Theories and Practice of Leadership - Analysis and Report

This report delves into the multifaceted realm of leadership, examining its theories and practical applications within an organizational context. It begins by exploring the concept of flexible leadership and its role in improving performance determinants, followed by an analysis of change management models and their effectiveness. The report then addresses the significant issues of gender in leadership, highlighting structural and institutional barriers, as well as the influence of individual mindsets and lifestyle choices. Furthermore, it investigates the impact of skills, abilities, and nationality on strategic leadership, offering insights into how these factors shape a leader's ability to articulate a vision and motivate team members. Through a comprehensive examination of these key elements, the report provides a nuanced understanding of the complexities and challenges inherent in effective leadership.

Theories And Practice Of
Leadership

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
1. Focus on the 3 performance determinants...............................................................................3
2. Key changes and effectiveness of that changes.......................................................................4
3. Issues of Gender and leadership..............................................................................................6
4. Impact of skills, abilities and nationality on strategic leadership............................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Leadership is a crucial and demanded qualities in today's corporate world. Leadership
refers to the skills in which leaders motivate and guide the employees in order to achieve the
organisational goals. Leadership skills are considered to be transformational because leaders
bring out the best results from employees in that way so that organisational as well as personal
objectives can be achieve and changes are also implemented without any objections from any
parties. Report will highlight the 3 determinants of performance which can be improve by
flexible leadership theory. Report will also tell about the changes implemented by change
management model used by leaders and management team. Report will also describe the gender
issues regarding leadership. Report will also reflect the impact of skills, abilities, nationality and
other characteristics on strategic leadership.
MAIN BODY
1. Focus on the 3 performance determinants
FLEXIBLE LEADERSHIP THEORY
Flexible leadership theory states the components and approaches by which company can
functions in two ways - 1. Tasks, relationships and changes together guides behaviour and 2.
Decisions making process (Northouse, 2018). This theory identify three determinants of
performance on which Camilla need to focus -
Innovation and Adaptation
According to the case study, Camilla bought a lot of innovation in order to improve the
conditions of hospital. Camilla hired external consultants team so that she can get to know more
about the issues faced by the hospital and accordingly planned and implemented the strategies in
order to prevent the impacts of issues on the hospital. For example – when External Consultants
told about the culture of bullying (where bullying of employees are normal) in the hospital, she
implemented zero tolerance bullying initiative in which employees are motivated to voice up
against bullying behaviours of other employees which lead to hospital cultural environment safe
which make employees satisfied and safe. Satisfied employees are efficient and confident
employees and that is the reason the performance of employees as well as hospital improved.
Also, Camilla did implement all those strategies which was easily adopted by employees
(Schoemaker, Heaton and Teece, 2018).
Human Resources and Relations

The case study showed that middle management of company are not co-operative at all,
they always demanded for the power which cause the procedure and process of hospital to be
slow down and performance decrease. Camilla also noticed that there were lack of
communication between all the level of management and employees. Even employees were not
allowed to speak something which is related to them. This lead to lack of trust and relationships
between them. After notice all the above issues faced by hospital, Camilla firstly bought
decentralized power of authority in the organization in which employees are also involved in
decision making process and meetings of hospital. Also, leader did set up cross-functional team
in order to bring open communication system between all the employees, departments and
management team. This all lead to create understanding between them. Organizational
environment become friendly. This all lead to employees to co-ordinate with each other and
build the relationships between members of hospital. It leads to improve the efficiency of
performance of them as well as hospital.
Cost
It has been observed from the case study that company are facing cost increasing issues
which lead company not able to meet with the government targets. External consultants told
Camilla that the reason behind the increasing costs of hospital was wasting a lot of money into
ineffective training programs. Thus, Camilla made immediately change in training program
which lead to reducing the costs. Also, Camilla did reduce the layers of hierarchy of
management team which also help company to reduce the costs (Dawson and et.al., 2018).
2. Key changes and effectiveness of that changes
According to the Kotler's 8 steps change management model, Camilla initiated the
changes by following steps -
Create an Urgency
Due to poor practices, increasing costs, not to match with government expectations and
high patient mortality rates, Hospital's board of directors decided that current CEO of hospital
should step down and hire new CEO who can bring change in the hospital. Thus, they understand
the needs of change so that performance can be improved.
Building Guiding Team

To bring change in the hospital, they hired Camilla as a new CEO who is confident and
ambitious. Camilla did her work good to bring change. She did hire external consultancy team
who help her to understand the area of issues faced by hospital (Salman and Broten, 2017).
Develop the Vision & Mission
Camilla after understanding the issues, determined to bring change in hospital. For that
she create vision and mission. Here, her mission was to create high trusting team which can
improve the performance. Her vision was to meet with the target of government in order to save
hospital from closing.
Communicate the Vision & Mission
After creating mission and vision, she communicated mission and vision both with top
management team which in return didn't support CEO. But she was stick with her words and
tried to achieve both mission and vision.
Remove Obstacles
There were so many issues such as lack of communication and co-ordination between
employees, management and staffs, lack of participation of employees, avoid difficult tasks or
assign them to others rather than solve them by own, power hunger, culture of bullying,
ineffective training program, complex and traditional hierarchical structure and lack of young
and talented employees in the hospital. In order to remove all the issues, Camilla did plan and
implement the strategies which help hospital to remove all obstacles.
Create Short Term Wins
Camilla did break her long term objectives into short term goals and tried to achieve them
with the help of young and talented employees with current potential employees. If they were
able to achieve them, Camilla would give recognition to them (Burden, 2016).
Don't Let Up
There were so many constraints which Camilla had to faced such as lack of support from
top and middle management team but still she was stick by her mission and vision and did
motivate to the employees for the same.
Make Change Stick
Camilla evaluated the changes time to time in order to prevent the impact of failure of
changes and make new changes according to the requirements of hospital.
CHANGES BECOME EFFECTIVENESS

Camilla did change in the process of hospital after full understanding of the roots of
issues. Also, she did involve the employees in the process of decision making of solving issues
which make employees feel important for the company, like these employees support the
Camilla in change management process. Also, Camilla evaluates the change on time to time
which help her to understand the failure of changes on time. This lead company to adopt right
strategies for bringing change in the organisation (Higgins, 2016).
3. Issues of Gender and leadership
Gender has always been impact the opportunities and success of leadership in corporate
world. In the field of leadership, the gender difference between men and women leaders always
impact the leadership styles at workplace. Some people thinks that female leaders are better than
male leaders because female leaders have some better leadership qualities which are as follows –
better communication skills such as good listener, empathetic etc., better interpersonal skills such
as collaborative nature, conflict resolve skills, soft approaches to solve the problems etc. Also, it
is said that leaders are the one who take every members of the team together and female are also
considered to be people oriented. Still, there are so many gender issues related to the leadership
which might faced by female leaders (GENDER AND LEADERSHIP, 2019). These gender issues
regarding leadership are as follows -
Structural Barriers
Female leaders have to face structural barriers such as prove herself to be better than
men, businesses are ready to hire them on high position due to other personal responsibilities,
women don't have that much network, which men have, women are not ready to move at up
positions where responsibilities and workload are increasing and women are not tough as men
are etc. these all factors make female leaders to face structural barriers.
Institutional Mindsets
It involves various types of gender bias and gender concepts which lead female to face
leadership issues. For example – role inappropriateness occurs when organisation holds belief
that to become successful in role, they must have particular skills, qualities and behaviour,
otherwise, they won't succeed. This kind of mindset don't give opportunities to female becoming
leaders or handling high position post.
Individual Mindsets

Female mindsets are the major contributors which lead female to face gender gap
regarding leadership. Women don't want to work on high position due to various reasons such as
lack of confidence, socialization pressure, work-life balance, not want to face politics and risk
avoidance etc. these all lead women to face gender issues regarding leadership (Henry and et.al.,
2015).
Lifestyle Choices
It involves work-life balance, family choices and caregiver priorities etc. these are
considered to be as barriers for female leadership. It is considered that after marriage, female
have to give time to her families, children and do household chores which become barrier female
not to give that much attention to the other professional incidents which lead them not to provide
leadership opportunities.
4. Impact of skills, abilities and nationality on strategic leadership
Strategic leadership refers to the leader's quality to make understand the vision to the
organisation and its members and motivate them to fulfil that vision. Strategic leadership are
always seen with the dealing the organisation with various kind of strategies (Simsek and et.al.,
2015). There are various factors which is related to the Camilla's such as her skills, abilities and
nationality which can impact the strategic leadership style. These factors are as follows -
Skills & Abilities
Camille has various skills and abilities which can impact the strategic leadership styles,
which are mentioned below -
CHALLENGE VIEWPOINTS
Camilla loves to take challenges tasks. She has better opportunities for her career but still
she was ready to take the post of CEO of hospital. She is open minded and ready to welcome the
conflicting viewpoints. But she didn't afraid from them. Camilla did focus on her mission and
vision and determined to achieve them on time. She did face a lot of backlash but still she tried to
got to know more about the problems and tried to solve them. This quality make leaders strategic
leader. Thus, Camilla is a strategic leader who in later time, able to achieved the goals of
organisation.
DECISIVE
As a leader, she has very little time to improve the performance of organisation with very
little knowledge about the hospital. But still to achieve the objective, she hired external

