HRM6014B Assignment: Leadership and Organizational Strategy Connection

This essay delves into the crucial relationship between leadership and organizational strategy, highlighting the importance of effective leadership in achieving organizational goals. The introduction emphasizes the challenges leaders face in today's dynamic business environment, focusing on the need for adaptability and innovative thinking. The essay defines leadership as the ability to influence and guide organizational members, while organizational strategy is presented as a set of actions aimed at long-term goals. The core argument emphasizes how leaders bring together diverse groups within an organization to execute strategic plans, driving employee engagement and contributing to overall success. The essay explores various leadership styles, including autocratic, democratic, and charismatic, and discusses the importance of strategic leadership principles such as distributive responsibility, open communication, and continuous leadership development. The conclusion reinforces the need for a dynamic approach to leadership and organizational strategy to ensure an organization's adaptability and sustained growth.

Leading and
Managing people
The link between leadership and
organizational strategy
2018
Student Name
11/19/2018

Leading and Managing people 1
Introduction
In today’s scenario, being a leader is the most challenging task. In addition, variations in
environment need apt leader to fulfil requirements of the business world, which, majorly
focuses on the unconventional thinking and common sense. Moreover, most importantly is to
figure out oneself in critical situation and the one who adapt themselves to change. They
think that being a leader is innovative and futuristic by approach. Leadership is one of those
ability and quality of individual, which influences and monitor the members and followers of
an organisation. Group performances and effective team are encouraged due to the efficient
working of leadership. However, bad leadership on the other hand degrades the value of life
for those who are more appropriate and are relied on a particular leader (Daskal, 2018).
For every business survival, certain strategies are needed to be developed for more attainment
of consumers, an increasing product line, an extending market by focusing on competitor’s
strategies, facing the counter attacks made by competitors to one’s objective set, with quick
actions needed to be taken into consideration. Other than this, businesses should concentrate
on improvising their existing products by refining them. With this in mind, organisations
need strategies to achieve its objectives, with all of this happening on the basis of how a
business is positioned in the marketplace (Miller, 2014). This discussion was mainly focused
on highlighting the above-mentioned concepts of leadership and organisational strategy, with
a particular focus on a company’s targets.
It majorly highlights the ability of the leadership effort along with handling organisational
strategic work through their talents and skills. Talent is inbuilt in humans whereas skills
improve through different training programmes. Developing leadership elements are a
lifelong process, as certain fundamental qualities are required from time to time for growing
and improving, and likewise, a clarity of purpose is a must for leader because leaders have to
lead all the decisions, which can be closely associated to an organisations goal, vision,
mission, targets and ethics (Heathfield, 2018).
Organisational Strategy
Organisational strategy states that a certain set of actions for a company are taken into
consideration in order for them to achieve long-term goals (O’Reilly, et al, 2010). Together,
these actions come up as a company’s strategic plans. In strategic planning, every company

Leading and Managing people 2
should have a clear understanding of its missions and targets. Planning is the base for an
organisational strategy. It focuses on what types of strategies are needed to be adopted, so
that the organisational long-term goals are achieved (Woodruff, 2018). Strategies are
dynamic in nature, which keeps on changing according to the change in environment. The
main work of an organisation is to keep on looking forward to strategies, continuously
working on targets, making amendments for the existing strategies, which helps the
organisation to move on a smooth track. A strategy acts as a guiding map to an entire
organisation, which not only helps in administrating and managing but also allows each
member of the organisation to work further, for the next move (Kokemuller, 2018).
Leadership
The second stated topic is leadership that highlights a major role in strategic management,
whatever the actions plans are set by an organisation, leaders work is to bring together the
various groups within an organisation to work upon the action design. By proper dedication,
persuasion and the high convincing power for their subordinates which is inbuilt in a leader,
effects the results, and not only inspire the employees for moving on positive the path which
has been outlined through strategic management planning but also making them positively
indulged for fully contributing towards the overall success of an organisation(Kruse, 2013).
Link between Leadership and Organisational strategy
Focusing on link between a leadership and organisational strategy, this states that leaders are
most important to organisational strategic management because due to their leadership
ability, they carry certain quality to bring people together for effective and efficient work for
organisation success. In fact, the main working of leader to find what all kind of work is to be
done, how it is to be done and what kind of tasks are to be assigned to each worker for
effective outcomes. A primary reason for being a leader and handling all strategic plans,
which not only guides and gives a sense of direction but they are also very much influential
by making their employees aware about, what their ultimate goal is. Leaders are born to be a
problem solver for those who are stuck and are unable to reach at their success point.
(Kramer and Stid, 2018).
In today’s scenario, strategic management activities are not static. With the change in
circumstances and situations, every strategy, which was set earlier whilst planning, has to be

