Leadership, Power and Politics

Conflict,   Management and leadership Conflict is a natural outcome originating due to individual and group interaction. It is a ‘friction’ produced due to emotions and behaviors of people working closely rubbing against each other. When people from various backgrounds and beliefs work together, consciously or unconsciously they try to pass their own principles in work aspects creates conflict. However, conflict is not always destructive or regressive. When well managed and directed, it has great utility in substantially improving an organization’s functional and production aspects, along with helping individuals to evolve a joint   philosophy of work and cooperation. However, poorly managed conflict situation impairs the organizational outcome, creating stress, introducing   dissatisfaction and reducing efficiency. Characteristics of Conflict The round the clock work schedules, trans-national nature of jobs, and strain in today’s world have worked together to make conflict an unavoidable part in life of people. Work related stress, with pressures of deadline, critical levels of responsibility, problems of resource allocation and management, setting, defining and achieving challenging goals, and all the time trying to coordinate with different individuals give rise to perfect conditions for   conflict to emerge within organizations (Bergman and Volkema, 1989). But before any attempt to resolve conflict it is important to understand the characteristics of conflict that an organization generally faces. According to Baron (1990), a study of various organizational parameters indicated towards five characteristics of conflict . These are 1. Conflict due to contrasting or opposing field of interests between or among individuals or groups. 2. Recognition of these opposing interests by the interested parties 3. Conflict centers on a perception by each side that its opposing party would injure its interests 4. Conflict is not a stage, rather a process and it results from the way individual and groups define their relations through the past interaction 5. Actions and efforts by each party with the intention of negating other’s goals. Conflict management and leadership Leadership has a great role to play in conflict resolution. A leader with qualities with excellent communication, understanding and negotiation can be instrumental in bringing the positive outcome through the issues involved in the conflict. As the business and corporate management has realized, leadership greatly helps to alleviate conflict situation due to its inspirational value. Leadership essentially about encouraging   people to pool themselves together towards achieving common goals and objectives (Rosenbach and Taylor, 1998, 1. Leadership further empowers individuals, helps them to rise above their rank and position within the organization to associate themselves and their colleagues with specific works, duties and responsibilities and enables them to identify and set their own directions, work on commitment and take challenges.   (Day and Halpin, 2004, 3). Its not surprising then that companies are ready to invest hugely in leadership development program, as a guaranteed way to emerge ahead than their competitors. Within every social, institutional or organizational structure, a leader is always looked upon the person with abilities to broach reconciliation and resolution in situation of conflict. Leadership entails elements of power and authority that are critical to acquire influence. There are five power bases for a leader, as identified by French and Raven (1959). They are 1. Legitimate power: the power that comes by virtue of the position and command to control behavior. 2. Coercive power: It is the leader’s control over persuasion and ability to take symbolic punitive actions in case of dissent 3. Reward power: It is the leader’s control over granting rewards 4. Expert power: These are the specialties that a leader attains due to knowledge and experience and that he is expected to possess and use in conflict resolution 5. Referent power: This is the power over over subordinate or group members to identify the leader Leaders may opt for one, some or   a combination or all of these power bases to attain conflict management and resolution by influencing the psychological and social dimension of conflict, trust, and authority (Johnson and Short, 1994 :Leadership (Power and Politics) Leadership is not a characteristic that exists in isolation. As it is defined, leadership implies establishing coordination, orientation, cooperation, and collaboration among the followers to accomplish designated objectives and goals. It is   possible when leaders can inspire their followers with respect, admiration, discipline, confidence in the abilities of the leader while being helped to envision themselves as empowered individuals (Brown and Lord, 2004, 2). A good leader has the ability to take over even most complex, demanding and otherwise impossible condition by exhibiting personal integrity, ethical and moral traits and values that other can relate to and aspire to imbibe in their own conduct (Laurie, 2000, 53). Here it is important to distinguish personal charisma from leadership, as personal charisma, being an person specific phenomena, can awe people but hardly give them impetus to follow in the footsteps of the leader. Leadership is also means natural acquisition of power and potential to change its equation affect over the leaders and their followers. There inherent dangers associated with power, and for most of the people, the timeless adage-‘power corrupts’ suits justly. Power contains a temptation that is hard to resist and has potential to become the ultimate goal for a person rather the tool that was designated in helping to achieve the goals.   