Executive summary
An organization without proper leadership is doomed to fail. Bearing in mind the numerous external forces that affect organizations in Australia, organizational leaders takes the responsibility of devising measures to counter these forces. Some of these forces include labor force, political, legal requirements, community as well as competition. Leaders ensure that they recruit and maintain competent staffs within their organizations to ensure that attain organizational goals. A leader need to posse certain skills and abilities for him or her to be able to cope with the various challenges experienced when managing organizations
. Some of these skills include being conversant with external factors that affect organization, being capable of harnessing and retaining competent staffs within an organization and also being flexible and one who accommodates changes that are aimed at improving the organization. Leaders play a vital role in ensuring that an organization maintains a competitive advantage in the market.
This is through educating their staffs on ways of improving organization performance as well as coming up with strategies aimed at gaining and retaining market share. They ensure that organization products and services are tailored to consumer needs. By consulting the general staff when making decisions affecting the organization, leaders make staff develop a sense of owning the organization thus making them strive to achieve the organizational goals.
Introduction
Leadership as it is defined by most scholars’ means to show the way or go with. For organizations to meet their goals and objectives, they must have a leader and some times more than one leader. The main role of these leaders is to show others organizational staffs the way forward towards attaining the organizational goals. It does not matter whether the goals are commercial or charitable.
The leaders are supposed to inspire a sense of reason and enthusiasm to the work the work that the organization intends to undertake. This helps in motivating the staffs thus ensuring a smooth running within the organization as it pursue its objectives. Developing, maintaining as well as identifying various leaders is a vital aspect in every organization.
There is need for leaders in every level of operations within an organization. Absence of leadership in these levels would lead to them performing poorly or even not meeting the organizational objectives. Leaders helps in ensuring that organization utilize its employees well, make some innovations, make use of every strategic opportunity as well as ensuring that organizations do not compromise the quality of their production, maintain high consume services as well as attain high profits (Russell Consulting Inc. 2009, Par. 1).
Competent leaders ensure the continuity and growth of organizations. This leads to creation of employment as well as continued remittance of revenue to the nation. Consequently, it leads to country development as the revenue collected from these organizations is used in providing various public amenities. For instance, development in Australia depends heavily on revenue gathered from various organizations. Without competent leadership in these organizations, it would be hard for the organizations to get fund to remit a tax.
This in return would lead to lack of finance from the government for developing the country. The role of nation building does not lie on the government alone. There are numerous non-governmental organizations (NGO) in Australia that works towards ensuring the development of the country. Without competent leaders in these organizations, their role in nation building would not be felt. The leaders have been involved in making various important decisions, delegating duties to specific staffs within the organizations as well as building and maintaining teamwork within the organizations.
Leadership and external forces in Australian organizations
There are numerous external forces that work within organizations. It is the duty of organizational leaders to ensure that all organizational activities are conducted in accordance with these forces. Some of these factors include labor force, political, legal requirements, community as well as competition. It is the responsibility of the organization leaders to ensure that they always hire competent employees. This helps in ensuring growth and continuity of the organization. As these employees are acquired from outside the organization, they are considered as one of the external force that affects organizations (Bowman & Daniels 2001, P. 158).
Labor force keeps on changing within organizations. As a result, organizational leaders in Australia ensure that they have all the necessary knowledge to help them cope with all changes that occur within their organizations with respect to workforce. There is need for leaders to understand that changes within the labor forces leads to various changes within the organizations. This helps them be ready to face any contingency that might arise due to these changes. For instance, changes in laws that have led to increase in the number of women working within various organizations in Australia have resulted in need for organizations to provide parental leave as well as child care resources (Bowman & Daniels 2001, PP. 162-167)
No organization can thrive without having to conduct all its activities according to the stipulated rules and regulations. Organizational leaders have to be conversant with all laws that govern the organization operations. Through this, they help in ensuring that there is a cordial relation between the organization and its customers. Organizational leadership is also affected by members of the public or the society. In Australia, any organizational action is not allowed to go without being questioned by the public.
