Peter Drucker argues that “The only definition of leader is someone who has followers. To gain followers requires influence but doesn’t exclude the lack of integrity in achieving this” (Yukl, 1989). Several theories agrees that leadership is same as social influence processes which occur all members of the group and others agrees that leadership is doing something in order to lead effective.

The classification of leadership style are how leaders strive their employee, how the communication is managed between leaders and working team, how leaders make decision with others, and the degree of sovereignty and empowerment leaders give to their contributory without considering the inherent characteristics. This theory advocate three styles, where power is required ‘autocratic’; power is distributed within ‘democratic’; or where power is relegated ‘laissez-faire’ (Krieger, 2001).

Therefore, this blog will evaluate my development as future leader according to these leadership styles and the feedback I have received while managing the team.

My Leadership Brand

Throughout my journey in the business world, I have always be a democratic leader when I am working in the group. Democratic leadership can be named as the consultative system and the participative system. According to Nave (2005) this leadership can be connected with the transformational style, which is indicated as the inspiring loyalty to the individuals, generating visionary changes in the organization. However, in Indonesia most of the leaders are using the authoritarian leadership styles which apply more coercive and legitimate power.

Assessing My Leadership Style

Coming from a business background family, I have always involved in business throughout my life. I have a chance to manage people in my family business. Throughout the experience, I have always taught to be a democratic leaders as decision making is much effective when you have more brain storming with others rather than individual. In the process, I have to work with other employee to discover better ideas and more creative solutions to problems. This process will creates more involvement of group members committed to the projects, making them to care about the end results.

I have spent most of my life in Singapore, making me interact with divergent nationalities of people. I have learnt a lot of things to manage others culture and along the way I have adapted well. I didn’t find any difficulty while working in teams in university level as Indonesia millennial are famous on using democratic leadership style in the team. Therefore, working with others culture would not be too troublesome for me.

Evaluation

The evaluation throughout my working life were the same as my feedback in the university as the leader of the team. I tend to listen to other members before making the final decision. Where this kind of elements are link to the intellect in democratic and transformational leadership.

Throughout my leadership experience in the university, I have several negative and positive feedbacks from the team members. The negative feedback has been taken for me to improve my style to become a better leader in the future. While the positive feedback has motivated me to work harder.

As one of the youngest person in the class, I am far behind other students regarding the experience in the leadership life. I am now twenty one years old and I still have a long way to learn in becoming a great leader. I’m always working on these leadership styles as my objective in the future is to become one of the successful millennial leaders in Indonesia. Therefore, I can influence other leaders in Indonesia to implement Democratic styles rather than authoritarian leadership style.

Development Plan

Several argument has been taken place about whether leaders are made or born. In my perspective, leaders are made through a learning process. I believe that people will grow themselves to be good leader if opportunity was given.

I was taught to become a humble person to everyone and by implementing the democratic style, there will be no position gap within the organisation. I will develop my democratic styles to achieve all my objectives in the future. Thus, I wouldn’t stop to learn to become a better leader as leader learning is endless (Coulter, 2001) and I will strengthen my strength in leading a successful team in my future studies and career.

References

Coulter, M. (2001). Entrepreneurship in action. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

Krieger, M. (2001). Sociología de las organizaciones: Una introducción al comportamiento organizacional. Mexico: Prentice Hall.

Nave, J. (2005). Leadership styles of entrepreneurs in small land surveying businesses (Electronic thesis and dissertation). East Tennessee State University, Tennessee.

Yukl, G., (1989), “Managerial Leadership: a review of theory and research”, Journal of Management, Vol. 15 Issue 2, p.251-290

What is leadership?

Leadership is a type of responsibility which aimed to achieve particular target by applying the human and material resources and providing a cohesive and coherent organisation in the process (Ololube, 2013). Northouse (2007) and Rowe (2007) also states that it is a process where a person influences others to achieve a common goal.

Modern Issues leading in a changing world

Leadership is one of the most hotly debated topics for decades (Pfeffer, 1993). Bennis and Nanus (1985) maintain that there is no consensus about the essence of leaderships. The modern world has causes numerous of challenges to the leaders due to the changing trends in the business world. Leaders have to behave differently to acquire the essential practice skills and knowledge to survive in 21st century global economy.

In the recent years, the internal characteristics of leadership has much focused on values and ethics (Hanges and Day, 2001). The lack of certainty in political leadership has been developed by the precise values that political leaders use to inspire their actions. Offermann (2001) claims that people is more aware with the values play in leadership effectiveness and success. As a results, this type of leader will attract different followers in regard of their values (Ehrhart & Klein, 2001).

Bass & Stidlemeier (1999) has described the two most popular concept of leadership which are transactional and transformational leadership.

