Role of Leaders Report Sample

• Subject Name : leadership

Role of Leaders in Driving Innovation and Creativity at Workplace

Table of Contents

Introduction.

Role of Leaders.

Motivating employees.

Workplace communication and environment

Tactics used by Leaders.

Diversification.

Ethics.

Take challenges and encourages risk taking.

Clearly defines expectations.

Rewarding Achievement

Conclusion.

References.

Introduction to Role of Leaders Report

The aim of the report is to critically analyze the role of leaders in driving innovation and creativity at workplace. The report will use different literatures and academic leadership theory as well as practical examples for justifying the role of leaders. Leadership is a skill which is developed through experiences and knowledge. This skill are needed to be gained. It depends on various things like personality, attitude, experience and many more (Afsar, Badir & Kiani, 2016). Leadership involves influencing people with an aim of achieving certain set objectives. The achievement of organizational objectives is accomplished through use of effective skills in leadership. A leader’s effectiveness is directly related to his capability to motivate his followers by use of word (Robinson, 2019). 

Role of Leaders

A leader has power to influence behavior of employees in an organization to a certain direction. In influencing behavior, an effective leader applies strategies or tactics that are meant to change the attitudes of the staff, their beliefs, values, and how they act. The leader plays a vital role in maintain the relationship with its follower and maintain the working environment (MacLellan, 2017). The leader as an individual contributes a lot which include motivating and inspiring others, providing coaching and training for development, identifying the opportunity and future needs of organization, enabling followers to share new ideas and experiences and helping followers to overcome various challenges and problems. As an individual, the leader makes an efficient and effective team which is capable of achieving organization goal through innovation and creativity. Leader is the one who is responsible for managing the team and resolving the issues resulting in conflicts in the team. Leader binds the team together and make them work together to achieve a specific goal. Leader make sure that the object is clear in the minds of the follower and the working environment is suitable for high productive (Perryer, Celestine, Scott-Ladd & Leighton, 2016). Organization become successful, when leader is able to influence others to accomplish the organization aim. Below are the roles that leaders play to drive innovation and creativity within the organization.

Motivating Employees

Leaders motivate and encourages their employee for better performance and innovation. Motivation is an internal state which is responsible for making people to behave in specific ways so as to achieve certain goals and purposes. The outward manifestations are observable to people but motivation itself remains internal (Perryer, Celestine, Scott-Ladd & Leighton, 2016). The work place is one of the places where motivation is highly desirable. Coming up with effective ways to motivate the employees mostly poses as a major challenge for the employers. This is the fact that highly motivated employees are key to the success of the business. People in the work place therefore need to be constantly motivated to ensure that work is done efficiently. However, the people making up the workforce differ greatly from each other and as such; any one single motivational tactic may not work universally. Every person has varying reasons for working and their desires differ to a large extent. Inspiration especially comes after leaders have come up with prudent leadership strategies which need employee support to work (Moore, Odom & Boyd, 2017). Most often, if it is a service oriented industry, the leadership may have to reach out to the frontline employees to undertake the new strategies because they are the first point of contact consumers have with the organization.

Workplace Communication and Environment

Leaders are the one who can comfort his team members and staff member of the organization to communicate freely. Without communication and clarification of doubts, innovation and creative has no scope. However, the workplace environment also influences the performance of the workforce. Creating a harmonious workplace environment is therefore one of the ways through which employee productivity can be raised since this demonstrates that the inputs of the employees are valued and appreciated by the organization. Communication is the cornerstone of all successful relationships and in the organization, communication takes place between and among the various individuals (Martin, Danzig, Wright, Flanary & Orr, 2016). The tone and language used to carry out communication plays a monumental role in motivating individual employees. When a superior uses motivating language, it results in increased efficiency in his/her management of the subordinates. The staff in the organization should feel they are part of the decision-making and consultation is crucial in achieving this.

