Leadership in Business: Exploring Leadership Effectiveness

This report analyzes leadership in business, addressing key questions related to leadership's impact on organizational outcomes, the limitations of a leader's influence, and the attributes of effective leaders. It explores the Leader Member Exchange (LMX) theory and its application in improving leadership effectiveness. The report also examines strategies for fostering developmental readiness within a team and defines leader identity, providing examples. Furthermore, it differentiates between an organization's core competence and core ideology and their importance in articulating a vision. The report also discusses the servant leadership approach, highlighting its characteristics and providing an example. The analysis draws upon various leadership theories and provides practical examples to illustrate the concepts discussed.

Running head: LEADERSHIP IN BUSINESS
Leadership In Business
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1LEADERSHIP IN BUSINESS
Week 1
Leadership affecting the organizational outcome:
Leadership directly affects the success of the organization. Leaders determine the
culture, employee motivation and values of an organization. Leaders usually shape the
strategies of the organizations, which involves the effectiveness and execution of the
organizational strategies (Iqbal, Anwar and Haider 2015). Successful and efficient leaders
influence the team members in order to help them in improving their performance and in turn
enhance the profit of the organization. They also know how to use the minimum resources
provided by the company for generating the maximum outcome. Successful and effective
leaders help the employees to work towards the same goal and objective of the organization.
This encourages and motivates the employees to work harder for a better outcome. Behavior
of the leaders can also help the employees to earn trust and in turn help the organization
grow.
Example: Charismatic leadership of Steve Jobs has made the company Apple tremendously
successful.
Influence of a leader is limited:
John F. Kennedy, as a president was known to manage bigger and more complicated
situations very easily. He was successful in influencing the people around him but he was
always against creating layers in the surrounding, which would promote communication
among the individuals, which would end up in rivals (Nasomboon 2014). He followed the
dictatorial type of leadership, which de-motivated the people around him. His personality was
the combination of affection and a very hard mind. Thus, he is a good example of a leader
who was less influential.

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Week 2:
Leaders and the attributes:
I was working in an organization in the previous year where my team leader guided
me. He was efficiently executing his roles and responsibilities. As a leader, he had various
attributes that has helped him in motivating and influencing the team members. They are:
 Honesty and integrity: He possessed the supreme quality of unquestionable integrity.
 Confidence: He was an effective leader because he was confident enough to ensure
that the employees follow his command (Yarhi-Milo, Kertzer and Renshon 2018).
 Inspiring and motivating: He has a great skill of motivating and inspiring his
employees to make them work harder.
 Dedicated: He was dedicated and passionate about his job role and conducted it with
strong will and dedication.
 Good communicator: He communicated with every individual employee personally
and tried figuring out their problems, which made his problems in the team easier to
handle (Yarhi-Milo, Kertzer and Renshon 2018).
Leaders like him would feel comfortable where the process of communication within the
organization is very vibrant and where there is vibrant feedback mechanism. Leaders like him
do not feel comfortable in the situations where the work culture is not healthy and there is
communication gap between the leader and the lower level employees.
Leader member exchange theory and its effectiveness:
Leader member exchange theory is relationship-based style of leadership that focuses
mainly on the two-way relationship between the leaders and the followers. In this type of
leadership, leaders communicate and have a good relationship with the subordinates and they

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in turn influence the performance of these subordinates (Martin et al 2016). Leader member
exchange promotes positive experiences of the employees. It talks about the growth of the
organization by influencing the team performance. They provide the employees with best
offers and this grows a relationship of trust and respect between the leader and the team
member.
Week 3:
If I was managing a team, how would I foster developmental readiness among the
people?
Being a leader, I will always follow the charismatic style of leadership where I will
motivate my employees through the form of reward either monetary or through kind. I will
make sure that while taking decisions for the team; I consider the ideas and opinions of the
team members and make sure that the employees feel important to be a part of the
organization (Mathew 2013). I will also make sure that the there is good communication
amongst all the levels of authorities in the organization which in turn will provide a healthy
environment for all the employees to work in. I will also take the initiative of respecting each
other’s opinion within the organization.
Leader identity:
Leader identity is the potential of a leader to motivate and influence the other
members of the team. Successful leaders, drive the employees towards working on achieving
the goals of the organization. People in the organization seek consistency and certainty. In
order to develop leadership identity it is necessary to be self-aware, to know the identity of
leadership, which would be valuable for the organization, and be good at self-management in
order to deliver the identity into the work culture of the organization (Nicholson and Carroll