Transactional leaderships was “based on reciprocity where leaders not only influence followers but are under their influence as well” (House & Shamir ,1993). However, this leadership overemphasizes on set routines and method of doing tasks causes the seldom encourage for the employees creativity.

Transformational leadership occurs when managers upraise the interest of the group, when they lead to achieve the purpose of the group and when they motivate the individuals (Bass, 1990). However, Yukl (1999) identified a few weakness or limitation of this concept which are the ambiguity underlying its influences and processes, and insufficient specification of situational variables and heroic leadership bias.

Challenges faced by current leaders

In the recent years, leaders have faces numerous challenges to manage people, challenges includes- developing trust, producing a combined purpose, deciding problems of bridging success and measurement of soft skill development (Boss, 2017). The conception and expectation of leadership will depends on the cultural background of individuals. Therefore, the chance of adopting western leadership is low, thus such leadership approaches are being questioned (Takahashi, Ishikawa & Kanai, 2012).

The changes in terms of demographics have been witnessed in the organisation for the past few years, especially in the modern century. According to Eagly and Chin (2010) the changes of demographics may causes a serious challenges to the leaders when dealing with the diversity issues in the workplace. However, this problem can be solves by obtaining the five categories of French and raven power sources.

According to the Google annual diversity report (2018), the company’s diversity is improving but it’s moving at a very slow pace. The numbers of both black and Native American workers at the firm have grown less than 1 percentage point over the past four years and the black US employees are leaving more than any other ethnic group. Therefore, Google have to solves this issues my using the Adair’s model on action-centered leadership. The organisation must set performance standard as ‘task need’ for targets market despite thinking about the background of the person, and discipline for ‘group task’ will minimize the challenges as it will improve the company reputation within the hierarchical level which have to be made by diverse set of people (Adair, 1973).

Future scope of leadership

It has been claimed directly that “Theories of leadership have overlooked diversity issue” (Chin, 2010). This is an important exclusion given that leadership will continue to become more diverse. For this reason there has been attention paid to diversity concern in leadership which are: Gender and Natural culture (Carli & Eagly, 2012). Eagly and Chin (2010) argue that leadership literature needs to better address diversity concerns and draw on research and hypothesis from the diversity literature to help address those worries.

References

Adair, J.E. (1973), “Action-Centred Leadership”. McGraw-Hill, London.

 Bass, B. & P. Steidlmeier. (1999). Ethics, Character and Authentic Transformational leadership Behaviour. The leadership Quarterly 10(2) , pp. 181 – 127.

Bass, B. M. (1990). From transactional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision. Organizational Dynamics, Vol 18(3) , 19-31. 

Bennis, W. & Nanus, B. (1985), Leaders: The strategies for Taking Change, Harper & Row, New York. 

Boss, J. (2017). The Top Leadership Challenges For 2016. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffboss/2016/02/02/the-top-leadership- challenges-for-2016/#47fc0c7719e0 [Accessed 24 Mar. 2019].

Carli, L. L., & Eagly, A. H. (2012). Leadership and gender. In D. V. Day & J. Antonakis (Eds.), The nature of leadership (2nd ed., pp. 437-476). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

Chin, J. L. (2010). Introduction to the special issue on diversity and leadership. American Psychologist, 65, 150-156.

Diversity.google. (2018). Diversity | Google. [online] Available at: https://diversity.google/annual-report/ [Accessed 25 Mar. 2019].

Eagly, A and Chin, J (2010). ‘Diversity and leadership in a changing world’, American Psychologist, vol. 65, no. 3, pp. 216, DOI: 10.1037/a001895

Eagly, A. H., & Chin, J. L. (2010). Diversity and leadership in a changing world. American Psychologist, 65, 216-224.

Northouse, G. (2007). Leadership Theory and Practice (3rd ed.) Thousand Oak: Sage Publications. 


Ololube, N. P. (2013). Educational Management, Planning and Supervision: Model for Effective Implementation. Owerri: SpringField Publishers.

Pfeffer, J. (1993), ‘The Ambiguity of Leadership’, in M. Matteson & J.M. Ivancevich (eds.), Management and Organizational Behavior Classics, Irwin, Homewood.

Rowe, W. G. (2007). Cases in Leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Takahashi, K., Ishikawa, J., and Kanai, T. (2012). Qualitative and quantitative studies of leadership in multinational settings: Metaanalytic and crosscultural reviews. Journal of World Business, 47 (4), 53-538. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2011.03.031.

Yukl, G. (1999). An Evaluation of the Conceptual Weaknesses in Transformational and Charismatic Leadership Theories. Leadership Quarterly. 10(2) , 285-305.

What is a culture? Unfortunately the universal understanding of culture does not exist. Some people considered culture as the “glue” that holds the organisations together and the “compass” that leads the directions. It also believes that culture refers to the mindset and values of an organisations as what Furnham and Gunter (1993) said “culture is the way we do things around here”.

