Leadership Report: Theories, Styles, and Implications for Ford Motors

This report provides an in-depth analysis of leadership within Ford Motors, examining various theories, styles, and approaches. It begins with an introduction to authentic leadership and its significance in fostering self-awareness and positive behavior, both from leaders and employees. The report then provides an overview of Ford Motors, highlighting its history and global presence as a major automaker. It delves into the role of leadership, emphasizing the importance of communication, vision creation, empathy, and purposeful strategy. The report then explores different leadership theories, including the Great Man theory and the Trait theory, and discusses various leadership styles such as authoritative, democratic, and affiliative styles. It also covers approaches to the study of leadership, focusing on the person-oriented approach. Finally, the report addresses conflict management as a key task for leaders, emphasizing the importance of resolving conflicts to maintain a positive work environment and employee productivity. The report concludes by highlighting the importance of effective leadership in directing the workforce, achieving organizational goals, and attracting top talent. The report references several scholarly articles to support its analysis.

Authentic Leadership

INTRODUCTION
Authentic leadership is a process that helps in developing more self awareness and self regulated positive behaviour
from leaders as well as from associates side. It can be developed with the help of positive psychological aspects as
well as with the help of highly developed organization and its structure. This process will help in fostering positive
self development. Their is a long discussion on the topic of whether leaders are born or made but their are lots of
examples and situation which has described that leaders can be made with high quality of education and with a
personality that can influence others. In context to Ford Motors, it is an American Multinational automaker which
was incorporated in the year 1903. the company was founded by Henry Ford and is headquartered in Dearborn
Michigan. The company is still controlled by the Ford Family. Ford is the fifth largest automaker in the world and are
serving their products and services worldwide. The products that the company have are automobiles, luxury vehicles,
commercial vehicles, etc. In the given report, leadership and its theories have been discussed. Also the approaches of
leadership are provided. In the given report leadership and its implications are also given on the basis of situations.

Role of Leadership
Leaders are the one who have the capability to
influence and motivate the employees in the
companies and to help them in achieving their
objectives. Leaders are the one who sometimes have
to make sound and sometimes difficult decisions as
these decisions have the direct impact on the
success of the companies. Ford Motor is the biggest
automaker company which sells the commercial
vehicles and mostly the luxury vehicles in the
market.

Features of Leadership
•Communication- The leaders includes the feature of having good communication
skills as this helps them to provide the guidance to the employees regarding how
the work has to be conducted and processed. But with the coming of COVID-19
situation this communication needs to be more clear and transparent. The
communication needs to be in sync within the company so that employees in Ford
Motors do not face any issue.

Role
•Helps in creating vision- The leaders are the one which provides the vision to both the
employees, their team and also provides the vision to the companies also. They helps the
company in providing the idea as to how they have to move and what ideas they have to
adopt to get the success and gain competitive advantage in the market. Ford Motor
leaders always aim high and their main approach is to provide the success by motivating
the employees to work hard for the accomplishment of the objectives.

Continue...
•Empathy- The leaders have the main and the
important role of showing empathy to the people who
are working and also considering their things and facts
while working. The current COVID-19 pandemic has
lead to many delayed projects as the employees have to
work from home. There are many situations which the
employee might have to face at home and at that time
leaders were the one who have considered all the facts
and understand their problems which the employees
were suffering

Continue...
•Purposeful strategy- The role of leaders in the present time have been increased and the
employees are at present time are working hard for the goals of the company. The
strategy which was adopted at the earlier time has now been changed and the leaders are
the one who have the main role for establishing the strategy and fulfilling it. Ford Motors
have adopted the different strategy for the effective management and the leaders have
taken the different approach for following the policies which has been formulated in
accomplishing the objectives.

Theories of leadership
•Great man theory: The theory states that leaders are born and not made. It refers to the theory that is
providing basis for the leadership and leaders traits. According to the theory the leader are born with
right traits, skills and abilities which helps them in fulfilling their leadership roles and will make sure
that these people can influence other. Those trait are Charisma, communication skills, confidence,
social skills, etc. It defines leaders as mythic, valiant, ordained in the different situation that requires
leadership.
•Trait theory: The theory is based on the characteristics of different leaders and try to find similarities
in order to identify the traits that a leader must have. The theory tries to analyse all the different
characteristics of leaders from different perspectives (Arasli and et. al., 2019.). The focus of the study
is on different attributes such as physiological (appearance, height, weight, etc), demographics
(education, age, family background, etc), intelligence, judgement, decision making, knowledge.

leadership styles
•Their are different leadership styles that are followed by leaders according to their
personality traits or according to the demand of the situation or of the workplace
environment (Imam and et. al., 2020.). The different leadership styles that are followed
by companies are given. In context to Ford motors, the leadership styles that the leaders
of the company are as follows:
•Authoritative style:
•Democratic style:
•Affiliative style:

Approaches to the study of leadership
•Person oriented approach: This approach states that a person in order to become a good
leader must poses some traits that can help them in handling situations. This approach
supports the statement the leaders are born and not made (Landesz, T., 2018.). In this
approach a leader must posses charismatic qualities. Charisma is connected with the
leadership style that exercise more of power than authority.

Theoretical and research-based contributions
•Conflict management is one of the main task that the leaders have to perform on almost daily
basis. Conflicts can disturb the environment of the workplace and can spread negativity in the
management of the company. It is important for the leaders to make sure that the conflicts
arising within the workplace and within team are resolved efficiently and effectively as
conflicts can affect the motivation and productivity of employees in a negative ways which is
not good (Munir and et. al., 2019.). In context to Ford motors, the leaders of the company
makes sure that all the conflicts within the organization are solved in real time and the conflicts
does not affect the management of the company. The company knows that the management of
conflicts can be tricky especially when the ecosystem of the organization is large so they
provide training to their leaders in order to provide them an effective way of handling conflicts
that occurs within the organization. Some of the ways are given below:

CONCLUSION
•From the above report it is concluded that the company needs to make sure that they
have effective and efficient leaders which can help the company in directing their
workforce in the correct direction and can help the company in achieving their goals and
objectives which is necessary for an organization. The leader must be capable of
influencing the workforce of the company and must be able to align the goals of
employees with the goals of the company. It will help the company in increasing
productivity of the employees and will also help the company in attracting right talent in
the organization which is essential for the growth of the company.