How Should I Lead?
When I started my marketing research agency thirty years ago, my idea of a great leader is shallow: a person with a great vision who treat his followers like family members.
Did my leadership work? On surface, it seems to be so. I was perceived to be a “nice” and motivational boss. But inside me, I felt my leadership is missing something. My employees are not as motivated, especially when it comes to embracing new changes.
Fast forward to the present time. The MBA program I am currently enrolled in certainly enlarges and deepens my understanding of leadership.
I was introduced to the different models of leadership style (UȚĂ, 2020). I realised in the past, I have not adopted any specific leadership style, but a fraction of charismatic and transformational leadership. Interestingly, findings from Khajeh (2018) suggested that transformational leadership contributed to improved organizational performance but not charismatic leadership.
According to Ahmad et al. (2014), transformational leadership strengthens employee motivation and contributes to organizational learning and performance (Mutahar et al., 2015). I am convinced that transformational leader is my vision of leadership.
Two transformational leaders were especially inspiring in my leadership learning journey.
The first one is Shantanu Narayen from Adobe, who has inspired his people with a compelling vision. He encourages his people to take risks. He believes in playing to the strength of his employees and seeks their opinions on how to improve the company. He offers seed money to support employees with creative ideas to start their own business (Bryant, 2009).
Another inspiring leader is Reed Hastings, the former CEO of Netflix. He focuses on empowerment. Instead of micromanaging, he ensures all his employees are equipped with relevant coaching, feedback, and information to make corporate decisions. Employees are encouraged to voice their opinions in writing. He does not set rules, and encourages his employees to take vacation regularly (Netflix, n.d.).
The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one who gets the people to do the greatest things.
Ronald Reagan
It is my goal that my company will be filled with innovative and motivated employees inspired to fulfil a worthy corporate vision.
The truth is that currently I am still very far from reaching this goal. There are still many leadership skills and attributes that I need to acquire.
To be a transformational leader, I must be convicted that leadership is a choice. It is a commitment to choose to make things happen and making a difference in my followers’ life (Covey, 2013).
The next attributes I need to develop is to be a better follower. According to Peters & Haslam (2018), an effective leader is one who is perceived by its followers as being one of them. I must learn to share my employees’ values and concerns, and to be willing to work on their behalf.
He who cannot be a good follower, cannot be a good leader.
Aristotle
To become a transformational leader, I need to master the skill of empowerment. In the past, by making most decisions myself and treating my employees as family members, I was not truly empowering them. Considering the eight principles of empowerment (Harley, 1995), I will need to work on helping my employees to realise their hidden potential by developing their talents and involving them in making decisions.
I will need to develop my personal power. I am still weak on adaptability, and I need to learn how to meet each employee at the level they are at to make them feel validated. I must also work on my confidence for currently I am not used to embracing my mistakes as part of learning experiences (Caro, 2019).
Regarding change management, in the past, I have been frustrated by the lack of enthusiasm among my employees whenever I introduced new initiatives. Knowing how to implement change using Lewin’s model (Raza, 2019) is very high on my learning priorities.
In addition, as my industry’s businesses are mainly project-based, I need to learn to adopt transactional leadership using extrinsic rewards as motivation for short projects that require efficiency (Miranda, 2023).
To develop all these leadership skills, I will take heed of the research findings from Birkinshaw et al. (2022) that structured programs only account for one-tenth of leadership development; with the bulk of the learning comes from experimenting (70%) and discovery (20%). Furthermore, according to Prossack (2021), investing in yourself is the optimal way to attain full leadership potential. This has motivated me to approach a leadership mentor to guide me in my leadership journey.
Ultimately, I need to experiment what I have learnt to make transformational leadership naturally becoming my way of leading.
List of References
Ahmad, F., Abbas, T., Latif, S., & Rasheed, A. (2014). Impact of Transformational Leadership on Employee Motivation in Telecommunication Sector. Journal of Management Policies and Practices, 2(2), 11-25. http://jmppnet.com/journals/jmpp/Vol_2_No_2_June_2014/2.pdf
Birkinshaw, J., Gudka, M., and Marshall, S. (2022, June 1). What Leadership Development Should Look Like in the Hybrid Era. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2022/06/what-leadership-development-should-look-like-in-the-hybrid-era
Bryant, A. (2009, July 18). Connecting the Dots Isn’t Enough. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/business/19corner.html
Caro, C. (2019, March 6). Do You Exude Personal Power, Or Do You Rely On Positional Power?. Forbes.
Covey, S. R. (2013, January 25). Leadership is a choice, not a position. Business Standard. https://www.business-standard.com/article/management/leadership-is-a-choice-not-a-position-stepen-r-covey-109020300076_1.html
Harley, W. B. (1995). Eight critical principles of empowerment. Empowerment in organizations, 3(1), 5-12.
Khajeh, E. H. A. (2018). Impact of Leadership Styles on Organizational Performance. Journal of Human Resources Management Research, 2018. DOI: 10.5171/2018.687849
Miranda, D. (2023, April 27). 10 Management Styles of Effective Leaders. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/management-styles/
Mutahar, A.Y., Rasli, A., & Al-Ghazali, B.M. (2015). Relationship of transformational leadership, organizational learning and organizational performance. International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, 5, 406-411.
Netflix. (n.d.). Netflix Culture — Seeking Excellence. https://jobs.netflix.com/culture
Peters, K., & Haslam, A. (2018, August 6). Research: To Be a Good Leader, Start By Being a Good Follower. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2018/08/research-to-be-a-good-leader-start-by-being-a-good-follower
Prossack, A. (2021, June 29). 4 Ways to Improve Your Leadership Skills. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashiraprossack1/2021/06/29/how-to-unlock-your-full-leadership-potential/?sh=151425f644ac
Raza, M. (2019). Lewin’s 3 Stage Model of Change Explained. BMC. https://www.bmc.com/blogs/lewin-three-stage-model-change/
UȚĂ, I. C. (2020). 12 Leadership Styles for Successful Leaders (complete list) with Pros & Cons. Brand Minds. https://brandminds.live/12-leadership-styles-for-successful-leaders-complete-list-with-pros-cons/