Organisational culture is a tool that defines the behavior of a person in a various kind of situations in an organisation (Ravasi and Schultz, 2006). This tool influenced the ways of individual and groups communicate with each others, with clients and with stakeholders (Schrodt, 2002).

As a person that is born in the capital city of Indonesia and grow in the metropolitan country of Singapore, I am equipped with the necessary knowledge on how to manage culture in different businesses. Coming from an enthusiast business family has lead me to several knowledge in the world of business, especially in the organization culture change. Changing organisational culture is not an easy task for the employee as they might resist the new culture. Therefore, it is the leaders duty to persuade their employee on the benefits of changes.

Organisation Cultural Challenges

Cummings and Worley (2004) explored four barriers that an organisation faces when accommodate changes in its cultural practices. The first barrier is formulate a clear strategic vision for culture change. Then, the favor by the top of the organisation to implement change. Furthermore, the changes in systems, policies, procedures and rules of the organisation. The last barrier is the loyalty of the employee to the company.

Challenges faced by Nokia Corporation

Nokia Corporation has been one of the best selling mobile phone brand in the World with operating profit of $4 billion in 1999 (Steinbock, 2001). However, a significant thing happened in 2007, where Apple launched iPhone. Nokia was unable to challenge Apple and started losing market share to 25% in 2011. Thus, it was announced that Nokia sold its entire mobile business to Microsoft in 2013 (Cord, 2014). This is causes due to the lacks in competitive innovation, visionary leaders, transparency within directors and employees, decision making and many others organisational structure.

Strategies to Manage Organisational Culture

Handy (1981) describes four main types 0f organisational cultures: Power culture; Role culture; Task culture; and Person culture. In the scenario of Nokia Corporation, they have weak power culture as the company unable to compete with the competitor. Moreover, the lacks of role culture also happened in the company as the bureaucracy of the organisational structure is obvious, where decisions were made in committees and each hierarchical level present their own assessment on the projects and innovations (Lamberg and Vaara, 2016). Whereas, the issues can be solved by improving each types of culture above.

Nonetheless, Hofstede (1991) states that culture is the collective programming of the mind that discriminate the members of one group or category of individual from others. Large power distance, weak uncertainty avoidance and short term orientation are the biggest problem of Nokia Corporation when implement changes. Thus, Nokia have to create a low power distance, strong uncertainty avoidance and a long term structure plan for the future.

Changing organisational culture will be successful if it is align with its strategy and its structure. Whereas, some leaders think that cultural change is too complicated to be managed and it takes time to make it worth dealing with. However, leader is the person who needs to implement several strategies to manage the culture of the organisation. In the case of Nokia corporation, the top management is too egocentric and arrogant as the company have been constantly praised without any criticism which causes the resistance to change its organisation culture (Lamberg and Vara, 2016).

Can culture be managed? YES

Strong corporate culture could be a crucial success factor to manage organisational culture. The main aspects of managing corporate culture is lead by example as Yukl (2010) states that leaderships is the process of influencing others and the process of helping individuals and cumulative efforts to accomplish the objectives. Organisational culture is the most important attribute to successful companies. Nowadays, it is changing due to the modernization which effect the failure of Nokia corporation. However, the failure of Nokia could be prevented if the leaders able to change its culture and produce a good organisational structure. To a certain extent, great corporate culture does not exist without any exertion, lets not forget that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”.

Reference

Cummings, Thomas G. & Worley, Christopher G. (2004), Organization Development and Change, 8th Ed., South-Western College Pub.

Cord, D. J. (2014). (2014). The decline and fall of Nokia. Schildt & Söderström.

Eldridge, J and Crombie, A (1974) The Sociology of Organizations, Allen & Unwin, London

Furnham, A and Gunter, B (1993) Corporate Assessment, Routledge, London

Handy, C (1981) Understanding Organizations, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth

Hofstede, G. (1991). Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. London, UK: McGraw-Hill.

Laamanen, T., Lamberg, J. A., & Vaara, E. (2016). Explanations of success and failure in management learning: What can we learn from Nokia’s rise and fall?. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 15(1), 2-25.

Medium. (2018). Why did Nokia fail and what can you learn from it?. [online] Available at: https://medium.com/multiplier-magazine/why-did-nokia-fail-81110d981787 [Accessed 16 Mar. 2019].

Ravasi, D.; Schultz, M. (2006). “Responding to organizational identity threats: Exploring the role of organizational culture”. Academy of Management Journal,49 (3): 433–458.

Schrodt, P (2002). “The relationship between organizational identification and organizational culture: Employee perceptions of culture and identification in a retail sales organization”. Communication Studies 53: 189–202.

Steinbock, D. (2001).The Nokia Revolution. The story of an extraordinary company that transformed an industry. New York: AMACOM.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton