Introduction
Nowadays, management and leadership are of utmost importance for any type of business. An efficient manager is expected to operate and control various processes in an organization. Therefore, such a professional must gain certain qualities to be capable of their job responsibilities. Employees’ leadership and management may be referred to as essential areas for development. Usually, managers perform certain tasks without being successful leaders. However, no leaders can seem promising without being good managers in the first place. There are different approaches to leadership and management because these concepts can be seen from different perspectives. Thus, one must acquire sufficient knowledge of how leadership and management function and applied in different concepts to find out ways their develop for the sake of a company’s prosperity.
Concepts of Leadership and Management
Admittedly, leadership can be seen from different perspectives because of its multilayer nature. Generally, leadership can be defined as the process when leaders influence followers to make a step towards the goal that they have intended. In this case, it is the implied context that occurs as a factor affecting leadership. Contextual factors are considered a moderating variable in some leadership models and theories. Moreover, “It is frequently explained by the leader’s individual-specific characteristics, the followers’ perceptions, attributions regarding the leader and leadership, and importantly, the context in which leadership occurs.”(Oc, 2018).
This is why leadership, management, and their application in an organizational, social, environmental, and multicultural context give the key to understanding how they can be developed in a company and affect organizational competence.
The same concerns management that has drastically developed in recent years as it is believed to have caused the increase in competitiveness of organizations. In fact, no organization can survive or develop without outplaying competitors. Human resource management is likely to give an organization a competitive advantage by means of creating a strategic capability to facilitate a working atmosphere and build a team consisting of highly motivated employees.
Apparently, Strategic human resources management consists of a vast number of programs and policies that may ensure the capability to compete. Still, it is the context of management that influences human resources practices in different organizations. The main fact concerning the human resource management system is that no success can be gained and preserved without a clear understanding of context and strategy.
The context of different types that makes an impact on leadership and management has been discussed by many scholars. Thus, a theory of dimensions was proposed in analyzing national culture; six cultural dimensions to be listed and briefly defined below:
- Power Distance;
- Individualism/Collectivism;
- Masculinity/Femininity;
- Uncertainty avoidance;
- Indulgence;
- Long/Short-term orientation (Beugelsdijk and Welzel, 2018).
The first dimension speaks about the way power abuse is tolerated in society or a certain company. If the employer seems to be authoritarian, their employees are likely to cultivate complete agreement with everything that happens in a company, even negative processes. Moreover, they tend to have no objection when their labor rights are infrequently violated by their employer. If one member of the team starts to resist injustice, the others never encourage such efforts. As far as the opposition between masculinity and femininity is concerned, collectivists tend to unite in front of obstacles and solve problems together. In addition, more collectivistic nations can better interact with each other. They may easily find a way with authorities. In contrast, individualists are more concerned with individual interests.
A competitive advantage is better achieved in companies with a high score of masculinity as competition and achievement serve as main principles for such workers. Meanwhile, a high score of femininity refers to caring for mutual welfare and quality of life that can be a part of opposite leadership and management models. Besides, the high degree of indulgence viewed as low rule obedience better suits the second cultural-environmental concept of leadership plus management. These two models seem to be different, but there are equal. Still, if there is a case of short-term orientation, it will be a great problem for any company manifesting either its inability to follow strategies or the unfavorable environment where it has to survive.
Apparently, leadership is a concept including many psychological aspects. Generally, leadership generates from self-assurance and the ability to find solutions with the help of other members of a team or subordinates. Contextual factors are considered a moderating variable in leadership models and theories because various societies may possess absolutely different psychological peculiarities. Surprisingly, even the history of a particular nation affects how these people interact with each other and what unique definition of leadership development they preserve.
The theory concerning the cultural dimensions may provide a better understanding of cultural and environmental context for Garvey Group because this company is in Ireland. It may be implied that Irish employees, together with English, build the collective of this particular organization. Probably, if one has a sufficient understanding of their cultural peculiarities, it will be easier to develop top-notch leadership and management qualities and skills among them.
Hopefully, a choice of three cultural dimensions, namely, power distance, collectivism/individualism, and uncertainty avoidance, is enough to promote a deep insight into Irish culture, especially its corporate part. Thus, the Irish are believed to have not very high power distance that leads to the outcome of how Irish employees react at management directives. In other words, Irish employees are unlikely to tolerate requirements that do not seem sensible to them. Thus, HRs should give a very good explanation of the purposes of the activities they suggest. The appraisal system should also be clear for the workers so that they remain motivated and ready to respond.
Surprisingly, the relatively high degree of collectivism (the low degree of individualism) helps Irish employees to affect group patterns of security behavior. It means that Irish employees are likely to put aside their coworkers’ security policy breaches. Connolly L. et al. (2019) described an experiment, the results of which have shown the difference between the US and Irish respondents at that point. To put it in a nutshell, “Irish employees from the observed organizations have been more willing to openly admit that they do not always comply. Within the transcripts, there is ample evidence of non-compliance in the US because, despite saying that they personally never break the rules” (Cannolly et al., 2019). It shows that all people display breaches of the corporate rules from time to time, but Irish employees are not embarrassed to admit it.
Leading skills may help a supervisor minimize this effect by designing certain communicative strategies. Obviously, the business reputation of Garvey Group is at stake. However, it may be admitted that this particular company has made a great step forward in this direction by implementing the so-called competency-based framework focusing on universal behavioral competencies. Thus, it would be interesting for them to conduct the same experiment and find out how their workers treat minor breaches.
Another idea concerns the relatively low degree of uncertainty avoidance, because of which Irish employees are usually ready to admit their mistakes and solve unexpected problems at work. An efficient supervisor or HR is expected to take it into consideration and use it as a beneficial inborn quality that their subordinates possess because of their cultural background. It becomes clear that leadership development has gained more popularity and success among Irish employees because of their profound independence from authority. If employees in some societies tend to expect instructions to every single movement to remain confident, Irish employees want to require a greater degree of freedom because they are born and raised to make solutions on their own.
Roles of Leadership and Management Development
Indeed, leadership development aims at facilitating an organizational culture to advance leadership processes. Its main role is developing interpersonal capacity, social awareness, and soft skills by giving opportunities for self-expression to enable leaders to emerge within the organization” (Larsson, 2017). Surprisingly, leadership development is not about an employerâs strengthening their psychological power to affect people’s work. An organization is generally agreed to be a collective that needs cooperation. Therefore, modern leadership development concerns every single individual working for a company.
Meanwhile, management has slightly another task concerning the overall strategy of the business. It is applied to create high-performance work systems and support achieving competitive advantage. It may include implementing a set of practices to control how human capital adds to the efficiency factor of a company (Applegate et al., 2018). Among the issues that are bound to be put under control are predictions about the economic progress of the industry in which the company and customers and position competitors rank highly. However, “sales Policy on short, medium and long term, unsafe level of sales development, investment policy and technologies, production policy that will take the company into the future can also be important (Bordean et al., 2015). It is rather the context that defines what practices should be implemented.
By and large, Garvey Group is trying to develop leadership to a greater degree than management because without leadership, no rapid increase in profit can be done. By the development of management skills, workers can become more responsible and do their job on time. However, it is not the main goal that business companies want to achieve by paying for expensive self-development individual courses for their employees.
Obviously, they aim at building a team that can function as a flawless mechanism like it is described in a theory of a classical organization. However, their approach is more personal. Being a solid mechanism does not require losing individuality. On the contrary, the members of the team and their interpersonal development are significant for the company. Each and every individual makes a contribution to the success of the company. This is the key to why they all should be leaders to a certain extent.
Approaches to the Development of Leadership and Management
There can be several approaches to leadership, namely, transactional and transformational. The previous decade has shifted the emphasis from studying the complexity of the contexts for leaders to prove them. There is an acknowledgment that transactional leaders tend to be active in simple situations, whereas transformational leaders activate in highly complicated situations. Therefore, transactional leaders want their employees to meet performance targets, focusing on the role of supervision, organization, and group performance (Sousa and Rocha, 2019). Meanwhile, transformational leadership is when leaders apply soft skills and show their respect. If one pays special attention to workers and provides intellectual stimulation, it would be a good stimulus for their self-development.
Nevertheless, there are also autocratic leaders who do not want to listen to the team members’ opinions. This approach can be advocated only in case of emergency. If a certain decision should be made quickly or there is no need for consulting the team, a leader can easily try this particular style. Still, the constant use of autocracy is highly likely to cause absenteeism and lack of motivation. To stay democratic by paying attention to workers’ opinions is generally recognized as the most encouraging method leading to a high degree of integration. In addition, the democratic model is highly conducive to leadership development. If a person is given trust and the ability to make small decisions, they will display creativity in decision-making. Also, people working in democratic companies tend to enjoy their work at a greater degree than people working under constant supervision.
Obviously, Garvey Group authorities do their best to reject the authoritarian model in leadership development. It is clear from their aspiration for developing every employee’s personal skills. There is an example of how leadership and management development facilitates the development processes in the context of Garvey Group. “The organizations follow the use of balanced scorecard factors in integrating capacity development programs with a competency-based framework being used to identify their staff training needs”(Stewart and Rigg, 2011). They try to identify what their stuff really needs instead of focusing on their own goals concerning profit.
