Leadership Styles

Case Analysis – M3A1 – Leadership Styles
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Task: Submit to complete this assignment
[Learning Objectives Assessed: 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d]

To: Organizational Behavior Expert
From: CEO
Re: Case Analysis

I am consulting you on this situation, individually, for your expert advice. We have been approached by a large restaurant franchise that is having trouble staying competitive in the casual dining market. This client’s performance had been slipping, employees are becoming disengaged. As part of their strategy to stay competitive, the company has strategically decided to add a line of upscale food and alcoholic beverages to their menu. The CEO of this company has asked for our consultation services. She knows that to make the new strategy work she will need the full support of the employees from the servers up through the ranks to the managers and supervisors.

The employees range in age from 18 to 46. The experience levels of the employees range from newly hired to six years at this particular restaurant. Each employee has their food handling permit but none have a bartender’s license. There are three (3) shifts from the clean-up crews that start after the restaurant closes in the evening, the food preparers that start in the early morning hours, and over-lapping shifts of servers, hostesses, and bussers that work the hours that the restaurant is open to the public. All employees were trained in promoting customer relations, as well as their particular job function, when they first started with the company, without additional training thereafter. Some of the employees are looking elsewhere for positions that offer career advancement and motivation. The building is in the older part of the city but is maintained well. There is ample parking space and lighting available. The restaurant atmosphere has not been updated since the restaurant opened 10 years ago and the menu has remained the same. There have been a few price increases to offset the increase in operating costs of food, utilities, and rent.

Directions:
On your own, (not with your team) please advise the CEO as to how she should lead the company to successfully implement the new strategy. Using the material from the course, I would like you to:

1. Explain to her why there is more than one way to be an effective leader; and

2. Provide her with 2 different leadership styles (See below – choose 2 styles which are discussed in your text) you suggest she could use. Be sure to use headings in your paper and explain why you chose these leadership styles; and

3. Identify one leadership style (from the list below) that would be the least effective and Be sure to use headings in your paper and explain why you chose this leadership style.

Transactional Leadership
Empowering Leadership
Servant Leadership
Ethical Leadership
Passive Leadership
Transformational Leadership
Provide a title page with your name and date.
Your content should include 600 words, and use a double-spaced Times New Roman font.
You should include headings, topic sentences, and the inclusion of the weekly learning.
Citations and references should be APA compliant.

ANSWER

Effective Leadership

Introduction

Leadership entails developing, planning, improving, correcting mistakes, and securing resources. Effective leaders can execute and improve the vision of a company and set the tone and culture of the organization. In the management of an organization, leadership is a vital function that helps in the direction of resources for the accomplishment of goals and improved effectiveness. Therefore, to facilitate the success of an organization, a leader has to be effective in motivating, offering clarity of purpose, and guiding the organization in realizing its mission. This paper will focus on ways of being an effective leader and leadership styles that can be effective in managing an organization successfully.

Effective Leadership

While every leader is different, there are various ways of being an effective leader. The ability to take a group from managing a business to outperforming each objective without challenges requires an understanding between managing and leading. There are several approaches to leadership that increase the ability of an individual to become an effective leader. Diverse leadership styles can be viable given the certain challenges being encountered and the specific needs of the organization (Al-Malki and Juan, 2018). Rather than choosing one leadership style, it’s important to move among styles, choosing the leadership style required at a time.

Great leaders tend to combine different leadership styles to adapt to the needs of varying situations and employ their diverse leadership skills to meet their goals. Ideally, the leadership styles are considered characteristic behaviors when motivating, directing, guiding, and managing a group of individuals. Leadership styles have been equally important in shaping the attitude and behavior of the members of an organization (Al-Malki and Juan, 2018). These also help communicate a strategic direction for the organization to facilitate success. Effective leadership styles comprise of transactional leadership, laissez fair, democratic, autocratic, transformational, servant and bureaucratic leadership.

Transformational Leadership

Transformational leadership is an approach used by leaders to inspire, and boost the workforce to create change and innovate, thus boosting the growth and future success of the company. Transformational leaders guide their workforce by facilitating a consistent values, mission and vision to the members (Hansen and Pihl-Thingvad, 2019). This creates a high-performance workforce since they understand what is required from every interaction. Transformational leaders guide the members through challenging them and offering a sense of meaning. They work optimistically and enthusiastically to foster the spirit of commitment and teamwork. Therefore, transformational leaders are inspirational and motivate the members to meet their goals successfully. Rather than managers who continue moving an organization on historical tracks, transformational leaders can transform and move it through new tracks.

The major challenge of the restaurant franchise is that they are having trouble staying competitive in the casual dining market. They have decided to add a line of upscale food and alcoholic beverages to their menu as a strategy to remain competitive. Transformational leadership will play an essential role in the new strategy’s success since the leaders will inspire the employees with a vision and strategy that empowers and encourages them to achieve (Al Khajeh, 2018). They will increasingly place value on the corporate vision through inspiration and motivation. The employees will also have high morale, which will facilitate the new strategy’s success to remain competitive.

Servant Leadership

Servant leadership focuses on the idea that leaders prioritize serving for the greater good. Leaders with this leadership style focus on serving their team and organization rather than their interests. They seek to achieve a vision through building a relationship with the employees and offering strong support. A servant leader feels comfortable and responsible in helping individuals grow, learn, feel energized, motivated and purposeful to contribute to the highest level (Gandolfi and Stone, 2018). Through servant leadership, the manager will create a work culture with high employee engagement and morale. For instance, the new strategy will require the full support of the employees and the ranks of managers and supervisors. Embracing servant leadership means that the managers will support all employees and teams from the lowest level to the highest level. They will create an environment where employees feel engaged and enjoy good relationships with all stakeholders.

Passive leadership

Passive leadership would be the least effective since it avoids any actions until problems or mistakes can no longer be ignored. This pattern of disengagement and inaction leads to delay in taking necessary steps when problems occur. Passive leadership is likely to lead to role conflict, employee confusion, and ambiguity. An organization’s inability to reward go work and focus on solving problems will lead to low employee morale and low performance. Considerably, managers who decide to use a passive leadership style are considered uninterested and withdrawn, which can lead to a lack of cohesiveness among the employees. The manager tends to be away from the group and is not responsible for any issues. Therefore, passive leadership is less effective since it will degrade employee performance and quality of work.

In summation, understanding the different leadership styles can make a leader more effective since it helps examine behaviors that affect the achievement of goals. Knowledge of leadership styles makes a manager more effective since they can choose the right leadership approach to maximize the team’s success.

References

Al Khajeh, E. H. (2018). Impact of leadership styles on organizational performance. Journal of Human Resources Management Research, 2018, 1-10.

Al-Malki, M., & Juan, W. (2018). Leadership styles and job performance: A literature review. Journal of International Business Research and Marketing, 3(3).

Gandolfi, F., & Stone, S. (2018). Leadership, leadership styles, and servant leadership. Journal of Management Research, 18(4), 261-269.

Hansen, J. A., & Pihl-Thingvad, S. (2019). Managing innovative employee behavior through transformational and transactional leadership styles. Public Management Review, 21(6), 918-944.