Leadership and Change Management: Reflective Essay with Strategies

This essay provides a reflective analysis of leadership and change management within a clothing retail company facing quality control issues. It discusses the implementation of total quality management (TQM) through hiring an operations expert and the application of democratic leadership to encourage employee buy-in. The essay also explores various change management strategies, emphasizing employee empowerment and strategic communication. Furthermore, it outlines leadership strategies focused on clear vision communication, employee recognition, and continuous education. The anticipated positive impact on the company includes improved customer satisfaction, increased profitability, and enhanced employee morale, ultimately leading to the successful implementation of organizational changes and recovery from financial losses.

Leadership and
Change Management -
individual reflective
essay

Executive Summary
Leadership and change management is considered as the significant functions in the company
because such activities and practices of leadership and change improves the productivity of the
company. Therefore, the below discussion is based on the case scenario where it is related to the
change to be applied in the company and leadership style along with the change management
strategies and leadership strategies. Moreover, impact on company and conclusion is also
specified for better understanding of the concepts.

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................1
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................1
Scenario..................................................................................................................................1
Change to be applied..............................................................................................................2
Leadership style......................................................................................................................2
Change management strategies..............................................................................................2
Leadership strategies..............................................................................................................3
Impact on company................................................................................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................4
References........................................................................................................................................5