Leading and Managing people 3
re-evaluated and the best upcoming strategies are to be assessed as benchmarks. With such
flexibility in environments and working styles, both can lead to a better acceptability and will
proceed towards their anticipated outcomes for the organisation. In basic words, company’s
main motive is to work with proper strategic planning and execute those planned ideas
properly (Letting, 2009). In planning, it gives a sense of direction, as without this it can often
lead to an organisation choosing the wrong path and can also disturb the ratio of success
which was earlier earned by the organisation. Hence, to make sure a company holds on to
success, leaders should give an idea about the strategies that are best suited for the problems
and what be the outcome ought to be, with organisational strategies providing resources and
directions for an ultimate target attainment. Both the terms are different, yet they come
together to get the organisation onto the correct path because their main motive is to reach a
goal and to fulfil their organisation’s mission (Miller, 2014).
A balanced strategy for management for overall success is to mobilise change through
executive leadership, by making such strategies, which are in continual process, and are
implemented, for everyone and for everyday jobs. In addition, leaders who are forming
strategies are to be aligned to the organisation strategy and should relate to the operational
concern. Sometimes, managers are considered as leaders but according to the literature
review, leaders are those who lead people, and managers are those who manage all things,
which were assigned by the leader to its subordinates. Moreover, leaders are those who bring
changes to the organisation whereas managers are those who keep records for day-to-day
organisational activities. Hence, leadership and organisational activities play a vital role in
reaching the vision and the mission of the organisation. In addition, if these strategies are not
effectively implemented, this would make the company paralysed and infertile (Azhar, Ikram,
Rashid and Saqib, 2012).
From a practical point of view, the principal task of leadership is to ensure an effective
deployment of corporate strategy, for this, certain roles of leadership act as a link between
strategic management, which provides vision that establishes a culture in which every person
knows what he or she must do (Epstein, Buhovac, and Yuthas, 2010).
Leader’s vision provides base line for strategic formulation and commitment, which ensure
implementation for set strategies by employees. Leadership act is performed to find out the
gaps carefully which arises while scanning of internal and external threats of environment
and then, developing new plans to fulfil those gaps for generating success. For this, certain

Leading and Managing people 4
roles are played by organisation leader like innovator, organizer, motivator, decisions- maker,
risk- analyst, change-enabler, as guide and most importantly as a collaborator, which not
only thinks of its own rewards by playing such roles in organisation but also ensures the
overall improvement in success and reputation of a company(Abbas and Asghar, 2010).
In innovator role, this helps in generating innovation within entire organisation and bring
changes to strategic management process and this ensure competitive edge within the
departments, and also for the competitors who always keep confronting on company’s set
targets. Similarly, to organize the whole organisation working, certain amendments are to be
made in planning and executing. Consequently, leaders cannot lead efficiently if they have
not systemised their work properly. Other than this, they also act as a motivator, which apply
intrinsic and extrinsic motivation technique to motivate its employees because subordinates
need to understand the changes and make it possible. Moreover, if changes will not happens
it will surely affect the overall performance of the organisation. Decisions in planning sector
help in achieving targets and most importantly, it helps in proper functioning of the
organisation. Therefore, entire strategic management process depends on the decision making
power of a leader. Leaders know that how and what all type of strategy are to be implemented
in order to gain advantage over competitors and successful achieving an organisation goals as
well as the work on improving goodwill (Serofontein, and Hough, 2011).
Leadership theories based on certain traits, which influences organisation to achieve
objectives. This is categorized as autocratic, democratic, bureaucratic or charismatic. Some
leaders are inexperienced with leadership, which guide their followers to execute strategies in
narrower way, which generated on subjective idea those are the autocratic leader. Autocratic
leader never focuses on commitment, creativity and innovation in their work hence; they
considered as inevitable and not suited for improving the organisational strategy.
Bureaucratic leaders they rely on policies to meet organisational goals and are strongly
committed to procedures and processes rather than employees. They are very strict towards
rules and never focus of employees’ motivation, benefits and development. Hence, both the
styles fail to influence employees as well as failing in adopting the organisation strategies.
Moreover, Democratic is that style of leadership in which their no single person who leads
but the group itself leads. Therefore, it leads to poor decision-making; along with this, the
entire execution process is affected. This theory is best suites according to present scenario of
today’s leading organisations but the only underlying problem is the assumptions made that

Leading and Managing people 5
every individual seems to be a leader, which slower process and majorly affects the best
outcomes (Gonos, and Gallo, 2013).
The most successful and the fast-driven leadership style is the charismatic approach, in this
approach, leaders give a productive base for creativity and innovation to their employees and
highly motivate them to apply those innovations. This leadership style is based on the
strength of preparing for their competition and to win over them (Go, and JE, 2015).
In all if a leadership fails in maintaining effective organisational strategy it will weaken the
organisation strength to perform well in future. For that, certain principles for strategic
leadership are taken into consideration for effective performance of organisation likewise;
distributive responsibility states that authority should flow from top to bottom like from
leader to his subordinates as flow of responsibility empower employees to take risk
(Cashman, 2017). It also contributes to collective intelligence, adaptability to changes and
resilience for organisation. It also includes that leader should be honest enough and should be
open about the information which he/ she has to deliver to its working members, so that the
changes in decisions can have positive impact on workings. In addition, they focus on
developing the various opportunities for experienced based leaning for their employees so
they can contribute to an overall success for the strategic organisation. Last but not the least
leaders recognize leadership development as an ongoing practice because neither
environment is static in nature nor leaders working styles are stagnant therefore, it keeps on
changing according to the requirements of business and also according to the organisations
strategies. Perhaps, for an organisations survival, it is mandatory that the flow of leadership
for organisational strategy should be dynamic in nature because an easy adaptability to
changes makes an organisation grow at a faster pace (Belias, and Koustelios, 2014).
Leadership highlights responsibility. Responsibility ensures the effectiveness of a strategic
organisation. With a change in time, approaches to strategies and its execution can also
change. Moreover, for this change, they provide a base line for strategic thinking and provide
a vision for strategic formulation. In this formulation, leaders try to align the organisations
strategy with the dynamic environment to generate success in terms of not only leadership
implementation, but also in terms of improving the overall organisation. The toughest task of
a leader is to give training and to motivate employees so that they work effectively and
efficiently, to meet the set targets, which can lead to their personal development (Salicru,
2017). Moreover, by being adaptive to environmental changes, which evaluate the entire

Leading and Managing people 6
process and ensures efficiency of whole process, it also helps an organisation to find
deviations as well as assist in taking the corrective steps by reducing or eliminate those
deviations according to the changes made. Furthermore, such evaluations by a leader ensure
continuous improvements in the organisation. Not only this, organisation should also work on
better return on investment. This can be attained by the combination of individual learning
with organizational transformation. Thus, it highlights the clear line in between investment
made in leadership improvement and the business outcomes for success. Hence, as always
stated, leadership is a core portion of an organisation, which cannot be disregarded as it
handles the entire organisation (Zenger, 2015).
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it states that firm’s performance is solely and wholly dependent
on both strategic organisation and leadership, which links directly as well as indirectly. In
current scenario of organisations, CEO and top management team are emphasising more on
coaching, mentoring and integrity of their future generation for leaders. By all these, they are
improvising the leadership by making them more effective and efficient, which in future
fulfils the dual aspect of the company as it not only benefits the leader for their personal
development but also leads to the overall development of the organisation by increments in
revenue generation as well as increase in their reputation.
Not only had this, in current scenario organisations have more craving for earning
competitive edge in a market over its competitors. This happens by employing innovative
leader in their organisation, which assures that they will be majorly focusing on sustainable
corporate performance and entirely change the society for betterment. However, it is very
much important for an organisational and a leader to act ethically while building up strategies
because ethics always come first, and if an organisation loses up ethics this may be ending up
to the loss of trust by the followers of an organisation and hence, affects the survival of the
organisation for long term.

Leading and Managing people 7
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