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2013). It also talks about the presence of the leader at work. It talks about the positive
attitude, mental and physical presence and the readiness of the leader take up new challenges
to bring in a change in the organization.
Example 1: In one of the organizations I have worked before, I have been managing a team
of 20 people where on a regular basis I used to take feedback from the employees and make
sure that their problems are resolved smoothly.
Example 2: In another case, I initiated the system of rewarding. On the basis of performance,
I rewarded the best performer with monetary benefits which in turn motivated the employees
to work harder for the individual betterment and also for the betterment of the organization.
Week 4:
Difference between an organization’s core competence and core ideology and its
importance in articulating a vision:
Core competencies of an organization talks about specific type of competency. These
competencies identify the strength and key values of the organization, which does not depend
on the kind of tasks the employees perform. If the employees take the initiative of supporting
these core competencies, the organizations will be able to gain a competitive advantage in the
marketplace. Whereas core ideology talks about the attributes that are made to last and help
the company attain the goals of the organization (Anwar and Hasnu 2013). The core ideology
of a company helps the employees to guide ad to inspire.
Based on the core competencies of the company, the employees are expected to work towards
attaining the mission and vision statement of the organization and this also helps the company
in developing the strategies for smooth functioning of the organization.

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Organization that has failed work on its vision statement:
For example the Dana Gas company had earned huge amount of losses as a result of
political problems in Syria, Iraq and Egypt and as a result of it the company was unable to
pay the shareholders their share of profits at the maturity of the Sukuk period. The main
reason behind this was directly related to the inefficient leadership in the organization, which
in turn failed to cope up with the market scenario (Jiang 2014). The leaders of the
organization refused to pay to the shareholders and as a result, they had to incur the losses.
Thus, this company was a failure in following its vision statement.
Week 5:
Servant leadership approach:
Servant leadership is a concept where the main aim of the leader is to serve. This
approach is pretty much different from that of the traditional approaches of leadership.
Servant leaders usually share power, consider the issues of the employees first and in turn
perform and develop as much as possible (Spears and Lawrence 2016). In case of servant
leadership, associates of the customer service are given the first priority. Whereas in other
approaches, employees work to serve the leader and in turn the organization.
Example of servant leader:
I consider Mahatma Gandhi as a servant leader as even after being a leader, he had
served the nation and worked for the people (Arnold 2014). He did not take advantage of his
power and did not entirely depend on the performance of others and rather he himself had
worked to serve the people and take better initiatives for the society. He has shown bravery
and courage in motivating the common people of the country.

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Reference:
Anwar, J. and Hasnu, S.A.F., 2013. Ideology, purpose, core values and leadership: How they
influence the vision of an organization. International Journal of Learning and
Development, 3(3), pp.168-184.
Arnold, D., 2014. Gandhi. Routledge.
Iqbal, N., Anwar, S. and Haider, N., 2015. Effect of leadership style on employee
performance. Arabian Journal of Business and Management Review, 5(5), pp.1-6.
Jiang, J., 2014. The study of the relationship between leadership style and project
success. American Journal of Trade and Policy, 1(1), pp.51-55.
Martin, R., Guillaume, Y., Thomas, G., Lee, A. and Epitropaki, O., 2016. Leader–member
exchange (LMX) and performance: A meta‐analytic review. Personnel Psychology, 69(1),
pp.67-121.
Mathew, A., 2013. Leadership: the preferred style in the context of Indian professionals using
Bass model of multi leadershi construct. The Business & Management Review, 4(2), pp.191-
197.
Nasomboon, B., 2014. The relationship among leadership commitment, organizational
performance, and employee engagement. International Business Research, 7(9), p.77.
Nicholson, H. and Carroll, B., 2013. Identity undoing and power relations in leadership
development. Human relations, 66(9), pp.1225-1248.
Spears, L.C. and Lawrence, M. eds., 2016. Practicing servant-leadership: Succeeding
through trust, bravery, and forgiveness. John Wiley & Sons.

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Yarhi-Milo, K., Kertzer, J.D. and Renshon, J., 2018. Tying hands, sinking costs, and leader
attributes. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 62(10), pp.2150-2179.