Leadership and People Management in Organizations: A Detailed Analysis

This essay delves into the critical link between organizational leadership and effective people management. It defines leadership as the ability to guide, inspire, and motivate teams, emphasizing the importance of leaders in navigating challenges and achieving organizational goals. The essay explores key elements such as motivation, overcoming conflict, and managing change, particularly within the context of globalization and diverse workforces. It examines the impact of contextual factors and presents various leadership theories, including trait, transformational, transactional, and democratic leadership, highlighting their approaches to people management. A real-world example of Sony's CEO is used to illustrate the application of transformational leadership in managing change. The essay concludes by emphasizing the situational relevance of different leadership approaches and the crucial role of inspirational people management in achieving optimal performance and productivity in today's challenging environment.

Running head: LEADERSHIP AND PEOPLE MANAGEMENT IN ORGANIZATIONS
Leadership and people management in organizations
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1LEADERSHIP AND PEOPLE MANAGEMENT IN ORGANIZATIONS
Table of Contents
Introduction: 2
Key elements of leadership and people management: 3
Contextual factors and their impact: 4
Leadership theories and people management: 5
Real world example: 6
Conclusion: 7
References 8

2LEADERSHIP AND PEOPLE MANAGEMENT IN ORGANIZATIONS
Introduction:
Leadership can be defined as the ability to guide, support, inspire and motivate a group of
different people working within a team. In an organisational perspective, the leaders are
supposed to guide the vast group of workers of the team through their job responsibilities and
performance management and achieve the primary mission and vision set by the organization.
Along with that, it has to be mentioned as well that the leaders in the present organizational
scenario are not just required to guide the individuals to make use of the different opportunities
presented to the corporate entity and increase the performance and productivity. The present day
leaders are required to overcome conflict, both personal and professional, in between a diverse
group of different individuals who belong to different backgrounds and domains (Avolio and
Yammarino 2013).
According to the Farndale, Scullion and Sparrow (2010), the responsibilities of a leader are
to play the part of co-ordination and balance in an organization. Given the present situation in the
corporate leadership, the importance of a leader who is able to provide co-ordination guidance is
optimal. However, it has to be mentioned in this context that performing all these attributes
effectively requires the ability to manage a variety of different people, their actions and
responses. However, there are various challenges and complications that have the potential to
complicate the functions of an organizational leader; which only effective and successful people
management skills can achieve. This essay will attempt to reflect on the link between
organizational leadership and people management, and if the combination of both can overcome
the present day organizational challenges effectively.

3LEADERSHIP AND PEOPLE MANAGEMENT IN ORGANIZATIONS
Key elements of leadership and people management:
Leadership can be described as one of the most core elements within the organizational
hierarchy that facilitates everything related to performance and productivity in the organization
and that is the reason, there are multitudes of different attributes that are needed to be able to
play the role of an organizational leader effectively. First and foremost, the most important
element in the leadership context is the motivation and inspiration, which is by far the most
important aspect of leadership when it comes to corporate organizations. According to the
Mendenhall et al. (2017), there are various challenges that an employee has to overcome on a
daily basis, the growing competition as well provides extreme complexities and can easily
demotivate the employees. In here the organizational leaders are the heroes for the employee by
providing them guidance and support in what they have to perform and how they can handle
these setbacks.
It has to be understood that in case of the multinational organizational sectors, which is
currently the most popular corporate setting, there are a vast variety of professional working
within or in between a team, where the performance of one individual is related with another in
an interdependent manner. There can be various conflicts arising in such a professional setting
due to the presence of either interpersonal conflict or performance related issues. Regardless of
the nature of the issue, an organizational leader has to overcome those internal conflicts and
hence active people management has to be a skill that the leaders need to harbor in their armour.
The importance of organizational leadership is even far stretching to supervising and
empowering the followers so that they can find the confidence within themselves and can
successfully overcome any organizational challenge. Along with that, change is constant in a
corporate sector; and according to the Northouse (2015), change and resistance management is

4LEADERSHIP AND PEOPLE MANAGEMENT IN ORGANIZATIONS
by far the most crucial leadership attribute in the present age. Considering the present global
perspective of leadership, authors have commented on the need for extreme leadership that
involves proactive risk taking and adequate risk management. Hence, the need for active risk
management and resistance management is crucial if the leader is attempting to make the most of
all the opportunities provided to him (Osland, Bird and Oddou 2012).
Contextual factors and their impact:
In the present situation of global perspectives it has been very clear that the needs of
globalization or internationalization of an organization depends heavily upon the organizational
leaders of the company and how they can effectively lead and guide the organization through the
process of the expansion. In the path of this massive change, many obstacles and hurdles can
complicate the process of success through the path of internationalization, and can create doubts
and lack of confidence in the staff, which can eventually affect their performance and loyalty
towards the organization. This is the main challenge that the present day organizational leaders
have the face the most. It has to be understood in this context that the competition is the key
facilitating variable governing the dynamic economy, and as a result, each of the corporate sector
has to go through a constant cycle of change and improvement to keep the customers optimally
satisfied and interested (Parris and Peachey 2013).
However, as explained by Raelin (2011), the process of change is associated with restrictions
and resistance both in the internal and external environment of the corporate entity, and in order
to overcome the friction, the leaders have to employ effective and successful change
management. However, it has to be mentioned in this context that change management is only
successfully when the entire team complies to the procedure spontaneously, which can never be