But a genuine leader understands this irony of power and therefore believes that power should be shared with others so that it can grow. The real power of leaders is their   ability to inspire others with a sense of power and confidence (Champy and Nohria, 1999, 165). According to Reigel’s (1979) theory of development, the relevant categories to leadership practices and conflict management are: 1. Optimism-faith in goodness of humanity. It works on the principle of faith in inherent goodness of humanity with a sense that goals and objective are achievable. 2. Interconnectedness-responsibility for the whole. The principle is extension of sense of responsibility to greater issues affecting the world that connects individual with the entire humanity. 3. The contradictory nature of things. It teaches about recognizing and respecting that contradiction occurs in people, their experience and circumstances. 4. Life is characterized by crises. Recognition that crises and conflicts are inbuilt of component of life and progress is achieved by incorporating them in the philosophy towards life. 5. Kinship with others. It stresses on building associations and help in realizing that every one is important and deserves equal respect from others. 6. The opposition. It teaches about taking opposition as contradiction, instead of viewing it in negative perspective. 7. Acknowledging other’s contribution. It stresses on frank and appreciative acknowledgment of success and achievements of others Reference Baron, R. A. (1990). Conflict in organizations. In K. R. Murphy & F. E. Saal (Eds.), Psychology in organizations: Integrating science and practice (pp. 197–216). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Bergmann T. J., and   Volkema R. J. ( 1989). â€Å"Understanding and managing interpersonal conflict at work: Its issues, interactive processes, and consequences†. In M. A. Rahim (Ed.), Managing Conflict : An inter-disciplinary approach (pp. 7-19). New York: Praeger Brown DJ and   Lord, RG,   2004, Leadership Processes and Follower Self-Identity,   Lawrence Erlbaum Mahwah, NJ. Champy J, Nohria N, 1999, The Arc of Ambition: Defining the Leadership Journey, Perseus Books (Current Publisher: Perseus PublishingCambridge, MA. Day DV and Halpin SM, 2004, Leader Development for Transforming Organizations: Growing Leaders for Tomorrow,   (edit) David V. Day, Stanley M. Halpin, Stephen J. Zaccaro, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,   Mahwah, NJ. French, Jr., J.R.P., & Raven, B. (1959). The bases social power. In Dorwin Cartwright (edit.), Studies in social power (pp. 150-157). Ann Arbor, MI: Researc Center for Group Dynamics, Institute for Social Research, The University of Michigan Johnson, P.E and Short, P.M (1994). Exploring the Links among Teacher Empowerment, Leader Power and Conflict. Education. Volume: 114. Issue: 4. Page Number: 581+. Laurie DL, 2000, The Real Work of Leaders: A Report from the Front Lines of Management, Perseus Books (Current Publisher: Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, MA Riegel KF. Foundations of Dialectical Psychology. New York: Academic Press, 1979. Rosenbach WE and Taylor RL, 1998, Contemporary Issues in Leadership, (edit) William E. Rosenbach, Robert L. Taylor, Westview Press,Boulder, CO.                   Leadership, Power and Politics Leadership is the process of influencing others to act to accomplish specific objectives. Leaders are the key movers of an organization and they are able to inspire and motivate their members to work towards the attainment of goals. In the past, leadership have been thought of as a quality that only the elite managers possess, however reality is, each one of us possess and may develop our leadership skills. Being a leader is not an easy job, it takes creativity, innovativeness, discipline, passion and an open mind. It is said that leaders emerge in times of change and turmoil; it is a fact that when the going gets tough, leaders are there to get things done. Opportunities for change however must be sought out and seized by the leader. It is a necessary element in the exercise of leadership, for leadership is at its best when there is an opportunity to grow, innovate and to improve. A leader can accomplish this by treating every job as an adventure, by deciding that each day is an opportunity to learn something new or to discover better ways of accomplishing things, the leader is more able to initiate changes that would be for the greater good of the group. When a leader seeks meaningful challenges, it allows the leader to work with passion and commitment that is personally gratifying and hence is able to effectively work for the group. With that, the leader also find and create meaningful challenges for others, when members feel that they are valued and trusted by their leaders to be able to accomplish realistic and challenging goals, they become more committed and become better workers. This means that the leader provides his/her members too become intrinsically motivated to rise to the challenge. As a leader, it is important that he/she make the workplace fun, happy people are more productive and they like going to work everyday because it is a happy place. as such, when an organization is so used to doing things in the same way, it leads to complacency and even deterioration, thus a leader must be able to question the status quo, this would mean that as a leader he/she must actively look for systems or programs that have outlived its usefulness and be creative enough to provide new ideas. Renewing teams in any organization is necessary in order to breathe new life to the team, a shuffling of departments or the movement of positions would reenergize