The public have realized that by airing their grievances through different media they can be able to impose changes within organizations. There have been establishment of several regulations in Australia as a result of public outcry with respect to organization operations. For organizations to remain acceptable within the public domain, they have to conduct all their operations in accordance with the public demands. It is the responsibility of the organizational leadership to ensure that all the operations within their organizations are tailored with the society norms (Bungi, Victor & Lentz 2004, P. 30).
There have been establishment of employee unions in most of the Australian organizations. These are groups made up of employees who come together to look for better relationship between employees and organization leadership. They participate in setting down the working conditions, wage amount as well as benefits to be enjoyed by employees within the organization. Organization leaders are entitled to ensuring that they have reached an agreement with these unions. They are also expected to make a follow up to ensure that the needs of all employees are met according to their agreement. With time, leaders are changing from relating with unions within their organizations to addressing the various employees individually.
This is perceived to allow the organization a ample time to compete in the business market. In the past, a lot of time has been wasted as leaders try to strike a deal with the union members. As monopoly has become an issue of the past, every organization in Australia must compete for market share in the nation (Bungi, Victor & Lentz 2004, PP. 32-34).
Each organization would like to retain as well as gain more competent employees. Organizations have in past resulted in increasing their wages to attract more skilled employees. This has cost them dearly when several organizations engage in a war of gaining employees with the same skills. As a result, organization leaders have embarked on introducing various benefits as well as changing some of the working conditions to ensure that they acquire as many skilled personnel as possible.
On the side of ensuring that their organizations enjoy profit in the market, leaders have tried to advertise their products in bid to build the brand loyalty. They also take the initiative of identifying the less competitive market domains and coming up with strategies of establishing their organizations on those areas.
With the development in technology, many organizations are shifting to employing these technologies in improving the performance of their organizations. It is the role of the organizational manager to ensure that they keep in touch with the changing technology to ensure that their organization is up to date with the current technology. There also various economic factors that affect the development of an organization. These include economic policies, behavior of economic growth and procedures and incentives require for economic growth. Most organizations depend on economic surplus for their development and sustenance.
For example, most Australian organizations gain directly from government economic anticipation, global economic agreements and national banking system. Organization leaders need to fully understand the Australian economy and also economy of various regions within the country to ensure growth of their organizations (Holden 2006, Par. 6).
Current changes in Australian and global economy as well as social environment have numerous effects on the organizational leadership in the country. The most affect levels of leadership in most of the organizations are the middle and higher management levels. From the research, it is clear that despite many years of great legislative and social changes with respect to equity area, women have not been allowed to take leadership positions in great numbers in most of the Australian organizations. There is no clear reason for this with some claiming that they lack managerial skills and profit centered experience. Other factors such as the Australian culture which do not accept women as leaders has led to women have a minor represent in most of the organizations.
Leadership roles, skills and abilities
In Australia, just as in most other countries, study has been conducted to identify the various skills that a leader ought to portray. For instance, study has been conducted on religious, political and military leaders to understand the behavior and skills that leaders must possess. Some of the competencies that every organization leader ought to have include:
- Be in conversant and consistent with external factors and contexts instead of relying fully on the internal judgments of their organizations.
- Be able to recruit, attract and manage innovative and industrious people who do not have to always be monitored as they carry out their daily obligations within the organization.
- Organization leader ought to be flexible, willing to accommodate changes that are geared towards development of the organizations as well as be one who is capable of embracing new learning.
- Be one who is capable of developing a culture of cooperation among the employees, develop trust among employees and get rid of the culture of blame as this hinders innovation and development in the organization.
- Leaders ought not to be selfish. They are supposed to be willing to share their leadership skills with other employees.
- Organization leader should be capable of working within organizations and also across a net work of organizations (Lles & Mabey 1993, PP. 110-112).
- No one can be entrusted to an organization if he or she is untrustworthy. Trustworthy is therefore a vital requirement for every leader within an organization.
- The leader need to be one who strives to attain the organizational goals and objectives as well as going far and wide in seek for means to solving problems that affect the organization.