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possible with the varieties of different conflicts and issue in the multicultural and diverse
workforce. On a more elaborative note, the most important of these barriers is the cultural
conflict. In case of any internationalising organization, among the diverse workforce in terms of
both culture and professional competence, the conflicts like cultural insensitivity, incompetence,
and miscommunication are the most common challenges that interrupt the work flow and affect
the productivity or performance of the staff (Schein 2010).
Another very important challenge that demands efficient people management from the
leaders is the fact that gender diversity and discrimination is still has a profound impact on the
organizational context. In addition, in the corporate world the deserving women are still treated
as below their male counterparts and that is the reason of major miscommunication and internal
conflict in the corporate sector. Along with that, it has to be mentioned that leaders are the only
facilitator of incorporating sustainability and balance into the organization and securing a
prosperous and productive future for the organization, and all these challenges and obstacles in
the present day corporate scenario has made an organizational leader with apt people
management skills quintessential (Tarique and Schuler 2010).
Leadership theories and people management:
There are many leadership theories that emphasize on the link between people management
and adequate organizational leadership attributes. For instance, taking the assistance of the most
pioneer leadership theory, the trait or behavioural theory of leadership entails that the leaders are
born with a few qualities that help them guide, motivate and manage the performance,
competence and response of the group (Kark and Shamir 2013). In this charismatic interpretation
of leaders, the theory emphasizes that the most efficient leaders are focused on people not on

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tasks that the people are going to perform. The second theory under discussion is the more
contemporary addition to the leadership theories, are the transformational and transactional
leadership theory, where both of the theories take two different kinds of people management. In
case of the transactional leadership approach, the leaders take up a reward and punishment take
to the manag9ng the performance and productivity of the people working under them and in case
of transformational leadership the leader attempts to employ a positivity based vision to the
followers and inspire them to perform better. In both of the leadership theories, people
management attempted by the leaders are antagonistic to each other; where a transactional leader
attempts to a system of rewards and punishment, a transformational leader adapts the system of
motivation and optimism (Wheatley 2011). The theory of democratic leadership is completely
people focussed on the other hand and in this approach, the leader shares the autonomy of
decision-making with the rest of the team members so that each and every member of the team
has equal rights to voice their opinion and have equal standing.
Real world example:
Considering the real world examples, the CEO of Sony had the responsibility to
revolutionalize the company and its marketing statistics completely. The task of reverting it to its
former position in the league of market domination, it had been a great challenge for Howard
Stringer as a new leader. Moreover, in case of internationalization of the business, the CEO
received extreme challenges in expanding in Japan. However, the approach that the leader has
taken was very much alike the transformational approach. Where Stringer attempted to change
the viewers’ perception and vision regarding the brand, and attempt complete rebranding of its
products and in order to successfully manage the change the leader took the transformational
leadership and had been more than successful (Steers, Sanchez-Runde and Nardon 2012).

7LEADERSHIP AND PEOPLE MANAGEMENT IN ORGANIZATIONS
Conclusion:
On a concluding note, it can be stated that each of the leadership approaches have their
own pros and cons and the relevance of using a particular approach depends completely on
the situation and its demands from the leaders. However, the link of organizational leadership
with people management is represented in all of the modern leadership styles. Although it
has to be mentioned that the leadership needs for this age is sought with many challenges and
obstacles and in order to overcome these challenges the leaders have to take help from
transformational or democratic leadership styles, where the inspirational mode of people
management is to be taken to ensure optimal performance and productivity.

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References:
Avolio, B.J. and Yammarino, F.J. eds., 2013. Introduction to, and overview of,
transformational and charismatic leadership. In Transformational and Charismatic
Leadership: The Road Ahead 10th Anniversary Edition (pp. xxvii-xxxiii). Emerald Group
Publishing Limited.
Farndale, E., Scullion, H. and Sparrow, P., 2010. The role of the corporate HR function in
global talent management. Journal of world business, 45(2), pp.161-168.
Kark, R. and Shamir, B., 2013. The dual effect of transformational leadership: Priming
relational and collective selves and further effects on followers. In Transformational and
Charismatic Leadership: The Road Ahead 10th Anniversary Edition (pp. 77-101). Emerald
Group Publishing Limited.
Mendenhall, M.E., Osland, J., Bird, A., Oddou, G.R., Stevens, M.J., Maznevski, M.L. and
Stahl, G.K. eds., 2017. Global leadership: Research, practice, and development. Routledge.
Northouse, P.G., 2015. Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.
Osland, J.S., Bird, A. and Oddou, G., 2012. The context of expert global leadership.
In Advances in global leadership (pp. 107-124). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Parris, D.L. and Peachey, J.W., 2013. A systematic literature review of servant leadership
theory in organizational contexts. Journal of business ethics, 113(3), pp.377-393.
Raelin, J., 2011. From leadership-as-practice to leaderful practice. Leadership, 7(2), pp.195-
211.
Schein, E.H., 2010. Organizational culture and leadership(Vol. 2). John Wiley & Sons.

9LEADERSHIP AND PEOPLE MANAGEMENT IN ORGANIZATIONS
Steers, R.M., Sanchez-Runde, C. and Nardon, L., 2012. Leadership in a global context: New
directions in research and theory development. Journal of World Business, 47(4), pp.479-
482.
Tarique, I. and Schuler, R.S., 2010. Global talent management: Literature review, integrative
framework, and suggestions for further research. Journal of world business, 45(2), pp.122-
133.
Wheatley, M., 2011. Leadership and the new science: Discovering order in a chaotic world.
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