Leadership Development in the Group
To be successful, individuals must display a combination of strategic vision and tactical skills, which together serve as a powerful catalyst for performance improvements throughout an organization. According to the most recent researches, “leading and managing are one and the same and that developing the skills of both a leader and a manager are really the same way of developing individuals who can adapt to change and become a source of strategic advantage” (Elkington et al, 2017). Therefore, many organizations want their employees to expect their workers to display a high leading or managing skills.
Somehow leading and managing are deeply connected and inseparable. There may be employees who yield to irresponsibility, though they want to remain leaders. At the same time, many managers have no intention to develop leading skills. Effectiveness is made up of both the quality and productivity perspectives and studies have found that relation and structure connections have a role in explaining effectiveness. Regarding the leadershipâs influence upon the effectiveness aspect of quality, studies have found it “to be crucial for successful quality management and for high organizational quality, productivity, and effectiveness” (Maheshwari and Yadav, 2018). Thus, there is no leadership and management without quality and productivity.
Leadership development has a better impact, as opposed to management, development in terms of Garvey Group’s performance improvement. Further, models such as traditional, modern, competency, and cognitive have all been evaluated with their link with Garvey group leadership and management development identified. Finally, Garvey Group HRs try to design the best strategies to achieve high-level leadership development. The main contribution of leadership to the company as opposed to management is the fact that leadership qualities are necessary for an employee’s life beyond working hours.
Employees may live their whole lives suffering from uncertainty, lack of confidence, and inability to communicate with peers effectively. No surprise that it may affect their work to a certain extent. One should never forget that a worker can be efficient only if they possess a healthy personality. Even family troubles may lead to sad repercussions as a scandal at a hotel or unprofessional behavior. Meanwhile, the root of all evil lies in troubles that a person may bring to their working place from personal life. Interpersonal self-development may be the only possible solution to such issues. If employees become happy masters of their own life, they will certainly be more productive at work. The same concerns their ability to cooperate with each other and share tasks.
How to Ensure Effective Leadership Development
By and large, an efficient leader serves as a facilitator who may question their employees by finding out various important points for discussion. In addition, they have to promote sharing of information by revealing problems and welcoming different points of view. In fact, they should lead these discussions, not resorting to acute criticism. An efficient leader is expected to know the goals of the organization and be aware of the current agenda to instruct others and involve them in decision-making. To develop leadership means to unite with others to achieve certain goals.
One of the most efficient ways to develop leadership in the company is coaching. Coaching may be referred to as a way of leading that provides guides and challenges to workers to maximize their potential and performance by means of identifying strengths and challenges, motivating, team building, and so on (Neelam et al., 2017). These methods are believed to be highly effective because employees need self-development and communication with their employer. There are many coaches that can work online as invited experts. The idea is that they should first test how employees interact. In addition, the possibility of brief personal consultations is highly desirable.
Probably, HRs and coaches may share the responsibilities of a company psychologist to make leadership development more effective. Obviously, the staff of this particular company consists of thousands of people. Therefore, their need systematized psychological supervision done by a variety of professionals. Leadership qualities are believed to be deeply connected with adequate self-esteem. Nobody is sure to acquire sufficient results after a program without finding their place in the world. Somehow HRs and coaches treat employees’ minds and souls for the sake of developing leadership qualities. In this case, professional psychologists’ participation may also be welcomed.
Possibly, Garvey Group managers should create programs including not only strategic thinking and interpersonal qualities. There should also be a focus on leadership development concerning loyalty to the rules of the company. An efficient leader is expected to serve as an example or even a role model to subordinates. If such a leader shows that even minor rules, which effect is slightly unclear, should be followed, they will see sense in it. Another point concerning the cultural context of Garvey Group is the ability to reject their temptation of self-administration. Sometimes, they may try to solve their own problems that need additional instructions. This is hardly conducive to the success and long prosperity of any company, especially if it is a relatively large company as Garvey Group.
Another idea concerns the implementation of team games on a regular basis. It can be board games, role plays, or sport activities. The thing is that people are generally agreed to achieve better results in acquiring certain competencies if they enjoy what they do. If they cooperate through laughing and hugging, their strategies and teamwork come out of nowhere. Lately, these leadership behavioral patterns are likely to appear during the working process. It is how leadership development works subconsciously, whereas programs provide people with the conscious model.
Conclusion
In conclusion, leadership and management should be developed because no organization can get leadership capability without a team of workers possessing these skills. There are different approaches to leadership and management development that should be implemented considering the context. Effective leadership development calls for a more contextual and integrated approach. To mountain an effective leadership development strategy, one has to take into account the cultural and environmental background of a company, its business demands and integrates management processes. Garvey Group’s experience has proved that investments in employee’s self-expression development are conducive to the shared success of the company even more than human resource management because of its methods.
Reference List
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