Essay on Organizational Leadership: Paradigms and Styles

This essay delves into the multifaceted realm of organizational leadership, contrasting the traditional, command-and-control approach with the evolving new paradigm. It highlights key differences, such as information sharing versus restriction, self-interest versus service and purpose, and hierarchical versus egalitarian structures. The essay explores various leadership styles including autocratic, democratic, paternalistic, and laissez-faire, analyzing their advantages and disadvantages. It emphasizes the importance of inspiring a shared vision, challenging processes, and fostering trust, collaboration, and commitment. The essay also outlines essential leadership characteristics like technical, interpersonal, and administrative skills, as well as the significance of progressive and honest leadership. Finally, it discusses the benefits of good organizational leadership, including enhanced efficiency, improved ability to thrive under pressure, and increased emotional intelligence.

Running head: ORGANISATIONAL LEADERSHIP 1
Organizational Leadership
Student’s Name
Affiliation Institution

ORGANISATIONAL LEADERSHIP 2
Organizational Leadership
The traditional leadership style is also known as command and control leadership or the
directive leadership having roots in industrial revolution. It is a set of values and beliefs in a
community but has become invalidated by the new paradigm (Yang, 2015). New paradigm is
defined as a new approach of doing things which effects on business. The new technology
changes the way human beings interact and think about something. The alternatives to traditional
leadership is the new paradigm. The new paradigm emphasizes on sharing of values, services
and collaborating with other members unlike the old paradigm whereby people have self-interest
and excluding other members in decision-making (Gaddis & Foster, 2015). Stewardship is a
form of new paradigm leadership, which is progressive, which involves presiding over an orderly
power distribution in that it gives subordinates at the bottom of an organization a chance to
participate in decision making by serving as a customer and citizen. The several key differences
between new paradigm mode and old paradigm model of leadership are for example, information
Share versus Restriction of Information:
Information Share versus Restriction of Information is one of the difference between the
new and old paradigm. In the old paradigm model, subordinates are denied crucial information of
the organization because the information is only communicated to people who need to know.
Leaders become rigid on passing information such as termination of projects, the dismissal of
staff members and also restructuring the organizational staff. Delegation of duties to the
subordinates in the old paradigm is also a rigid process due to lack of trust and confidence by the
leaders to delegate duties having in mind that the subordinates might not deliver their works
properly in accordance to the organizations expectations.

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The leaders also lack the skills to delegate such as giving little guidance to the
subordinates and expecting them to deliver exaggerated targets that they might not be able to
reach. This kind of actions lead to employee dissatisfaction, which leads to lack of commitment
by the staff (Schwalbe, 2015). In return, employee turnover rates tend to become high as well as
absenteeism. Hoarding back important information provides protection to the organization,
which is obviously unnecessary because work process responsibility is essential to the
subordinates.
Stewardship on the other hand focuses on informing employees about incoming projects,
restructuring the organization and delegation of duties (Casserley & Critchley, 2010). This
enables employees make informed decisions by participating in the organizations decision
making process Sharing of information brings about a large pool of ideas from individuals,
commitment and empowerment, increases collaboration therefore leading to achievement of
organizational mission and vision as information flows freely across all levels of the
organization.
Self-interest versus Service and purpose is another variation between the new and old
paradigm. Old paradigm models of leadership are often driven by own self-interest in order to
achieve high targets on revenue, self –profile, and maximization of power and control. The new
paradigm emphasizes on the wellbeing of communities by giving back to society and also
improving the lives of their subordinates. The subordinates are therefore given intrinsic and
extrinsic rewards after accomplishing their targets in the organization (Shanafelt et al., 2015).
The intrinsic rewards are those that come from achieving targets in the job itself and they are
more psychological that cash means. They include rewards such as applauding a subordinate for
the good job well done, Recognition and the status, which the subordinate’s position at the job

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holds. Extrinsic rewards on the other hand are separate from the job itself and they are more in
cash means than psychological, they include; pay, benefits, cash and non-cash incentives. This
improves the motivation standards of the subordinates as well as commitment in pursuing their
work due to transparency and consideration of respect given by the top leaders.
Egalitarian Leadership and the Class System structures can also be used to understand the
distinct two kinds of leadership. The Egalitarian leadership is more of non- hierarchical in
structure, the new paradigm model of leadership emphasizes on abolishing this system because
others are seen as being more superior to others in terms of position. The new paradigm views
everyone regardless of their position and status to have the same conduct of behavior, rewarding
system and achievement of organizations mission and vision. The old paradigm of leadership
gives the leaders at the top advantages in setting reward systems by giving them more and the
subordinates less. Egalitarian leadership structure facilitates a nonhierarchical form of leadership
in which leadership is shared among members of staff in the organization.
There are different kind of leadership that are evident in different business settings.
Autocratic leadership is one of these types. It is a form of centralized leadership whereby
subordinates are not involved in decision-making process. The leader exercises full control over
all decisions and little input from the group members. The leaders make choices based on ideas
and judgment of their own. The advantages of this kind of leadership is that decision making
process is fast compared to other forms of leadership styles, confidential information is secure
can be used where a great deal of pressure is involved. The disadvantage is that it is involves
dictatorship, it is rigid and less flexible. However, it is different from the democratic leadership
which is a decentralized type of leadership whereby, subordinates are involved in the decision
making process. It is also known as participative leadership or shared leadership. Ideas move

