try to manage people and resources to support the organization
direction (Reunanen & Kaitonen, 2017). It can be said that leaders and managers greatly impact
on the organization strategy and organization working.
2.1 Impact of selected theories on organizational strategy
The above mentioned theories such as trait theory, situational theory and behavioral
theory has impact on the way organization run or implement strategies. Organization strategy
largely depend on the organization theories; for instance if leader use situational leadership
theory than all the decisions in the organization are based on the situation and leader use
different style according to situation so its directly impact on the organizational goals and
strategy (Thompson & Glas,2018). For example, organization strategy is to improve sales by