the team and possibly generate new ideas and opportunities. Lastly, the leader should adopt an open approach to searching for opportunities. It is an acceptance of the leader that he/she does not have the monopoly of ideas and it is necessary to be aware of what is happening outside and inside the organization. Being an effective leader also takes the ability to experiment and takes risks and to learn from mistakes. Leaders if for some twist of fate have always been thought of as someone who can transform any organization form the brink of death to greater heights. But in reality, it is the scientific and objective leader who is able to appreciate the importance of carrying out mini experiments of new processes that would in the end be more cost-effective than to rush and implement a program or process that have not been tested. Experiments are for introducing new products while creating or developing models in specific departments of new processes will give the leader an objective assessment of the possibility of success or failure of the new process. The leader is not the sole experimenter, he/she must encourage other to experiment also, but at times it is faced with fear and apprehension, thus the leader should assure the members that it is safe to experiment. When a person is so set in his/her ways then it is difficult to initiate change, the leader therefore must be able to break the mind set of its people, to become more open to new ideas and change. An enormous change may be anxiety provoking for members, the leader thus should break up the changes into small challenges that members can accomplish one at a time. People work better if they know that their ideas and feelings are respected and that if what they are doing is of their own choice, a leader should give each person the opportunity to make their own choices. A leader must learn how to say yes to the ideas and opinions of its members, by saying yes more frequently than but or no, it would be easier for the leader to also solicit the cooperation of its people. A leader is not a Greek hero who has supernatural powers, he/she can make mistakes and a true leader has the grace and humility to accept his/her mistakes and to learn from it. Lastly, a leader should also be able to evaluate the effectiveness of the new programs or changes that he/she has carried out in the company and this exercise should be a collaborative effort with input from the different members of the organization. Knowing what may cause the failure of an innovation would go a long way in improving that product or process. It is true that leaders emerge out of the difficulties or major changes in an organization, and being a leader is no easy job, and one can always make use of information that would help enhance or develop our leadership skills. I found this as the advantage of the concepts, it provides true-to-life examples of how a leader is able to seize opportunities for change and why it is important to experiment and learn from mistakes. The disadvantages of the concepts however is that it is too abstract and sometimes it is difficult to relate to a job as mundane as selling cigarettes and that most of the examples involve large organizations wherein leaders are often the head of the department or the organization. Although the chapters do provide pointers on what an ordinary person could do to become a leader and it is a practical guide. The chapters present the concept as a series of things to do or things to learn, and not all could be applied at the same time to a single organization. In my experience as a cigarette store owner, I am limited by the products that sell the most; I may provide my customers with new brands or novel cigarettes but since smokers tend to stick to one brand. I may be able to innovate probably in giving freebies to loyal customers or be creative by using bonus coupons that they could exchange for premium brands. Moreover, I do not have a staff and hence my leadership skills are not harnessed. On the other hand I work part time in a gasoline station and work with other people but again a gasoline station is one of the most normal and stable organization there is. Thus, unless if the gasoline station gets sold or merged with another store, then maybe it would be time for me to rise to that challenge. On the other hand, learning about leadership has been exciting and very challenging, it tells me that I can be a leader someday; it also made me become aware of some of my personal characteristics that is akin to leaders. I would like to share to others what I have learned about leadership, sometimes we do not know that we possess the ability to be leaders if other people don’t acknowledge it, I would also tell them of the things that a good leader should be able to accomplish. That said, there are different leadership styles which a person may favor and use in different situations. Leadership styles include autocratic leadership, bureaucratic leadership charismatic leadership, participative leadership, Laissez-faire leadership, relations-oriented leadership, servant leadership, task-oriented leadership, transactional leadership and transformational leadership. Personally, I think that participative leadership is the best among the styles because although the leader has the final say in the decisions concerning issues on organizational change; it allows the members of the organization to contribute their ideas and thoughts. This communicate that the leader value and respects its members and thus increase job satisfaction of members and cultivates a culture of collaboration and cooperation that every organization needs to get things done. Reference Kouzes, J. & Posner, B. (2002). The Leadership Challenge.   California: Jossey-Bass