consultant team. With the help of that team, she tried to understand the whole scenario,
conditions and issues of hospital. After that, she took strategic decisions which not only
improved the performance but also made balance between speed and accuracy. This make
Camilla a better strategic leader in order to take perfect decision for the hospital and its
management team and employees.
ALIGN DIFFERING PERSONALITIES
Strategic leaders are able to bring all the team members together and teach them to do
compromise. This requires strong communication skills, understanding and trusts.
If there will be communication between members in organisation, this would lead them to
understand each other and respect each other. This will create trust between them and they will
be work in the team in easy and co-ordinative way.
In the hospital, there is no communication between staffs, employees and management
team. Camilla implemented the open communication systems in order to bring them together.
Also, she removed the traditional hierarchical structure and decentralized the power of authority
which align the various parties of hospital.
Nationality
As Camille was from Japan where employees are considered to be most important asset
for the growth of the organisation. Camilla also considered and worried about the employees
when she got to know about their conditions such as they are bullied by another employees and
they are not involved in the management of organisation or decision making process, this lead
her to change the hierarchy structure of organisation and adopt participative management
approaches. So that employees can be part of organisation. She motivated employees to speak
against wrong and bullying actions which were happening with them so that she can help them.
Generally Japanese are dedicated towards their public, they put efforts in providing high
qaulity goods and services to theie customers at reasonable price. Same Camilla did. Her mission
was to provide high quality services and improve the performance at high level and her vision
was to meet with the government's expectations without increasing the costs. She adopted the
strategies accordingly which can improve the performance of organisation and reduce the
increasing costs (Kleiner, A., Thomson, J. and Schwartz, J., 2019).

CONCLUSION
From the above study, it has been summarized that leadership is essential in bringing
change in organisation. There are various leadership theories which has their own advantages
and disadvantages which can impact the organisational objectives, mission and vision. Thus,
neither leaders not management should go for particular leadership theory. Also, people,
societies and organisation should give equal opportunities to both men and women regarding
promotion, placement at high posts and payments. Every level of management and leaders
should work together in order to bring effective change in organisation. There should be no
conflict between managers and leaders because both have their own place at organisation and
both have their own perception towards organisation but ultimately both end objective is to
achieve organisational goal. Thus, there should be co-ordination between management and
leadership.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Burden, M., 2016. Using a change model to reduce the risk of surgical site infection. British
Journal of Nursing. 25(17). pp.949-955.
Dawson, S., and et.al., 2018, March. Rethinking learning analytics adoption through complexity
leadership theory. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Learning
Analytics and Knowledge. (pp. 236-244). ACM.
Henry, C., and et.al., 2015. Entrepreneurial leadership and gender: Exploring theory and practice
in global contexts. Journal of Small Business Management. 53(3). pp.581-586.
Higgins, B., 2016. Implementation of Change Using Assessment Outcomes.
Kleiner, A., Thomson, J. and Schwartz, J., 2019. The Wise Advocate: The Inner Voice of
Strategic Leadership. Columbia University Press.
Northouse, P.G., 2018. Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.
Salman, Y. and Broten, N., 2017. Leading Change. Macat Library.
Schoemaker, P.J., Heaton, S. and Teece, D., 2018. Innovation, dynamic capabilities, and
leadership. California Management Review. 61(1). pp.15-42.
Simsek, Z., and et.al., 2015. Strategic leadership and leaders in entrepreneurial contexts: A nexus
for innovation and impact missed?. Journal of Management Studies. 52(4). pp.463-478.
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