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freely amongst as discussions on projects are discussed openly (Bhatti et al., 2012). Advantages
of democratic leadership is that it enhances a creative environment, creates empowerment among
team members, it enables problem solving skills for complex issues and it is highly applicable in
many organizations. The disadvantages are that decision-making process is time consuming and
an element of uncertainty is created.
Additionally, some organizations leadership styles are based on paternalistic leadership
styles. This involves a dominant authority figure where the leader acts as a patriarch where the
subordinate staff is treated as family and the leader expects nothing less than trust and loyalty
from the employees. This type of leadership protects the subordinate staff, is more appropriate
for a business with formal and hierarchical structure, and does not involve creative thinking from
the subordinates. The leadership style varies from the Laissez-faire leadership, which is a
delegate form of leadership. The subordinate staff is allowed to make essential decisions. Most
researchers argue that the laissez faire leadership leads to the lowest productivity levels among
group members. It is also direct opposite to autocratic form of leadership as it is non-
authoritarian leadership style where leaders believe that people perform better when they are left
alone to make their own prompt decisions through provision of necessary tools and resources. It
is usually advisable to apply this type of leadership where subordinates are highly skilled with
relevant qualifications (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2015). Advantages of laissez -faire leadership
include: It brings about freedom among employees which results to great commitment and
empowerment among employees. It is used in situations whereby subordinates have a high level
of intrinsic motivation. Businesses which attract laissez-faire leadership of usually engaged in a
highly creative business The drawbacks are that it is not applicable in organizations where

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subordinate staff lack experience and knowledge in completing tasks and making essential
decisions because not everyone has the discipline to manage projects and set own deadlines.
In organization leadership, there is the same characteristics of leadership that is required
in the new paradigm model. One of them is that, the leader inspires a shared vision. This implies
that the leader communicates the vision to the subordinates and influences the subordinates to
achieve tangible results through a shared vision and maintain the status quo. A shared vision
inspires commitment by employees by owning the vision themselves (Alberts et al., 2015). A
vision owned by the leader only can never become strong to create changes in the organization.
Additionally, the leader should also challenge the process. The leader should be the ultimate
pioneer by conducting environmental analysis and know which internal and external forces face
by the organization. He should know how to curb the challenges and also the emerging trends in
the market on how to diversify into new strategies. A leader should be innovative and be able to
inspire trust and confidence (Li et al., 2018). He should concentrate on the one of the 3p’s of
Service marketing, that is, The People, which includes the external and internal clients. The
external clients are usually the customers, he should know their taste and preferences, and
acquire customer feedback. The internal clients are employees, the leader should concentrate on
employees by motivating them through inspiration.
The manager is a leader, and he is expected to initiate others to Act, command and
control the organization New paradigms should be carefully enacted through enabling trust,
collaboration and commitment, which leads to successful leadership. This involves giving out
essential information and skills in order for the subordinates to perform the job well. A trust
based leadership environment is a successful environment and organization. He gives
encouragement to their subjects. The leader does so by showing acknowledgement, rewarding

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subordinates through intrinsic and extrinsic rewards as well as celebration of achieved targets.
Give your employees consideration by showing them that they truly matter and their contribution
to the organizations success cannot go unrewarded. The leader should not only focus on his self-
interests through growing out beyond his status quo. He should be able to focus on the ones
driving the success of the organization.
Competent leadership is paramount when it comes to organization leadership. The leader
should know the following skills; Technical skills, Interpersonal skills and Administrative skills.
The technical skills include skills on the job know how such as machine operations. The
interpersonal skills include; Leaders flexibility, trust, ability to delegate,
enthusiasm ,communication skills, decision making skills as well as problem solving skills.
Administrative skills on the other hand include; cost control, compliance to regulations of the
organization, inventory management and maintenance of records and files. Hitherto, Progressive
leadership is also inevitable for the success of the organization leadership. An effective leader
anticipates problems and changes and ultimately plans for solutions to mitigate against the
problems. The leader is a goal setter and sets realistic targets for the organization (Prajogo et al.,
2018). He brings in new strategies such as changing the marketing system by adopting the
Generic approaches of Michael Porter, which includes; Cost leadership, Differentiation and
Niche marketing. The other strategies he may adapt includes the Ansoff Product model, which
are; market penetration, product development, market development and diversification. Finally,
the organization leadership should cultivate on the honesty in their leadership practices. An
effective leader should believe in what he says to influence other to put their confidence in the
line. Deception in leadership as well as unfulfilled promises are examples of dishonest leadership
and they deem up the organizations vision.

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Charismatic leadership traits involve having a leadership that has the ability to inspire
motivation to subordinates by influencing them to perform at high levels and be committed to the
organization. Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize other people emotion and being
able to discern them as well as managing your own emotions and use emotional information to
guide thinking and behavior. Motivation ability is the way a leader uses strategies to retain his
employees through recognition and reward system. The focus on achievement is the means by
which a leader focuses in achieving set objectives of the organization (Bolden, 2016).
Conclusively, a good organizational leadership has many advantages to the company
itself and to the stakeholders. Good organizational leadership benefits involves; enhanced
efficiency of the labor force, improved ability to thrive under pressure and improved emotional
brainpower. Good organizational leadership also contributes to enhanced personality and
seriousness in firm’s operations, improvement of workforces’ confidence and enhanced listening
and communication abilities. Therefore, the company should ensure that it gives managerial
opportunities to those individuals who highly skilled. In return, the company will perform better
because of skilled management enabling the company compete effectively with the competitors
hence being able to survive in the market in the long term
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