These factors helps the employees to think out of the box and enable them to invent and create new ideas and strategies for the benefit of the organization. This is also an important factor because junior members of staff are able to voice their concerns depending on the mission, consumer demands, sales and inventory distribution information. Leaders ensures favorable working environment for the employees so that employee morale can be high and teamwork fostered (Martin, Danzig, Wright, Flanary & Orr, 2016). Complimentarily, the management can come up with a plan to reward well performing employees, probably through the establishment of an employee recognition program, tied to success and employee performance. This creates a new reality for the employees because it puts them on levels which they have never been in. In fact, such a strategy is very useful to align employees with future environmental changes since it makes employees much more flexible and adaptive to new changes (MacLellan, 2017). Which further results in innovation and creativity.

Tactics Used by Leaders

Ingratiation is another tactic applied by effective leaders and it involves the act of ensuring other people are in good mood before a leader attempts to influence the people. Ingratiation is at times regarded as flattery but it works if well applied. Personal appeal is also an effective approach that is applied by leaders, it involves the application of reference to friendship, and loyalty before a leader makes any request (MacLellan, 2017). Consultation is also an important tactic applied by effective leader and it involves inviting of other people in the organization into participating in the decision-making, planning, and in the creation and implementation of changes in the strategies. Leaders apply soft tactics in their leadership that are friendly to their employees, are not coercive and other people perceive this tactics to be fair to them. Inspirational appeal, which is attempting to create enthusiasm amongst the employees by attempting to appeal to the emotions, value system, and individual ideals of the employees. Success of an influence tactic is based how the people who are the target of the tactic react, either by demonstrating compliance, being committed or resist in regards to the achievement of the objective (Laurs, 2018).

Leaders apply this strategy by carrying out environmental analysis through research and adopting future forecasting tools like actuarial analysis in predicting the future business environment. A leader who has power will effectively apply a number of influence tactics that leaders who have little or no power will not apply. The challenge to the leaders is assessing the best situation and the most effective influence tactic to apply to achieve the desired outcome. Leadership also honors commitment to ensure achievement of any pronounced plans. A successful leader has a set of values that subordinates identify with and clients can easily connects to it. Employees are only able to access these leadership traits through close interaction with their leaders (Laurs, 2018).

Diversification

Leaders can enhance diversity through teamwork, motivation, interactive form of communication and acceptance of different personalities. Diversification also allows the leaders to note the potential business rivals or outside threats to the firm’s continuity plans (Kragt & Guenter, 2018). Seeing the kind of diversity one has made over the years motivates and enhances more dynamism for better performances. Creativity has no end because whenever a firm accomplishes the set business goals, new and more creative plans emanate, thus the origin of progressive prosperity (Kragt & Guenter, 2018).

Ethics

Ethical form of leadership requires governance through considerations of various aspects such as age, gender, performance, experience and energy differences, characterized by emphasis of good relations. An ethical leader is a good listener who is approachable and friendly. Her/his style of governance is open and enlists mental trust among those involved. Business ethics is ability to engage employees’ behaviors that direct performance to financial prosperity and growth through clear definition of goals, structure and style of execution. Today innovation brings about enormous challenges and complexity in the entrepreneurship world. A leader succeed, as it identifies the international consumer trends to develop an ethical form of leadership culture and ensure effective and balanced overall management of multiple operational environments.

There are diverse and often conflicting demands by consumers, stakeholders, investors and employees that a firm must balance (Chaturvedi, Rizvi & Pasipanodya, 2019). This means that a good entrepreneur must be in a position to balance all these demands. Leader ensures that Clear business values, culture and believe must accompany ethical codes of management and performance. Leaders also ensures that employees have a pro-work wage policy that enhances business good sense. Good remunerations attract quality workers who often remain in the firm for longer, it is a long-term investment and thus a benefit to the firm. Ethically justifiable form of payment is also very important. Ability to attract and retain better, more productive and loyal employees depends on how well a business is able to cultivate human resources. Most current firms have neglected this critical aspect of finding lifetime personnel to enhancing long-term business growth (Chaturvedi, Rizvi & Pasipanodya, 2019).

Take Challenges and Encourages Risk Taking

Leaders instill a new culture of “thinking out of the box” by encouraging employees to envision beyond the constraints of traditional business assumptions since incorporating this new business culture can lead to both management and employee innovation. Leaders employ transformational learning theory as a means to instill this new skill in the organization (Bergner, Kanape & Rybnicek, 2019). Transformational learning has majorly been used in adult education and rarely been used in an organizational context but its application is bound to work because it has been proved to work in aspects such as cross cultural experiences, interactive leadership and development, and active research projects by managers and leaders. Transformational learning should therefore be encouraged in the organization but this ought to be done in full support of the management, through the reaffirmation of accommodation of cultural diversity, training and development and action research (Bergner, Kanape & Rybnicek, 2019).