There has been a great change at the organizational level in relation to the roles that leaders are supposed to play within an organization. Due to the dynamicity of the global economy, leaders are required to stimulate and be innovative at a very fast rate to meet the changing economic demands. Companies as well as Australian society need leaders who are flexible enough to meet these circumstances. As Australian organizations continue to outsource some of the activities they used to conduct within their environs, it means that they have to depend on outsourced labor and services. Consequently, it is leading to greatly changes within public sectors not to mention internationalization of the country’s economy (Lles & Mabey 1993, PP. 114-118).
This has led to many organizations changing their way of doing things. It is therefore the role of the leaders to ensure that they operate across the network to ensure the quality of their products and services is not compromised. They need to ensure that organization’s operations are carried out smoothly even if they do not have to directly monitor them. Leaders need to ensure that they always motivate their staffs despite the challenges they face in carrying out their duties in the organization.
Leadership role in maintaining a competitive advantage
The main aim of coming up with a leadership team within an organization is to help it gain and maintain competitive advantage in the market. A leadership that has no impact on the organization performance is as good as no leadership at all. As a result, leaders have to understand the organizational goals and objectives and come up with means to attaining these goals.
They need to understand that leadership development is critical in ensuring organization success. They ought to commit themselves by actively participating in motivating and directing other employees on how to attain market share. Coming up with a leadership model that is readily acceptable in the organization ensures that all stakeholders cooperate in attaining organizational goals (Savery & Luks 2000, PP. 312-317).
Organizations gain competitive advantage through differentiation. It is hard for organizations to be competitive if they use same approach as their competitors. By understanding that different organizations have different objectives, cultures and values, organization leaders are able to come up with strategies that best meet the needs of their customers hence ensuring that their company enjoys a competitive advantage. In most cases information within organization flows in a downward trend; from the manager to the staffs.
Ensuring that staffs participate in decision making in an organization helps in making them feel as part of the organization. In so doing, leaders helps in motivating staffs thus ensuring that they endeavor to improve the organization performance. External uncertainties greatly affect organization performance. As a result, organization leadership comes up with mechanisms for forecast environmental uncertainties hence ensuring that organization is not adversely affected in case of such incidences (Steiner 2001, PP. 158-165).
Conclusion
An organization without proper leadership is doomed to fail. Bearing in mind the numerous external forces that affect organizations in Australia, organizational leaders takes the responsibility of devising measures to counter these forces. Some of these forces include labor force, political, legal requirements, community as well as competition. Leaders ensure that they recruit and maintain competent staffs within their organizations to ensure that attain organizational goals. A leader need to posse certain skills and abilities for him or her to be able to cope with the various challenges experienced when managing organizations.
Some of these skills include being conversant with external factors that affect organization, being capable of harnessing and retaining competent staffs within an organization and also being flexible and one who accommodates changes that are aimed at improving the organization. Leaders play a vital role in ensuring that an organization maintains a competitive advantage in the market.
This is through educating their staffs on ways of improving organization performance as well as coming up with strategies aimed at gaining and retaining market share. They ensure that organization products and services are tailored to consumer needs. By consulting the general staff when making decisions affecting the organization, leaders make staff develop a sense of owning the organization thus making them strive to achieve the organizational goals.
Reference list
Bowman, C. & Daniels, K., 2001. On managing cultural integration and cultural change processes in mergers and acquisition. Journal of European industrial Training, 25 (4), PP. 157-167.
Bungi, P, Victor, B. & Lentz, J., 2004. Case study: Modeling how their business really works prepares managers for sudden change. Strategy leadership, Emerald Group publishing Ltd, 32 (2), PP. 28-34.
Holden, J., 2006. The Culture of Leadership. Web.
Lles, P & Mabey, C 1993. Managerial career development programmes: effectiveness, availability and acceptability. British journal of management, 4 (2), PP. 103- 118.
Russell Consulting, Inc., 2009. What Does it Mean to Lead?. Web.
Savery, L.K. & Luks, J.A., 2000. Organizational change: The Australian experience. Journal of management development, 19(4), PP. 309-317.
Steiner, C., 2001. A role for individuality and mystery in “managing” change. Journal of organizational change management, 14(2), PP. 150-167.