Introduction
Leadership is defined as the capabilities of an individual or can be the group of
individuals who influences and direct their followers and guidance to the employees of the
organization as well. A leader is a person who has the ability to convince other person to carry
out the assigned task in order to meet the goals and objectives of the company in order to
enhance the productivity of the firm. Their responsibility is to inspire the people to convert their
thoughts into action with great confidence and encourages them to achieve their personal as well
as the organisational targets also (Holten, Hancock and Bøllingtoft, 2019). Change management
can be defined as the methods in which the company defines the changes in the organization and
encourages employees to adopt the change in a positive manner. It includes the change in
internal and external processes of the businesses either changes in product portfolio or in a entire
business model. The following discussion is based on the company scenario and what changes it
can apply while adopting the leadership style and change management techniques. Moreover,
discussion is also made on the leadership and change models and strategies to applied within the
case scenario and its impact on the company
Main Body
Scenario
The case scenario is such that the company is based on the clothing retail sector. Firm is
facing continuous losses in the recent years. The reason is that they are receiving the continuous
negative feedbacks from the customer of quality defects in the cloth they were purchasing from
the company. It is then identified that the company is lacking the operations tactics in total
quality management of their product. Moreover, there are no expertise in the operations
department who look after the quality of the cloth which is manufactured and sold to the
customers. This also affects the finance and marketing department of the company. Human
resources needs to hire a person who have good experience in total quality management in the
clothing sector so that the customer can be satisfied with the company's products and services.
This is the entire case scenario of the company in which the firm is facing the issues in quality of
their products and services (Mansaray, 2019).
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Change to be applied
According to the issues identified above, there are several changes which is to be applied
in order to manage the total quality of the product by hiring the operations expertise manager. It
is important for the firm to hire the experienced operations manager who has the good
knowledge about the clothing quality. So that the total quality management can be performed. It
will be difficult for the organization to convince the team members for the new manager as it
takes time to adopt the change. Therefore, employees will be highly reluctant to accept the
change introduced within the firm in terms of the new methods adopting to maintain the TQM
and also to coordinate with the new manager of operations. Hence, it is highly essential for the
firm to adopt the proper leadership style and change management strategies and model in order
to convince the staff for accepting the change introduced in the company. It can be done by
communicating the benefits of change and positive impact on the company due to the changes
(Schell, 2019).
Leadership style
There are several styles of leadership which can be adopted by the organization in order
to manage the change within the organization. Such as autocratic style and affiliation style along
with the bureaucratic style and coaching style which is followed by the democratic style and
laissez faire style and many more. The most suitable and an appropriate style of leadership as per
the current case scenario is the democratic style of leadership. It is also known as the facilitative
or participative style of leadership. It is defined as the style of leadership in which different
members of the group participates in the decision making process. The reason behind choosing
this style of leadership is such that there are people in the company who will not get convinced
about hiring of the new manager and adopting the practices of TQM. Therefore, democratic is
chosen so that those people can be involved in the decision making for better acknowledgements
and engagement with the changes introduced in the company (Dzwigol, Shcherbak, Semikina
and Vasiuta, 2019).
Change management strategies
There are several strategies of change management which I can apply within the
company in order to motivate the people to adopt the changes introduced in the company. Such
as it is important for the firm to put the people first. This is because employees are considered as
the greatest asset of the company as they are only responsible for the losses and profits of the
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company due to the productivity fluctuations of the organisation. It is essential for the firm to
empower the employees with strategic communication flow and interaction among the staff. It is
significant for the company to make the changes compelling and exciting manner so that people
can take interest in the introduced change. It is highly crucial for the firm to concentrate on the
high and low points in momentum so that any risks can be mitigated soon. People are generally
resisting the change so therefore, I must focus on the avoidance of resistance as well (Cameron
and Green, 2019).
Leadership strategies
There are several strategies of leadership which I must apply within the firm to handle the
people and management of the total quality management as well. I can clearly define and
communicate the vision of change. I should encourage the recognition and also must delegate
and empower the employees with roles and responsibilities. It is vital to commit the continued
education for the employees in order to motivate them for personal as well as the professional
development also. It is essential for me to be honest and open about the information while
distributing the responsibilities. It must create the multiple paths and raise the ideas for testing
and implementation. I would have developed the opportunities for the experience based learning
by adopting two way communication with the employees. Moreover, strategies must also
includes the rewards and recognition for the employees as it encourages the employees to work
more harder and smarter for the organization and work on the changes as per the needs and
requirements of the company (Harrison, Fischer, Walpola and Le-Dao, 2021).
Impact on company
Above discussed strategies of leadership and change management can have the positive
impact on the company profile as it can recover with the losses and can start gaining the profits
with customer positive feedbacks and good reputation in the market place. This is because hiring
of the operations manager can apply the strategies of TQM which can further assist the company
in improving its productivity. It has helped the company in implementing the company's vision
and values which also has boosted the morale of the employees. It has further impacted the
organization with effective communication flow and the motivation of the employees while
providing the appropriate resources to the organization. Moreover, it has benefited the employees
with the easy change management which has aligned with the company goals and objectives of
the company. Furthermore, company has overall gained the advantage of managing the change
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and the leadership style of democratic in order to recover the losses and gain profits (Zainol,
Kowang, Hee and Kadir, 2021).
Conclusion
I can conclude that leadership and change management is an important concept to learn
and study so that its application can be applied in the real world organizations. This is because
leadership has various styles and it is important to identify that which style will suit the particular
organizational situation. This can help the company in determining the change sin the company
as well so that productivity can be maintained in an effective and efficient manner. Changes is
important as it modifies the organizational processes into something more good which improves
the company's sales and revenue generations. That is why it is important to analyze the case
scenario of the company in an in depth manner. It is necessary to determine the changes which is
to be applied in order to sort out the problems identified in the case scenario. It is essential to
examine the best and suitable leadership style according to the change within the company. It is
significant to assess the change management in the company. It is vital to evaluate the leadership
and change models and strategies. It is imperative to study the impact on the company of
leadership style and change introduced and managed. Hence, I have covered all such areas in
order to better understand the conception of leadership and change management.
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References
Books and Journals
Cameron, E. and Green, M., 2019. Making sense of change management: A complete guide to
the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. Kogan Page Publishers.
Dzwigol, H., Shcherbak, S., Semikina, M. and Vasiuta, V., 2019. Formation of strategic change
management system at an enterprise. Academy of Strategic Management Journal, 18, pp.1-
8.
Harrison, R., Fischer, S., Walpola, R.L. and Le-Dao, H., 2021. Where do models for change
management, improvement and implementation meet? A systematic review of the
applications of change management models in healthcare. Journal of healthcare
leadership, 13, p.85.
Holten, A.L., Hancock, G.R. and Bøllingtoft, A., 2019. Studying the importance of change
leadership and change management in layoffs, mergers, and closures. Management
Decision.
Mansaray, H.E., 2019. The role of leadership style in organisational change management: a
literature review. Journal of Human Resource Management, 7(1), pp.18-31.
Schell, W.J., 2019. Leadership and change management. In Traffic Safety Culture. Emerald
Publishing Limited.
Zainol, N.Z., Kowang, T.O., Hee, O.C. and Kadir, B.B., 2021. Managing organizational change
through effective leadership: A review from literature. International Journal of Academic
Research in Business and Social Sciences, 11(1), pp.1-10.
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