Clearly Defines Expectations

Leaders clearly defines its expectation so that innovation and creativity should be carried out. It is also important for leaders to let employees know their expectations in undertaking such measures. When employees comprehend the management’s expectations when employing new strategies, and are provided with the right tools for undertaking the strategy, they are bound to have an increased sense of job satisfaction when they accomplish the set goals (Bal, Arikan & Çalişkan, 2016).

Rewarding Achievement

It is the most effective tactic used by the leader to drive the innovation and creativity at workplace. When an individual gets an awards for his/her exceptional work, other gets motivated to work hard and bring something new to the table. Leaders put specific incentives to motivate employees to improve their performances or maintain outstanding performances (Afsar, Badir & Kiani, 2016). The type of incentives also vary because some employees may be motivated by financial rewards; some may be motivated by an expensive vacation holiday or a change in the working schedule to be more flexible; while others may just be motivated by the mere verbal recognition of performance.

Conclusion on Role of Leaders Report

It can be concluded that the report has clearly identified the role of leaders in motivating creativity and innovation within the workplace. Various factors that leads to innovation and creativity were discussed which include motivation, enhancing workplace communication and environment, strategies to influence, diversification at workplace, ethical behavior, taking challenges and encouraging risk taking, clearly defining expectation and rewarding for tremendous work. Leaders the key which enable the motivating and creativity factors in the employees as leaders provides them freedom to think out of the box rather than sticking to work.

References for Role of Leaders Report

Afsar, B., Badir, Y. & Kiani, U.S. (2016). Linking spiritual leadership and employee pro-environmental behavior: The influence of workplace spirituality, intrinsic motivation, and environmental passion. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 45, pp.79-88.

Bal, E.A., Arikan, S.Ç. & Çalişkan, S.C. (2016). Personality, values and career concerns as individual antecedents of workplace influence tactics. Global Media Journal: Turkish Edition, 7(13), pp.63-85.

Bergner, S., Kanape, A. & Rybnicek, R. (2019). Taking an interest in taking the lead: The influence of vocational interests, leadership experience and success on the motivation to lead. Applied Psychology, 68(1), pp.202-219.

Chaturvedi, S., Rizvi, I.A. & Pasipanodya, E.T. (2019). How can leaders make their followers to commit to the organization? The importance of influence tactics. Global Business Review, 20(6), pp.1462-1474.

Harry Garretsen, Janka I. Stoker, Roberto A. & Weber (2020). Economic perspectives on leadership: Concepts, causality, and context in leadership research. The Leadership Quarterly, 31(3). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2020.101410.

Kragt, D. & Guenter, H. (2018). "Why and when leadership training predicts effectiveness: The role of leader identity and leadership experience". Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 39 (3), pp. 406-418

Laurs, D.E. (2018). Perceived Impact of PASS Leadership Experience on Student Leaders' Transferable Skills Development. Journal of Peer Learning, 11(3), pp.27-40.

MacLellan, A.M. (2017). Contagious motivation in the workplace: An examination of how leaders' motivation can impact the motivation of their subordinates. Retrieved from http://t.library2.smu.ca/handle/01/27167#.XwPyoSgzZPY

Martin, G.E., Danzig, A.B., Wright, W.F., Flanary, R.A. & Orr, M.T. (2016). School leader internship: Developing, monitoring, and evaluating your leadership experience. London: Routledge.

Moore, L.L., Odom, S.F. & Boyd, B.L. (2017). The team leadership summit: Culminating the leadership experience. Journal of Leadership Education, 16(3), pp.1-8.

Perryer, C., Celestine, N.A., Scott-Ladd, B. & Leighton, C. (2016). Enhancing workplace motivation through gamification: Transferrable lessons from pedagogy. The International Journal of Management Education, 14(3), pp.327-335.

Robinson, A. (2019). Five signs of a high performance team. In BSAVA Congress Proceedings 2019 (pp. 312-313). BSAVA Library.

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